# Tarantino using the N-word ("Django Unchained" Spoliers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 31, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682 "2012-12-31T17:06:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/41 "2013-01-01T06:26:48Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > … I’ve encountered white northerners who seem to believe that racism is strictly a southern problem … Use your rhymer powers and make them Google “[Boston](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_busing_crisis) [busing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soiling_of_Old_Glory)”! The thought of what America would be like If that photograph had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep CMC ---
**Author:** ![grodinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/57b2e6/32.png) [@grodinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grodinsky)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/42 "2013-01-01T06:35:27Z")
have not followed this “controversy” closely but all the hubbub seems to be racist right wing people trying to prove they are not racist by accusing “liberal hollywood” of being the actual racists. yeh, i know spike lee has spoken out but his comments seem to be directed at the way slavery is treated in the movie, though he has comment on QT and the word nigger. though i admire him (more than tarantino who i can take or leave), spike lee seems a bit “off” sometimes but im glad he doesnt hold back. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/43 "2013-01-01T06:39:34Z")
Saw Django last night, loved, plan on seeing it again. To the point of this thread, it’s worth noting that nigger hasn’t been a blacklisted word (snerk) for as long as we might think. Here’s a quote from Janis Joplin about being a high school misfit in 1950’s Texas, she was PNG’d for NOT being racist and she uses the word. > [@](#): > > Joplin was quoted as saying, “I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn’t hate niggers.”[5] Link [Janis Joplin - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janis_Joplin) ---
**Author:** ![grodinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/57b2e6/32.png) [@grodinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grodinsky)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/44 "2013-01-01T06:55:41Z")
not to derail the thread or to say you dont have a point but i think youd have to hear the inflection of that quote to know if she was casually referring to black people as niggers or paraphrasing other people who she had hear say “hate niggers” which would be said with an ironic/sarcastic tinge. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/45 "2013-01-01T08:21:47Z")
As to _Pulp Fiction_ and Jimmie’s use of the word “nigger”–this is sort of getting into “But some of Jimmie’s best friends are…” territory–we actually see Bonnie in a very quick “hypothetical” scene when Jules is on the phone with Marsellus Wallace. She’s played by one [Venessia Valentino](http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=24705) (who has had bit parts in a few other movies, including _Jackie Brow_n and _Kill Bill Volume 2_). So, the n-bomb-dropping Jimmie is actually _married to a black woman_, and in his conversation about not being in the “dead nigger storage business”, he states repeatedly and with apparent sincerity that he loves his wife (and does not wish to be divorced). (Also, Jules calls _Vincent_ “nigger” at times, such as in the scene when they’re washing their hands–Vincent rather ineffectively–in Jimmie and Bonnie’s bathroom before going out to talk to Jimmie and compliment him on his coffee and so forth.) So, it’s definitely a complex sort of a word in the Tarantinoverse. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/46 "2013-01-01T11:38:44Z")
I imagine QT is not adverse to stimulating a debate on this very issue. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/47 "2013-01-01T12:31:18Z")
[QUOTE=QT] Well, you know if you’re going to make a movie about slavery and are taking a 21st-century viewer and putting them in that time period, you’re going to hear some things that are going to be ugly, and you’re going see some things that are going be ugly. That’s just part and parcel of dealing truthfully with this story, with this environment, with this land." [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > Quentin went on to say that his goal was not to make viewers comfortable, but for the film’s words to feel like " a big, gigantic boulder, a jagged pill" with no glass of water to help wash it down. I’m in agreement with this. As is Eric Michael Dyson (vis-a-vis The Ed Show) who has my respect way more than Spike Lee, who seems to be rather upset with this movie. (Not that he ever had any love for QT in the first place.) ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/48 "2013-01-01T12:54:18Z")
Jimmy says nigger because QT thought that it would make the character more of a badass to be able to say it around a black person without that person getting pissed off. That he has designer coffee and expensive sheets don’t take away from the badassery in his mind, they’re just funny quirks. In every movie QT cameos in, the parts with his characters are always my least favorite. At least when Shyamalan does it he usually only gives himself like a minute of screen time. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/49 "2013-01-01T14:29:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Tarantino is being historically accurate here. It is not over-the-top language; it is the language of the white people of the time. No white person in the South would find the word over-the-top and offensive, and most black people would reluctantly accept it because there was nothing they could do about it. I think you’re assigning modern sensibilities to nineteenth-century blacks, at least in part here. I’m not sure that blacks would have been reluctant at all; it seems to have been the accepted term. White people’s contempt had become a given, without the need for a special word to make it clear. “Nigger” may or may not have started as a word to make clear blacks’ perceived inferiority (that’s certainly what it became), but it seems to operate as a simple descriptor in that period. I would think that in the south at the very least, a black person would likely have had even less of a reaction than modern-day Jules did upon hearing the term. [From Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger): > [@](#): > > Among Anglophones, the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, because it then denoted “black-skinned”, a common Anglophone usage. Nineteenth-century English (language) literature features usages of nigger without racist connotation, e.g. the Joseph Conrad novella The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897). Moreover, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain created characters who used the word as contemporary usage. Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported usage, but used the term “negro” when speaking in his own narrative persona. > > During the fur trade of the early 1800s to the late 1840s in the Western United States, the word was spelled “niggur”, and is often recorded in literature of the time. George Fredrick Ruxton often included the word as part of the “mountain man” lexicon, did not indicate that the word was pejorative at the time. “Niggur” was evidently similar to the modern use of dude, or guy. This passage from Ruxton’s Life in the Far West illustrates a common use of the word in spoken form—the speaker here referring to himself: “Travler, marm, this niggur’s no travler; I ar’ a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!” It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period, as Indians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a “niggur.” > > By the 1900s, nigger had become a pejorative word. To play out your Twain reference: remember, Jim refers to other blacks as niggers, too, without seeming to imply any sort of underlying irony or message. What else would he call them (the context seems to make clear)? So it is (I say without having seen the movie) with _Django Unchained_, I would think. ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/50 "2013-01-01T15:59:13Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Doesn’t that pretty much describe all of Tarantino’s dialogue? Yes. The problem I’m having is that he sometimes makes jokes using the word where I’m not sure whether they should be funny. The jokes he makes do not use historical accuracy, they use his own stylized dialogue. Sometimes they really straddle the line between racism and satire. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/51 "2013-01-01T16:41:38Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > On the rare occasion you say that on this board, I always imagine dozens of dopers at home doing a spit take. Skald is black? (Actually, I had this discovery before, with similar reaction.) > [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > Talking about compound epithets he then uses this term for native Americans, “prairie N-word.” Any offended nearby black can be told, “I used ‘prairie’ in front of it. This doesn’t involve you.” Sadly, I’ve seen a variant of that argument given seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/52 "2013-01-02T01:07:33Z")
> [@azraiel](#): > > Zed and Maynard. > > Not that I have anything else to add to the conversation. Do they? I did a word find through a copy of the screen play and didn’t see it come up. Marellus says it in that scene (“Couple hard pipe-hittin’ niggers…”) Ah, I see they don’t spell out the whole “Eenie Meenie Minnie Moe” bit in the script and I assume it’s not a tiger (or Tigger) they’re catching by the toe. ---
**Author:** ![azraiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@azraiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/azraiel)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/53 "2013-01-02T09:29:15Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Do they? I did a word find through a copy of the screen play and didn’t see it come up. Marellus says it in that scene (“Couple hard pipe-hittin’ niggers…”) > > Ah, I see they don’t spell out the whole “Eenie Meenie Minnie Moe” bit in the script and I assume it’s not a tiger (or Tigger) they’re catching by the toe. That was one, yes. The scene upstairs in the pawnshop has more dialog than the linked script indicates. After covering Butch with a shotgun, Maynard says “get your foot off the nigger, put your hands behind your head, and approach the counter, right now.” I know this only because this thread compelled me to download the damned movie from amazon, and to pay particular attention to the epithet’s use. Y’all owe me $6. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/54 "2013-01-02T16:11:20Z")
I don’t think Tarantino was going to extraordinary lengths to keep the language historically accurate but he wasn’t doing it to get off his racist jollies either. In a subtle and perhaps unintentional way the flood of nbombs made for a fairly interesting point in the movie when alternative words were chosen like jimmy or black. It drew you out of the movie a bit and was kind of remarkable how quickly people were (at least I was) to acclimate themselves to certain words. Also, I think the hubbub over the race of Skald is a bit more insensitive than Tarantino’s. It may be mildly surprising to see that Skald goes against stereotypes (what stereotypes, I have no idea. White people have a monopoly on elaborate thought experiments? male pattern baking? Tolkien?) but it’s not a spit take. It’s more of a “huh. So now I can kind of put a shade of skin on that poster.” rather than “good golly, I would have never suspected.” Sorry to be such a downer on this post. Must be the weak coffee. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/55 "2013-01-02T17:59:43Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > Also, I think the hubbub over the race of Skald is a bit more insensitive than Tarantino’s. It may be mildly surprising to see that Skald goes against stereotypes (what stereotypes, I have no idea. White people have a monopoly on elaborate thought experiments? male pattern baking? Tolkien?) but it’s not a spit take. It’s more of a “huh. So now I can kind of put a shade of skin on that poster.” rather than “good golly, I would have never suspected.” For me, it’s less about stereotypes and more just the fact that I have a default assumption unless someone says otherwise, or I have reason to suspect. Says more about me than Skald, I’m sure. Skald’s a fine fellow. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/56 "2013-01-02T20:37:11Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I don’t think the Wolf was using “uncle” in a literal sense. I think the Wolf ONLY speaks in a litteral sense. Also, in the sequence where Jimmy is describing Bonnie comming home and catching Vince and Jules disposing of the body, we see that she is black. Which makes Jimmy’s casual use of the N-word that much more odd. The way I look at it, Tarantino use of the N-word is meant to portray a brutally honest and un-PC view of their world (the Los Angeles underworld). LA is a city segregated by race and economic class. And these characters are criminals and sociopaths. What do they care about being PC? > [@Irishman](#): > > Skald is black? (Actually, I had this discovery before, with similar reaction.) Oh my stars!:eek: ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/57 "2013-01-02T21:19:33Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > \ Also, I think the hubbub over the race of Skald is a bit more insensitive than Tarantino’s. It may be mildly surprising to see that Skald goes against stereotypes (what stereotypes, I have no idea. White people have a monopoly on elaborate thought experiments? male pattern baking? Tolkien?) but it’s not a spit take. It’s more of a “huh. So now I can kind of put a shade of skin on that poster.” rather than “good golly, I would have never suspected.” > > Sorry to be such a downer on this post. Must be the weak coffee. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I adore Skald and he knows it, I’m not shy about it. I am the type of person who wears black on my sleeve, and everyone knows I’m black. Skald transcends race and that’s why people don’t know his race. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/58 "2013-01-02T21:27:49Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I adore Skald and he knows it, I’m not shy about it. I am the type of person who wears black on my sleeve, and everyone knows I’m black. Skald transcends race and that’s why people don’t know his race. Nzinga, I didn’t perceive you as being insensitive, or even serious. I know you know my as-defined-by-others-race. It’s off topic, but I’ve been thinking recently about the issues of official versus “cultural” race. As I’ve mentioned hereabouts before, my wife looks “white” but self-identifies as “black;” my best friend from high school is unquestionably “white” but is far more culturally black (in her tastes in music, food, drama, etc) than I am. I know my friend would never use the word nigger as much as a character in a Tarantino movie; my wife might, but only around her birth family, and probably not even then (unless she were countering a racist statement someone else made because they don’t know her heritage.) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/59 "2013-01-02T21:47:27Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I don’t think the Wolf was using “uncle” in a literal sense. > [@msmith537](#): > > I think the Wolf ONLY speaks in a litteral sense. That’d be kind of impractical, and even if you are right, he’s not speaking literally: if Bonnie were Marcellus’ niece, Marcellus would not be Jimmie’s uncle. **Miller** is usually right about this kind of stuff, and I think this additional quote makes it clear he is this should make it pretty clear he’s putting Jimmie in his place by mocking him a bit: > [@Jimmie](#): > > You gotta understand something, Winston. I want to help you guys out and all, but that’s my best linen. It was a wedding present from my Uncle Conrad and Aunt Ginny, and they ain’t with us anymore – > [@Wolf](#): > > Were you Uncle Conrad and Aunt Ginny millionaires? […] Well, your Uncle Marsellus is. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682/60 "2013-01-02T21:57:18Z")
Pretty obvious there, that he isn’t really his uncle. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tarantino-using-the-n-word-django-unchained-spoliers/645682.md?page=4)