Interpersonal communication is the process of using symbols to represent ideas in order to share meanings and create a personal bond between people (Solomon and Theiss, 2013).
The film Crash is an intense look at interpersonal communication in our modern-day society. Crash is a multi-faceted film with a simple idea. Taking place in Los Angeles, the film follows the lives of several characters of different race, whose lives shockingly all intersect at some point during a forty-eight hour period. The overall theme of the film is racism, which is portrayed with no hesitation.
The correlation between race and income ultimately heighten a problem, which piles on the ethnic and cultural differences on top of class differences. Although each character makes racist remarks throughout the film, each also suffers from racism. The film intimately illustrates concepts of interpersonal communications such as culture, self-identity, perception, and attribution. Character Description This essay follows the character arc of Ryan Phillipe as Officer Hansen as well as the fundamental components located within culture, self-identity, perception, and attribution of the character.
Officer Hansen is the role of a rookie police officer that is having trouble dealing with the realities of his job. Hansen is partnered with Officer John Ryan, who is the most abstruse character. At the start of the film, Officers John and Hansen receive a call for a stolen black SUV. Several moments later, John commences to pulling over a vehicle he ultimately knows is the incorrect vehicle simply because the driver is black. After requesting for the black couple to exit the vehicle, John proceeded to fill-up the man’s wife.
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Officer Hansen could barely hide his disgust, and requested a new partner the following day. Despite Officer Hanson’s innocence and lack of racism at the start of the film, he ultimately finds himself acting on racism itself in the end after shooting a black man out of fear caused by prejudice. Analysis The three most prominent concepts shown throughout the film that are discussed in Solomon and Theiss’s Interpersonal Communication: Putting Theory into Practice are culture, marginalization, and stereotyping.
Culture The first concept, culture, is a term that represents the values, beliefs, and customs that we share with a group of people (Solomon and Theiss, 2013).
Throughout Crash, director Paul Haggis has made it a point to show many different ethnic cultures. There are “black” people, “white” people, “china men,” “Mexicans,” and Persians. The film ultimately exaggerates how categorizing people from various cultures into racial stereotypes of supposed inferiority is a common yet foolish practice. Marginalization
The second concept, marginalization, occurs when less dominant groups of people in a society are treated as inferior or unimportant (Solomon and Theiss, 2013).
After Officer John pulls over the black couple just because of their race, he makes them exit the vehicle and proceeds to molest the black man’s wife. Officer Hansen wants to say something, but feels inferior compared to Officer John because he is only a rookie in training. This example shows marginalization of African Americans, and trainees.
Officer John victimized the black couple because he felt like he was better than them. He also knew that Officer Hansen would not say anything because he was above him. In the end, both Officer Hansen and the black couple ultimately felt inferior and helpless. Stereotyping The third concept, stereotyping, is assuming that individuals have certain qualities based on their membership in a social group (Solomon and Theiss, 2013).
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At the end of the film, Officer Hansen has his own car and is giving a ride to a black man.
After getting into a heated verbal debate regarding racial issues, Officer Hansen asks the man to get out of the car. As the man notices the St. Christopher statue on the dashboard he starts laughing and reaches into his pocket to show the officer his. Hansen assumes he has a gun, and shoots him. Officer Hansen made a racial stereotype by thinking the man had a gun just because he was a member of the black ethnic group. These three minor sub-concepts located within culture, self-identity, perception and attribution, are seen plenty throughout Officer Hansen’s character.
Each concept gives us a more in-depth look at Hansen’s forms of communication along with broader ideas associated with interpersonal communication. General Implications about the Foundations of Interpersonal Communication The foundations of Interpersonal Communication are not only seen in the movie Crash, but also in everyday life. People make assumptions about others every day. Although they may not be classified as racist, they are sometimes stereotypical and test our perception.
People are unaware of the boundary markers associated within different cultures and ethnicities, and others break them just because that is how they are. As seen in the film and in today’s society, many people have ethnocentric views. There should not be any tendency to see ones own cultural beliefs as more correct, appropriate, and moral than any other culture. People in today’s society also focus more on the identity of others when they should be more concerned with the creation of their own identity, which in hand, could improve their interpersonal communication competence.
Conclusion Overall, the film Crash shows that the correlation between race and income ultimately heighten a problem, which piles on the ethnic and cultural differences on top of class differences. The film provides its viewers with many different examples of interpersonal communication concepts, fundamentals of communication, and real life instances that ultimately make you think about the ways in which we communicate, and the nature of bigotry and stereotypes.
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