67 Responses to “Crashed”

1. GM Roper Says:
   June 26th, 2005 at 6:56 pm

   Now that you mention it, I think I’ll wait for HBO or Cinemax to put it on.

2. reg Says:
   June 26th, 2005 at 7:21 pm

   “this kind of politically correct ‘dialogue’”

   Trying to figure out what movie Hicks went to see…that’s about the dumbest characterization of “Crash” or it’s political frame, whatever else one might say about the film, I’ve seen yet.

   Don’t know much about L.A. and don’t really care. Although most of the I “Heart” LA counter-evidence to the alleged CRASH thesis that Hicks musters was encompassed within the movie itself to one degree or another. It was a piece of cinematic fiction for God’s sake, and a compelling, resonant, well-acted, cleverly scripted one IMHO. But “politically correct”? Hardly.

3. Josh Legere Says:
   June 26th, 2005 at 9:16 pm

   Reg,

   Were you not irate with my characterizations BoBo Radicals in the Bay Area in past postings? I mean, IRATE. Lots of ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ thrown in!

   For us that live in LA, it seems kind of silly, if not downright offensive to characterize the city in the manner that Crash does. I have been lucky to travel all over this country and if I appreciate one thing about LA, especially Long Beach (where I live), it is the diversity. You can stand on Broadway in front of Cliftons in downtown LA and actually be amazed at how so many different kinds of people flow together without wanting to kill each other.

   When I was a kid in Boston a ‘cook out’ was a sterile WASPish event with lots of clams and topsiders. Kind of sterile. Now I mostly attend ‘fiestas’ with chicharones and pork fried rice. A lot more fun. Needless to say I am glad that most of my friends have unique cultures that we share sincere camaraderie versus tribal loyalty. ‘Diversity’ does not even come into the picture, people are people and in LA, increasingly, nothing seems ‘foreign.’ And I should note that the Bay Area ‘cultural competence’ jive is absent! Not that LA is utopia, but I have to give credit where credit is due (none to those in power… this is organic).

   So for me and all of my friends that live and grew up in LA (including a couple of LAPD officers), the movie is pretty damn silly.

   But I can see how a rich BoBo film Yuppy living in West Hollywood or Beverly Hills could imagine the LA pictured in CRASH.

4. reg Says:
   June 26th, 2005 at 9:46 pm

   As I said, I didn’t take “Crash” as a documentary on L.A. I’m sure L.A. is a wonderful place to live for people of all races and faiths. It’s a damn shame it’s reputation has suffered over the years at the hands of jerks like Raymond Chandler, Nathaniel West, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Mike Davis etc. etc. ad nauseum. And now Paul Haggis.

   But would you seriously argue that “Crash” was “politically correct”? It’s one of the least PC movies that isn’t pure exploitation or entertainment I’ve seen – take the characterization of Matt Dillon’s cop, for example. It may well have been over-the-top from the POV of a real L.A. cop (that would be something new in portrayals of L.A. cops in movies, wouldn’t it?) but it was far from being PC or one-dimensional in stereotyping a “racist cop” as an evil guy with no redemption. Maybe it was implausible, but it was mostly the opposite of “PC” in my view. That was also true of Cheadle and his relationship with both his family and his lover, the Latina cop. The script, which was written on spec and only produced – for a measly $6.5 million dollars, incidentally – because Don Cheadle championed it, was inspired by a real carjacking that Paul Haggis and his wife experienced at the hands of some “black youth” in the early nineties. His creative response wasn’t sentimental or silly or cheap, in my opinion. And the movie was about as far removed from “central casting” in drawing it’s characters (to counter another of Hicks’ assertions) as one could imagine. I didn’t see any pure good guys or bad guys or sentimentalized victims in this movie. Nor did I think the message was “we can’t all get along” any more than it was a simplistic “Can’t we all just get along”? There were flaws in the film, but I don’t think the critique posted above catches any of them.

   As for “cultural competence”, I’ve never heard the term before you wrote it. Guess I’m not part of the local zeitgeist. Or something…

5. modestproposal Says:
   June 26th, 2005 at 11:59 pm

   Everything you’ve concluded about Crash is true, Marc, especially the part about stirring up middle-class guilt.

   I’m no booster for LA, and I certainly have no problem with a film that chooses to use racism as a prism for looking at broader issues — about LA, about America, whatever. But Crash’s problem is that it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say about racism, other than to insist over and over, in the most absurdly contrived manner imaginable, that it exists everywhere, all the time, at maximum decibel level.

   And here’s something else seriously wrong with the film: it peddles racial stereotypes of its own. The Iranian shopkeeper is a particularly egregious example — the umpteenth example of a Middle Easterner in a Hollywood movie who turns out to be a murderous bastard. But there are others — even Sandra Bullock’s miserable white Brentwood trophy wife. The point, once again, is not that people like her don’t exist. They do, of course. The point is that the film can’t resist wrapping every conceivable cliche around her character and then having absolutely nothing worthwhile to say about her. She might as well have been carrying a sign saying “spoiled white bitch”, just as other characters might have carried signs saying “black punk delinquent loser” or “heartless Chinese human trafficker who can’t even speak English for cripes sake”.

   It was overblown, uninvolving and borderline offensive all round.

6. Robert Fiore Says:
   June 27th, 2005 at 12:31 am

   A mugged liberal becomes a conservative. A carjacked radical tries to figure out what he’s done to make the carjackers so angry.

7. rosedog Says:
   June 27th, 2005 at 1:01 am

   As it happens, I went to see CRASH the first weekend it was out—without reading any reviews—and loved it. Since that time, I’ve been rather stunned to find that a whole host of friends and reviewers are utterly offended by the movie—interpreting it as Josh, modest proposal, and Joe Hicks have, as an absurd and somewhat hateful caricature of race relations in LA.

   More than any film I can call to mind in the recent past, CRASH appears to hit folks at drastically different angles. And, Josh, while I wholeheartedly agree with your (and Joe Hicks’) personal take on our fair city, I don’t think one can dismiss everyone who liked CRASH as being effete idiots who wouldn’t dream of getting off the freeway in the “wrong” zip code.

   As nearly as I can tell, if you take the film literally, you’ll end up with one POV—which is that the film is overblown, negative, stereotypic and clumsy. Or as modest proposal said, that racism “exists everywhere, all the time, at maximum decibel levels..”

   Yet, the way I saw it, Haggis deliberately used stereotypes, pushed them to the limit, then used a poetic slight of hand to imbue them with life, poignancy and complexity….and the ultimate sense that we’re all in this together.

   Marc, only your personal instinct can tell you whether to wait for video, or rush to your nearest theater. The worth—or lack thereof—of this particular puppy is really in the eye of the beholder.

   In any case, rather than natter on with my own inchoate Sunday night impressions, as a counterpoint to Hick’s review, I’d like to recommend reading David Denby’s write up in the New Yorker…

   http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050502crci_cinema

   Here are some clipped ‘graphs:.

   “….. “Crash” is hyper-articulate and often breathtakingly intelligent and always brazenly alive. I think it’s easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” though it is not for the fainthearted. In the first twenty minutes or so, the racial comments are so blunt and the dialogue so incisive that you may want to shield yourself from the daggers flying across the screen by getting up and leaving. That would be a mistake. “Crash” stretches the boundaries: after the cantankerous early scenes, it pulls us into the multiple stories it has to tell and becomes intensely moving.

   “……… “We’re always behind this metal and glass,” a melancholy police detective, Graham (Don Cheadle), says as he sits in his car with his partner and girlfriend, Ria (Jennifer Esposito). “It’s the sense of touch. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.” This may seem a fancy conceit until one realizes that Haggis is pushing the word “crash” beyond the literal: he means any kind of rough contact between folks from different ethnic groups. But after the collision, what then? The stories, which begin on separate paths, slowly mesh; the characters are thrown together in bizarre ways, and they go past their initial distaste for each other and at least admit that they live in the same city, and are touched by the same fatality and magic.

   …..Haggis’s complex take on each furious encounter makes previous movie treatments of prejudice seem like easy and self-congratulatory liberalizing. Apart from a few brave scenes in Spike Lee’s work, “Crash” is the first movie I know of to acknowledge not only that the intolerant are also human but, further, that something like white fear of black street crime, or black fear of white cops, isn’t always irrational. In another strand, an Iranian shopkeeper named Farhad (Shaun Toub) has become a quarrelsome fool; he’s sure that everyone is out to cheat him. But this incensed man’s neighbors think that he and his family are Arabs, and trash his store. In Haggis’s Los Angeles, the tangle of mistrust, misunderstanding, and foul temper envelops everyone; no one is entirely innocent or entirely guilty.

   “….There are plenty of angry people in movies and on television, but Haggis has an intimate feeling for the way rage fuels itself and redoubles—the demotic eloquence of the street, the marital quarrel, the police-station tirade. I can’t think of a single flat or dramatically pointless scene, and some of the big moments play out at the edge of insanity, where contentiousness spills over into tragedy or farce.

   The actors grab at their roles as if their careers depended on it. Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard expose the kind of torment and shame that could drive this educated, privileged couple apart. Cheadle’s soft-spoken intelligence has become one of the most expressive elements in American cinema, and, as the man who sees the most, understands the most, and pays for his knowledge in suffering, he holds this movie together. But everyone steps up, including Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, and the angel-faced Ryan Phillippe, who pulls off a moment of near-calamity with character and force. The heart-swelling resolutions of the different stories will, I know, strike some viewers as overwrought. But hasn’t Haggis earned the tears? He has laid the groundwork for emotional release by writing some of the toughest talk ever heard in American movies. Some things may be better left unsaid, but the exuberant frankness of this movie burns through embarrassment and chagrin and produces its own kind of exhilaration….”

   PS: You have, however, convinced me to see the penguin movie.

8. rosedog Says:
   June 27th, 2005 at 1:22 am

   PPS: Emperor penquins truly rock. They are really among life’s most amazing critters. Especially the dad penguins. Yep, gotta see the penguin movie.

9. richard lo cicero Says:
   June 27th, 2005 at 6:22 am

   I will not comment on a film that I have not seen – guess that makes me unAmerican – but I find it interesting that the people denouncing it seem to come from the same political persuasion. Joe Hicks is now associated with David Horowitz and the DAILY NEWS where he wrote his piece was the prime print advocate of Valley Sucession – the ultimate White Flight.

   I don’t think any film could capture a city like LA. Just as NAKED CITY, SERPICO or Q and A didn’t give us the last word on the Apple. But before I give LA a clean bill it ought to be noted that this is the town that put the dark in Noir. Chandler and West didn’t write those novels out of pique and Moseley and Elmore that guy who writes the Harry Bosch stories haqve kept the tradition up. Are they giving us the real deal? Probably not. But who, other than our lingustically challenged president, reads a steady diet of MY PET GOAT?

10. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 7:47 am

    rosedog…that was an insightful review…the movie’s worth seeing for the acting alone. And outside of L.A. I don’t think the city’s virtue comes up as the central issue in response to the film. Most of us hinterland suckers are used to seeing L.A. as a movie set – one that’s richly detailed – and take these cinematic narratives as…well…as narratives. We’ve seen enough of these concoctions you cook up down there that we generally understand “Realism” is a dramatic device & not actual reality, “a slice of life” is more than likely just a sliver, and the POV is in the eye of the beholder.

    That said, my wife and I did find some parallels between incidents in the film and some experiences her oldest son, a “Dean’s-list-at-a-prestigious-private-college” senior in L.A. who is percieved as black or a very brown Latino depending on how he’s currently exercising his penchant for cool hair, has had at the hands of the police in L.A. and Berkeley, no less. The last one involved a cop’s gun to the head in the course of sitting & chatting on a friend’s front porch and the continuation of a totally “fuck you” attitude with not even a hint of common courtesies when the officers involved realized they’d made a mistake and had scared a couple of harmless kids to death. That was in Berkeley.

    rlc – no need to smear the poor guy with that Horowitz association. Don’t know him, but suddenly I wouldn’t trust him to choose an ice cream flavor, much less judge a movie. I checked his website and it seems that he’s pretty much just trying to engage locals in a harmless Kumbaya, lets-all-join-hands exercise. (Thankfully nothing “PC” that normal people would avoid like the plague. And no stereotyping except perhaps of divisive scum like public school teachers as referenced in his review who, we know, truly are sowing racial discord.)

    I forgot to mention earlier that this film also captures Tony Danza in his finest performance yet. And that – for all of the crash, bang, anger and pathos – it has more than a few moments that are very, very funny.

11. Marc Cooper Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 10:18 am

    Richard.. why dont you deal with real ideas instead of engaging in guilt by association? Joe Hicks has not been associated with Horowitz for more than three years.. his new group is decidedly centist. The Daily News supports secession. The Nation, at one point in its history, supported Joe Stalin. I have lived in L.A. on and off for more than 50 years. Anyone who believes race relations here are stuck in the mid-century is really asleep.

12. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 10:30 am

    “Anyone who believes race relations here are stuck in the mid-century is really asleep.”

    True, but that observation has nothing to do with this film. You oughta see it…you probably won’t like it, since you now seem to have a vested interest in slamming it, but give it a shot.

13. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 10:34 am

    “Anyone who believes race relations here are stuck in the mid-century is really asleep.”

    True, but that observation has nothing to do with this film. You oughta see it…you probably won’t like it, since you now seem to have a vested interest in slamming it, but give it a shot.

14. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 10:39 am

    “The Nation, at one point in its history, supported Joe Stalin.” So did the nation (sans caps).

15. rosedog Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 3:04 pm

    “Anyone who believes race relations here are stuck in the mid-century is really asleep.”

    Marc, where did that come from???? Not the movie, I promise you.

    By the way, I liked the film precisely because it WASN’T at all PC. And the last thing it’s about is middle-class, liberal guilt. That’s what most films about race classically cover….and attempt to induce. This one, blessedly, doesn’t. Its strength is that nobody is demonized and nobody gets out the door free and unscathed.

    Look, in once sense, race relations are better than they’ve ever been in LA, and yet they’re also more complex than ever—which is, I believe, what Haggis is attempting to portray. This is not meant as Cinéma vérité. What his characters do, in the film, is to say…and in many cases, act out….all the stuff that’s going on below the surface in LA….and any other big multicultural city.

    As Joe Hicks points out, the voting patterns that resulted in Villaraigosa’s victory are evidence of the way racial boundaries and alliances are breaking down and smoothing out in LA County. And yet to go on from here, we need to admit to the racial wounds and tensions and barriers that still exist—on all sides of the racial/ethnic fence. It’s the first precept of therapy or any so-called recovery process, that you don’t get better until you at least get the problem out into the open. And, yes, Virginia, we have more than just one or two racial problems in Los Angeles in the year 2005. They’re far, far better than they were before. But, in some ways, they’re also more difficult to address, because they’re writ less large….and exist at times at a more subtle level.

    A few random examples:

    ***I spoke to Antonio a few days after he won and he told me about the death threats he’s been getting. “I don’t let em bother me,” he said. But clearly they did bother him because they evidently had a different viciousness and tenor than any he’d experienced before.

    ***I’ve spent the last few weeks working on an article I’m doing on Jefferson High, where the “N” word is now part of conflict, where it never was before, and the racial situation is complex to say the least—more than I’d dream of trying to detail here. Suffice it to say that kids who’ve always had close friends of another color are, now at times, experiencing a painful split along the Black/Brown divide. Moreover, although I’ve met teachers at Jeff Hi who are nothing less than heroic in their devotion to their kids, some of the remarks that have reportedly been made by other teachers in the time that I’ve been there—about Jeff High’s students ability to learn—are breathtaking in their odiously racist/classist content.

    ***At Pali High school, where the racial mix is 42 % white, 23 % African American, 25 % Hispanic. —instead of fostering diversity—with a few exceptions, like the sports teams, and the film school, the social groups tend to balkanize almost exclusively along racial lines, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. I’ve heard parent after parent despair because their white kids who’d been brought up all their lives to respect diversity, were starting to spout loathsome stereotypes at home, because they’d been continually bullied and threatened by groups of kids of color.

    ***Last summmer around this time, I went with a group of young East LA homegirls on a sort of all-day field trip where they each got to get “beauty make-overs” by an upstreet make-up artist. The makeovers took place at the Santa Monica boardwalk, just south of the pier, where the make-up woman set up her make shift “salon” on a bunch of picnic tables, and the rest of the homegirls either watched or played around in the sand while they waited their turn. It was quite the colorful photo op. As a result, quite a few bikeriders and rollerbladers stopped by to stare, but somehow the mood was always friendly. It was truly the most enchanted of days. (I wish I could post photos here. They’re fabulous.) It was great to get the girls out of the ‘hood, and everyone enjoyed the fun of this silly girly-girl activity.

    Afterward, we all repaired to the Santa Monica pier for banana splits. That’s when the racial incident occurred. It involved a couple of unpleasant little private school white girls—who repeatedly race baited the most extravagantly tattooed of our homegirls, maybe out of fear. Or perhaps they simply didn’t see her as human. (Maybe if they’d known the kind of horrific sexual and emotional abuse she’d endured as a child, and how no adult family member ever protected her at all, and how brave and smart and funny and kind she is anyway, against all odds, maybe then they might have had more compassion. But perhaps not.)

    In any case, when these little rich twits didn’t desist, the homegirl finally turned and calmly told them to “F” off. That was all. But the tormenting girls didn’t leave it at that. They evidently ran to their mother who, in turn, told pier security that a gangster had physically threatened her poor little girls and yelled Jewish epithets at them. (None of which ever happened.) Without any attempt to discover the truth of the situation, the homegirl who’d behaved with admirable restraint in the face of this, was removed from the park by a thug of a security guard who stopped just short of assaulting her when the rest of us tried to verbally intercede. (Yes, a complaint was filed with everyone we could think of.)

    ***Even after having an African American police chief, and despite the fact that current chief, Bill Bratton does his damnedest to promote racial equity everywhere in his department, I’ve had Black cop after Black cop tell me stories over the past two years that illustrate how racism is still alive and well in the LAPD.

    ***My Iranian-American dentist is brilliant technician who also happens to be the sweetest of men, a great dad, and a poetry buff. Nevertheless, his practice was cut in half after 9/11. (It’s since built back up, thankfully, because he’s so damn good, and his remaining patients have all recommended him to others.)

    ***Because I’m a white broad who spends much of her working life in east and south LA, I’m used to quickly diffusing the racial stereotypes that get lobbed my direction on a regular basis. Frankly, I hardly even see ‘em any more, it’s become so automatic. But just two weeks ago at a murder scene where I showed up as a reporter, I had an African American woman come at me hard core and physically, simply because I was white and she had evidently decided in that moment, based on who knew what string of past experiences or whatever, that all white people were a**holes, and it was time she beat one of ‘em down. (Fortunately her friends restrained her. But it wasn’t pretty.)

    ***My 19-year-old son has become friends, of late, with a Lebanese guy who’s in LA on a student visa, attending Cal State Northridge, studying computer science, working another 40 plus hours on top of his school time, doing the night shift at a San Fernando Valley liquor store in order to afford to stay here. My son and the Lebanese kid happily talk tech stuff and life, and have found they are kindred spirits. And, my kid has been stunned at the racial slights this other brave and hardworking kid endures on a daily, weekly basis.

    ***In a murder case covered not too long ago, the victim was white (actually he was half Hawaiian), but the defense attorney went out of his way to portray him as Hispanic, because then it was less of a stretch to suggest that he was a gang member (he wasn’t), and somehow deserving of his fate.

    ***I know very few men friends of mine, who are either Black or Mexican American who live in the barrio who haven’t forced, by cops, at some point in the last year or two to lie on the ground spread eagled, usually in front of their kids….for nothing. Really. Still.

    ***Two weeks ago, I interviewed the most famous African American model in this country (for a profile for a women’s magazine). She lives in LA, went to a private school, and grew up in a decidedly upper middle class environment. When I asked her if she ever still deals with racism now. She paused for a beat, then said quietly, “Only all the time.”

    I can give you another 50 examples of white on Black, Black on Hispanic, Hispanic on Vietnamese…or White, Armenian on Hispanic, ….and on and on…. without pausing to take a breath.

    Yet, this is only the bad news. The good news far outweighs the bad. Yet, to say that these problems don’t exist is….counterproductive.

    ******************

    Okay. I’ll shut up. Sorry I went on so long. I’m going back to the spidey-hole to work now.

16. rosedog Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 3:31 pm

    Hmmm. Typos. Ooops. Should’ve proofread.

17. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 3:40 pm

    Thanks for that…great, illuminating, reality-based comment. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen here.

18. Marc Cooper Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 4:06 pm

    Rosedog: great anecdotes that all reveal something about L.A. life. I just dont believe that life in this city is dominated and defined primarily by race… at least no more or less than most otehr places ( I’m thinking of what it means to be an African in Paris and having to deal with undeodorized “flic” all day and night… not something I would want to do). I think the issue in L.A. — like most other places— is social class (which of course overlaps but does NOT coinicide with race).

    Further, Im on full-overload-tilt with racial equality sermons coming from the L.A. Westside… and unfairly or not, and Im sure it IS unfair, I equate film-makers, even nice-thinking Indies as part of the same cabal./

    OK. enough of that.

    And Reg, what’s ur deal, guy? I let u rant and rave here like crazy but u pay me back by accusing me of all sorts of things that are plain off the wall. What kind of “interest” could I have in not wanting to see Crash? Let me answer for you: I’m not interested, period. Nothing about the movie attracts me. But u can see it three, four times if you like.

19. rosedog Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 4:50 pm

    Marc…”I just dont believe that life in this city is dominated and defined primarily by race… I think the issue in L.A. — like most other places— is social class…”

    Agreed. Totally. And, also agreed, that the last people I want to be lecturing me on race is white folks from the west side. Even though I…um…am one of ‘em.

    Still I liked the movie and thought it both entertaining and valuable. What can I tell ya? (Also, I don’t think it was meant to be about LA, per se, although LA was the lens through which it presented its view.)

    Okay, happy Monday everybody. Back to work. (And time to move the cat who’s draped with one paw straying far too close to the laptop keyboard.)

20. jim hitchcock Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 5:04 pm

    Good stuff, Rosedog…In a perfect world, Marc could use those private school yahoos for sharkbait.

    “(And time to move the cat who’s draped with one paw straying far too close to the laptop keyboard.)”

    Which is better than a parrot who goes for strolls on the keyboard…and poops entirely at random.

21. richard lo cicero Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 6:42 pm

    Marc I was born and raised around LA (Southeast County) almost 60 years ago and now live in a mainly White Working Class area that has plenty of Latinos. If you think assimilation is taking place think again. Among the twentysomethings I hear plenty of the “N” word and the term of art for our Hispanic Friends is “Beaner”. This ain’t the West Side (I’ve lived there) or even the Valley (lived there too – CSUN)

    I’m not talking about the NATION in the thirties and forties but the DAILY NEWS in the 21st Century. They wanted to split the city and you don’t need to be Mike Davis or Eric Mann to know why.

22. Virgil Johnson Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 7:09 pm

    I think we are all to busy trying to define reality with fantasy, and in the process we miss what real life is. Hey, if what the eyes see’s and the ear hears is what we believe, than we all have a lot of shit floating in our heads in the entertainment capital of the world.

    It’s just really interesting how the “artists” in film media depict what is supposed to be the norm – I mean, the rest of the world must get a real kick out of this. Than again, maybe they don’t watch it.

23. green dem Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 8:18 pm

    Wasn’t Crash about people who get off on being chased or wrecking their cars or something? Am I missing something?

24. green dem Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 8:29 pm

    I think I might agree more with Marc. I went to a school in the valley that was wildly diverse racially and ethnically (something like half of my graduating class didn’t speak English as their first language) and there was little in the way of tension along these lines. But of course there was a catch. No small number of these kids – regardless of race or ethnicity – came from seven and eight figure fortunes.

25. jim hitchcock Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 9:22 pm

    Green dem, the other `Crash’ in 1996 was about a people who got aroused after being involved in car crashes. Never saw it. If I had to watch a James Spader movie, it’d have to be `2 days in the Valley’.

26. reg Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 9:30 pm

    “Wasn’t Crash about people who get off on being chased or wrecking their cars or something?”

    That was a movie by David Cronenberg a few years back that really did seem like something to take a pass on.

    And Marc, based on your post and subsequent comments, your “interest” very definitely seems to be in slamming this movie for reasons that have virtually nothing to do with the actual film but apparently something to do with asserting how un-PC and anti-”West Side” you are. Frankly, Paul Haggis, based on his film, comes across as less PC and platitudinous on race than either you or your buddy Hicks, who’s website has the quease-inducing look of a handout at a corporate diversity training seminar. (I know because, in one of my masks as corporate media whore, I create saccharine videos for those things.) Also, not that it matters to you, but the movie deals with the race-class nexus from several angles. But stick to your guns.

    Next…my views on how much I hate anthropomorphizing animals in Disneyfied nature films, using the Penguin movie which I haven’t seen as my prime example, complete with a scathing critique of the Emperor Penguin colony’s approach to socialized health insurance. Stick around.

27. Jim Rockford Says:
    June 27th, 2005 at 9:38 pm

    I haven’t seen it, but the most damning criticism I’ve heard is that the story just isn’t very good. Too many cliche cardboard characters and not enough real human beings.

    That’s the real shame, too many agendas instead of just thinking about characters and stories that entertain people. Taxi Driver was a great movie, even though it was uncomfortable and uncompromising (and one of the greatest noir movies ever). But it had great characters, and an unforgettable story.

    This seems full of cliches and no characters at all.

    I highly reccommend Mad Hot Ballroom instead. A great film. Well worth your time and money. Don’t waste either on Batman Begins. Caine, Oldman, and Freeman are terrific, but there’s no story or central character. Plus it’s way too long and talky. Bale and Holmes weren’t very good, either. Neeson phoned in his performance.

28. Ahmed Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 1:01 am

    I haven’t seen the film yet; but Hick’s clumpsy and ultimately PC attempt to contrast “Crash” with the way “real people in LA get along” reminds me of utterly banal and rather stupid critique of the Sopranos-that it stereotypes Italians instead of offering a “realistic” portrait of Italian American life. Well, beneath all the track suits and tough talk the Sopranos has certainly offered us an insightful, complex and fascinating meditation on race, class and gender in America. I’m interested in what Crash has to say. That said, this thread is already a keeper due to rosedogs insightful illustration, anecdotes and thoughts on hpw race functions in all its multiplicities in every day life, not too mentionreg’s brilliant dig at Marc about prejudging anthropomorphizing animals in Disneyfied nature films. Cheers

    ps. on the topic of PC banalities, did anyone really care that Josh Legere’s bbq’s have evolved from lily white get togethers to “fiesta” with more guacamole then your heart could desire?

29. Marc Cooper Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 1:35 am

    Well, folks, here’s the point: Our social dialogue of the last forty years — with all of its acknowledged flaws and omissions– has raised mass consciousness around race to rather impressive proportions. Only a moron would deny the continued existence of racism, prejudice and discrimination. But it would take a virtual idiot not to recognize the extraordinary place that racial relations has in modern American culture. So let me really enrage you: I would say I have been in NO other country where the racial dialogue was so advanced as it is in the United States (thanks to all those activists who have done the hard work of the last forty years). You heard me right: I think racial relations are more advanced here than they are in South America (where Indians are still considered beasts of burden) or in Western Europe where de facto discrimination against African and Asian immigrants rivals the worst of Jim Crow.

    In Japan (and to a lesser degree in China) foreigners are considered to be more or less from a different planet– no one is more ostracized or suspect than “others.”

    I stress the words “dialogue.” Fact is, since the 1950′s, that is since Brown V Brd of Ed, American society has been engaged in a profound, sweeping, ongoing national conversation about race that we have all benefitted from. Perhaps it is a legacy of our own slave holding past, perhaps because de jure segregation persisted so long and we had so much ground to make up, but .. I insist… our conversation has been profound. I contrast this, for example, with my experience in Cuba where the official propaganda claims that racism has been “abolished” but where there has beeen NO national discussion of race whatsoever and mass attitudes remain fixed in some earler period of history. Enter any Cuban home and the private conversation is reminiscent of Mississippi in 1949 (one of my best friends in Cuba is an educated former Major in the Ministry of Interior [read State Security] who told me with, no irony, that he found “los negros” endearing “because they are all like big babies”).

    Racism and bigotry seems intertwined in the universal human condition… anyone who tells you they live in a place where racism has been expunged, is just plain lying to you and themselves. So I think it natural and not very shocking to easily encounter racist attitudes. Indeed, such attitudes are SO commonplace that they are often quite superifical and insignificant and one finds that in deeper conversation the offending person isn’t quite so narrow minded as he or she seems at first blush. (Sometimes it goes in the other, uglier direction).

    So, with all due respect to my brilliant and compassionate colleague Rosedog, anecdotal (and real) racialist attitudes (as the Brits say) are abundant and immediate, always at hand.

    What I like about Hicks’ piece is that it emphasizes what is not so obvious.. that amidst the predictable racism, tribalism, bigotry etc etc that we encounter there are simultaneously millions of small inter-personal, cross-racial narratives taking place under the radar. Racial cooperation and respect seems much more the norm in modern Los Angeles than does racial conflict and flagrant discrimination. Does that mean people love each other? No. Does it mean that class war has evaporated? No. Does it mean that in their private and family discourse people have abandoned racial stereotypes and prejudice? No. What it DOES mean is that we have made measurable and admirable progress. If we havent after 50 years of sustained struggle, debate, conversation, and legislation than we ought to abandon social activism as futile masturbation. I prefer, in contrast, to take what small victories we can in everyday life and I think that’s what Hicks was getting at.

    P.S. what a revealing story in yesterday’s L.A. Times.. all of a sudden here in LA-LALand, the second biggest city in America, we have: a Latino Mayor, a Latino City Council President, a Latino President of the School Board, a Latino chair of the county board of supervisors, a Latin City Attorney, and a Latino Speaker of the State Assembly. These hard won victories and real signs of advance (try to find a similar number of blacks or hyphenates who hold such positions in Cuba, the UK, France, Italy or Spain) that deserve celebration and recognition. ANd ordinary people deserve some real credit considering from where we have come in a half century.

30. Ahmed Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 2:35 am

    Marc, I’m saying this with all due respect, but what utterlly banal comments and dry observatios you’ve made here. And I still don’t get your beef with “Crash” nor the championing of such dull article. Anyways here’s the mussings of a canadian with far more interesting things to say on the topic

    Black and white in America

    >by Rick Salutin

    June 24, 2005

    Edgar Ray Killen, a former Klansman involved in murdering three civil-rights workers in Mississippi 41 years ago, will serve his 60-year sentence in isolation due to fear of retaliation by other prisoners. “It’s kind of a race issue,” said a state official, “in that our [prison] population is 70 per cent black.” This is what I find perplexing about the “race issue” in the United States. They seem to deal with it impressively. And they don’t seem to deal with it at all.

    Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book, An American Dilemma, on the race issue. He said U.S. society could never meet its basic challenges without confronting its racism. In those years, southern blacks could not vote and lynching was common, as was segregation (even in the army). Ten years later, a cover on a sports magazine of a white actress with an arm around a black ballplayer still provoked an outcry. Ten years after that came the Mississippi murders, over efforts to register black voters.

    Forty years on, there has been massive change. I know many thoughtful people would call the changes token and superficial. But it is normal now to have black mayors or police chiefs in parts of the United States where it would have been impossible. It would have been unthinkable for the armed forces to be led by a black general in the first Iraq war — for him to then become secretary of state, be succeeded by a black woman, and for it all to seem routine. The president who appointed them is a modern good ol’ boy; you can see his ancestors in In the Heat of the Night. The type still exists, but he’s changed, too.

    Had you told anyone 40, 50 or 60 years ago about the state of race in the U.S. now, they’d have had trouble believing it. Or they’d have argued that racism is so rooted in American reality, such changes could never occur without a radical makeover of the whole society. Yet, however much the United States has changed, it remains fervently capitalist, globally interventionist and busily religious in a traditional or fundamentalist way. It has, in other words, managed to accommodate a lot of racial change without seeing its basics profoundly undermined.

    Does that mean racism was not as deeply rooted in the national gestalt as it seemed? Just to confuse things further, among the basic things that haven’t changed are the overall social and economic situation of most blacks. There are obscenely disproportionate incarceration rates, high unemployment, severely lagging health levels. How can a society deal so widely, successfully and, I’d argue, fairly earnestly with race — yet still not have dealt with so much of it?

    You can try saying the changes happened only on the level of personal attitude rather than underlying socio-economic structures, and that what remains ensconced is “systemic racism,” a less tractable force. So the U.S. can close the book on the personal mode of racism, as in Mississippi, without touching the other, systemic type. Think, for example, of racial profiling. It’s easy to picture cops who will gladly serve under a black chief but still methodically target black youth. That’s how odd it can get.

    It makes you think about feminism, which also transformed our world in a short time — making it almost unrecognizable. Yet, in other ways, little changed for women. Is power really the only issue that truly counts: how it gets wielded, shared out, imposed, passed on — while all the isms and reforms come and go?

    U.S. writer Julius Lester began his career with a 1968 book called Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama. But the droll tone showed he doubted black power would ever do more than say boo to whitey or power itself. He moved on to dozens of books for kids, recorded folk music, taught university. Yet he also knew his great-great-grandfather had been a German Jew who migrated to Arkansas — and he converted! He’s spent much of his later life lecturing in synagogues and singing Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur, while renouncing nothing of his earlier self.

    What’s my point? I dunno. But it does no harm to pursue more resoluble interests, while you continue to try to help vexing issues like race and power get sorted out.

31. Matt Hardwick Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:25 am

    Since nobody’s pointed it out, i’ll gladly do so (don’t thank me all at once): Crash sounds like a mash-up (no pun intended) of Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon and Brian De Palma’s Bonfire Of The Vanities, both reworked for an era that has a George Bush but not a Democratic Congress that could possibly risk their careers countering the excesses of the Ideological Mob that he represents.

    Without the mention of the there-used-to-be-a-Democratic-Congress thingy above — waaaaay to relevant to reality — that’s probably the way Crash was high-concept pitched, too…

    Thanks, y’all, for this here discussion, but I think I’ll go see something that really does gives me both high quality social relevance and good entertainment value for my eight bucks, like that penguin documentary.

    Or far better yet — Land Of The Dead…

32. reg Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 6:08 am

    marc…I don’t disagree with your perspective in general and I’m a hardcore class warrior. But, from personal observations within a multi-racial family, from what I see going down in the ubiquitous “news” and from my own emotional gut-checks living in what might well be the most integrated city in the U.S., I know that race is still a crucial factor in our interactions, and as rosedog pointed out, in ways that are far more complex (and interesting – thus much of the appeal of Crash, to stay OT) than they were “mid-century”.

    My own daily life – home, work and play – mostly revolves around precisely the “unity/diversity” theme that Hicks “celebrates” and promotes. And it’s not all that unique. But I’ve also seen, among other things, the “Crash” effect do emotional damage to a super-high-achieving, mixed-race, middle-class youngster who finds himself inundated by the perceptions of white, well-to-do students on a “first-rate” college campus who assume he’s from “the ghetto”, campus security who persistently treat him like an interloper, and a series of ugly DWB/WWB incidents with LAPD off-campus. It’s not Mississippi in ’64, it’s California in ’05. Wonderful place – clearly one of the best in the world – but complex, more than a little crazy and still tangled up in race. What drives me most nuts about the race/class nexus, is that we’ve damn near Oprahfied discussions of race but talking seriously about class suddenly turns you into the hot, sweaty guy in the room who forgot his deodorant.

    Speaking of Oprah, did anybody see that ridiculous item about Herself claiming a “Crash” moment because She and Her party were turned away from Hermes in Paris 15 minutes after it closed. I don’t doubt for a minute that a black “supermodel” still deals with race “only all the time”, or that Even Oprah could feel racial bumps on her superhighway periodically, but for a black billionaire to publicize that kind of upper-stratosphere “affront” (which, frankly, sounded like it only happened because the folks inside were busy preparing the store for their own publicity event) was bizarre, clueless and trivializes what “faceless” folk do in fact still run into frequently.

    Oh, and Crash is maybe 5X the better film than Grand Canyon. Probably 20X Bonfire. Hardly a mash-up.

    Did I mention that it’s also the best Tony Danza film yet? Also that it’s funny? Maybe I did.

33. reg Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 6:13 am

    Oh…and Ahmed. I have to take issue with one of your comments.

    “more guacamole then your heart could desire”

    No such thing…

34. Marc Cooper Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 9:15 am

    You know, Ahmed, next time try to respond with your own articulated argument instead of an an insult and a news clip. In the meantime I count my stars that you are not one of my editors… I much prefer the others that pay me $2 and $3 a word for my banalities.

35. Marc Cooper Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 9:30 am

    P.S. A couple of more points. First, thanks to Matt for his posting. And yes! Grand Canyon was the worst fucking movie I hae ever seen… there should be a bounty on Larry Kasdan’s head!

    Reg (and Rosedog): Y’know, I just dont buy that whine from the blask super-model. Sure, at some level Im confronted everyday with material evidence that I am treated in some ways differently because I am A) short b)fat c)Jewish d)obnxious etc etc, but I live a quite comfortable and blessed life. I am not going to believe that a black super-model doesnt have an even more comfy existence. We all deal with human ignorance and foibles “only all the time.” But the ‘suffering’ of that black cover model doesnt begin to compare with, say, the challenges posed to some white redneck carpenter who tries to support a family of four on a basis of non-union sporadic emplument (Rosedog I know u agree with this).

    And to Reg: My daughter is mixed-race, has a latino surname and definitely “looks” Latino (and speaks Spanish).. i.e. she is about as latino as many others here in L.A. But it would be an outrageous insult for her to somehow equate her daily experience with the daily lives of the children of the gardeners and pool cleaners who work for us. Im trying to figure what my kid suffers as being a Latino in L.A. and I cant come up with a single response. I think the issue we are looking at remains one PRIMARILY of social class at this point in our lives. It’s time we started dealing with that instead of continuing to whip each other over race.

36. reg Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 11:19 am

    marc – Rosedog interviewed the supermodel…I’ve never met one…I’ll not discount the lady’s experience, because I don’t know her experience. Most of your assumptions about it are probably true. But I can easily imagine that, while she’s not facing anything comparable to a girl scuffling in South Central, she deals with racist bullshit in that upscale world every day, albeit of a different sort than most.

    As for what I wrote about my own family, I wasn’t equating anything. It’s sort of outrageous for you to take that tack. I can’t speak for your daughter. I can only say that I know for a fact that young black males – unless perhaps they’re dressed like Tiger Woods with a penguin on the pocket of their polo shirt, and even then I’m not so sure – are routine targets for ugly, racist bullshit in a variety of environments, but most notably in interactions with police – unless and until they have established themselves as familiar, non-threatening figures. I doubt this is consistently true with young Latinas in LA.

    I’m not comparing or “equating” the life of a young middle-class, educated black male with the life of a poor, marginalized black male. Not even close. I’m saying that, “all other things being unequal”, neither is immune to certain stuff that’s humiliating, degrading and, in some cases, frightening. Some people handle that kind of treatment better than others and can brush it off, but it can also be corrosive and numbing. Questioning whether you should continue college on a scholarship at a predominantly white campus because you are treated like some interloper, people persistently assume you’re ignorant, and you’re subject to what feels like a steady stream of harrassment by security and police isn’t exactly a James Meredith moment. But it doesn’t happen to most white kids and it would be “an outrageous insult” to dismiss those experiences as trivial in the life of an adolescent. Especially when it goes to the extreme of having guns drawn on you with absolutely no provocation. (Remember adolescence and all that it entailed in terms of emotional turmoil without race or fear of cops entering into the equation?)

37. NeoDude Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 12:38 pm

    SIX FEET UNDER!!!! SIX FEET UNDER!!!! SIX FEET UNDER!!!! SIX FEET UNDER!!!! SIX FEET UNDER!!!! SIX FEET UNDER!!!!

    nOW THAT’S A WIERD LA SHOW.

38. NeoDude Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 12:47 pm

    but i love it.

39. NeoDude Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 12:53 pm

    But the ‘suffering’ of that black cover model doesnt begin to compare with, say, the challenges posed to some white redneck carpenter who tries to support a family of four on a basis of non-union sporadic emplument.

    —

    Ain’t that the truth.

    Wealth can buy someone color-blind glasses and a little tolerance…lack of money don’t buy shit.

40. Pearsall Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 12:59 pm

    This is off-topic (I’m a New Yorker and I haven’t seen Crash, so I don’t have anything to add to this conversation), but Rosedog, I thought your anecdotes were fascinating, and, considering that you mentioned that you are a journalist, I was wondering where I could read more of your work?

41. jim hitchcock Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 1:13 pm

    Can I shill for Rosedog? O.K. Pearsall, go to Marc’s December 2004 archive and check out the Dec. 30th post. (And congratulations to Rosedog for winning an award or it!)

42. rosedog Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 2:32 pm

    A couple of points, and in no particular order;

    1. In defense of the super model, I brought the race issue up, she didn’t, and I pushed the topic, not she. Nor was she a whiner. To the contrary, she was quick to admit she’s lived a privileged life, with an extremely supportive, well-educated family, and a lifetime of private schools, save one year. Actually, I found her a kick-ass young woman who is relentless at making her own opportunities, knows she’s been blessed, takes rejection as a motivator, and has started a non-profit that works with at risk inner city girls on issues of self image, to which she devotes a goodly amount of concentrated, in person time. Not that I’d put her up for sainthood, just yet, but I found her surprisingly un full of sh*t.

    All that said, she’d had some experiences that I found a bit startling in this day and age. And I don’t mean stupid stuff from the low-rent troglodytes who still run rife through the countryside, and likely always will. But, for example, when she first started getting the really big commercial accounts, she was routinely paid less, by as much as a decimal point, as white models with the same visibility, reputation and experience. She didn’t sweat it and took the jobs, figuring it was all part of the game, and hoped that for the women coming behind her it would be different. (Peculiar factoid: the one exception, she said, was Victoria’s Secret, which always paid all the models equitably.)

    Does this, in any way, compare with what lower income inner city men and women deal with? Of course not. It’s not even on the same planet. Yet it is an indication that, if it’s happening at the rarified end of the class scale, it’s happening to the 100th power at the other end. (The Oprah story, however, is….grating. You want to get in the store?! Try arriving during business hours, girlfriend!)

    2. Marc, I think we all pretty much agree on the condition of race in LA, and in the US, so I’m not sure why we’re quarrelling—except for the fact that not everyone has the same take on CRASH—an honorable artistic disagreement. And certainly, the same lens that one can turn on the still existing problems relating to race, can be just as easily turned on the victories—both public and personal. For example, whereas once the actresses held up as great beauties and/or sex symbol stars in American movies were all white women; now, as often as not, they’re either mixed race or an ethic minority: Halle Barry, Jennifer Lopez, Catherine Zeta Jones,…and the like. That may seem like a superficial example, but weirdly I don’t think it is.

    By the same token, the one and only time I was mildly startled by the race of my son’s girlfriend—was when he began dating a white girl. This was due to the fact that, from 5th grade forward, all the girls in whom he’d shown interest were all over the map, ethnically speaking. I’m not suggesting this was purposeful on his part. Or that we’re in any way hip or cool at our house. It’s merely that in the So Cal public schools he attended—at least with the kids he hung out with—that kind of cross ethnic mix was the norm. Surely, that’s progress.

    3. Also agreed, Marc, class is the new “ race,” so to speak (to use Vogue Magazine’s hysterically strange way of viewing the world, [brown is the new black, green is the new pink. sheesh.]), But, in lower income communities in particular, race and class are often so tightly fused, one can’t easily be addressed without addressing the other. Yet, to focus on race alone usually leads one down the wrong road..

    On the other hand, acknowledging that, for all our progress, there’s a long-ass way to go with regard to race, is not, I don’t believe, viewing the cup as half empty.

    Okay, I think I’m starting to ramble and repeat myself.

    Reg, thanks for telling the stories about your kid.

    Jim Hitchcock, thanks for being my PR rep.

    And hey, Ahmed, I for one liked hearing about Josh’s neighborhood barbecues. In fact, I’m thinking of crashing one, based on the menu alone.

    PS: Pearsall, if you don’t find what you want, feel free to e-mail me.

    PPS: This has been a thought-provoking thread, at least for me. Glad you posted it Marc. (Now if I can just shut up and get back to work.)

43. rosedog Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:00 pm

    Arrggghhh. More strange moments in grammar above. (Must proofread. Really must proofread.)

44. Pearsall Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:04 pm

    For example, whereas once the actresses held up as great beauties and/or sex symbol stars in American movies were all white women; now, as often as not, they’re either mixed race or an ethic minority: Halle Barry, Jennifer Lopez, Catherine Zeta Jones,…and the like. That may seem like a superficial example, but weirdly I don’t think it is.

    Catherine Zeta Jones? She’s Welsh!

    Just started going through the Aguilar family story. Sterling work.

45. Pearsall Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:06 pm

    No html in the comments? Bah!

46. rosedog Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:24 pm

    “Catherine Zeta Jones? She’s Welsh!”

    Ooops. Okay, I’m an idiot. Brain freeze. No good excuse. Um….uh…how ’bout Salma Hayek? I’m sure that’s who I meant. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Salma…and Penelope Cruz!

    (Thanks for the kind words, BTW.)

47. NeoDude Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:43 pm

    I thought Gays were the new black?

    And America still seems in denial of class.

48. jim hitchcock Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 3:46 pm

    Don’t be silly, Neodude…gays are the new commies.

49. Susan Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 6:22 pm

    Wow – what a convoluted thread I just read…good arguments from all sides…

    When reading just now, this one experience crossed my mind as the most offensive in all my years…totally based on color not class distinction…

    Living in New Orleans circa the mid 90s…I went outside to go swimming at the pool in my complex, which was somewhat upper class in terms of finances for that area…the pool was too crowded with nowhere to sit…so I turned to go back to my place when the resident manager, who I was friends with came up to me and said……

    “I don’t blame you — too many chocolate drops in the pool”…….I was honestly jaw dropped by that!…..there we two black people in the pool at the time, while the rest of the pool was all white…..I said nothing that day…went home…did talk to her the next day though…as I never let those type of things pass as I would then feel part and party to nothing that I believe in at all…..

    I have one strong belief — race problems are by color…money does not change it…it is not a financial class struggle by my thinking…it is purely based on race/color…ask any black man trying to hail a cab in NY, even if he is the most famous guy of the week and the wealthiest of the year……..

50. jim hitchcock Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 6:33 pm

    Susan makes a good point…it seems like we’re genetically predisposed

    to racism, and have been since we were all running around in our G-strings, when it was a matter of survival.

    Sigh. Kinda like we’re genetically predisposed to all this useless belly fat..

51. PJ Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 7:52 pm

    Crash was stereotyped and pretty clumsily written, but interesting in that it proposed that racism is not necessarily a white failing but a human one–pretty revolutionary for a Hwood flick. If you don’t believe that’s true, go visit South Central or Alhambra or Santa Ana or any minority-majority city and see who’s fighting whom. There’s lots of racial tension and white people are only peripherally involved.

    As for the black supermodel, how else is she going to respond to persistent questions about (white) racism and not be accused of selling out her people?! I’m sure it is a factor in her life, but it’s the media that keep forcing the issue into the foreground.

52. rosedog Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 8:36 pm

    “…interesting in that it proposed that racism is not necessarily a white failing but a human one–pretty revolutionary for a Hwood flick….”

    Good point.

    “…As for the black supermodel, how else is she going to respond to persistent questions about (white) racism and not be accused of selling out her people?! I’m sure it is a factor in her life, but it’s the media that keep forcing the issue into the foreground….”

    Oh, piffle. You weren’t there, PJ. It was a two and a half hour girl-to-girl conversation that wound through a zillion topics. And, in that this woman was the first African American model to break a whole host of professional barriers, not to have brought up race would have been idiotic. In terms of mentioning the one (extremely truncated) anecdote here, I simply meant to toss it out as another random puzzle piece among many I was listing off the top of my no-doubt over-caffeinated head. And then I brought it up again in order to correct the mistaken impression I’d given that Ms. Rich Supermodel was whining about racial prejudice, when she wasn’t. It was a remark made in the course of contextual, textured conversation. Now, I’m sorry, frankly, that I brought her up at all. Jee-zus!

53. PJ Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 10:02 pm

    “In defense of the super model, I brought the race issue up, she didn’t, and I pushed the topic, not she.”

    I know I wasn’t there, rosedog. I’m basing my comment on what you wrote…and I don’t think she was whining. She was trying to respond to an pointed question in a socially acceptable way. So, double piffle!

54. reg Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 10:08 pm

    rosedog…I sort of enjoyed the way PJ managed to turn your anecdote (which I think was absolutely pertinent to this discussion – especially if one’s actually seen the film) into another, albeit minor, case of “it’s the media’s fault”. That tune seems to be hitting #1 on Certain People’s Hit Parade these days. Every time you hear it, you should be proud.

55. rosedog Says:
    June 28th, 2005 at 10:45 pm

    Thanks for coming to my defense, reg.

    PJ, I’d see your double piffle and raise you one, but I’m feeling a tad stiff today and am worried I’d sprain something. Rain check?

56. PJ Says:
    June 29th, 2005 at 7:41 am

    Reg,

    You overstate and catastrophize, as usual, but I do agree that the model story is pertinent to the movie. The role of the media in creating news is actually quite nuanced and is under discussion all the time and not just by the VRWC.

    I’m sure rosedog was just covering all her journalistic bases–I’m not saying she did not do anything “wrong” so you can hold your fire–but the anecdote is worth considering if only to examine the myriad of ways that we construct “racism” in this society. It’s not etched in stone–it’s an evolutionary process.

    And I accept your piffle default, rosedog.

57. reg Says:
    June 29th, 2005 at 10:59 am

    I was obviously annoyed by Marc posting an incompetent, second-hand critique of a movie he hadn’t seen but which had clearly aroused in him some kind of subjective negativity. But I have to agree with rosedog that it sparked some interesting discussion. I also just want to add something that is pretty obvious but needs to be stated: Class has displaced race as the worst problem for the African-Americans who remain the most marginalized. But the fact that their socio-economic status, not just their racial classification, is inextricably intertwined with the legacy of centuries of institutional, overt racism means that their pains will likely continue to be expressed through a largely racial prism. Especially in a country which has managed to obfuscate the very notion of class in the first place.

58. PJ Says:
    June 29th, 2005 at 6:47 pm

    Speaking of institutional racism…

    http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8410111/

59. rosedog Says:
    June 29th, 2005 at 6:54 pm

    Yikes.

60. reg Says:
    June 29th, 2005 at 8:05 pm

    Interestingly MSNBC had an online poll of people offended – or not – by Mexico issuing that cartoon stamp. The results so far – 43% offended, 57% not offended. Maybe they should have said “approve” or “disapprove” or asked if it’s “offensive”, because “are you offended” might over-state the implication of one’s having actually taken it as a personal affront as opposed to simply recognizing bad taste when you see it, but I’ll admit to being a bit surprised by the number of folks who answered “no”.

61. Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Crashing The Oscars Says:
    March 4th, 2006 at 6:28 pm

    [...] I also re-direct you via this link to last summer’s piece by Joe Hicks.  Matt Welch also got it right. [...]

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66. Arden Gens Says:
    September 3rd, 2010 at 8:45 am

    You could easily spend $150-250/hr on a lawyer only to find out he really is not a claim expert and knows nothing or very little about property insurance claims. There are very FEW attorneys who are claim experts and really understand and KNOW property claims. I have been hired by several attorneys to work for the case as their expert witness. The reason they hire me is because I understand insurance claims.

67. Sheri @ Bosch Discount Says:
    October 31st, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    Hi, just doing some browsing for my Bosch website. Lots of information out there. Not what I was looking for, but good site. Take care.