Peeking Under the Hood of Our Car-Culture in "Crash"
"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."--Opening line in Best Picture winner "Crash."
Don Cheadle's character makes an interesting observation at the beginning of "Crash," a movie that ultimately failed to fulfill the promise hinted in this line about exploring our dehumanizing love affair with the automobile and what implications this has for our public relationships with each other.
Instead the movie focuses almost cartoonishly on the way racism manifests itself in daily interactions with strangers in L.A., which is a worthy topic no doubt, but in going that direction, the characters in "Crash" feel alien to most of us. We can't relate to Matt Dillon's race-baiting bad cop/good cop, or Sandra Bullock's upper class snootiness.
Cheadle's character was right though; we Americans do miss "touches" or what we might define as the simple trusting and reassuring interactions with our neighbors, the guy in line with us at the grocery store, or the people in the doctor’s waiting room.
But our society has made a choice in favor of a life of free-agency. We (Our generation especially) expects to make our own decisions, find self-expression in buying what we want when we want it, and see ourselves as individuals free of geographic, institutional or social or religious bonds. And one of the unfortunate tradeoffs of this lifestyle is a loss of these “touches.”
And part of this happens because as Robert Putnam in the book Bowling Alone puts it, “we spend measurably more of every day shuttling alone in metal boxes among the vertices of our private triangles.”
Cars make the American lifestyle of ultimate free-agency possible. We can live almost anywhere, we don't even have to live very near our jobs, and many decide to go wherever in the world they have the most potential to earn the most money.
Like the characters in Crash, I also live in Los Angeles, the World Capital of Free Agency. Based on personal observation, I would guess that at least 80 percent of cars zipping down L.A. streets have single occupants. Traffic is indeed ridiculous, but that’s just the most obvious and personally inconvenient effect.
Of course, you do see some poor souls walking, riding bikes, or taking public transportation, but by and large, these are people who lack the resources to drive themselves and are looked down as so.
My boss recently told me he'd like to get rid of his car, but there is just too much of a stigma involved in riding the bus. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood's infamous liberal spirit which George Clooney gushed about in this month's Oscars, stops when it comes to personal inconvenience.
If you're really serious about America's "War for Oil" George, how about riding your bike with me on Wilshire Boulevard? I'll even a share a double seater with ya.
Not that it’s just Mr. Clooney’s fault. According to Putnam’s research, in four decades, we went from a society of one car per household in 1969 to nearly two cars by 1995. The suburbanization of America also meant more people driving longer distances to and from work and school and the store. According to a Department of Transportation’s Personal Transportation Survey, adults spend 72 minutes a day behind the wheel, more than we spend eating, cooking, and twice as much as the average parents spends with the kids.
Studies also show that the more time we spend in automobiles; the less likely we’re to spend time in our neighbors and participating in the community. It helps make ghost towns of our own neighborhoods- as homes have become containments units where we put all our stuff, go to sleep, eat, or entertain ourselves…that is until we're ready to go out, get in our personal containment unit and drive away.
Unfortunately then, too many of our interactions with the rest of humanity outside of our own tightly knit social and familial circles take place in two ways - through our commercial transactions, and in the car.
Our interactions with people in the first way – talking to a clerk at a store, speaking with a customer service employee on the phone, chit-chatting with a waitress at a restaurant - many times seem rote and robotic in its form and function because we cynically know that politeness is seen as a top-down directive to increase profit. Is that waitress smiling at us because she genuinely likes us, or does she simply want an extra 5 percent tip?
And in our mobile personal spaces the car, our “touches” with others are overwhelmingly negative. On the road were competing with each other for parking places, for a left turn before the signal turns yellow, and we often treats others as such. With that said, it’s no surprise that our communication tools in the car are overwhelmingly the horn and the middle finger….both that say the same thing. “Get the hell out of my way,” or “You are an idiot.”
The term “sidewalk rage” doesn't exist and rightfully so. On the sidewalk, we are rarely competing with anyone for space and we aren’t hiding behind the confines of the tank-like confines of a H2.
All of these things would be a fascinating topic for a movie, but “Crash” never really “peeks under the hood” so to speak at our country's car-centric lives. Here’s hoping “Crash 2” stars Herbie.
"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."--Opening line in Best Picture winner "Crash."
Don Cheadle's character makes an interesting observation at the beginning of "Crash," a movie that ultimately failed to fulfill the promise hinted in this line about exploring our dehumanizing love affair with the automobile and what implications this has for our public relationships with each other.
Instead the movie focuses almost cartoonishly on the way racism manifests itself in daily interactions with strangers in L.A., which is a worthy topic no doubt, but in going that direction, the characters in "Crash" feel alien to most of us. We can't relate to Matt Dillon's race-baiting bad cop/good cop, or Sandra Bullock's upper class snootiness.
Cheadle's character was right though; we Americans do miss "touches" or what we might define as the simple trusting and reassuring interactions with our neighbors, the guy in line with us at the grocery store, or the people in the doctor’s waiting room.
But our society has made a choice in favor of a life of free-agency. We (Our generation especially) expects to make our own decisions, find self-expression in buying what we want when we want it, and see ourselves as individuals free of geographic, institutional or social or religious bonds. And one of the unfortunate tradeoffs of this lifestyle is a loss of these “touches.”
And part of this happens because as Robert Putnam in the book Bowling Alone puts it, “we spend measurably more of every day shuttling alone in metal boxes among the vertices of our private triangles.”
Cars make the American lifestyle of ultimate free-agency possible. We can live almost anywhere, we don't even have to live very near our jobs, and many decide to go wherever in the world they have the most potential to earn the most money.
Like the characters in Crash, I also live in Los Angeles, the World Capital of Free Agency. Based on personal observation, I would guess that at least 80 percent of cars zipping down L.A. streets have single occupants. Traffic is indeed ridiculous, but that’s just the most obvious and personally inconvenient effect.
Of course, you do see some poor souls walking, riding bikes, or taking public transportation, but by and large, these are people who lack the resources to drive themselves and are looked down as so.
My boss recently told me he'd like to get rid of his car, but there is just too much of a stigma involved in riding the bus. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood's infamous liberal spirit which George Clooney gushed about in this month's Oscars, stops when it comes to personal inconvenience.
If you're really serious about America's "War for Oil" George, how about riding your bike with me on Wilshire Boulevard? I'll even a share a double seater with ya.
Not that it’s just Mr. Clooney’s fault. According to Putnam’s research, in four decades, we went from a society of one car per household in 1969 to nearly two cars by 1995. The suburbanization of America also meant more people driving longer distances to and from work and school and the store. According to a Department of Transportation’s Personal Transportation Survey, adults spend 72 minutes a day behind the wheel, more than we spend eating, cooking, and twice as much as the average parents spends with the kids.
Studies also show that the more time we spend in automobiles; the less likely we’re to spend time in our neighbors and participating in the community. It helps make ghost towns of our own neighborhoods- as homes have become containments units where we put all our stuff, go to sleep, eat, or entertain ourselves…that is until we're ready to go out, get in our personal containment unit and drive away.
Unfortunately then, too many of our interactions with the rest of humanity outside of our own tightly knit social and familial circles take place in two ways - through our commercial transactions, and in the car.
Our interactions with people in the first way – talking to a clerk at a store, speaking with a customer service employee on the phone, chit-chatting with a waitress at a restaurant - many times seem rote and robotic in its form and function because we cynically know that politeness is seen as a top-down directive to increase profit. Is that waitress smiling at us because she genuinely likes us, or does she simply want an extra 5 percent tip?
And in our mobile personal spaces the car, our “touches” with others are overwhelmingly negative. On the road were competing with each other for parking places, for a left turn before the signal turns yellow, and we often treats others as such. With that said, it’s no surprise that our communication tools in the car are overwhelmingly the horn and the middle finger….both that say the same thing. “Get the hell out of my way,” or “You are an idiot.”
The term “sidewalk rage” doesn't exist and rightfully so. On the sidewalk, we are rarely competing with anyone for space and we aren’t hiding behind the confines of the tank-like confines of a H2.
All of these things would be a fascinating topic for a movie, but “Crash” never really “peeks under the hood” so to speak at our country's car-centric lives. Here’s hoping “Crash 2” stars Herbie.
