remember when I watched "Crash" for the first time, I saw more of the problem of racial discrimination in the United States that the director wanted to show. The feeling at the time was that the director wanted to respond to such a phenomenon, but was unable to respond thoroughly. It may be because this is a film that is going to compete for the Oscars, and the Oscars have never liked radical left or extreme right activists, but they don’t like beautiful films, and something that reflects a little reality will always win over the judges The film was well received, so the film took a reflection of the racial issues that plagued people in the reality of the United States, but left a lot of bright clues for the film. The ending is more a compromise than a clever one. As a result, in the old Oscar tradition, it won. That's how I felt when I watched this Oscar-winning movie with a herd mentality a few years ago.
Watching the movie Crash again, taking some of the knowledge learned in the cultural studies class, and watching this Oscar-winning film with deeper thinking.
I have been thinking about what cultural research is concerned with, in fact, cultural research is so close to our life, what it teaches us is to observe what is happening around us with a more professional or deeper critical and thinking perspective than usual. The most familiar thing. Just like some social issues reflected in "Crash", if you think about it from the perspective of cultural studies, you can come up with more thorough results than the usual superficial views, not to mention conclusions, because in the field of cultural studies Don't jump to conclusions about something.
What I want to say is about culture and power. Our world is full of inequalities and injustices. As a highly politicized, critical, participatory field of academic thought exploration with its fundamental mission to change reality, cultural studies cannot but analyze and criticize this inequality. as their most important mission. The origins and manifestations of inequality are not only concentrated in economic and political aspects, but also culture plays an increasing role in it. Inequality in the cultural field is more reflected in the inequality of race, ethnicity, age and gender.
Therefore, we can know that the crash is not a film that can be clearly described by just "racism". I believe that the screenwriters and directors are aware of the inequality in the cultural field and the impact of this inequality on people's lives. The beauty of the film is also in the phenomena and metaphorical nature that are shown in some details of life. If it is a racial issue, the film does reflect the conflict between whites and blacks, as well as the conflict between whites and blacks and Asians together, but there are also French-speaking Puerto Ricans in the film, which have almost Black people who have been assimilated by white people, etc., the problems that arise between these people are not understandable because of color discrimination. More may have to involve the cultural level.
The confrontation between the so-called elite culture and popular culture, we can see the connotation of the HIP-POP songs discussed by the black boy who died at the end and his companions. In terms of discourse, he first recognized cultural inequality, and the naive black boy is a representative of resistance to cultural inequality. He does not think such songs have any deep discriminatory connotations. He believes that as long as the existing cultural situation It is right that he can be entertained by himself, he even believes that there is no difference in culture, but in fact it is this indifference that he believes in that kills him when he sees the white cop who is driving him and believes as much as he does The Virgin Mary smiled silly when she put the golden man in the car as a mascot, but the white police thought it was a mockery. Cultural barriers and deep-rooted misunderstandings made the white police finally pull out The gun ended the life of a boy who believed in cultural indifference.
Reconsider the hegemonic status of power in the cultural realm. Having power can even change cultural differences, does the director want to express such a thought? Let’s look at the black boss’s reprimand against the white policeman. He is a person who recognizes cultural differences, but he believes that the basis for changing this difference is to have power. , you can't kill us both with just a few ideas about race. This sentence itself is very contradictory. What a black police officer means is that it is normal to be discriminated against as a black man, and it is not your turn to be a white man, and a black man does not rely on people to change their own ideas. The society changes the original The mechanism is to allow black people to adapt to this society, and then have power, and then they can change their own destiny. Black police officers have admitted the fact that they are treated unequally as black people, but they are unwilling to change this kind of inconsistency. equality.
This point clearly made me see the fact that culture is constructed. Why it is the most difficult to eliminate inequality in the cultural field is because some cultural facts constructed by discourse and knowledge have already been buried In people's lives, both higher and lower cultures implicitly recognize this inequality. In history, whether it is the resistance movement of black people or the liberation wave of women, which has eliminated economic inequality and alleviated inequality in status, it has always been difficult to resist the fact of cultural inequality. development intensified. The reason why I say that power plays an important role in the cultural field is that, perhaps just like the contradictions shown by black police officers, the elimination of unequal cultural differences must rely on other forces, and power is a good means.
But I think that power in the field of culture cannot always be the key to the ultimate solution to the problem. It may be able to solve the inequality of some people, but in the entire cultural wave, the problem of inequality is that some people can get power. fixed? A little thought is that since culture is constructed, to alleviate inequality, it takes generations to recognize the problem. If the problem is really critical, just as racial issues and women's issues are getting more and more attention, Then let's build a new cultural discourse together. It may be difficult to see in one's lifetime, but just as history is written from generation to generation, can culture be reconstructed one day?
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