Crash the moive

Name:
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Ludacris Character Analysis in the Crash Movie
The movie is unique since its characters have been stressed out and pushed to their personal emotional limits, while also showing them at their best. As the film progresses, it is evident that crashing emerges from stereotype beliefs, racial discrimination, and pre-conceived judgments. These negative characters run rampant in the entire movie in an attempt to portray a typical day in Los Angeles. The movie comprises a handful of disparate people’s lives, which intertwine as they face the tense race relations that are seen to belie life in Los Angeles (“Crash Character Analysis”). The district attorney uses race as his political card, while his wife who was carjacked by two black men, believes that her stereotypical perception of the non-whites is entirely justified and one should not consider her as a racist (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”). The two black carjackers take advantage of their race and as an excuse to conduct their criminal acts. Moreover, some partnered racist Caucasian police constables use their authorities to undermine the non-whites. Not only does the movie portray racism between the black and white citizens, but also discrimination between the rich and the poor, among the Latinos, Iranians, and the Koreans. One evident element in the movie is that a person subjected to racism as also guilty of the same act. All characters have their own assumptions about the other people, which prevent them from seeing the actual person standing before them for who they are rather than their stereotypes (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”).

One of the most exciting characters in the movie is Antony, which is played by a famous icon Ludacris. He is a black American inner-city criminal who is involved in carjacking vehicles for a bigoted owner of a chop shop (“Crash Character Analysis”). Throughout the entire movie, Antony believes that the society is biased against the black people, and at some point, he tries to justify his actions by promising never to hurt a fellow black person. However, the moment he was attacked by Cameron when they tried to hijack him, he calls on Peter to shoot Cameron, who was a black car driver (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”). After the heated standoff between Cameron and Antony’s group of criminals hits back at them by saying that Antony and his team have embarrassed him and themselves too as black people. Towards the end of the movie, Antony carjacks a van full of illegal immigrants from South East Asia; he refers to them as Chinamen. However, Antony learned that the chop shop owner wanted to sell them to slavery, thus prompted him to release them out onto the Los Angeles streets and gives them $40 as pocket money (“Crash Character Analysis”).
Antony constantly tries to prove that he does not belong to the black male thug stereotype in the entire movie. Together with Peter, his friend, they collaborate to steal cars so as to make a living (“Crash Character Analysis”). However, Antony is seen to be the dominant figure in their friendship; he affirms his preponderance by being older than Peter and possessing more experience compared to Peter. In the friendship, Antony talks down to his friend and usually does the talking while Peter listens to him. Antony often trivializes the hardship of black man to his friend Peter, while Peter always seeks to look out for the positives (“Crash Character Analysis”). In his statement, Antony tells his friend that the reason why the manufacturers put big windows on buses is to humiliate the blacks riding on those buses. By using many different examples, Antony tries convincing Peter that they do not act or look like people under the “gangster stereotype.”
Antony portrays some characters that are similar to that of Farhad only that he is portrayed to be more hypocritical. He always complains about those people following stereotypes while he personally follows them the most. As a black person, he has a great belief that literally, almost all the things affecting the black population are plots created by the white people to bring the black people down (“Crash Character Analysis”). In that case, he tries to protect himself from the world that he believes that it is against him. Believing that the white race is over the black people is a stereotype in itself, making him a hypocrite.
Throughout the entire movie, he portrays fear of the white race (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”). At the restaurant, he decides not to tip the waitresses because people believe that black people do not tip. Also, he does not listen to rap or pop music, which was made by his black colleagues; since he believes it is an instrument that has been made by the white man to bring down the black man. The most confusing of his stereotypes is that he hates the thug and gangster stereotypes related to the black people, but he carjacks cars from the white individuals with a perception that he is doing a service to his black people. It also seems odd since Antony has morals against stealing from a black person as compared to taking from a white person. He points out that taking from a black man is not right since they already have other problems to deal with and the white people are the source of the black people’s problems. However, his standards do not stop him from trying to steal from his black compatriot, Cameron, but the move failed eventually. After a heated controversy between them, Cameron points out that Antony and his friend are a disgrace to the black people since they promote the negative stereotypes that were being linked to the black race (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”). In this case, it is clear that both Cameron and Antony understand the black people stereotype, but only Cameron tries to avoid the stereotype in a different matter.
In the movie, Ludacris character Antony faces a reality check in the entire film. He first carjacks a Lincoln Navigator in the city of Los Angeles and then metaphorically crashes into Cameron, who was a black man driving an SUV (“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”). Cameron thwarts Antony’s actions and he ends up teaching him that not all the stereotypes linked to the black people are right, there exist some exceptions. It is evident that Antony can become a good communicator if he listens and accept the views of other people rather than being a closed-minded black man. By being a closed-minded person, he is involved in many fights that led to the death of his close friend. However, he ends up saving lives of the illegal immigrants who were to be sold into slavery, thus portraying some better elements about himself (“Crash Character Analysis”). In this case, Antony should get rid of his ethnocentric thinking and embrace a sympathetic character, just as he had at the end of the movie. Although he has a chance of changing his character just as shown at the end of the film, personally I believe that it is highly impossible to change his way of thinking. This movie portrays the race relations in America and depicts how a lack of communication and misconceptions can make people’s lives unstable.
References
“CRASH (FULL MOVIE) HD”. YouTube. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Nov. 2016.
“Crash Character Analysis”. twilk2012. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Nov. 2016.