Crash Part 1: Fragmented Relationsships.

I went to Crash (the movie) with a few people last night. I, like Christina, really enjoyed it. I can recommend it too any one. You got attached to the characters easily even though there was so many and you didn’t know the names of most of them (I wonder if that was intentional). After a while you realized that every one of the characters was making preconceived judgments about others. It seemed funny at first. Then you realize that camera is turned on you and you make the same judgments as the characters and you feel uncomfortable and guilty.

I can’t avoid looking at things from Sociological point of view so I had some thoughts that related to the movie. I will divide them into three posts. These are just my thoughts with no research.

One of the characters in the movie noted that in urban environments humans seem to lack meaningful contact with each so we seem to be drawn to “crash” into each other. Sort of like short episodes of dramatic intense emotional interaction with each other.
Most sociologists would agree that urbanization in the last couple of hundred years has resulted in a fragmentation of relationships.

1) The number of people confined in a limited space means that you cant have meaningful relationships with everybody you interact with.

2) Because so many people are in a small area this raises many problems, one of them being the fear of the unknown or “the other”. This xenophobia is particularly prevalent in multicultural cities like L.A, Auckland and to a lesser extent Christchurch.

3) There are time restrictions placed on us by society and ourselves and a lot of people are too busy to develop meaningful relationships even with their spouses and children.

4) Because so many modern relationships are economically based they often don’t get particularly deep or meaningful.


These four things (number of people, fear, time and economics) mean that most relationships in urban areas are by nature fleeting, shallow and fragmented and it does seem that we are floating in a vacuum.
Even some of the relationships with people we interact with on a regular basis (or are related to ) are uncomfortably hollow.
We might know a collection of information about the person but do we really know them?
This creates strange situations were you meet someone for a short period of time and interact in a fairly meaningful way at the end you say “see you later” when you are quite aware that you probably never will. (This often happens at Christian camps, or music festivals!)

Lots of different sociologists would have varied ideas about it. Berger would say it was a result of disintegration of the “sacred canopy” (worth a post in it self at a latter date), Durkheim would say it was a result of increased bureaucracy and Marx would mumble about class conflict.The next post will be on stereotypes, labels and first impressions.