Crash, and The Forest, The Trees, and The One Thing
The movie Crash tells the story of many seemingly unrelated people who are trying to live their lives in Los Angels, are actually intimately intertwined with each other. The article “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing” elaborates on the theme of interconnectivity by using the analogy of the individual trees, and how they come together to make a forest. Both the movie and the article show how people who are just trying to go about their dally lives affect others In more ways than we realize.
The locksmith played by Michael Penn was the easiest to empathic with, because he was one of the only characters who was genuinely a nice person. The scene where he gives his daughter the invisible, impenetrable cloak was easy for most people to empathic with because he was being a good father by making his daughter feel safe. He is one of the most touching characters because even when the Iranian man is yelling at him and treating him badly, he tries to explain to him that the door needs to be fixed, and not the lock that he keeps requesting.
Sandra Bullock’s racism visibly disturbs and Insults Michael Penn when he Is fixing her lock, because Sandra Is yelling at her husband that the man ‘”with the jail tattoos” is going to go give their eyes to one of his “homiest” so they can break in and steal from them. Michael does not say anything though, but he makes sure to leave all of the keys on the counter in front of her when he leaves to show her that she is wrong. Sandra Bullocks character Is a great example of how racial attitudes shape behavior.
When Sandra and her husband are walking home from dinner, she Instantly grabs his arm when she sees two black men walking towards them. She Is racist so she immediately assumes that since they are black, they will try to rob them, which coincidentally is exactly what happens. This incident only serves to strengthen her already racist beliefs. When they get home, she is so paranoid that she makes her husband get their locks changed, and then wants the locks to be changed again in the morning because the locksmith has tattoos and is Latino.
Her racist attitude towards others begins to show Its downfalls when she falls down the stairs at the end of the movie, and her own “friends” will not take her to the hospital because she is at the spa. Sandra then relies on her Mexican maid, who she regularly berates, to take her to the hospital and make sure she is taken care of. Sandra realizes that her aid is the only one who was there for her, and that her maid is her only real friend. Matt Dillon plays a bitter, racist cop who is teaching his rookie partner the ways of the force.
The last thing that he says to his rookie partner Is ‘Walt until you’ve been on the Job a few more years. Walt until you’ve been doing It a little bit longer. ” Dillon is implying that after a few years, Ryan Philippe will start to see the trends that eventually lead to more black men being arrested than white men. This trend comes from racist cops who believe that black people are criminals, and it reinforces their life because they keep arresting black people. Dillon also blames the black supervisor at his fathers HOMO for not providing adequate treatment for his father.
He thinks that she only has the Job because she Is black and he thinks that a more lady to get the Job. Ludicrous’ character is a stereotypical black criminal in LA who has vowed to only steal from white people. When he hits an Asian man in the street, he wanted to Just leave him to die, but his friend made sure that they dropped him off at a hospital. In the beginning of the movie, he complains to his friend that everyone else thinks that hey have him figured out because he’s black, especially when Sandra Bullock grabs her husband’s arm. He then proceeds to steal Sander’s car and prove that she was right to be scared.
Ludicrous then breaks his one promise, to never steal from another black man, when he tries to carjack the Movie Director Cameron. After Cameron has the standoff with the police and he is let go with a warning, he drops off Ludicrous at a corner and tells him Mimi embarrass me. You embarrass yourself. ” Ludicrous then commits what is probably the most morally correct act of his life by saving the updated Chinese people that he found in the back of a van that he had stolen. The last character that I am analyzing is Ryan Philippe, the rookie cop.
When his partner Matt Dillon pulls over the black couple, he feels uneasy because he can see the racial motivation that his partner has for pulling him over. He is beginning to see “the real world” that is not sugar coated. When he requests to be moved to a solo car because he does not like how his partner is racist, the Chief tells him that he needs a better reason. He begins to realize that most people won’t personally care about him, and that they only care about themselves. He is becoming aware that it is a dog eat dog world, and he needs to learn in order to survive.
The article “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing” and the movie Crash are both great examples of connectivity. In Crash, all of the characters affect each other in one way or another, and “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing” shows us, the readers, how we may affect more people than we think. The article tells us about the Forest, which is society, is made up of a multitude of trees, or individual people, and the One Thing that makes the Trees a Forest, is the One Thing, which is the interactions are connections between the Trees, between the individual people.
This is also shown in the movie because of the many different interactions between all of the characters and how they unknowingly influence each other. The idea interactions and connectivity is expressed in “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing” is shown when the author says “The choices we make as individuals matter beyond our loves more than we can imagine”. The author also elaborates on the effects of racism in a society giving examples such as “When the subject of race and racism come up, white people often withdraw into silence as if paralyzed by guilt”.
The character played by Ludicrous also expresses feeling similar to this when he talks to his friend about how everyone thinks that they know him and “type”. As humans we think of most things as a collection of parts that function together in order to do things that each part would be unable to do on its own. We think of families as individual people, the mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, and their relationships with each other is what makes them a family. If this is the way that we think of things and comprehend them, then we can think of society in that way as well, Just with more people, more trees.
We begin to think about the relationships that we normally overlook, such as the cashier at the Cutbacks that you make small talk with while you we realize how much of an impact we have on other people with Just these little interactions, we realize that all of us play a large role in the big family that we call society. In the forest, little trees can be protected from storms under the canopy of larger trees, or the larger tree can slowly kill the smaller trees by not letting enough sunlight through. Without realizing it, everyone influences everyone, and that, is the one thing that makes Just a bunch of trees, a forest.
