I use it myself sometimes when someone trips over their words. I think I can safely say that no one has gotten it yet. Yet, I giggle to myself through their blank stares.
This idea is what prompted me to start this thread. It’s the “rose tinted nostalgia” part that’s important. I loved the film Things To Do In Denver When Your Dead. If you had asked me, before I re-watched it recently, if it had any offensive part, I would have maybe responded about the part where Critical Bill is punching the dead guy. But would have probably not remembered the comments about disability or the pedophilia. Certainly not the gay bashing or heavy, casual racism. Why is that? I was quite uncomfortable during the re-watch. Have I changed? Have my attitudes changed with societal norms? I wouldn’t like to think so, but I don’t know what other explanation there is.
It’s those changing societal norms, I fear, that would cause some past movies to fare far less successfully had they been released today.
But that’s the same for everything. And that’s why I don’t get the “I fear” part - things have always changed and always will. You wouldn’t expect plenty of today’s hits to be successful if they were released in 1980, either (regardless if music, movies, tv, etc.). I can understand why someone might get defensive about censure directed towards something that they loved when they were younger (regardless if they still love it). I can understand why some might be nostalgic for a time in their lives when they didn’t perceive those things as bad. I can even understand those who things really were better then and those attitudes were the right ones for society to have. I can’t understand being upset or disappointed that what’s popular changes, in the broad stokes. The specific societal changes, yes, but just that something old you love and regard as a classic would bomb/never get made today - so what? There were hits made 40 years before that that would not be successful if made/released in 1980s.
I can think of many reasons why Smokey and the Bandit couldn’t be made today. Truck full of Coors, redneck, misogynist sheriff. CB radios. It was a hoot at the time, but doesn’t hold up too well.
Of course, it’s possible that the audience would be wrong about that. That is, you could have shown RotN to a group of teenagers at the time, then hooked them up to lie detector tests (pretending for a second that such a things existed and were infallible), asked them “does this film endorse/trivialize/support rape? does it make you more likely to commit rape?” and have them answer “no”, and they would honestly consciously mean it… not realizing that the film very slightly moved the needle on their opinions about rape. Not enough to turn them from would-never-rape to would-definitely-rape, but people are more complex than that.
Some comments in some other threads helped me to think about this a bit. When the N-word is used in Huckleberry Fin it is appropriate. The extreme racism casually on display is appropriate for the time, and the shock a modern reader may feel is important. Editing the book to remove the explicitly racist language would diminish the story, because part of the point of the story is showing the racism.
So is Things To Do In Denver When Your Dead meant to be a realistic portrait of a time when gay bashing was acceptable, perhaps commenting on how it was even inappropriate back then? Or, is it a product of it’s time and the only thing a modern viewer should take away is that the creators of the movie did not think there was anything wrong with gay bashing?
Look at something like Stranger Things. It is a nostalgic look at the early 80s. That is a time with lots of gay bashing, and if it was true to its time, the kids would be using “gay” as a synonym for “stupid,” and the bullies would absolutely be calling them f----ts. It is left out, because it was made for a modern audience, and is a theme the creators did not want to address, or be a distraction.
But is it though? It may well be (I’m not familiar enough with Mark Twain’s beliefs to knowledgably weigh in) but I just assumed it was played for humor on it’s face. I do understand that things like racism are sometimes written into a character to demonstrate that character’s flaws or weaknesses. And I’m OK with that. But I didn’t think the writer of TTDIDWYD was smearing the people who were speaking racists epitaphs. These were people we were supposed to be rooting for, I take. The anti-heros.
One of my all time favorite movies is Taxi Driver. I’ve watched it many times. But today, I get a bit conflicted hearing Travis spit his racists thoughts.
I don’t know, good question… I suspect the latter.
Advertised as a tribute to Smokey and the Bandit. Biracial actor Tyrus plays the sheriff. Different brand of beer. I presume they use cellphones instead of CBs.
This tribute to the 1977 classic Smokey and the Bandit follows an aging TV franchise actor Duke Marietta (John Schneider) as he is bet that he cannot get a truck full of micro beer from Texas to Louisiana in 24 hours. This comedy mirrors its predecessor as Duke drafts his country star friend Roy (Cody McCarver) to drive the truck, while Duke drives a modified Dodge Hellcat that looks oddly like the Trans Am used in the original. Along the way Duke picks of a runaway bride (Mindy Robinson) who is on the run from a large-than-life backwoods Louisiana Sheriff Cletus T. Necessary (Tyrus), and his dim-witted offspring, Sonny (Dion Baia). Hilarity ensues.
I have no idea if it is any good, but it apparently made enough money to spawn a sequel, titled Poker Run.
Huckleberry Finn is my candidate for The Great American Novel (if such a thing can even exist) in part because it deals with racism and how it affects people as an integral part of the novel. Twain himself had become aware of his own racism and that of his society over the previous years (it’s clear from his writing. Yeah, Twain was “woke”, in the best sense of that term). One of the most important parts of the story is Huck’s evolution from a person raised in a racist society and thinking in its terms to become his own person, breaking free from those bounds.
Twain used “n-----r” because it was so overwhelmingly common in his society. It would have been odd for him NOT to use it. But, to be honest, I don’t know quite how pejorative it was seen to be at the time. It certainly wasn’t a “classy” word, and wouldn’t be used in official statements by the government, but I note that it was used casually into the 20th century in Britain (Agatha Christie’s novel “And Then There was None” was originally titled “Ten Little N----r Boys”, for instance), and it may well have been used in the same way among whites in the US, with casual indifference and ignorance of its being derogatory by most people.
But it was probably known to anyone who thought about it.
You know, S&tB was bad enough in its understanding of time and travel (you could actually do “what they said couldn’t be done” driving 55(!) in less time than was allowed), but it is only 6 hours from Austin to Baton Rouge! They could make two round trips in that time!
I hate to be that guy (no, no I don’t), but the in the movie the job was to drive from Atlanta to Texarkana, load up the truck with beer and drive back to Atlanta in 24 hours. From Google Maps, it looks like it is about 10 hours one way nowadays, so not so easy.
Correcting: it was the third title, because the second (“And then there were none”) was, I guess, not racist enough:
It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,[3] after an 1869 minstrel song which serves as a major plot element.[4][5] The US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were None, taken from the last five words of the song.[6] Successive American reprints and adaptations use that title, though American Pocket Books paperbacks used the title Ten Little Indians between 1964 and 1986. UK editions continued to use the original title until 1985.[7]
20 hours round trip driving gives four to load, and that’s at posted speed limits. No problemo.
Of course, that means if you’re on the clock you don’t take time out to sit down eat and get in fights with bikers. And woo pretty girls, when you should be running interference, Bandit!
I came across an n-bomb in Christie’s They Do it With Mirrors and it was jarring. But it came from the mouth of a Police Inspector and it didn’t seem farfetched that’s language such a person would use in real life. It was a euphemism I’d never heard before. (Part of what made it jarring, besides the slur itself, is that he used it while talking to a genteel old lady. In my mind even racist old white well-heeled ladies do not use that word.)
I’ve been meaning to start a thread about this, because a writer doesn’t necessarily agree with the morality of their characters. But in 2023 all the same I would not be using that word no matter how racist my character was.
There are really different sensibilities even compared to when I grew up in the 80s and 90s. These days you have to be careful even in how you depict racism. And I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, but it’s different.
