I went to see the movie Crash this afternoon. I would not call it a successful film. Its ideas are far too clumsily and hastily expressed, its emotional manipulation is often laughably blatant, and the director's idea of nuance is to give each character two hulking great black-and-white personality characteristics (the racist cop shows great personal bravery; the hypocritical thug turns out to be a carjacker-with-a-heart-of-gold; and so on). It's interesting to ponder how much more cogent and thoughtful the story would have been had it had the breathing space of, say, an HBO multi-part series - ironic given our lingering but absurd prejudice that TV is a dumbed-down and inferior medium compared to cinema. But one really penetrating truth that does emerge from the chaotic wreckage of Crash is that America's biggest problem today is anger: the infantalizing of personal conflict, the inability of otherwise good and intelligent people to control their tempers at moments of stress. My Cliopatria colleague Mark Grimsley has also seen Crash and wrote a perceptive essay on just this theme, which I urge you all to read.
Posted by Alan Allport at July 4, 2005 10:53 PM'...lingering but absurd prejudice that TV is a dumbed-down and inferior medium compared to cinema..'
Well I wouldn't call it an absurd prejudice given the history of TV as opposed to cinema.
Posted by: Aibrushed by the Commissars at July 5, 2005 07:08 AMWouldn’t some see the Grimsley approach as nearing appeasement? Outwitting your opponent with empathy and understanding has been unpopular a long time. Which is too bad. Appeasement got such a bad reputation. Got me thinking about Norman Davies’ comment in Europe: A History (I’m remembering this; can’t confirm at the moment) that appeasement, just because it failed with Hitler, is not an invalid approach for all time.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at July 5, 2005 07:18 AMThe appeasement of the 1930s is particularly misunderstood because it's commonly assumed that it was motivated by nothing more than fear and weakness. But appeasement was really about prioritizing threats. Chamberlain's government saw three dangers to its imperial position - Hitler in Europe, Mussolini in the Mediterranean, and Japan in the Pacific - and argued that because the first was the least threatening to immediate British interests, it would be most sensible to buy it off while concentrating on the other two. This proved to be a mistake, but it wasn't a wholly irrational mistake.
It can also be argued (from the cold Realpolitik position anyway) that FDR got America unnecessarily into a war in the Pacific while he was trying to deal with the European threat by failing to appease the Japanese. That's one line taken by David Kennedy in his excellent book on Roosevelt's presidency, anyway.
Posted by: Alan Allport at July 5, 2005 05:42 PM