I stirred up a bit of ... well, not trouble, but certainly discussion with
my diaries about my son's music teacher teaching "Pick a Bale of Cotton" to a class of first graders, one of whom is black. (My kid.) The two diaries topped 800 comments, none of them trollish, which leads me to one conclusion: even we smart, spohisticated lefties have no idea what to do about race in this country.
I made a passing mention of Best Picture winner Crash in the second diary, calling it a bullshit movie. Quite a few comments agreed with me, and almost as many disagreed, and many of the commenters made the case against the movie more eloquently than I'll be able to.
But a bunch of folks wanted me to try, so here goes ...
First, about the source: I'm a professional writer and columnist, but not a film critic. But I do love movies, and for the first time this year I had seen all five Best Picture nominees. (For the record,
Crash was the first one I saw, and my opinion of it has remained consistent.) I'm white as they come, as is my ex-wife and my daughter, who is six. My seven-year-old son is black and very tall. My girlfriend is Mexican and Camanche, from San Diego. So, even though I'm Whitey McWhite from Wisconsin (oh geeez!), race is a part of my daily life.
But, that doesn't make me any expert on the topic.
Disclaimers aside, Crash was not really a bad movie, I guess. The camera work was nice. There were some good performances, especially Michael Pena and Brendan Frasier. And Terrence Howard was ok.
The interlocking story device was cute in Pulp Fiction. But that was nineteen frickin' ninety four. It worked in Magnolia and to a lesser extent in Traffic. But it's no longer clever or innovative.
I think I would have shrugged it off as an OK effort except for two things.
First. My expectations were so high. The critics were practically begging Paul Haggis to come make out with them. Especially Ebert and Roeper, with whom I usually agree. They kept saying how it was a new kind of race movie.
Which would be good. If you look at some of the more popular "movies about race," like American History X and Higher Learning, everything is extremes. No subtlety. The racists are skinheads or Klan members, which most of us will never encounter. At the end, either all the racists are in jail or everyone's learned something and they can all hug.
But Crash, said my pleasingly plump buddy Roger Ebert, showed depth. Showed that everyone can have prejudice, and can still be good in other ways. Best movie of the year! So I figured I'd see it.
But it was only so-so. The script was silly. But eh, ok. It's a fable, not supposed to be realistic. Fine. The characters were all stereotypes: the angry white cop, the hard-working, family-oriented Hispanic, the shop-owner Arab, the rich WASP bitch, the gangsta hoodlum, the not-black-enough-black-dude.
And yes, everyone has two sides. The angry white cop also takes good care of his ill father. The Hispanic-hating black dude, who's dating a Hispanic(?), takes good care of his mom.
But everyone had exactly two sides, and showed those sides through contrived and stupid "examples". The script went like this:
- Show an example of someone being racist.
- Show an example of that same person doing something good.
- Repeat as necessary.
I hate when movies use "example" scenes. Like the whole first 30 minutes of
A History of Violence. Example after example of Viggo Mortenson being a family man. OK, we get it!
So anyway, it tries to show that racism is subtle, and that not all racists are assholes. Well, no duh. But even in the movie, the racism wasn't subtle. Cop molests black woman? Same cop actually says out loud, "Shaniqua? Big Fuckin' Surprise"? Arab guy gets called "Osama"? Come on.
Still, fine. Whatever. I like lots of movies with poorly-drawn characters and dopey dialogue.
But this one was just soooo hyped up. It was just like Sideways and A History of Violence. Both were ok. Woulda been worth renting, I suppose. But when I went in expecting to see the best movie in the world, both came up way, way short.
So there's that.
But second, and more important, this movie buds me not only on its own merits but also for the effect it tried to have, and the effect it had.
It appeals to Limousine Liberals. You know the people I'm talking about. The people who like to think themselves "tolerant" as long as they don't have to "tolerate" any real minorities. (Note, they prefer "tolerance" to "acceptance".) The people who say, "I don't care if you're black or brown or purple or green," as if race doesn't mean anything and people are TeleTubbies. The people who want to pretend "there's only one race" and to be "colorblind." The people who compliment minorities unnecessarily in a slightly surprised tone of voice, as if to offer a pat on the head and a bit of encouragement. You know what I mean.
They are described quite well in the book Bobos in Paradise (BoBos being bourgeois bohemians) by David Brooks, and satarized brilliantly on Black People Love Us and Rent a Negro.
This is the audience for this movie. This is the Hollywood liberal I mentioned in the other diary. This is the person who went to see Crash, furrowed his brow and nodded, and said the movie showed how complex racism is. Except movies don't "show" anything but what the screenwriter and director want it to show. And if you needed to be "shown" that race is complex ... well, shit, where have you been? Iceland?
This same person went to see Crash for the same reason some Christians went to see Narnia. I suspect some went to Narnia and counted it as church for the week. (I'm being snarky, but only sort of.) A lot of limousine liberals went to see Crash and patted themselves on the back for doing their Racial Tolerance Duty. They congratulated themselves on "learning" something that ought to have been perfectly fuckin' obvious, then went to discuss the movie over skinny half-caf lattes with their white friends.
So. To sum up. It was not a horrible movie. But the only reason it won Best Picture was the limousine liberal vote.
Brokeback Mountain, man-on-man smooching notwithstanding, was a better picture on many levels, from the subtle pacing of the script to the sweeping visuals to the homages to Western film lore to Heath Ledger's heartbreaking, stunning performance. But while it was on one level about the struggle for gay rights, it was not a political movie. It was a love story. It could have been a man and a woman in love but for some reason forbidden from being together, and it still would have been a great film. And the limousine liberals didn't know what to do with that. They love gays as a political cause, but don't like the idea of two men tonsil-wrasslin. So they chose to vote for an overtly political movie, a "lesson" flick, exploiting their other favorite self-congratulaion vehicle - minorities - and pulled a Gladiator.
