While we may wish to blame the media for all the racial ills of society, though, it remains true that the media, including Hollywood, reflects as much as it relays. It is also up to us, as the audience, to determine how we will interpret the messages sent and to investigate our own responses, both within the media setting and within daily life, to understand how we may also act in conscious or unconscious ways to reinforce damaging minority stereotypes. For adults, this process of learning about ourselves and our own attitudes generally takes the form of transformative learning. An understanding of this term applied to the 2004 Paul Haggis film Crash and personal experience reveals that film as a genre can provide an excellent point of view from which transformative learning can take place.

Transformative learning in its most basic sense is the way in which adults more consciously learn to adapt and shape their behavior in given situations. Officially, it is described as “the process of effecting change in a frame of reference” (Mezirow, 1997: 5). As Mezirow explains, adults tend to behave according to a set series of the assumption that defines the world as they know it. These can consist of “associations, concepts, values, feelings, conditioned responses” (Mezirow, 1997: 5), anything that provides the adult with a frame of reference for dealing with the particular situation at hand, whether it be a simple transaction at the grocery store or an unusual encounter with an individual of a different race not typically interact with. While the transformative learner will use this opportunity to expand their knowledge and move toward a more self-reflective and inclusive frame of reference, the more common tendency is for the individual to fall back on preconceived and often not well-considered concepts housed deep in their psyche. As Mezirow describes it, the frame of reference is actually comprised of two different elements.