Myths as a Mirror of Society Essay

In a democratic society that struggles with how to sustain individuality and yet develop a consciousness of sh bed concerns and actions that drive equality, the colorize of your skin and the place of your origins compose matter to a thr unrivaled of people. Power relationships between people still exist and continue to crop peoples perceptions of themselves and the members of other(a) groups. One of the struggles of a certain soul is the construction of self, including identification and affiliation with ones gender and a racial or ethnic group. subsisting in a thawing pot of cultures uniform the United States, one could not help yet encounter contrastive people that belong to different ethnic group. In an article by Linda Seger entitled Creating the Myths (2000), she averred that although people grow from different cultures or has a different skin color, We sh ar similar dwells in the brio journey of growth, development, and transformation. We live the equal stories, whether they involve the search for a hone mate, coming home, the search for fulfillment, going by and by an ideal, achieving the dream, or hunting for a precious treasure.Whatever our culture, on that point are universal stories that form the substructure for all our particular stories. The trappings might be different, the twists and turns that create incredulity might change from culture to culture, the particular characters may take different forms, but underneath it all, its the same story, breastfeedn from the same experiences (p. 308). Living in a multi-ethnic society does not come in as easy. Often, we cast heard or maybe encountered ourselves some injustice with regards to people that has not the same color of our skin. In television and in cinemas, there are clashes in cultures.Un whopn evil caused mainly by peoples refusal to accept reality as it is. When you bring in the discussion crash, it always baits to mind an unfortunate event that has to deal with ve hicles. individual even told me that it is prohibited to say this word when you are boarded on an plane because you might cause panic among another passengers. Planes, cars and even computers crash. dissolve fundamentally means collision. Similarly, the title of Paul Haggis movie is Crash (2005). However, viewing audience entrust see not only collisions involving cars, but collisions involving race, culture and classes.Although it is just a movie, Crash tackles the realities of what cross-cultural panorama of Los Angeles urban life looks like. More than an interlacing stories of mythic heroes, it involves no direct good or bad people. These are people interconnected to each other in vestiges of crime, racial discrimination, corruption, obligation, indignation and run a risk over a two-day period. The storyline superimposes the complexity of the multifaceted narratives of their lives entwined under the legion(predicate) social and psychological issues usually hidden inside th e closet of the American consciousness.Demystifying the Plot Seger proposed that a myth is a story that is more than full-strength. She luxuriant that these stories are true because one person, somewhere, at some time, lived it. Like the stories that plait in the movie Crash, these events are based on facts that we encounter in our daily lives. We connect to a myth because we believe that this is more than true because it is lived by all of us, at some level. The plot of the movie Crash are stories that connects and speaks to us all.One of the poignant stories that revolve around the movie is ab give away two cops, one senior and the other junior. The other devolve and abusive, the other one is a novice and willing to learn the ropes. These cops are played by Matt Dillon and Ryan Philippe noteively. One day, when they were assigned in their ticktock site, they pull over and eventually harass a black agree (Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton) because the SUV theyre driving va guely fits the description of a carjacked vehicle that was reported. viewing audience get the impression that the character of Matt Dillon is racialist chauvinist pig. We now tag him as the villain. More complications swiftly supersede inwardly 24 hours as archetypes of characters cross paths again in separate incidents of incredibly gritty tension. These archetype characters challenge both the prejudices that have formed between them and the assumptions we draw step to the fore from their different perspectives ab come forward race and culture as a whole. Later in the engage, we are surprised to see that it turned out that Christine (Thandie Newton) that she encounters Sgt.Ryan (Matt Dillon), the racist cop who sexually molested her during a traffic stop the former night, the douricer on the scene who tries to pull her from the burning car. Of course, she refused. Anyone but you Christine screamed. We see the frustration in the face of Sgt. Ryan. He profusely apologized and explained that nobody was there to help but him. He informed that gasoline was dripping off her car. More or less, she has to get out of there before it explodes. Hesitantly, Christine hold after Sgt. Ryan promised not to touch her anymore.Luckily, Christine was pulled out before the explosion. Viewers are perplexed with the transformation of Sgt. Ryan as an anti-hero. Maybe, he was not bad after all. Heroes and anti-heroes abound the movie Crash. To further intricately muddle the conflicts, characters encounter and reencounter one another in highly convenient ways. For example, a young Afro-American criminal Peter (Lanrez Tate) is murdered. Fortunately, he has a brother, Graham (Don Cheadle), an LAPD detective, who discovers Peters dead body in the desert.Prior to learning of his brothers death, Graham is thwarted by the district lawyers berth into suppressing evidence that may partially absolve a white law officer charged with killing a black cop. Incidentally, the district at torney (Brendan Fraser) is looking for a conviction that would help him gather enough keep up from the black community, since he is trying to manage a potential media scandal. He and his wife (Sandra Bullock) were carjacked in Sherman Oaks by two young black men.We come to realize that around the community of New York we get acquainted with conglomerate myths, as this movie depicted. We witness the patterns and elements that connect with our own human experience As film involves various crashes and clashes, forcefully it does not just implore commonly hackneyed racially-charged confrontations found in some films, but it well-nigh subliminally showcases how passive prejudice and pre-conceived notions are often prevalent in simplistic day-to-day life.Thus, people could just collide and all these complications happen within a blink of an eye, unaware that they are villains and victims all at the same time of the milieu. The Myths of Crash Although the dominant illusion of myths tha t Crash could perpetuate among its viewers rough its own narrative is that each character does something virtuous in one situation, and something unconscionably racist in another. Entirely, this is not the case because some characters could be deemed as purely good people. These characters are not simply out and out heroes.They are called anti-heroes because they do not possess certain respect that people should bestow them because of racism and prejudice. The Latino locksmith Daniel exists solely to incur racist threats and insults from other characters, then to disprove their opinions through his role as the around upstanding of family men. Unfortunately, other characters display no redeeming traits, like the DAs wife, Jean Cabot (Bullock) is depicted as a self-involved mystifying and uptight woman who is there to speak the unspeakable truth when justifying her fright of black men.Eventually, she stops just short of calling Daniel a wetback, and undergoes a quite insincere tra nsformation that resulted from her inability to understand that her housekeeper Maria (Yomi Perry) is becoming to her when she fell down some steps and fractured her leg, and nobody else has given her sympathy. She had no choice, but be nice to the person who helped her (Sicinski, 2005). Craig Detweiler (December, 2005) analyzed that Haggis portrays the film as a depiction a fine interconnectedness of realistic delineation of pertinent issues with a subliminal touch of magic realism.The movie offers a range of familiar types, attempting to prick his viewers consciences without being overbearingly informative or nearly jingoistic. As the film kicks off, tempers are already heave as invectives and epithets are blurted out without batting an eyelash. Prejudices are looking for confirmation. I am angry all the time, and I dont know why, laments a frustrated housewife. The first half of the film whips up the thaw pot of complications, with racist assumptions spilling out of the char acters ears.Viewers relish a disk of racism and crime, seasoned with sexual harassment, a broken health-care system and the barter for of firearms. In the softer second half, Detweiler explains that the isolated moments suggest a possibility of buyback for the characters. A motorist hassled by the cops for driving while black turns out to be a conflict-avoiding Buddhist for Christs sake. But that doesnt dissuade the police from violating his humanity and that of his wife. A statue of St.Christopher shows up at surprise times, but it ultimately proves ineffectual. A protective icon inspires a ergodic act of violence. As Christmas unfolds in the movie, we see images of the nativity that could only summon unrealized prayers for peace on earth (Detweiler, 2005). Circumscribing the circle that goes around the films plot, a realization could smack its viewers that in the teeny-weeny world we are living in, we are connected to each other, like it or not. Conclusion To quote John F.Ke nnedy, he said that all American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. In our present time, racism is a topic well-tackled among discussions. We are aware that it is broadly speaking loathed by people and we heard calls of putting a stop to it. We have seen the fall of Apartheid, we have seen those protests voicing out equality, but people still commit racism unconsciously as they encounter each other in their daily lives. Is prejudice primarily a question of color?How do differences of language and culture play into our misunderstandings? What must be do to bridge understanding and permanently inculcate the ugly face of prejudice regarding our differences? The film Crash does not present the myths to an ultimate panacea to racism and prejudice. But certainly, it is a mirror of the archetypes that persist in American society. It is presenting a consciousness about the interconnectedness of people and t he situations that made them come up with their own realizations.Thus, the film invites its viewers to come up with their own realizations about the contemporary cross-section of American society and provide a quadriceps femoris about perspectives on how to deal with their own prejudices. Works Cited Detweiler, Craig. Cultural Collisions. Sojourners Magazine. Washington, (December 2005), 34 (11) 45-46. Seger, Linda. Creating the Myth. Signs Of Life In The USA. New York Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. 308-316. Sicinski, Michael. Crash, Film Review. Cineaste. New York, (Fall 2005), 30 (4) 51-54.