Crash Stereotypes

"Crash" has been one of my favorite movies ever since it was released in 2004. However, after learning about stereotypes, and how hard it is for people to beak out of their stereotypes, I see the movie much differently than I had before. I noticed that a lot of the stereotypes that we talked about in class, read about in our readings, and watched in class are in "Crash." On eexample is how a latina is expected to be sexy all the time.... Well in the movie, the latina character does sleep with her police partner, reinforcing that this negative stereotype is true. Another example would be in the beginning of the movie where Sandra Bullock's character cuddles to her husband as they were walking to their car because she saw a black man, played be Ludacris. Ludacris' character points out what she did and says that white people are scared of black people, even though there are more white people than black people around where they were. This reinforces the stereotype that all black men are scary. Another example of stereotypes in this movie was when the Persian family was mistaken for being middle eastern, and someone burglarized their store because they thought that they were idle eastern. Also, the man whose store was burglarized accused the hispanic man, who was fixing the lock on the back door of the store, that he was cheating him out of money when he tried to tell the store owner that he needed a new door. Also, he fixed the locks on Sandra Bullock's character's home doors. He overheard her saying that she was scared that he would sell one of his "homies" their new house key, and that she wanted the locks changed again by someone else in the morning. This says that hispanics are expected not to be trusted for some reason. Another example is when the Police Officer played by Matt Dillon saves the woman from the car, portraying him as a white messiah, even though earlier in the movie, he boarderline molested the same woman that he saved. Another stereotype in the movie is when the younger police officer in the film, gives a black man a ride. When the man was reaching or something out of his pocket, the off duty officer assumed that he was grabbing a gun, probably because of his race, and shot him. When all he was grabbing was a statue of mary that the police officer also had on the dash of his car.
Some people i the film, like Ludacris' character, wanted to break free from his stereotype, but was having a difficult time doing so. He almost was stereotypical of other black men, and assumed that they were ll doing something bad. Another example of a character in this film trying to break free from his stereotype was the black police officer played by Don Cheadle. His character was trying to break free from his mothers' stereotype of him. She believed that he was the bad son, and that her other son was the good son. Cheadle's character filled his mother's refrigerator up with fresh food, and when she saw it, she assumed that it was her other son, who had not been home for years. Terrence Howard's character tried to be his stereotype. He was a successful black man in the entertainment industry. He was tired of being pushed around by the police, and instead of trying to conform, he yelled at the police, and would not listen to them.
There are so many stereotypes in this movie that it is difficult to remember all of them. However, thinking about it now, I do not think that stereotyping people was the intention of the movie. I think that the film was trying to portray how we all use stereotypes all the time with races different from our own, no matter who are what we are. We all are stereotypical of each other, and probably of our own race also.