Last Friday I was able to participate in some of my favorite weekend activites: watching a movie, eating pizza, drinking a beer, and hanging out. My regular pizza-loving buddy is my roommate Heather. We like the same kind of pizza from the same pizza place as well, which I think is a very unique trait to find in a friend.
The movie of the night was "Crash" which has random characters in it like Sandra Bullock, Ryan Phillippe, Brendan Fraiser and Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda). It is indeed a fascinating movie and it gives you tons to think about. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone because of the content and subject matter. But I think it's an important movie to get Americans thinking more about the realities of racism in our country. It does affect all of us. This movie is also very good to watch on DVD so that way if you need to take a break or pause it to discuss it you can. We had to take a break mid-way to make some decaff coffee and catch up to make sure we understood the plot correctly.
I've been thinking a lot about the premise of the movie lately and it's interesting to see how much we stereotype different people groups, mostly in fun of course. When I get home from work each day I normally watch at least one seinfeld rerun from 6:00-7:00. Last night's episode centered around Elaine's new boyfriend who was a communist. He dressed in plain clothes and had random literature in his car about it. They made some great jokes about the clothes and him being "red". Fortunately I don't think communists will watch the show and freak out.
But, take for example, the the rioting going on by some Muslims against one of the Danish embassys in the Middle East for posting a cartoon making fun of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. It may not seem to affect the U.S. directly, however, the movie "Crash" showes viewers how forms of racism, prejudice and stereotyping interconnects us globally much more then we realize.
2 comments:
Seriously, I thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Sort of. For a while, I said that watching it should be a requirement to be my friend. If I had a movie club like a book club, that would be one of the first movies we watched. I think we should have a roundtable discussion of it at some point.
Dave and I just watched that flick a month ago. I was fairly disturbed through the whole thing, but it was interesting how redemption seemed to be woven into the plot. I wouldn't watch it again, but definitely a discussion starter. As for the crazy Danes...well good thing we won't be visiting Coppenhagen until the summer.
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