Crash (film) Analysis

Also, the relationship between the father and daughter becomes very intimate and compelling within the few short minutes of a scene.  These scenes bring together the powerful effects parents can have on their young children by using persuasion.

            In Scene 6 of Crash, a father comes home late at night from work to find his daughter awake, hiding under her bed.  The fact that the daughter is scared and hiding in her room is a very good example of classical conditioning, in which a stimulus is able to cause a response that was originally caused by another stimulus (Weiten, 2005).  The daughter is scared and hiding under her head because she "heard a bang".  In another situation or a safer neighborhood, one might assume the loud noise was simply someone slamming a door or throwing or dropping something.  However, the father and daughter later talk about how a bullet came into her bedroom window not that long ago.  The father also mentioned that they had previously lived in a worse neighborhood than this one.  Therefore, through TV, their living situation, and parents lecturing the daughter has already been conditioned to be afraid of bullets.  However, she might not have associated all loud noises with bullets until one hit the window of her room.  Therefore, the previous neutral stimulus of a loud noise is now able to evoke the emotional response of fear and anxiety in the daughter that was previously evoked by bullets or guns.

            The father seems to experience emotions of guilt and sadness for his daughter's fearful state and her being to afraid to sleep in her own bed.  In order to subdue her fear, he comes up with a plan to make her feel safe in her room again.  He decides to try to tell her a story about how he obtained an invisible and impenetrable cloak from a fairy.  However, the daughter appears to be between ages five and seven and her cognitive abilities are too great to easily fall for this fairytale.  The father tries to use "reverse psychology" to persuade his daughter to believe him.  Interestingly, I could not find much information or research on "reverse psychology", suggesting that it is not a well supported theory in psychological research and more of a public misinterpretation.  However, some research seems to call this idea reactance psychology and the research does indicate that when people's behavioral freedom is threatened, they will fight back against it (Brehm, 1966).  Basically it means that if you tell someone you can't do something, it will make them want to do it more.  Whether this theory is well supported or not, it seems that often parents use this principle and this is exemplified in this scene.

            In Crash, the father uses reactance psychology to make his daughter listen to his story about the invisible and impenetrable cloak.  He starts to propose the idea and then stops himself, saying, "Nah, forget it.  You ain't gonna believe me."  Mentioning and acting excited that he has some interesting information, but then making it secret causes his daughter to protest.  Now she really wants to know what it is.  Then later as he starts to tell the story of a fairy flying around the room, the daughter criticizes the idea.  The father uses reactance psychology again now by threatening to leave and telling her he knew she wouldn't believe it.  This then causes the daughter to beg him to stay and at least finish the story, even if she is skeptical of its credibility.  In this scene the reactance psychology is effective in getting her to want to hear the story, but does not seem to have an effect on whether she will actually believe it or not.

            There are some benefits that the father has in persuading his daughter to feel safe and believe in his story in order to motivate her to accept the cloak.  Persuasion is defined as trying to persuade someone's attitude and an attitude is defined as positive or negative evaluations of objects or thought (Weiten, 2005).  In the beginning, the daughter has a negative attitude towards the idea of a fairy giving her father an invisible and impenetrable cloak.  One thing that really helps the father's persuasion is his source credibility.  Erikson proposes there are eight stages of development from childhood to adulthood and the first stage is trust versus mistrust (Weiten, 2005).  Erikson suggests that trust is developed in the first year of life if the child has been taken care of properly and his or her needs have been met (Weiten, 2005).  He further theorizes that if the child's needs are met properly he or she will develop a more optimistic and trusting attitude towards the world (Weiten, 2005).  It seems that the daughter in this case is very trusting of her father and the world as she begins to listen and start to believe his story.  This trust gives the father high source credibility so that she scrutinizes his story less.  Also, in Psychology: Themes & Variations, Weiten states that trustworthiness is a very important component of source credibility.

            The father also uses effective persuasion in his actual message.  Weiten states that two-sided arguments are more effective than one-side arguments (2005).  While telling the story of the fairy, the father acts like he was very skeptical at the time of the incident and is still skeptical today.  He says there was a fairy flying around his room when he was a kid, but that her wings could have been glued on or something.  He then also mentions that the fairy gave him the impenetrable cloak, and he has never gotten shot or stabbed since.  This statement suggests he might still be doubtful of the cloak's abilities, but that his experience suggests it might be real.  Another effective method in persuasion for the message is using fear.  This might seem a little backwards since the father is trying to reduce his daughter's fear.  However, because the daughter is already fearful about a bullet coming into her room, it makes his message more attractive.  In the end, the father succeeds in persuading his daughter that he has an impenetrable cloak and in motivating her to accept it from him.  This is confirmed by her slowly caressing the cloak as she later sits comfortably on top of her bed while the father leaves the room.

            Though the father helped his daughter to feel safer in her own room, he did not anticipate the possible problems that this impenetrability concept could cause.  In Scene 17, the negative aspects of this persuasion are displayed.  Apparently the father's persuasion was much more powerful than he ever expected.  After coming home from work in the afternoon and parking the company truck in their driveway, the father is threatened by a man with a gun.  The details of this man's anger and frustration are lengthy and will not be discussed here, but overall the man's anger will not be stopped by the father's negotiations.  At the same time, the daughter is watching this man wave a gun at her father through the window in the house.  As mentioned before, the daughter appears to be between ages five and seven.  Therefore, she is most likely in Erikson's stage three of development, Initiative versus Guilt (Weiten, 2005).  At this stage Erikson states that children learn how to function socially within their own families.  The daughter is definitely more on the initiative side of this stage in which she is also thinking of other family members' needs and desires.  This is evident as she runs out to jump in front of her father and protect him with her impenetrable cloak.  She seems to be experiencing emotions of fear and guilt that she took the cloak from him and is motivated to try and save her father's life.  This confirms that the father was very powerful in his persuasion that he had obtained an invisible and impenetrable cloak.

            Overall, these scenes in Crash provide a very powerful image of the relationship between a father and daughter.  Scene 6 presents the psychological theories associated with conditioning an emotional response of fear and anxiety.  Also in this scene, the father very effectively persuades his daughter due to his high source credibility and delivery of a very influential message.  The effectiveness of this persuasion is reinforced by the daughter's actions in Scene 17.  Though these scenes are only a sliver of the intense psychological aspects of the film Crash, they provide a powerful and emotional image all on their own.

 

References

Weiten, W. (2005). Psychology: Themes & variations. Belmont: Thomson Learning.

Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.

 

Crash Scenes Available Online:

Scene 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7aMrkGBDBQ

Scene 17 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Wi4k_NeFA