I’ve lamented this much for a while: everything is Crash now.
Sure it’s fashionable for progressives to ridicule Crash and dismiss Paul Haggis’s movie as tacky, witless testament to the cringe-worthiness of certain white liberals.
But now I consider so many shows, and movies, and games, and books, and podcasts, and articles, which leave me thinking, “This is Crash. Unmistakably. Crash won.”
Talking about The Falcon and the Winter Solider this week on Sound Only, I’ve finally surfaced this idea beyond the newsletter. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier crams so many racial concerns into its second episode: lending discrimination, police biases, military experiments on black soldiers. Mind you, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is a TV comedy about a techno-birdman and his grunge sidekick.
I do often wish storytellers were more thoughtful about the real-world political institutions, such as the military and the police, which they incorporate into their fictional intrigue. I wrote as much about Spider-Man. But goddamn, man. I can’t say I’d have ever wished Marvel would transform Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes into Kendrick Lamar and Macklemore.
A few months ago we discussed Lovecraft Country, the TV series which first forced me to consider the undead influence of Paul Haggis’s Crash as the sort of awful, unspeakable afterthought best reserved for Substack.
The advantage of the podcast is that you get to hear my shy attempt to impersonate Jamie Foxx impersonating Terrence Howard, among other vocal flourishes.