Yeah. I’m definitely intrigued by the scene again. Gonna watch the movie later.
I don’t think the Wolf was using “uncle” in a literal sense.
Having seen Pulp Fiction like 100 times (easy to do if you’ve got cable), this.
I think it was being used as a weapon, but the target was Vincent.
It’s pretty clear that Vincent doesn’t know Jimmy at all,JULES: This is the Valley, Vincent. Marsellus don’t got no friendly places in the Valley.
VINCENT: Well, don’t look at me, this is your town, Jules.
(Jules takes out a cellular phone and starts punching digits.)
VINCENT: Who ya callin’?
JULES: A buddy of mine in Toluca Lake.
VINCENT: Where’s Toluca Lake.Not in the film, but in the script,JIMMIE: … (look up and sees Vincent) Who the fuck are you?Jimmie’s over the top usage of “nigger” establishes his relationship with Jules for Vincent and Miller’s second point.
I think Lance’s use of nigger establishes that in the Marsellus Wallace part of the Pulp Fiction universe “nigger” has a not racist meaning too (see: Chris Rock - Black People VS. Niggaz (Bring the Pain 1996)).
Marsellus Wallace’s business partners, Brett and Co.? (Probably not including Marvin.) Niggers.
CMC
What’s the old saying? A pal will help you move. A friend will help you move a body.
I’m a black man who’s been on the receiving end of that word on multiple occasions. Though I haven’t seen Django and don’t intend to, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to have a white character in a period piece use the word “nigger” a lot. Bad people use the word. Good people sometimes also use the word. And words aren’t magic.
what else were they supposed to say in that era?
calling someone black? when did that term come into use?
negro would have probably worked but if it was the only term you used you might stand out as strange for talking funny (not really an issue for the german guy)
one thing to keep in mind with film, the dialog, the sets, the camera work, ALL exist to take you to a certain place at a certain time. this is why things (some things anyway) that happen in movies never happen irl.
On the rare occasion you say that on this board, I always imagine dozens of dopers at home doing a spit take.
Oh yeah? How about “Abracadabra”?
Oddly enough, that does help. In fact, the whole character takes on a new light when I imagine Buscemi in the role. With Tarantino doing it, the role seemed slightly self-indulgent, and even though I enjoyed those scenes, I could never quite shake the idea that Tarantino really likes saying “nigger.”
I think the reason is that Jimmy’s use of “nigger” is supposed to calculated to send a message to both Jules and Vincent, as several people have suggested, but Tarantino’s Jimmy is played a little too broadly to make that believable. Jimmy comes across as a slightly dumb guy who probably never did more in the gangster world than some minor drug dealing. I assumed he bought drugs from Jules back when Jules himself was a small-time hood, and they got close enough that Jules may have dragged him along on a heist or something, but not much more than that. He seems too freaked out by the whole thing for me to believe that his words were carefully chosen.
Buscemi, OTOH, while he plays plenty of dumb guys, always plays them as a bit more cagey. I could easily see him interpreting the role as someone who was comfortable enough in the criminal demimonde to know exactly what words like “nigger” would convey to Jules and Vincent. It especially makes cmc’s point make sense–I never liked Lance’s use of the word, which always seemed more pointless to me than Jimmy’s, but if you have a slightly more serious portrayal of Jimmy, then it becomes necessary to convey early in the movie exactly what cmc is suggesting–that a “nigger” to these characters isn’t just a black person, but a specifically worthless black person. Then Jimmy’s usage become much more pointed–Jules is a friend, Vincent is a stranger, but this (Marvin) isn’t even a person at this point, just a problem, a piece of trash that has no business being there. The point isn’t that he’s black but that he’s a victim, and even Jimmy knows that real gangsters clean up their own fucking messes.
It’s certainly a strange situation with the N-word in the US.
On the weekend I was watching Aziz Ansari’s live standup Dangerously Delicious in which he does a bit about his hatred of racism but fascination with racial slurs. He prefaces the bit by saying that the slurs are, by their nature, offensive so if you are offended “shut your fucking mouth.”
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.”
Ansari appears to have no idea how ridiculous, almost surreal, this sounds without him using the word nigger. He adds to the bewilderment by several times using the phrase “ching chong bing bong” having explained that it is an offensive term for Asians, not to be used in their presence.
HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!! I’m dying!
I agree that the word was used in the south, but I’m pretty sure it was not used the way Tarantino used it in “Django.” It’s much more stylized in the movie, with more relish and showmanship than if it were used for historical accuracy.
That first sentence drew my attention. Do you think the word “nigger” was used only by southerners? I seriously doubt that.
I don’t. I’m not even sure how you could conclude that I do from my remarks.
I’d add that whatever Jimmy’s involvement in criminal activity is or was, he clearly very much wants to keep it separate from the domestic suburban life he has with his wife, and thus “gangster shit” coming to his house with virtually no warning is a major nuisance and imposition and Jules’s attempts at politeness, complimenting Jimmy’s coffee and such, don’t help at all.
I didn’t draw a conclusion, Lakai. I try to avoid rhetorical questions, and I didn’t fail this time. I asked because I’ve encountered white northerners who seem to believe that racism is strictly a southern problem, and it seemed possible to read your statement in that light. As I can’t think of any previous post of yours that would support your thinking that, I thought it best to simply ask rather than to conclude.
Fair enough. I thought you made a conclusion because you said “I seriously doubt that.” It sounded like you were arguing against a belief you thought I had rather than a belief you thought I possibly had. My mistake.
Having seen Django, I have to say I was impressed by how well Tarantino works the term nigger into conversation. It’s used as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, the pluperfect subjunctive*, a basic part of speech the way in exactly the way that a lot of modern people use fuck every other word in every possible form.
He knew what he was doing and every use was deliberate. So if you don’t want him to use nigger, you need to ask what other terms he could have substituted.
Black isn’t one of them. It existed as a usage, but it just wasn’t a standard term of the time. African-American hadn’t appeared yet. Afro-American has a few cites in abolitionist literature, but never in Southern talk. Colored was the normal polite term. Tarantino’s characters aren’t polite, and they were a might riled at times, so polite terms won’t do. Buck was used a lot as well as boy. So was coon. And crow. A woman might be a mammy, but not a young, pretty one. Sambo had been around a while by then, and so had Rastus and Cuffy and Zip (for Scipio). Children could be pickaninnies.
Yep, Tarantino had lots of choices to ponder while he was writing his script. Yet most of the time he used nigger. It is stylized. It may be excessive, but only because he choose not to use the alternatives. Niggers are the subject of the movie. Every line of it is about niggerdom in the antebellum South. Not about coondom or mammydom. Niggerdom. I can’f figure out what other word would do. And I can’t figure out what his detractors would have him say, except not to make the movie at all. Which, despite my criticisms in the other thread, would have been a shame.
*Variation of the old joke: A visitor to Boston asks, “Do you know where I can get scrod around here?” “Pal,” replies the cabdriver, “I’ve got to congratulate you. I’ve heard that question a lot over the years, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive.”
Zed and Maynard.
Not that I have anything else to add to the conversation.
Doesn’t that pretty much describe all of Tarantino’s dialogue?
Actually, the way he handled it makes the one time (I think) that ‘black’ was used, by Schultz during the Dumas scene, truly stand out. I can’t imagine that wasn’t intentionally showing the Schultz was throwing off the blanket of southern racism by using the term to refer to a European black man rather than the American black men he’s been surrounded by for a while.