The rule I use is that something is offensive if someone is offended. That seems to be true by definition, so we should go by that. The more offended people are, the more offensive it really is. Because that’s the definition. No, it’s not hard, and it ought to be obvious, but apparently some people seem to know better. But anyway, that’s how you judge. Ask someone how they, or their ethnicity or nationality should be referred to, if you have any doubts, and then say that instead.
In any case, context is incredibly important. If you are clear that you are trying to create an historically accurate depiction of what life was like in a given time, then people should probably not be offended by the author (by the people being depicted by the author, yes, but not by the author himself). It can help if it’s clear that the person is trying to highlight the racism of the time, and not actually displaying his own racism. It’s clear, for example, that Mark Twain was not being racist in Huckleberry Finn, and the only people he intended to offend were racists.
It is perfectly acceptable to use ethnic, racist and nationalist slurs in period films, since the intent is often to display the ethnic, racist and nationalist sensibilities of the period. The world was a lot less “globalized” and “multicultural” back in the day.
Not Racist: A film about Pearl Harbor where Ben Affleck refers to the enemy as “Japs”.
Racist: A film about Pearl Harbor where Admiral Yamamoto is played by Matt Damon in yellowface with a broken “sowry Chawlie” accent.
Not Racist: A Raj period piece where the British are shown displaying condescending and racist attitudes to their Indian colonies.
Racist: Having the Indians eating chilled monkey brains and other weird food that no one eats ever.
I have to say I am a little torn on this issue. While I am keen on historical accuracy, there are plenty of historically accurate things we choose to leave out of movies, like lice and rape and dysentery. We usually leave them out because they are unpleasant distractions from the action. If we did emphasize strict accuracy, movies about some campaigns would be MOSTLY lice and dysentery, with very little shooting and almost no traditional heroism.
So we have to ask where “Japs” would fall on the spectrum from “unpleasant and distracting” to “crucial to historically accurate advancement of the plot.” The answer probably differs for each viewer.
Agreed that, where it accurately depicts the past, it’s not racist to use insulting terms in historical movies. It should be handled appropriately in context, and not gratuitously, and as to that, YMMV.
I agree in principle. But it might be interesting (if done well, of course) to have a film that shows the harsh reality of war. Personally, I am tired of movies that seem to glorify war, even at the same time as it seems to be critical of it. I have this friend who wanted to join the military because of films he saw that I alway considered to be anti-war films, because in spite of the obvious criticism, they still made the action scenes look like fun. At first I thought that he and I had seen totally different movies, because I left the theater feeling nauseous, and he left feeling excited.
I’m not a film maker, so I could not say how you could make a worthwhile film that shows all of that. But I’d love to see people try.
BTW, my favorite war movies include “The Deer Hunter”, “Slaughterhouse 5”, and “Catch 22”.
As for the other word, what do you do about The Dam Busters, which has the unfortunately named dog? The dog that was probably named for his color rather than as a deliberate ethnic slur. And that the dog’s name was used as a code word for the mission.
Historical accuracy means it should be used, but is it necessary to the story? The name could be changed to “Blackie” (or even “Darkie”, which is offensive but not to the same degree), but the purists (and I find myself in that category) would be offended by the cleansing of history. So what do you do?
I guess you punt. We’re still waiting for the remake to happen. One wonders if the dog’s name problem is the sole issue?
Well, “Jap” can refer to a race and/or a nationality. I don’t think referring to people who were citizens of Japan and subjects of the Emperor is racist as Japs as it’s a reference to their nationality. On the other hand, how the USA treated Japanese-American citizens during WWII was racist. Of course, a reference to their skin tone or shape of their eyes would be racist.
Is it even important to have the dog in a movie about the dam busters at all? If the only reason you’re including the dog is to have the chance to say his name, then that’s a problem, even if the dog was real and really was named that. And is the dog’s name actually important? Will it really hurt the movie if you call him “Blackie” instead? Or, if you insist for the purists, put in a small footnote somewhere that you changed the dog’s name in the interest of not distracting from more important matters.
The dog’s specific name is entirely irrelevant to the plot. It merely indicates how casual the use of that particular word was at the time - and that is also irrelevant to the plot. If the dog’s masters were in fact racist and that fact was somehow related to the plot, then it might be reasonable to keep it. Otherwise changing a small detail like that wouldn’t bother me.
I would say it was. In the original, the dog was used as a substitute for personal attachment. Instead of these proper Britishers getting all emotionally verklempt over each other, which just wouldn’t be cricket, they showed their emotions for the dog. When (spoiler alert!) the dog gets killed on the day of the raid, it had a large emotional impact. The dog’s name is the codeword that the mission was successful.
Eliminating the dog from the story just makes it another technical attack mission movie. It rips the heart out.
I would support the fact that the dog’s actual name is not important to the story, save for the fact this is a movie based on fact, and the fact was, that was the dog’s name. As a character, the dog is as important as Guy Gibson or Barnes Wallace, and their names shouldn’t be changed.
Is there a single movie based on a factual story in the entire history of cinema that didn’t change any of the details? This would be an extremely trivial detail to change, and if that were the only thing that differed from the actual story, this would be the most accurate movie ever made.
There’s also the consideration that the name would be a distraction for modern audiences. People would be thinking about the name rather than the dog.
I think the second part could be generalized to more extensively undercut the first part. The big weakness in defining what’s offensive strictly as what anyone says they are offended by is that people might be offended by things it’s not reasonable to be offended by, examples of which aren’t limited to the one you gave in the second part.
The other problem is toward the end of the first part. You start out saying ‘someone is offended’. But at the end that someone gets to speak not only for themselves but everyone ‘of their ethnicity or nationality’. Why?
Your rule might be reasonable guidance for shallow everyday interactions, but here’s a better one for today’s climate IME: just don’t make any references to things like race, ethnicity or nationality in casual interaction unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. If you don’t know his name, refer to the ‘tall guy’ not the ‘[race, ethnicity, etc] guy’, etc. And don’t ask any questions hinting at any such subject (like ‘where are you from?’).
But for deeper public discussion runaway offendedness has become a problem. It has to be challenged when it gets ridiculous, IMO.
That sounds good, but I think it fails in practice. It leaves you open to situations where terms like “black hole” and “Black Friday” are offensive, which is absurd.
Son of a WW2 and Korean theater combat vet and a southerner by heritage chiming in. I’m not sure how you can have a period piece without Japs and Nips being featured prominently. It’s just the language used. My father was also raised to use the word “negro” instead of the “N” word. And raised by my Alabama born sharecropping grandmother that I heard say “and they didn’t have to use the back door, neither.” Jap was an obvious abbreviation for Japanese and similarly Nip for Nippon. One doesn’t need to politically correctify the language used in a period piece, and in fact it’s unrepresentative.
The opposite would be something such as MASH the TV show was an 1980’s show set during the Korean war as a back drop.
Re: Dam Busters, one of the workarounds they are thinking of is calling the dog Nigsy, which the real crew apparently did sometimes, so it would be more accurate than completely changing the name.
Well, I don’t think you should go out of your way to insert “Japs” into your movie, but if it falls in line with the story and realistic characterization, I don’t think it should be avoided. I think it’s probably one of the least offensive epithets as it’s referring to a nationality rather than a race, and a simple contraction of that nationality. I’m not saying it isn’t offensive, but it’s not as bad as say, g**k.
I mean, I don’t* like* the term gringo, but since it isn’t directly referring to whites, I wouldn’t have a problem with it being used in a movie even set in modern times.