Examples Of Existentialism In The Movie Crash

This movie Directed by Paul Haggis who also directed Academy Award Winning "Million Dollar Baby" and had also won an Academy Award for this movie as well puts a twisted story in this film. This movie is trying to symbolize what goes on in the world today in regards to racism and stereotypes. He tries to make a point on how societies view themselves and others in the world based on there ethnicities. This movie intertwines several different people's lives, all different races, with different types of beliefs. Such ethnicities include Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Middle Eastern. This movie includes conflicts on both sides of the picture from cops and criminals as well

Communication is important in our lives as it enables us to interact with one another, and allows us to form and build upon relationships with other people. However, when communication is not effective or colored by personal biases, it may lead to conflict. In the movie Crash, the characters are faced with a number of social issues, born from their inability to communicate with one another as well as their perceived notions of racial and cultural biases. Through the interactions between the characters this film allows us to understand how interpersonal communication affects individuals be it with strangers, friends, or family.

Lester Grinspoon, M.D., a medical marijuana advocate and highly supports the re-classification of marijuana, makes another good point in one of his articles “A Plea for Reconsideration. In Dr. Grinspoon’s article “A Plea for Reconsideration”, he recommends that marijuana be reclassified to a Schedule II class drug, so that it could maybe be prescribed medically. He writes: In a 1990 survey, 44% of oncologists said they had suggested that a patient smoke marijuana for relief of the nausea induced by chemotherapy. If marijuana were actually unsafe for use under medical supervision, as its Schedule I status explicitly affirms, this recommendation would be unthinkable.

Crash is the movie that was released in 2004. This movie begins by saying “it is the sense of touch…we miss so much that we crash into each other, so we can feel something.” These two words touch and feel had huge meaningful in this movie. The word touch was used to show the connection and feel which conjures a sense of motion. The touch in this movie brings a lot of issues which provides the movie main theme. Before I explore the theme, I will tell my readers what are the themes. The themes are; traditional gender roles, Gender roles, Hope, Faith, and love, Finding the light while we are facing the shadow, and the social construct vs nature characters.

For this paper, both movies used to explain Existentialism are adapted from real stories. The first film is Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed and the second is Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless. In Sartre’s definition of existentialism, human existence precedes essence, therefore leading to meaning, purpose and identity. When Chris and Cheryl leave their family, friends and everything else they know from the society, they are attempting to find a meaning and purpose to their lives.

One must never judge or discriminate a person based on their physical attributes. Prejudice and discrimination directed against someone of a different race is known as racism. It is evident in the movie “Crash” directed by Paul Haggis, that people misconceive others due to judgement on their physical traits. Throughout the movie, the characters living in Los Angeles face the challenges of fitting in a town populated by people of different colours. The offenders are the “white” people whereas the victims are everyone else. The presence of racism is the main cause of every conflict that occurs in the movie.

By the definition of existentialism, it is the theory that one gives an action a value by the virtue of choosing said action to begin with. It is an approach that emphasizes any existence of an individual that is “condemned to be free” (McCutcheon, p. 91) and are therefore agents who have no other choice but to be accountable for those actions in which they produce. In a way, it is as if existentialism is contrary to essentialism. The idea that existence precedes essence manifests itself in the movie Fight Club. This movie shows many themes of existentialism, where the main character struggles between his “everyday self” and the “inner self” he longs to become. The Narrator soon learns that it is only when one strips away everything they thought they knew about themselves—down to an empty shell of who they are—that you may build back up into a new and complete person with a real identity and the capability of decision making. The three themes of existentialism that the movie portrays are: (1)) the awareness of what you are and assuming responsibility, (2) the aspect of choosing how one may define themselves with respect to the world they exist in, and lastly, (3) the confrontation of mental pain in order to reach a genuine state of “being for itself”.

This semester we have studied five works that all communicate different themes and views of existentialism through each protagonist's point of view. From reading, watching, and analyzing each piece of work, we have come to know existentialists as having a very interesting outlook on life. Almost all the existentialists in the five works we studied believe in freedom of choice. That humans define their own meaning in life and try their best to make rational decisions in spite of existing in what they consider an “unreasonable universe”. The protagonists in each short story and movie we have watched, have similar qualities between each other and quite a few differences. The two pieces of work that will be focused on are, ‘The Wall’ by Jean-Paul Sartre and ‘The Guest’ by Albert Camus.

  Existentialism is a philosophy dealing with man's aloneness in the universe. Either there is no God or else God stands apart from man, leaving him free will to make his own choices. From this basic idea of man being alone in an uncertain and purposeless world, many related ideas have developed. One great worry of existentialist writers is that life is becoming too complicated and too impersonal. People become more and more involved with their work, which is taking them away from their friends, family, and culture. However, these provide the only "meaning" that life could possibly have. One author prominently known for his work with existential ideas was Franz

In the movie Crash, the director Paul Haggis interweaves multiple connected stories about race, class, family, and gender in Los Angeles, California after the 9/11 event. All the characters are shown to have life changing experiences with their conflicts of stereotypes, prejudice, and racism within a span of 36 hours. This movie has won three Oscars and was deemed “expertly written” and “Best Picture Oscar-winner … sprawling and ambitious, episodic and contrived” by Cynthia Fuchs, a professional movie critic. So, how did this movie become so well-known and popular in the U.S., even though there are already so many movies with similar themes?

The movie Crash is a film that was released in 2005 that follows the lives of everyday citizens from different ethnic and racial backgrounds in Los Angeles, California. Within the lives of the citizens, the people try to get through hardships as each of the several stories within the film “crash” into on another. With the film focusing race, family, and gender, the theme of this films shifts often. Even though the movie has multiple themes, the main theme of the movie is that once you look past their race, gender, and their socioeconomic status, each of these characters have similar hardships that they try to overcome throughout the move. Each character no matter what their race is struggles just as much as the rest do. Not one person in that

In the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, the theory of Existentialism can be easily seen through various key components. Existentialism is a philosophy that accentuates an individual’s existence as a free being who is entirely responsible for the choices they make. It questions the human existence and whether there is any purpose of living; it is a notion that declares that an individual must define their own meaning in life and attempt to make rational decisions while existing in an irrational universe (Crowell). Such existential concepts are showcased throughout the book as an unnamed father and son travel across the United States where an unclear cataclysm has occurred destroying almost all life on Earth. They are striving to survive in this world where murder, cannibalism and sex slavery have become the norm. They are faced with inhumane situations and barbaric people, forcing them to make crucial decisions. It is understandable that the father and the boy are undergoing an existential crisis when being placed in this post-apocalyptic world where they attempt to fulfill their ultimate goal of reaching safety by abiding by their morals and depending on their hope while questioning their faith in God.

I don’t know where to start? Firstly, “EASY RIDER”, is one of the movies I love, it represents the eternal question about us as humans, it is bright example of an existential movie, conveying in an unmatched way, the message: “Existence precedes essence”. Moreover, the existential message, here is displayed in a perfect way in front of all viewers, related to some other masterpieces: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979); Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979); Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999); Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936), The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946), Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952), Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, just to mention few, of many

The movie, Crash, demonstrates the lives of various individuals from divergent socio-economic classes, who have life changing experiences in between their conflicting prejudices and stereotypes. The theme of multiculturalism has also made its influence on the major characters of the movie: a white American district attorney and his wife who is constantly scared of "the other"; two African American thieves who steal their car, a racist police officer who offends an African American TV producer and harasses his wife, a non-racist police officer, a Latino lock maker, a Persian family and another African American detective in the search of his brother.

The existentialist is one who is concerned only with that intense moment of awareness with only his senses at his disposal, never looking to the future – the most living awareness. McCandles, the protagonist, in Into the Wild has come to the realization that existence is already being dead and accepting the fact that life is absurd and marvelous. He embraced the sublime absurdity of existence by renouncing the language games society plays. What is so enticing about the existentialist is that he is not concerned with the pressure of appearances and small talk which society employs to lie about what they think and feel. Existentialism is accepting the inevitability of death and living life for the moment without entertaining hope or falsities that distract one from living and accepting truth. The existentialist sees the simplicity in life and the absurdity of complicating it with pretences and lies, the existentialist is a naked man, he is one who becomes one with the rest of creation in accepting his fate on this earth and not hoping for anything more – he simply exists.