Crash on country

Although Nashville and Hollywood are not exactly in the same state, country music successfully entered into the big screen years ago. Yet, the movie Crash not only includes Merle Haggard Swinging Doors on its soundtrack, but it also fosters artist’s musical comeback skillfully referring to the image of his youth.

Haggard was born in 1937 in California. It took him only 13 years to get to prison for the first time – he got involved in petty crimes (e.g. shoplifting in a lingerie place – curious place to shoplift for a spotty teenage boy) and truancy. For the next 10 years he completed an impressive list of crimes and offences:

-          Petty larceny

-          Avoiding serving the sentence

-          Burglary

-          Attempt of robbery

-          Organizing illegal gambling in prison

-          Organizing a brewing racket in his cell

Upon meeting a hopeless drunk in prison, Haggard decided to change his life. As he earlier played country for living in Texas, this was the professional direction he headed after release from prison. However, the omnipresent in Nashville honky tonk sort of music, infuriated Haggard. His first records were a voice of discontent to “candy entertainment”. Increasingly Haggard started recording more political pieces, usually of more “parochial” nature (Okie From Muskogee). Adding to it his former reputation, the musician became associated with the outlaw music (long hair, denim and lather, scruffy look, rawness and vitality, drinking, drugs, hard working men and honky tonk heroes, more like rock and roll and little strings in the background.

The movie feeds on this image of Merle Haggard as it tries to clash the notions of good and evil. Haggard did great music - 1:0 for him. He deliberately broke the law at numerous occasions – 1:1. He underwent a major spiritual change that transformed his ways – 2:1. That’s the score for Haggard. This is not the score for the movie though. Crash presents a way more complicated calculation of what is right and what is wrong – the wrong accidentally turn out to be good, the good fail, the wrong seem more sympathetic and the good become disillusioned. Crash is all shades of gray in fact. It’s so in between black and white that it is difficult to hope for a 2:1 for good in real life. Even a draw seems an optimistic bet.