I have seen all of Qentin Tarentino’s movies, most recently Reservior Dogs last night, and I find Q.T.'s movies very artistic pieces of work.
I have noticed that in Reservior Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown that the word “nigger” is used a lot in passing. In “Dogs”, three of the gangsters (Kietel, Buscemi, Chris Penn) and the police informant were driving down the road talking about “niggers” and “jungle bunnies”. Of course in Pulp Fiction, we have Q.T’s Jimmy and his memorable question to Jules (Sam Jackson) “Did you notice a sign out front that said ‘Dead Nigger Storage’?” “No, cause soring dead niggers aint my fucking business!” hen you have Samual Jackson’s (verne) calling Vincent a nigger while they were washing their hands at Jimmy’s house.
How come the “politically correct” Hollywood has not bashed QT on all those nigger references? I think they are funny, and i think most people of both races do to, and QT’s movies are liked by both races. But I know someone out there in La-La land is mad about it. Besides Spike Lee, who has complained?
The sort of people who are going to see a Quentin Tarantino movie are generally the sort of people who can distinguish between the author and the characters the author is writing about. The sort of people who can’t make that distinction are already boycotting the film because of the language/violence/blasphemey/whatever.
In a way Hollywood did bash Q. Pulp Fiction IMO was clearly the best movie of, was it 1994? & no Oscar ,or none that mattered. Same for Goodfellas in 1990-which had a few Jewish slurs as well.
Spike Lee- he lectures mixed couples that he sees.(OR stares at them at length). My couisin(white) has a black girl friend- Lee tried to talk to her about dating a white man. My cousin- all 6 foot five stood up- & told Lee to mind his fucking business. Spike slunk away.
It’s worth pointing out that Jimmy’s wife was about to get home (thus all the rush about cleaning up the “dead nigger”) and she turned out to be black.
I don’t think she was Jules’ sister. As I recall, Jules says he knows someone who can help. If she was his sister, he would have mentioned that they were going to his brother-in-law’s.
I’ve seen it a few times-besides the irony of mob hit men being scared of a nurse-I never noticed she was black. Are you sure-I recall the brief clip-she looked white to me.
Pff. Nigger is “edge” these days where we live in a society thats much too politically-correct. Quentin is loosening our shackles and I admire him for it. I’m not in any way racist, but its absurd that everyone gets uptight over racial slang no matter what context its used. The only thing I could get upset over, is racial slang used in derogatory terms. They are just words after all, but its important that everyone is able to judge the intended effect that those racial slurs have.
Sam Jackson used it a lot in Jackie Brown but I believe there really are black gangsters who use that word.
I think he uses it because he writes edgy characters (mostly criminals) and he probably likes the shock value of it. I agree that the “dead n____r storage” line didn’t really work and he probably should have tried a different line.
Not just gangsters; I’ve got black (non-gangster) friends who toss it around casually in conversation (I’m white). It doesn’t bother me a bit because I know that when they use it, it has approximately the same emotional weight as “dude,” but I don’t use it myself, even in conversation with them.
Another oddity in Pulp Fiction is the bathroom scene at Jimmy’s house between Jules and Vincent. They’re just finishing up washing their hands when Jules notices the bloody mess Vincent has left on one of the towels. Jules picks the towel off the rack and yells “Hey fuck, nigger! What the fuck you just do with the towel, man?!”
Where I lived, when the movie came out in 1994, a black guy calling a white guy “nigger” raised far more eyebrows than even Jimmy’s outburst.
Similarly, “hey fuck, nigger! What the fuck you just do” was an oft-repeated line among a few of my white co-workers: spill some coffee at breakfast, somebody said the line. Come back from the bar with the wrong drink, there’s that line.
Anybody else get the impression Tarantino was trying to mainstream the word? Or am I just an optimist to think he finds salve in repetition?
I think both Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino have some racial issues in their heads they need to resolve. In Lee’s case, he seems to feel the need to prove he’s blacker than everyone else; apparently he feels growing up in an affluent middle class suburban family damages his street cred.
Tarantino’s case is much simpler. He’s just a geek trying to act cool; in this particular case by imitating black gangstas. It is 100% true that black criminals call each other “nigger” but I’ve never seen any white criminal, no matter how respected or tough he might be, do the same. It’s not a matter of fear; many white criminals have no problem using the word as an insult. But a real white criminal would know he’d just look silly pretending to be something he isn’t by using it as an ironic term of closeness.
It’s like a British accent. You may think an Englishman sounds classy because of his accent. But if you hear someone you know is from New Jersey talking with the same accent, you’d figure they were an idiot. Some things you either have or you don’t; you can’t pretend.
The actress who played Bonnie in Jules visualization of what might happen if Bonnie came home before they were finished was Vanessia Valentino, who is black. She’s listed in the credits as Pedestrian also, but I don’t know exactly where it is that she appears. However, if you want a good look at her, she’s the flight attendant announcing the Cabo San Lucas flight at the end of the opening credits of Jackie Brown.