Bryan Yeaglin

Characteristics of Intercultural Communication in “Crash”

Throughout the entire movie of “Crash”, there are numerous experiences with

Intercultural Communication of how different cultures and people from different countries can

interact with each other in a society. The movie is set up in a way to intertwine all of the

characters problems and situations, involving one or another different character in some way. It

links many different people of different cultures and pulls them together to create relationships

struggling with language and intercultural communication barriers, ethics, communication in

general, and identities.

The movie starts out with a crime scene and a car accident where an Asian woman has hit

a Caucasian woman from behind at a traffic light. The two women immediately begin arguing

and that is when the language barriers start to occur. The Asian woman’s language components

consist of a different phonology than the white woman’s does. Meaning that their sounds

systems or pronunciations are different. The Asian women speaks the English language but uses

a direct communication style in that she is trying to get right to the point. The Asian women

states “She break too fast!”. She is trying to get her point right away across to the police officer,

but the white female insists that she was stopping for the light and proceeds to humiliate the

Asian female by making fun of her bad grammar. The white female also makes a comment to the

police officer to call in that an Asian woman did not break in time and hit a car. In saying this ,

she was using her own view of stereotypes that Asian women are bad drivers and it is clearly her

fault because of this.

Along with stereotypes, there are many other scenes during the movie that entail other

barriers to intercultural communication such as, ethnocentrism, prejudice, and discrimination. In

throughout the movie. The man calls into a health insurance office of some type and requests that

his father is taken care of for an infection that is keeping him up at night. The woman on the

phone is a back female and is using her upmost respect and customer service to handle the phone

call. However, when the man doesn’t get what he wants, he asks for her name and is given in

response, Shaniqua, a name in which he thinks is known to be usual for a black person to obtain.

The LAPD officer realizes this stereotype and then immediately shows that he is prejudice

against blacks by calling her out on being worthless in helping him. He then later comes in the

next day to at first apologize, but then again the lady denies him of his request and breaks he into

ethnocentrism. He tells her how many more white people would be more qualified for her job

than her. The officer felt that his own cultural group was superior to hers and she only obtained

the job because of an equal opportunity act.

Along with cultural barriers, imperatives are also displayed in the movie Crash. The

ethical imperative is brought up when Ludacris finds out that the car he has stolen has

immigrants hidden in the van. After taking the van to a chop shop, where he usually sells his

stolen cars to, a man offers him a decent amount of money for the hidden immigrants. In a later

scene, the movie shows that Ludacris took the ethical route and did not sell them, but instead he

him lets the immigrants out on the street with $40, free to live on their own. It would have been

unethical for Ludacris to accept money for these immigrants to be sold, but instead Ludacris

examined the world from the immigrants’ point of and made a more ethical decision.

Communication is much more than just words and actions. An example of this is

displayed in a scene in the movie where an owner of a store needs his lock fixed. The owner has

had trouble with his lock and calls a locksmith to get it fixed. It turns out that the lock just cannot
be fixed and the locksmith replaces the lock and tries and to explain that it is the door that is the

problem. Communication is receiver-oriented in that it is the receiver is in charge of attributing

meaning to a message. The locksmith is trying to explain to the owner that he needs a new door

and that just only a new lock will not work. The owner hears this but does not fully listen to him

and apply meaning to his message. He just screams back in response, “fix the lock!” The

locksmith tries to explain over and over that he needs a new door but the owner still does not

listen correctly and miscommunication occurs. The owners shop later gets broken into because

the door was not fully fixed and the owner is liable for it because his door was not fixed. If the

shopkeeper would have used better communication skills and listened to the locksmith, he would

have realized that he need to buy a new door instead of just screaming at him. It is important to

be open-minded and when receiving a message you need to decode it and make a better meaning

of the interaction.

Lastly, the movie involves different social and cultural identities that are brought upon in

numerous scenes. The movie generates some usage of identities in gender and race which are

based on some physical characteristics, as well as ethics, which is one’s own idea of ethnic-

group membership. The movie also includes the identity of class and throughout these identities

the movie explains and give examples of how they play different roles throughout society. In one

scene, Ludacris explains to his friend in the movie how they are both male, black, and in a high

class, wealthy area where the majority of people around are white. These are the identities that

are surrounding him. He keeps walking with his friend explaining that they should be the one’s

that are scared of getting hurt because of their identity being placed together with all these other

identities. However, they disregard this and end up stealing a car from the two people who

consist of different identities in class and race.

other cultures and countries can interact with one another. The movie exhibits many forms of

people form different cultures coming together in creating and solving problems. The movie

includes interactions between characters, such as a Hispanic locksmith dealing with a Persian

shopkeeper. The two cultures are completely different and the movie shows how communication

can be difficult between the two characters. The movie also shows that certain characters in the

movie try to see views different from their own culture in both good and bad ways. The wife of

the politician saw the locksmith’s culture as a gangbanger and was not trustworthy of him. Along

with this in the movie, the relationship couple of the black Buddhist and his wife were arguing

about which culture had it harder in society and what histories they came from and were born

into. The movie hits all the building blocks of intercultural communication in culture,

communication, context, and power. It displays cultural differences, difficulties in sending and

receiving communication, the areas and salutations of interactions, and how others can hold

more power due to their race and occupation.

The movie “Crash”, displays many characteristics of intercultural communication. It links

many different cultures and pulls them together to create relationships struggling with language

and intercultural communication barriers, ethics, communication in general, and identities, as

well as a few others. It displays characters getting involved with many different cultures other

than their own and how they deal with those situations. There are a lot of positive as well as

negative thoughts, actions, and communications that occur in the movie that can be perceived in

many ways depending on the characters or your own culture or identity. That is what makes this

movie so good, you can see opinions and rate decisions based on the character’s cultures in the

movie or base them by your own individual culture, values, or beliefs.