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.