Crash.

Analyse how a character or narrator’s fate was used to reinforce one or more themes in the visual text.

Everyday the world wakes and goes about their time, preforming actions which causes small ripples across society. We never really stop to consider the extent of the effects of our small, seemingly insignificant daily actions. The inability to consider this, has crafted an ignorant and alienated society. Paul Haggis, the director of the polarising visual text Crash, challenged his viewers by directing his character, Farhad, into bad fate as a result of others effecting her more significantly than they ever considered. The strong overhanging theme that Haggis believed that everybody’s lives are intertwined further enforced this.

BP 1 – The shop door break and break in.

BP 2 – His attempted murder of Daniel Ruiz’s Daughter, Lara. 

BP 3 – The racism and separation in LA.

BP 1 – Farhad only appears a selection of times throughout the movie but all appearances are influential in their own way. The scene with Daniel in his store is the set up for the series of events which occurs in the future. By fate, the two are brought together in Farhad’s shop over a broken door. A feeble argument breaks out among them and Farhad unleashes the bottled anger and pain from his own racial predicament on Daniel throwing racial insults at him. It is so ironic that despite Farhad knowing and feeling the pain of being discriminated, he continues to fuel the fire. The chain of mistreatment and discrimination runs through the world through the deep interconnection between our own lives with everyone elses and our actions become part of a larger scale more quickly than we could ever imagine. This small interaction was triggered into argument because of the past and will continue to affect the future as we see in the following scenes. 

BP 2 – A accumulation of anger and pain has lead Farhad down a dark path, to driveway of Daniel Ruiz’s home. A place he will never forget.

BP3 – It not a coincidence that the movie begins with Farhad being battered by derogative racial comments and identify being mistaken and disrespected. Farhad was confused with Arab terrorists despite being Persian, and was told to “plan a jihad on your own time.” This is was not accident by Haggis, the immediate confrontation of the immense racism which still evidently controls many grieving people in the wake of 9/11 is not avoided in the early stages of the movie. The magnitude of the effects following the actions of the humans behind the 9/11 attacks illustrates the theme explored by Haggis in Crash. Millions left distraught and shocked by the actions of a small group of people, a small group which shook the world. When scaled down to everyday life, we can imagine the spread of the effects of own actions. The racism and continual second class treatment from many people who likely did not think one then once about it, pushed Farhad into an attempt of murder. His fate was decide not by himself but the people around him who continually ruined his life. The people which he encountered did not know the full extent of their actions, but as the viewer we were able to follow and understand the effects they had on Farhad.