Getting a ‘Crash’ Course on Race

“You’re an idiot.”

That’s reader John Serop Simonian’s opinion of me.

Thank God that Ray Cochran reads my column too.

“You are a genius,” he wrote.

If you haven’t already guessed, they’re talking about my thoughts on the love-it-or-hate-it movie “Crash.” It won the Oscar for best picture a week ago today, and in Wednesday’s column I wondered why.

Since then, I’ve gotten hundreds of responses from across the spectrum. Most readers agreed with me that “Crash” was dreck, reducing racism in Los Angeles to cliche and beating viewers over the head with enough blunt morality tales to cause permanent brain damage.

The movie’s fans wrote to remind me of the riots, the recent racial flare-ups in the jails, strife at day-labor sites and within the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the mile after mile of segregated flatlands.

“Contrary to your opinion,” wrote Pompilio Eraso, the movie “depicts a great deal of reality in Los Angeles, especially the boiling hatred.”

I have no doubt that boiling hatred exists, and there was some truth in “Crash.” But the movie was so over the top and two-dimensional, the cartoon characters might as well have had steam coming out of their ears.

A reader named Sara Fludd disagreed with my assessment and shared a couple of glimpses of the kind of racism she sees regularly.

“Listen to the Brentwood mom talk to her Hispanic nanny like a dog at the Souplantation on San Vicente,” she wrote. “Watch the stares the biracial couple gets as they stand in line for tickets at the Arclight.”

OK, I’m buying the Brentwood shrew. But come on, now. Do we really think that in the heart of Hollywood, in the year 2006, anyone gives a hoot whether a couple in line for tickets is gay, straight, transgender, blue, green, biracial, extraterrestrial or involved in a threesome with a camel? Give me a break.

June Carryl, an actress and writer, said she is constantly reminded of race in her Koreatown-adjacent neighborhood, where men sometimes assume she’s a prostitute because she’s black.

“If you’re sick of hearing about race,” she wrote, “just be honest and say so. I’m sick of it myself. But don’t insult the intelligence and daily experience of others of us who live it EVERY SINGLE DAY.”

I have no doubt. And if “Crash” had explored race in a semi-realistic way, I might have recognized Los Angeles.

Simonian, the guy who called me an idiot, told me I simply didn’t understand “Crash.” He suggested it was because of where I had my head, if you catch my drift.

“ ‘Crash’ isn’t even about L.A.,” he wrote, “although it could really have only taken place in L.A. It’s about racism in the 21st century.”

Yes, I suppose the director intended to share universal truths that extend beyond Los Angeles. But a movie that begins with a collision and a stupendously trite speech about how this isn’t a real city, but a city with so little human contact that we’re all hankering for a good fender bender, seems to have a specific place in mind.

“And although you may not see violence at every corner,” Simonian went on, “I can assure you that racism is alive and well all over this country, and especially in L.A. ...”

You’re kidding. There’s racism out there?

“That’s what ‘Crash’ is about -- not racial violence but racism plain and simple,” Simonian said. “It exists and actually thrives in a culture that pretends to value diversity while separating the city ever more tightly into racial enclaves that are supposedly only the result of economic status -- as if that has nothing to do with race.”

I happen to agree with much of that, which is why I said in Wednesday’s column that Los Angeles is quite obviously divided by race and class. But I don’t know how anyone could fall for a movie of such shallow stereotypes and flimsy epiphanies -- a movie in which we’re expected to confront our own misguided bigotry upon seeing a black character from South-Central who likes hockey and western music.

Yes, racism exists here and everywhere else in the world. Hatred seems to be part of human nature, and it goes back to the beginning of time. Yes, Los Angeles is a shamefully stratified metropolis, and I’ve written about the stark economic divisions and gross educational inequities in dozens of different ways.

I’m guessing, as others have, that some Oscar voters were assuaging liberal guilt over the safety of their own isolation when they feted “Crash” for “tackling” that old devil racism.

But while a polyglot city may offer more opportunity for disenfranchisement, bias and daily friction, it also offers more opportunity for the kinds of real encounters that lead to greater tolerance and understanding.

And by real, I don’t mean that vomitous scene in “Crash” where Sandra Bullock hugs the maid she’s treated like dirt and says, “You’re the best friend I’ve got.”

I’m talking about the kind of friendships, intermarriage and all the other mingling that goes on naturally here in a thousand places each and every day.

That is the essence of Greater Los Angeles. Despite its many limitations and class barriers, none of which should be tolerated, it’s still a place of possibility.

That’s why people come here from all over a sorrowfully divided, unaccepting world.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a Ugandan political prisoner and torture victim who was recently reunited with her children after several years. To start a new life with them, she moved from Northern California to Los Angeles because she doesn’t know of a place where their assimilation will be easier.

A reader by the name of Robert Badner seems to think I might have been right when I suggested that “Crash” felt like it was shot through a long lens from behind the bars of a gated Westside manse. Badner

thanked me for “exposing ‘Crash’s’ distorted view of ethnic relations in this city!”

He signed his note:

“From a Los Angeles Chinese-Jewish couple, whose neighbors are Korean, whose landlord is Armenian, who live down from a Sikh temple, whose dry cleaner is an African American, and who never venture WEST of Robertson (except to eat Japanese or Persian).”

Two thumbs up, Mr. Badner.

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez.