If I recall correctly, that’s exactly what Atticus Finch said to his daughter Scout when she used the word in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. “Don’t use that word; it’s common.”
Agree that in British English the N-word, while vulgar and disrespectful, has traditionally not been perceived as the same sort of contemptuous and menacing slur that it implies in American English.
Similarly, in American English the mostly-unfamiliar term “Paki” would probably seem like just a slangy or even good-natured abbreviation to refer to somebody of Pakistani heritage. Sort of like “Frenchy” Lacroix, or one of the many guys called “Scotty” Mcintosh or Macdougal or whatever despite their given name not being “Scott”.
In British English, however, “Paki” is a very very bad word.
They were using the word “nigger” the same way as American racists when they labeled their racist police activities “Operation P.N.H.” for “Police Nigger Hunt”…
I thought (though I can’t find the reference), there was a literary usage of the word “n*gger in the woodpile” in the UK, and it referred to a type of insect of that name, not anything to do with people at all. I can’t back that up with references though, the usage of it seems to have been overwhelmed by some politician using the phrase.
Just, wow! From that article:
In 1977, some 14,000 people were stopped and searched in Lewisham, south London, alone. Over 200 Special Patrol Group police – an elite unit – armed with pick-axe handles and Alsatian dogs, raided 60 black homes in the area. The police called it, “Operation PNH – Police Nigger Hunt”.
Special Patrol Police Groups armed with pick-axe handles!? WTF?
Yeah, I found the post to which you responded both ill-informed and condescending (like, don’t tell me about “bloody,” thank you very much, I’m not ten and in need of an elementary education in British cussin). While it’s possible that the n-word is considered less offensive by Black people in England, I don’t really want to go searching for evidence of this fact, and there’s not been any evidence offered.
In any case, the claim was that the word wasn’t considered “as offensive” in 1943. That’s a different claim from claiming that it’s not as offensive in England.
I also doubt that very much. The only difference of which I am aware between British and American usage is that, historically, the word was also applied by the British to South Asians.
I think Overboard would be a tough move to make nowadays. It was questionable even back then. Weird, it looks like it was remade in 2018.
Yep- slavery, rape, etc. Creepy as fuck.
The remake reversed the sexual roles, which to some would be less creepy, but really wasnt.
My wife and I were just discussing Gone with the Wind and I had a thought of a way that the movie could be remade today - as a deconstruction of the original.
Imagine a movie where the general plot beats are the same, but instead of portraying Antebellum culture as glorious and honorable and its loss as a tragedy, the suffering it caused is highlighted, and the main characters’ romances and struggles are put into stark contrast.
It would be dripping with irony and subtext. The main plot would be played straight; the actors should give convincing and passionate performances; but then, just as we start to get pulled into their myopic worldview, the inherent injustice that the whole rotten house is built upon gets thrust to the foreground.
Done right, by a brave enough director… it could be epic.
It is one of the most racist films on the AFIs list, and it comes in at #6. Shame on them. Dont get me wrong, many of the older films on the list are products of their time, sure, and could be bigoted to todays sensibilities. But GWtW was bigoted in 1939. Happy slaves marching off to help their masters win the war?
But they also USED to list Birth of a Nation at #44, however, they dropped when they redid the list in 2007. So, time for GWtW to go also.
But there is movement in that direction-
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/opinions/gone-with-the-wind-how-to-deal-with-racist-art-yang/index.html
Last week, novelist, director and television writer John Ridley – an Academy Award winner for his screenplay for the movie “12 Years a Slave” – wrote a brief but compelling op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, asking HBO (a sister company of CNN under the ownership of WarnerMedia) to take the movie “Gone With the Wind” off of its much-hyped new streaming platform HBO Max.
Ridley wrote that the movie “glorifies the antebellum south. It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.
AFI took off Fantasia, which certainly had a small bit which was really bad. But that was a few moments of the film, and Disney has edited it out. You cant edit out the racism in GWtW.
The Robertson’s golliwog wasn’t retired until 2001.
It’s worse than plain old racist - it’s straight up Lost Cause propaganda. That’s inherently racist, of course, but it also glorifies a hideously evil socioeconomic system.
That’s why I think a remake that deconstructs the story and flips the theme could use the same exact plot to critique and condemn the Antebellum way of life instead of glorifying and celebrating it.
True, we agree. which is why there is no editing it , like Disney did when they cut 2-3 minutes from Fantasia.
Great idea that wont fly. sadly.
Yeah, the original is irredeemable. Only by skewering the original’s viewpoint could the story be reused.
Agreed, no studio would risk it and I’m not sure there’s a writer or director talented enough and brave enough to pull it off.
The general public doesn’t care that much about GWTW anymore, only people old enough to remember when it was a thing. Filmmakers will still keep it on a pedestal for a while but in time that will fade and we’ll see the deconstructed remake in time. It may require a blatant parody to avoid copyright issues.
How do you think the recent film Antebellum stacks up in this regard? Yes, I know, not explicitly a GWTW retelling but working with a lot of similar tropes…
I haven’t seen it or honestly heard much about it previously. The plot synopsis makes it sound a bit out there, but it’s very possible that this is just because it’s a synopsis.
The themes aren’t exactly what I was thinking of - it sounds like the movie is a condemnation of the planter class for being brutal and evil, which they absolutely were - but I think the big thing a GWTW remake would be to play with the dichotomy between the way the Southern genteel class portrays itself (honor, chivalry, blah blah blah) and the very grim reality of the immense suffering that society was fundamentally built upon.
The plot of Antebellum (again from purely the plot synopsis) read to me as a contrivance to put a modern black woman into the position of being a slave on a plantation, which definitely helps us sympathize with her and feel the horror of her situation more distinctly. Whatever the execution of this movie was like, I think that could be a very powerful story.
But it’s not exactly the story I was thinking a GWTW remake could tell. If Antebellum’s single sentence summary is “a movie about how horrible it was to live through slavery”, Gone with the Wind (2024) would be “a movie about the dissonance created when a society of horrible brutal slavers try to cosplay as chivalrous and honorable gentle folk”.
I’d watch that.
Is Gone With the Wind, the novel, more critical than the film?
Nope, it’s explicit Lost Cause propaganda as well.