Summary
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Officer Ryan enters his police car, joining his partner Tom Hansen. After hearing the radio reports, the two follow an SUV that resembles the one involved in the carjacking. Though Hansen tells Ryan that the descriptions of the two vehicles do not match, Ryan pursues the car anyway. After noticing that a passenger of the vehicle is performing a sexual act on the vehicle’s driver, Ryan pulls over the car and orders the African-American couple to exit. Cameron Thayer, a television director, complies with the officer’s orders. However, his wife, Christine, is argumentative and opposes Ryan’s aggression. Mr. Thayer and Hansen passively watch as Ryan molests Mrs. Thayer during a pat-down. The couple is let off with a warning, but once they return home, Mrs. Thayer is furious that her husband stood idly by her side during her assault. Cameron claims that his subservience was the only thing that saved the two from being shot dead, and he storms out of their bedroom in frustration.
Late into the night, Daniel arrives home to find his five-year-old daughter, Lara, hiding under her bed. Lara asks if their new home is as dangerous as their last, as she is similarly awakened by the sound of a gunshot outside. In an effort to reassure his daughter, Daniel tells a story about an “invisible impenetrable cloak” that will protect Lara from danger. After Daniel has “tied” the cloak around her neck, Lara feels safe enough to fall back asleep.
In a diner, two Asian men talk quietly as they are doing a business deal. Just steps away, LAPD officer John Ryan calls a medical insurance company on behalf of his ill father. Frustrated by the responses he receives from his call, Ryan asks for the representative’s name. After the woman tells Ryan her name is Shaniqua Johnson, Ryan comments that he “should’ve figured” her name was Shaniqua. She hangs up the phone angrily. One of the Asian men from the business deal drives away hurriedly in a white van.
In another part of the city, Anthony drives distractedly as Peter loudly sings a country song about a white man killing a black man. Anthony’s recklessness results in him running over an Asian man who is standing next to his white van. The two debate about what to do with the man—he is alive, but severely injured after being dragged under the vehicle for half a block. The two ultimately decide to drop him in front of a hospital. However, due to the blood in the SUV, they are unable to earn money from the carjacking.
Troubled by Ryan’s behavior, Hansen asks his boss, Lieutenant Dixon, if he can switch partners. Dixon, a black officer, is immensely proud of himself for earning a position of distinction within the racist LAPD. He tells Hansen that reporting Ryan’s racist practices would lead them to both be fired. Dixon mockingly suggests for Hansen to claim he has “uncontrollable flatulence” in order to be placed in a one-man car.
Daniel reappears, this time fixing the lock of the door to Farhad’s shop. Though Daniel has repaired the lock correctly, the door remains broken. Daniel advises Farhad to replace his door, but Farhad misunderstands him and accuses Daniel of “cheating” him. Daniel makes various attempts to explain the situation to Farhad, but Farhad becomes increasingly aggravated. Daniel leaves the store without being paid.
Waters and Ria are in bed together when Waters receives a phone call from his mother. She asks for the whereabouts of her other son, Waters’s brother. Waters hangs up hurriedly, telling his mother that he is too busy “having sex with a white woman.” Ria is angry at Waters for both speaking to his mother this way and for referring to her as both “white” and “Mexican” when she is half-Puerto Rican and half-El Salvadorian.
Analysis
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
Though the previous sequences have shown how individuals experience prejudice in their external lives, the profiles of Mr. and Mrs. Thayer, Officer Ryan, and Daniel begin to reveal each character’s interiority. As the scenes transition between Mr. and Mrs. Thayer’s arrest, to Daniel reassuring his young daughter, to Officer Ryan’s angry telephone call, we begin to see how racial aggressions divide the home and threaten family dynamics. When Officer Ryan pulls over the black SUV, he claims to catch Christine in a sexual act. From this moment forward, Ryan engages in behaviors that specifically reference the historical policing of black bodies. Ryan fetishizes and hypersexualizes Mrs. Thayer, and his final attack demonstrates how he usurps her autonomy.
Fearing for his life, Cameron stands by idly as his wife is taken advantage of. Though Cameron’s inactivity is painful to watch, it is a deliberate narrative choice that both emphasizes gender roles and references the historical struggle of black males throughout American history. While white slave owners emasculated their male slaves in a variety of ways, one of the most common was the sexual assault of female slaves in front of their male partners. Later in their home, Christine and Cameron fight over Cameron’s passivity. As Christine mocks her husband, she references the history of violence experienced specifically by black women.
Instead of acknowledging their mutual feelings of anger and violation, the couple blames one another for their behavior during the attack. This idea of “blaming” is in line with a major theme of the film that we discussed in the previous section. Instead of recognizing his or her personal feelings of vulnerability and anger, each character displaces their intense emotions onto another. In this particular vignette, we see how racial trauma specifically divides the black family unit. Additionally, this scene emphasizes gender roles and the expectations that men should be “protectors.”
The theme of family allegiance is further explored in the profiles of Daniel and Officer Ryan. We come to understand that Daniel’s profession as a locksmith mirrors the behavior that governs his personal life—his first priority is to ensure his home and his family’s security. Additionally, this scene introduces Lara, a character whose significance grows throughout the film. On the surface, Lara’s behavior demonstrates a level of innocence and sweetness that distinguishes her from the jadedness of other characters. However, Lara is vulnerable to the tumultuous world beyond her bedroom window—she, too, is susceptible to the violence and trauma that her father experiences. In the sequences that depict Lara and Officer Ryan respectively, it becomes clear that generational responsibility is a profound theme throughout the film. Children are greatly affected by their parent’s actions and/or inactions, and both Lara and Officer Ryan are forced to grapple with their societal positions in relation to the roles they fulfill within their respective families.
While the following four scenes initially appear to have nothing in common, we must extrapolate from Haggis’s noted use of montage and attempt to uncover the thread that ties these individual narratives together. Anthony and Peter’s hit-and-run, Officer Hansen’s request, Farhad’s aggression, and Waters’s and Ria’s conversation all demonstrate that each character internalizes and then perpetuates racial injustice differently. Though many of the characters in this sequence are not white and are thus confronted with various injustices, they continue to make judgments about one another on the basis of race and/or ethnicity. Specifically in the scene between Waters and Ria, we learn that even the characters that appear to be friends or lovers fail to genuinely know or understand one another.
