Sunday.... Sleeepy Sleeeepy Sunday.

Didn't do much today. Probably should have done a lot more. Wasted time, wasted time... tsk tsk tsk.

Film Review by Mr. Parks
This evening I got around to watching "Crash", and I must say, this film definitely exceeded all of my expectations.

I've read some reviews calling it over rated, and some others saying it was a movie that was not controversial, or covering new ground.

Quite honestly, I don't really believe this movie was supposed to expose the dark prejudiced truths of the average person. I think people who thought that were totally missing the point, and simply, I'm not sure I "get" what they expected out of the film.

This movie looked at people, whose fates were interwoven in current-day Los Angeles. Each person had socially oriented obstacles in life that they struggled to overcome. For some, the circumstances in which they found themselves were more tragic than for others. Each character had options that they mull over. Their decisions were tough, and weren't always black and white choices. This movie described a world that is comprised of shades of gray.

In our lives, whether we are making political decisions, or impatiently waiting in line for coffee, it would pay for us all to understand that things aren't black and white, but are multi-textured, layered shades of gray.

The writer really made sure you connected to all of the characters, even those who at times seemed villainous.

It was a great film, because I believe one of the keys to improving our existence as people is to try to see how the people around us view the world. We have to understand why we all behave in a certain way. People have a tendency to think that everything is centered around themselves. They can't find it in themselves to give others the benefit of the doubt.

There should be more movies made like this. It was excellent, completely worthy of its Oscars.

Prejudices, stereotypes, to me I think they are perceived as two different things. Prejudices usually have more of a negative connotation, where as stereotypes are things like "Its a young black person, therefore they like hip hop".

I often think that people say you shouldn't "stereotype", and that more than ever it is held equally with prejudices. I think this is ignorant, and here's why. Stereotyping is a learned behavior that in many circumstances serves to keep us safe. We would not function properly as human beings if we did not learn by the behaviors of certain types of people. Prejudices, is when you take that stereotype, and rather than being cautious, we deem it as affirmative before giving a person a chance to show us otherwise.

An example of where stereotyping is important:

Young kids are irresponsible.

Now we know that not all young kids are irresponsible, however, you aren't going to give a strange teenager a chance to watch over something important without some supervision.

This page describes stereotyping as according to what is taught in a course

I kind of find it difficult to say that we must not stereotype. To me, its sort of impossible. Does that make us bad people? I don't think so.

I think there is a big leftist movement to eradicate this, but I think this is arrogance on their part. The mere idea that we can see something and completely distance it from what we've experienced or learned indirectly is nothing more than a lie. We are always going to be wary of things we learn by experience, even snooty college professors will be (Oooohhh, look an example of stereotyping :D ). I guarantee a college professor will have pre-determined in his or her head how certain students will act, and perform, and that it will be merely based on their appearance, and further more, that in most cases it will be accurate. They must be strong, not to treat these people differently, but in most cases professors will either call on these people more in class, hoping to embarrass them, or ignore them entirely, assuming that they have nothing to offer. Something really ironic is when one of these professors happens to be teaching about how we should eradicate stereotypes. :D

I think better than "Never judge a book by its cover", would be "Things aren't always as they appear". We need to be wary of what we've learned in life. Just don't assume that everything will be a repetition of past or learned experiences. Additionally, think about why, certain negative experiences happened in the past, and maybe we can prevent them from happening again.

If we could concentrate as people to destroy the instances of behavior that create "negative stereotypes" I believe this would serve more purpose that to pretend that they don't exist in the backs of our mind.

Ryan Phillippe's character in Crash put his stereotype aside momentarily to pick up a hitchhiker (bad mistake). When this hitchhiker, a young black male, began laughing at his music amongst other things, he jumped to conclusions that this passenger was filled with prejudice towards him (So what if he was?). Ultimately Phillippe led himself to be a victim of his own prejudices when he let his ego get in the way. If anything the world has a lot more to fear from big egos than it does from stereotypes. People who feel threatened or insecure tend to be dangerous, and in many cases are (another stereotype?). If we could care less about how "cool" we seem compared to those around us perhaps there'd be a lot less hatred in this world. Why is there so much territorial pissing out there?