CRASH Analysis – Officer Ryan

The movie “Crash” is a very thought provoking movie about the underlying racial tensions in our society. It represented black, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern ethnicities and the stereotypes associated with each. The character I will be analyzing is Officer Ryan who is played by Matt Dillon. Ryan is a middle-aged police officer in Las Angeles, California who has been with the force for 17 years. He appears to be extremely racist in his multiple encounters with African Americans.
Although officer Ryan is an extremely verbal person, his use of nonverbal communication speaks even louder. From the beginning of the movie, you can tell Ryan is an arrogant person. He seems to have a “better than thou” attitude. This is prevalent in the way he walks and carries himself; shoulders back, head cocked, and chest out. He is typical looking- all American male: tall, dark and seemingly handsome with a loud and stately voice. There are two distinct times when he used touch to send a message. The first was when he pulled over Cameron and his wife Christine. Because Ryan had so much underlying hatred towards blacks, he used his power to exercise inappropriate behavior towards an innocent couple of color. When he asked Christine to put her hands on the car, he began to feel her up and touch her body right in front of her husband. The whole time acting like he has checking for “weapons”. She is an attractive woman and he took advantage of her because he views them as lower than himself. The second time he used touch was when Ryan Philippe’s character told him he was switching partners and when he shook hands with him, he held on and squeezed extremely tight and then told him that after doing this for years, he will become a different person. Basically telling him that once you have done this for a while, you will become just as racist as me. Again, he was using this hand gesture to exert authority over one of his colleagues.
I would describe Ryan as a white supremacist. Not only is he racial, but also sees himself as being above those of color. He seems to think that he is entitled to the power that comes from his ethnicity. He believes that because he is a white male living in North America, he is somewhat at the “top of the food chain”.
Socioeconomic identity deals with income, occupation, and education. Officer Ryan has an average income, average occupation, and decent amount of education. Nothing about his socioeconomic status would ever elevate him or make him above others, yet because he is a law enforcement officer, he seems to have the idea he can use his position to exert power over others, like he did with Cameron and Christine.
In our society, especial the South, there are many people with similar mindsets to officer Ryan. Although there are many people who would immediately recognize the racial injustices of his behavior, there are also many people who would justify it because of the general stereotype of blacks. The media somewhat perpetuates the stereotype of blacks simply by showing their gang activity, criminal accounts, and poverty levels. However, I think that officers Ryan’s hatred toward blacks comes from personal bad experiences, particularly one with his father. Every since, every offence a black person commits continues to reinforce his misconception of the black population. Instead of seeing a person who commits a crime as a sinful human being who has made wrong decisions in life, he assumes the reason they commit such crimes is BECAUSE they are black.

Ethnocentrism is seeing your culture as superior to others. Xenophobia is a fear of strangers. I do think that Officer Ryan tends to be a little bit ethnocentric yet not xenophobic. His ethnocentricity is portrayed by his racist actions. When he is frustrated with the women on the phone at the insurance office and finds out her name is Shanequa, he responds with “of course it is”, implying that because she is black she is somehow incompetent. Also, when he goes into her office to discuss his fathers health care plan he says to her “do you know how many more qualified white men there are that should have your job?” Both of these statement clearly show how racist and how he sees white people as more capable. Ryan however, does not appear to be fearful of strangers whatsoever. He is more than willing to interact with others he has never met, such as Shanequa, his new partner, and Cameron and Christine.
Officer Ryan is a very intriguing character. At the beginning of the movie, I thought he was just a racist prick who didn’t care about anyone except for himself. The way he treated Cameron and Christine made it very apparent that he didn’t feel any shame in completely humiliating and taking advantage of two innocent people. However, as the movie progressed, you see him living with his dad and waking up in the middle of the night to take care of him and his health problem. Then you see him seeking out extreme measures to try and receive some alternate health care for his hurting father. And finally at the climax scene of the movie you see him risk his own life to save a black woman. At the end of the movie, I saw Ryan not as a selfish uncaring person but as a man who has let certain individuals change his perception on an entire race of people. Because he is a cop, he deals with all of the black people who DO live up to their stereotype and hardly ever comes in contact with the black people who are good and responsible citizens. He let his bitterness consume him.
I think that it is only human to form an opinion of the whole based on a few. I find myself stereotyping many groups of people based on just a few experiences or from what I hear. By the end of the movie, I did not hate Ryan, I pitied him. He let bitterness and anger take over his life and then took it out on innocent people. This is a lesson everyone should learn. There is always going to be bad things that happen to us; we cannot escape it. But it is about how we handle and move on is what defines who we are.