Stereotyping is a way of organizing our individual perceptions in order to classify people; making generalizations and predictions about members of the groups who fit the categories we use. It's often an exaggerated generalization associated with a categorizing system. Stereotypes may be based on a kernel of truth, but they it's common for them to go beyond facts to a point of view which has no valid basis. ".
In writing this paper on stereotypes, I revisited the 2004 Academy Award Best Picture winner, "Crash." The film, directed brilliantly by Paul Haggis, depicts many of the stereotypes and prejudices present in American society. Haggis avoids all traces of political correctedness, exposing common ethnic cliches in an effort to open our eyes to the preconceived ideas we may have regarding those different from ourselves. An good example of this is a dialogue between two detectives:.
Ria:You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How 'bout a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico. .
Graham: Ah. Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?.
Crash is an exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents - Black, White, Latino, Asian, and Persian. A key character is a District Attorney who uses race as a political card. He and his wife had recently been carjacked by two black men which causes her to justify her belief that other races deserve their negative reputations. The DA's wife believes that the Latino locksmith who was hired to put new locks on their house doors, is the kind of man who would give a copy of their keys to his gang-member friends so they can burglarize their home. Haggis invites the audience into the Latino locksmith's personal life, and we are shown that he is good man, working a long and tedious job to provide for his young daughter.