Description
For this class, the final paper will be a 6 pages paper that connects a current text or issue from outside of class with our final text, Crash. The paper should show comprehension of the larger issues in this course, make a claim, and connect the film to contemporary issues with a popular cultural text. The paper must also have a minimum of three scholarly sources and two popular sources.
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Figure 1: Research Paper Rubric
EXPERT
PROFICIENT
APPRENTICE
The paper demonstrates that
The paper demonstrates that
the author fully understands
the author, for the most part,
The paper demonstrates that
and has applied concepts
understands and has applied
INTEGRATION learned in the course.
the author, to a certain
concepts learned in the
extent, understands and has
Concepts are integrated into
OF
course. Some of the
KNOWLEDGE the writer’s own insights. The conclusions, however, are applied concepts learned in
the course.
writer provides concluding
not supported in the body of
remarks that show analysis
the paper.
and synthesis of ideas.
TOPIC
FOCUS
DEPTH OF
DISCUSSION
SOURCES
CITATIONS
The paper does not
demonstrate that the
author has fully
understood and applied
concepts learned in the
course.
The topic is focused narrowly
enough for the scope of this The topic is focused but lacks
assignment. A thesis
direction. The paper is about
The topic is too broad for the The topic is not clearly
statement provides direction a specific topic but the
scope of this assignment.
defined.
for the paper, either by
writer has not established a
statement of a position or
position.
hypothesis.
In-depth discussion &
elaboration in all sections of
the paper.
Ties together information
from all sources. Paper flows
from one issue to the next
without the need for
COHESIVENESS headings. Author’s writing
demonstrates an
understanding of the
relationship among material
obtained from all sources.
SPELLING &
GRAMMAR
NOVICE
No spelling &/or grammar
mistakes.
The writer has omitted
pertinent content or content
In-depth discussion &
runs-on excessively.
elaboration in most sections
Quotations from others
of the paper.
outweigh the writer’s own
ideas excessively.
Cursory discussion in all
the sections of the paper
or brief discussion in
only a few sections.
Does not tie together
Sometimes ties together
For the most part, ties
information. Paper does
information from all sources.
together information from
not flow and appears to
all sources. Paper flows with Paper does not flow be created from
disjointedness is apparent.
only some disjointedness.
disparate issues.
Author’s writing
Author’s writing does not
Headings are necessary
demonstrates an
demonstrate an
to link concepts. Writing
understanding of the
understanding of the
does not demonstrate
relationship among material relationship among material
understanding any
obtained from all sources.
obtained from all sources.
relationships
Minimal spelling &/or
grammar mistakes.
More than 5 current sources,
of which at least 3 are peerreview journal articles or
scholarly books. Sources
5 current sources, of which
include both general
at least 2 are peer-review
background sources and
journal articles or scholarly
specialized sources. Specialbooks. All web sites utilized
interest sources and popular
are authoritative.
literature are acknowledged
as such if they are cited. All
web sites utilized are
authoritative.
Cites all data obtained from Cites most data obtained
from other sources. APA
other sources. APA citation
style is used in both text and citation style is used in both
text and bibliography.
bibliography.
Noticeable spelling &
grammar mistakes.
Unacceptable number of
spelling and/or
grammar mistakes.
Fewer than 5 current
sources, or fewer than 2
Fewer than 5 current sources,
of 5 are peer-reviewed
or fewer than 2 of 5 are peerjournal articles or
reviewed journal articles or
scholarly books. Not all
scholarly books. All web sites
web sites utilized are
utilized are credible.
credible, and/or sources
are not current.
Cites some data obtained
from other sources. Citation
Does not cite sources.
style is either inconsistent or
incorrect.
Adapted from: Whalen, S. “Rubric from Contemporary Health Issues Research Paper”
http://academics.adelphi.edu/edu/hpe/healthstudies/whalen/HED601_r2.shtml
REFLECTING THE MAN: GENDERING
RACE IN PAUL HAGGIS’S CRASH
MANDY ELLIOTT
University of Manitoba
Résumé : Le lm Crash (Collision) de Paul Haggis (2004) emploie la uidité des rôles de
genre pour illustrer des cas d’iniquité raciale et les réactions qu’ils suscitent. L’auteure démontre de quelles façons le lm joue avec l’idée que se fait Frantz Fanon du regard raciste
comme forme de castration métaphorique — le remplacement systématique de la puissance sexuelle masculine par une objectication et une soumission forcées. Dans l’esprit
des travaux de Fanon, Daniel Kim déclare que le regard homosocial du mâle blanc « force
les hommes de couleur à féminiser leur position », armant la supériorité raciale à travers
le langage de la domination sexuelle. Dans Crash, Christine (andie Newton) et Cameron (Terrence Howard) ayer sont tous les deux privés de leur identité sexuelle à titre
de gens de couleur. Bien que cee castration métaphorique ne soit pas nécessairement
permanente, elle met en relief le lien inéluctable entre race et genre et les pairages qui tendent à dicter la domination et la soumission.
Mots clés : Collision (Crash), corps, genre, racisme, regard
Abstract: Paul Haggis’s Crash (2004) employs the uidity of gender roles to demonstrate
and respond to instances of social inequity commied on the basis of race. is paper
demonstrates the ways in which the lm engages with Frantz Fanon’s idea of the racist
gaze as a form of gurative castration—as the systematic replacement of masculine sexual
power with forced objectication and submission. Informed by Fanon’s work, Daniel Kim
states that the white male homosocial gaze “forces men of color to adopt a feminized
position,” asserting ideas of racial superiority through the language of sexual dominance.
In the lm, Christine (andie Newton) and Cameron (Terrence Howard) ayer both
experience the racist cuing o of their sexual identity as people of colour. While this
gurative castration is not necessarily permanent, it emphasizes the unavoidable link
between race and gender and the binaries that tend to dictate dominance and submission.
Keywords: racism, gender, Crash, bodies, gaze
When Christine ayer (andie Newton) exclaims to a white police ofcer, “Ma’am? Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me! Who the hell do you think you’re talking
to?” in Paul Haggis’s Crash (2004), the line works as an example of her drunken
belligerence at being pulled over by the police and having to watch her husband,
Cameron (Terrence Howard), submit to a sobriety test. But Christine’s loud
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FILM STUDIES /
REVUE CANADIENNE D’ÉTUDES CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUES
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resistance to a feminizing moniker speaks to the lm’s depiction of gendered
racism and its responses; she rejects the ocer’s aempts to feminize her, having
noticed that the ocer treats her husband the same way and exerts his masculinity through his white male gaze.
We are rst introduced to the ayers, an auent African American couple,
when they are caught engaging in fellatio while driving home from an awards
show. On the lookout for a stolen vehicle resembling the ayers’ SUV, Ocer
Ryan (Ma Dillon) pursues the vehicle, despite Ocer Hansen’s (Ryan Phillippe) observations that Cameron does not resemble the description of the
thief, and that the license plate does not match that of the stolen vehicle. Established as a bigot in the previous scene, Ryan’s reasons for this pursuit are made
even clearer when, as he ashes his headlights from behind the SUV, Christine’s
fair-complexioned face pops up, illuminated against both the black vehicle and
the night sky.1 Ryan notes that the two “were doing something,” giving himself an
excuse to make his way to the driver’s side door. e camera adopts his point of
view as Cameron and Christine laugh sheepishly, Christine reapplying her lipstick. As Ryan takes Cameron’s driver’s license back to the police car, the camera
remains, and the viewer is privy to the ayers’ quiet giggling, and to Cameron’s
playful suggestion that they “do it again, right now.”
When Ryan returns, though, the ayers’ mood shis. Ryan’s presence is
instantly made more ominous by a low camera angle; he shines a ashlight
downward into the vehicle, accentuating his stature and his gaze toward the
couple. Ryan asks Cameron to step out of the vehicle. Christine, slightly inebriated, says that her husband has not been drinking—“he’s a Buddhist, for Christ’s
sake”—aempting to absolve him of wrongdoing, and suggesting instead that
she is the instigator of any inappropriate goings on.
Ignoring Christine, Ryan forces Cameron to perform a sobriety test,
telling him to stand on one foot and touch his nose with the opposite index
nger. A two-shot of Cameron and Ryan on the sidewalk quickly moves to Ryan’s
point of view again as the camera tracks 90 degrees around the standing gures.
Facing Cameron, we can see his humiliation as he is forced to perform at
Ryan’s command. Christine becomes more belligerent and aggressive. A medium
shot of her repeating that her husband isn’t drunk is met with a close-up prole
shot of Ryan saying, “ma’am, I’m only gonna tell you one time to stay in the
vehicle.” As he nishes his statement, the prole shot is replaced with a medium
shot of Cameron standing beside the vehicle with his nger on his nose, reluctantly submiing to Ryan’s sobriety test. Despite Ryan’s aempt to subject her to
his authority as well, Christine gets out of the vehicle and refuses his address of
“ma’am,” pushing into his space and saying “don’t you ‘ma’am’ me; who the hell
do you think you’re talking to?” Here we see a quick close-up shot/reverse shot
of Christine and then Ryan, which establishes the two as adversaries, and leaves
Cameron to his shame.
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ELLIOTT
Christine then angrily accuses Ryan of pulling them over because he
“thought he saw a white woman blowing a black man [and] that just drove [his]
lile cracker ass crazy.” As Cameron tries to avoid arrest by aempting to defuse
the situation, Ryan pushes him against the hood of the car and stands directly
behind him, pinning him to the vehicle. Aer this point Cameron urges his wife
to do what Ryan tells her to do, much to Christine’s frustration. In response to
her anger, Ryan forces her to face the vehicle as well.
Christine’s assertiveness is short-lived as Ryan, positioned behind her,
moves his hands down her buocks and back up her inner thighs, sexually
assaulting her as the shot cuts to her husband, helplessly looking on. While the
camera tilts up only as far as Christine’s thigh, the audience is also in a position
to gaze as the shot of Ryan’s hands reaching further up Christine’s dress cuts
to a close-up of Christine’s expression of pained humiliation. Aer the assault,
Cameron shakily apologizes to Ryan for their trac violation and asks to be
released with a warning.
While this introductory scene is ostensibly meant to depict blatant racism,
and sets the viewer up for the later conict between Christine and Ocer Ryan
when they meet again under dierent circumstances, I am interested here in the
ways race becomes gendered as a result of the feminizing gaze that Ocer Ryan
adopts toward both Cameron and Christine.
is feminizing gaze can be understood through Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin,
White Masks, and Daniel Kim’s Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph
Ellison, Frank Chin, and the Literary Politics of Identity. In Black Skin, White Masks,
Fanon insists that socially dominant and submissive roles, as they apply to masculinity and femininity, respectively, apply to race as well; that is, according to
Fanon, racial hierarchy imagined and proliferated through colonialism and slavery has forced a gender binary onto race: white men have been perceived—
largely by themselves—as dominant and masculine due to the social power they
have historically wielded. Conversely, he notes that black men tend to embody
the penis, making them victims of an essentializing and objectifying gaze before
socially emasculating them by removing their symbolic sexual power.2
Informed by Fanon’s work, Kim claims that the white male homosocial gaze
“forces men of color to adopt a feminized position,” suggesting that people—
most oen white men—who are in positions of social (read: racial) dominance
exert their power through the language of sexual dominance.3 While Fanon’s
equation between male victimization and feminization (i.e., being made weaker
and more submissive) is certainly problematic, I argue that Crash nevertheless
reects this theory in its treatment of Cameron and Christine, who deal directly
with a white socially-sanctioned authority gure, and who are therefore the
characters most oen claimed by, and subjected to, the white male gaze.
Kim expands Fanon’s argument about the highly sexualized black man
to include the highly asexualized Asian man, both of whom are relegated to
REFLECTING THE MAN: GENDERING RACE IN PAUL HAGGIS’S CRASH
119
submissive social roles by the socially—and therefore sexually—dominating
white man. Kim writes that “while the body of the black man has long been a
focal point of the racial imaginary in the United States, the body of the Asian
man has tended to gure as a kind of absence . . . whereas Fanon tells us, ‘the
[black man] is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis. He is a penis,’ the Asian man is
dened by a striking absence down there.”4
Crash presents these physically essentializing views of masculinity while examining the complications of racial hybridity. Importantly, while the entire lm
reduces racism to an individual choice, rather than an institutional system of
privilege and non-privilege, I’m choosing to focus on the relationship between
Ryan and the ayers because of its intersection with sexism, and the ways we
see racism and sexism used as excuses for one another. Hsuan L. Hsu notes that
Crash “consistently tempers its characters’ racist outbursts by revealing their origins in personal anxieties, shame, and frailty.”5 e gaze directed toward the
ayers, and the constant aempts to temper Ryan’s racism with scenes depicting his ailing father, and with his seemingly racism-erasing good deed at the end
of the lm, clearly exemplies Hsu’s point. Moreover, I nd the sexualization of
the shame and frailty of the ayers’ characterizations particularly important in
examining the ways that, in Hsu’s words, “racial identity actually correlates with
power.”6
If, as I have observed, racial identity in Crash correlates with sexual power,
it is particularly interesting that the complications of racial hybridity extend
racialized gendering to include Christine’s masculinization in response to Cameron’s feminization, and vice versa. at is, in correlating race with sexual power
the lm employs the uidity of gender roles to demonstrate and respond to instances of social iniquity based on race. Crash not only provides strong examples
of the ayers’ African American emasculation through the dramatization of the
racial dominance that perpetuates the dominant male gaze, it also demonstrates
Christine’s re-appropriation of masculinity as a woman of colour, indicating a
subconscious eort to recover social power through a patriarchal, heteronormative stance.7
e implications of such gender alterity in response to racial otherness
might also be understood through J. Halberstam’s idea that “patriarchal power,
in some sense, takes two: one to be the man, and the other to reect his being
the man.”8 Haggis’s lm depicts a constant give and take of masculine power
between Cameron and Christine, as Christine becomes masculinized to make
up for Cameron’s emasculation. She is, however, subsequently “feminized” in the
way that Fanon suggests; Ryan’s exertions of social and sexual dominance strip
her of social agency and sexually humiliate her in front of her already-humiliated
husband, which ultimately ensures that both she and her husband, as people of
colour, become “castrated” and are viewed as sexually inferior on the basis of
race. By “castrated” I mean that while, as Fanon notes, black sexuality is reduced
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ELLIOTT
to the gure of the penis, that gure of feared racial power is, in the characters
of Cameron and Christine, violently discarded by homosocial aitudes of racism. In response to the homosocial gaze, Christine and Cameron re-appropriate
their gender roles. Although gurative castration is not necessarily permanent,
it serves to emphasize the unavoidable link between race and gender and the
binaries that tend to dictate dominance and submission.
In the lm’s introductory scene, we learn that Cameron ayer’s identity
as a television director who is African American places him in a precarious position; his class auence ensures that his representation of blackness does not
ostensibly relegate him to the dregs of Los Angeles’s racially dened social system, and yet his blackness prevents him from fully achieving the class auence
he believes he has earned. He is presented rst and foremost as a black body, and
spends the majority of the lm navigating between the extremes of over-sexualization and emasculation, the two identities made available for him by a racist
society. Moreover, he is consistently frustrated by the paradox created by the racist white gaze; while he is socially reduced to the status of a penis, he is rendered
impotent at the same time.
In keeping with Fanon’s observation that black men are socially reduced
to the status of a penis, it seems ing that the rst scene involving Cameron
and his wife depicts Christine performing fellatio on Cameron. While fellatio
need not always represent the binary of dominance and submission, it remains a
polysemous act that draws aention to Cameron’s sexualization, and also to the
ayers’ mutual sexual power.
Recalling Haggis’s aention to the colour of Christine’s face, illuminated by
the police car’s headlights, leads us to believe that her accusation against Ryan,
namely that he only pulled them over because he thought she was white, is
partially true. While it seems clear that Ryan’s main motivation for pursuing the
vehicle is simply that he sees a black man driving it, and assumes it must have
been stolen, seeing Christine’s pale face rise from the seat appears to clinch his
decision to act, and the expression on Ryan’s face in the reverse-shot, and his
assertion that “they were doing something,” suggests that he wishes to dominate
the encounter.
is new information certainly draws aention to Ryan’s objectication
of Cameron’s African American sexuality and his desire for sexual superiority
rather than subordination. While Cameron embodies the gure of the penis
through the act of fellatio with his wife, Ryan stops him from achieving orgasm,
thwarting Cameron’s exercise of masculinity with the use of his gaze, represented by the police spotlight.
us, Ryan is able to guratively emasculate Cameron simply by looking
at him. Kim writes, “It is, aer all, a white male ‘look’ that has, in a sense, been
graed onto the psyche of the black man that provides the perspective from
which he comes to see himself as an object—that causes him to see himself as
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‘amputated’ and ‘spaered with black[ening] blood.’”9 Cameron’s identity does
become amputated here, through his gurative castration and lack of masculine
agency. us, while he is racially relegated to the status of penis, Ryan’s interruption of the ayers’ fellatio session cuts o (pun intended) the only satisfaction
permied the black penis.
Interestingly, aer Cameron is “cut o,” Christine oandedly asserts Cameron’s religious identity, possibly contributing to Cameron’s victimization and
sexual/racial subordination resulting from Ryan’s social and sexual domination.
Although it is mentioned in passing and is not mentioned again, Christine’s
assertion of his Buddhism changes their gender dynamic within the scene, and is
arguably an essential contributor to the kind of “yellow manhood” described in
Kim’s work; it provides a way to view and judge Cameron’s performance of masculinity as his body becomes “enveloped in ‘a desexualized Zen asceticism.’”10
Moreover, Cameron’s Buddhism signies hybridity between African American and Asian representations of masculinity and signals his refusal to perform
within the dominant construct of black masculinity, as he refrains from
various “manly” activities, including the violent acts of self-defence and
self-preservation aributed to the other black men in the lm such as Graham
Waters (Don Cheadle), a detective who cares for his drug-addicted mother
and carjacker brother, and whom we see actively engaging in a sexual relationship with his partner, or Anthony (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), who recognizes
that he exists within a awed system and responds solely through violent and
illegal acts.
Cameron’s Buddhism could speak to an aempt at what Bill Mullen refers
to as “an imaginary Asianness as a eeting antidote for African American suering,”11 but we must also remember that Cameron’s auence has encouraged his
naïveté about his position in a racist and racializing society. e importance of
Cameron’s link to Asian exoticism by way of his Buddhism seems to lie in W. E.
B. Du Bois’s and Bill Mullen’s ideas that African Americans and Asian Americans have been folded “into the same discursive trap of mutual subordination
and, more important, separation.”12 Mullen’s work on Afro-Orientalism draws a
connection between Western Orientalism and Western capitalism, wherein “it
foregrounds the relationship between peoples of African and Asian descent as
a dialectical synecdoche of Western capitalist modernity, in much the manner
that traditional Marxist theory has viewed the international working class: as the
agent of Western capitalism’s rise and fall.”13
In his auence, Cameron seems to benet from the very capitalist structure that has been built on the back of his Afro-Orientalism. us, Cameron
cannot be saved by his material status, nor by his Buddhism, which shis “the
critical gaze to African American engagement with Asia proper” and accentuates his hybridity, exoticizing him as a submissive other with “a striking absence
down there” and subjecting him to the white homosocial gaze 14
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ELLIOTT
us, as the scene plays out, we see that Cameron’s Buddhism is not an antidote for what he is about to suer at all; on the contrary, it compounds his inability to withstand the impending aack on his masculinity on his own. Moreover,
he feels he must disobey Buddhist tenets toward the end of the lm, presumably
in his move to become a more racially essentialized black man, trading one form
of objectication for another.
e moment Ocer Ryan engages the couple with his white male gaze,
and Christine identies Cameron as a Buddhist, the gender roles performed by
Cameron and Christine in the previous shots shi to reect Kim’s assessment
of gender performance; in the forced cessation of his sexual performance of
masculinity, combined with his adopted and “orientalizing” practice of physical
restraint, Cameron is forced to adopt a feminized performance of gender. When
Ryan moves to arrest Cameron, Fanon’s assertion via Kim that “white men look
at black men in much the same way that men look at women” is not without
merit;15 Ryan pushes Cameron roughly against the Navigator in an approximation of anal sex, further emphasizing Cameron’s subordination through Ryan’s
domination. e act exemplies Fanon’s belief that the typically white male
desire to dominate men of colour animates homosocial racism.16
Seemingly as a direct result of her husband’s emasculation, Christine
adopts a more traditional masculine role, exerting physical and verbal resistance
against an unreasonable, and, at this moment, illogical aggressor. Her appropriation of traditional masculine tropes seems a subconscious aempt to provide
the agency required to assert the couple’s social legitimacy in their racial alterity. When she rails against Ryan’s address of “ma’am,” it seems clear that, besides
disliking such a placating moniker, Christine does not appreciate the feminizing
implications in light of Ryan’s obvious desire to dominate through the gendering of race.
Once Christine adopts a masculine role, though, Ryan’s desire to dominate her becomes homosocial in nature; he sees her as both a racial and a sexual conquest that will allow him to regain and assert his power as a white male
aer having lost it in the previous scene. As soon as Christine stands up to Ryan
and aempts to assert her own dominance, Ryan holds her as he has just held
her husband: in a submissive position from behind, equating the two as both
physical and sexual conquests. is is exacerbated when Ryan says to Christine, “that’s quite the mouth you have”; he then turns to Cameron and notes,
“of course, you know that” as the shot cuts to a close-up of Cameron’s pained
expression at the reminder of his eclipsed masculinity and the way in which he
is overshadowed (in a perverse rendering of racist fears of blackness) by Ryan’s
performance of white masculinity.
e end of the scene sees Cameron apologizing for Christine’s behaviour and
for their transgression, emphasizing his submission to Ryan’s gaze, and embodying Kim’s gure of the “bootlicking Uncle Tom,” who “expresses and exposes the
123
essential falsity of his self in the orientation of his mind and body toward white
men.”17 is is pointed out more specically by Christine, once they are at home,
when she calls aention to Cameron’s racial and sexual subordination, and again
takes on a traditionally masculine role, reiterating her husband’s feminization by
adopting the racializing gaze and asserting her sexual dominance.
e scene begins in the ayers’ bedroom, with a shot of the telephone.
Christine crosses in front of the camera to pick up the phone and call the police,
and her action is initiated by Cameron’s inaction; as she, standing, aggressively
grabs the phone, Cameron sits passively, asking her what she is doing, emphasizing her action and his inaction. e red walls of the bedroom are evocative
of Christine’s anger, rather than of Cameron’s sadness, and her commandeering of the bed from which to argue with her husband suggests that she has asserted sexual dominance in their marriage. Shots alternate between close-ups of
Christine’s face, which betrays her anger, and Cameron’s teary-eyed face. He is
defeated while she is aempting to exert her agency, taking on a stereotypical
masculine role as he remains feminized. While she slams the phone down without actually calling the police, revealing her own inaction, she does so to enter
into an argument with her husband that sees her stand, hovering over him as he
continues to sit; he notes that if he had tried to defend her, they would have been
shot. She responds, “they were gonna shoot us on Ventura Boulevard. Pathetic.”
Christine’s acknowledgement that her husband’s inaction during her
assault is “pathetic” stresses his inaction in this scene and reiterates the cue for
the audience to see him as the weaker party. Moreover, the camera tracks her as
she moves to sit at the end of the bed, nearer his chair, and switches to a long
shot of Christine in the centre of the frame. As she sits on the bed removing her
high heels—outward symbols of her feminization—Cameron is diminished,
shoved into the right corner of the frame.
Here, Christine actually turns her own feminizing gaze against her husband,
and makes the connection between Cameron’s “pathetic” behaviour and race,
when she accuses him of not defending her because of his worry that the public
would discover that “he’s actually black.” Cameron responds by noting that the
men were “cops, for God’s sake,” and that they had guns, puing himself in a subordinate position. However, as Cameron stands, he aempts to regain control
of the scenario when he says to Christine, “maybe I should have let them arrest
your ass. . . . Sooner or later you goa nd out what it is really like to be black.”
While this line—which spells out his powerlessness in the altercation with Ofcer Ryan (i.e., he let Ryan do precisely what he wanted)—might serve as Cameron’s aempt to take back his masculinity, the implication that he knows “what
it is really like to be black,” combined with the jagged movement of the now
handheld camera lming from a low, canted angle, suggests that Cameron is literally on shaky ground here, and that we cannot trust this outburst as a signier
of masculine dominance.
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ELLIOTT
Cameron is aempting to “re-masculate” himself aer having been “castrated” by Ryan, but his aempt is a racialization of his own sexuality. He is
aempting to demonstrate his masculinity to his wife by telling her that she
doesn’t know what it’s like to be black, implying that he does, and equating himself once again with the gure of the penis. Cameron’s reliance on his race to
reassert the masculinity that had been “cut o ” cannot bring about a sense of
masculinity that he can sustain without subjecting himself to one or the other of
the identity categories provided for him by straight, racist masculinity.
is identity trap is conrmed by the shot cuing to Christine; as the camera tracks her approaching Cameron from the bathroom back into the bedroom,
the shot quickly cuts to Cameron backing up and lowering his head, submitting to her authority. Christine notes that the “closest [he] ever came to being
black . . . was watching Te Cosby Show,” suggesting that this was the closest he
came before her assault, when he allowed himself to be dominated by Ocer
Ryan. is is reiterated when the camera moves in for a close-up on Christine, as
she then accuses Cameron of being too black in terms of his fear of and submission to the white police ocer, and adopts a dialect indicative of the Uncle Tom
gure that Kim describes. Christine angrily pushes into Cameron’s space and
performs an impersonation of her husband: “I got a lot to learn, cause I haven’t
quite learned how to shuck and jive. Lemme hear it again: ‘ank you, mister
po-lice man, you sho’ is might kind to us po’ black folk. You be sho’ to let me
know next time you wanna nger-fuck my wife.’”
Christine is able to reassert her masculinity here, seemingly by reminding her husband of his perceived racial subordination, thereby reiterating his
emasculation. She counters his aempt to regain his masculinity through his assertion of race by referring to the diminished—yet polarized—performances
of blackness exemplied by the “Uncle Tom” caricature and Te Cosby Show.
While Cameron is aempting to regain his masculinity by once again embodying the gure of the black penis, Christine castrates him by equating him with
examples— the already subordinate “Uncle Tom” gure and a television show
manufactured for a mostly white spectatorship—that have been cut o from any
sexual prowess by the inuence of the white gaze. Moreover, this scene exemplies Hsu’s point that “Crash repeatedly presents melodramatic scenes in which
individual suering and heroism trump racial loyalties.”18 As a result of his now
multiple experiences of emasculation, Cameron is reduced to tears in his own
bedroom, again adopting a stereotypically feminine posture that counters the
racist image of the sexually charged black penis in a space associated with the
intimate experience of sexual mutuality.
Although in the scene discussed above Christine certainly asserts the conventional masculinity that Cameron lacks, the couple again enact more stereotypical gender roles when Christine goes to the television studio, seemingly
to make amends with Cameron. Contrary to her recent show of masculinist
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bravado, she appears small on his workplace turf, her posture and costume
emphasizing her slightness, the camera foregrounding Cameron to make him
appear larger. While walking, she grabs his arm and leans into him; she is at rst
contrite and submissive, in contrast to his coldness. However, as she aempts to
bring up the events of their mutual emasculation, Cameron refuses to discuss it,
and the camera is trained on his face, gauging his reaction, but also making him
the object of the viewer’s gaze.
As Cameron looks away, and as both Christine and the camera look at him,
Cameron is once again emasculated, objectied by a gaze that he is unable to
redirect. is is underscored by Christine’s surprising explanation for the anger
she directed toward him on the night of her assault: “I was humiliated. For you.
I just couldn’t stand to see that man take away your dignity.” While the pregnant
pause aer the word “humiliated” might lead the audience to assume that she is
describing her own humiliation at the hands of Ocer Ryan
