I'll come right out and say it: I hated "Crash".
I thought it was contrived, dishonest, and "Art" with a capital "A" (that means pretentious).
But that aside, I found it to be a lie. A lie about the city in which I live. A lie about Los Angeles.
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I once heard a comedian say something like "You can't be a racist in Los Angeles. You'd be too exhausted".
Los Angeles is probably the least racist city in North America. The comedian is right because you CAN'T be racist here or you'd just lose your mind.
I never loved Los Angeles and I probably never will. It's not the kind of city that you love. It's the kind of city that you learn to endure, and even learn to enjoy, if you stick it out. This city can kick your ass, and Los Angeles is full of nasty, angry old people who have been dessicated into emotional prunes by their lives here.
However. You cannot live in this city and be racist. There are something like 81 languages spoken in the public school system here. (I don't think I can even name 81 languages, or countries, off the top of my head). There are huge sections of town where all the signs are in Chinese, huge sections where all the signs are in Korean, and of course huge sections where they're all in Spanish.
I once met an Ethiopian in LA who told me that there were 80,000 Ethiopians in Los Angeles. Eighty thousand Ethiopians! On any given day at work I'll work with people from all over the world. There are many bad things about Los Angeles, but one of the GREAT things about it is exactly this -- it is truly a multiracial and multicultural city, to a mind-boggling degree.
The city portrayed in "Crash" was bogus. It doesn't exist. It is utter fiction.
"Crash" is a lie.