It does?? I always felt the opposite, that he was inclusive enough to use it the way blacks use it, at least within his own circle of friends and family.
Also, when Marcellus was talking to Jules about The Bonnie Situation he asked if she’d freak a little or a lot and makes the point that ‘you (Jules) know her, I don’t.’ I doubt if he’s her uncle.
I watched Jackie Brown the other day and was occasionally taken out of the movie by the frequency with which Samuel L Jackson said nigger. He often said it where anyone else would have said “him” or “somebody.” It wasn’t just like a black man might occasionally say nigger, it was just let’s use the word as much as we can.
Pure shock effect. Sad that Tarantino still hasn’t got over it.
But, it’s not shocking to some people. I hear the word sometimes dozens and dozens of time in a day. Tarantino understands that reality and tries to inject it in his characters. I actually feel bad for the guy…if he makes characters that are interesting that speak just like folks do in real life, he gets slammed for it.
There is an Eminem song where he says,
“and motherfuckers act like they forgot about Dre”
Everytime I used to sing it, I would say, out of habit, “and niggas they act like they forgot about Dre”
I have no idea why I changed the words, but I do know that Eminem doesn’t use the word ‘nigger’. Soooo many times in his music, it seems like the perfect word to drop in, but he always goes with something else.
When I’m listening to hip hop, and the vibe is very black, gritty, grimy, street, the word is in the rotation of the language that is being used. It nearly seems…odd that he doesn’t ever use it.
It is like an elephant shaped hole in the room. I think Tarantino really believes that he is creating characters that are, well not realistic, because hey, it’s a movie…but that he is not allowing anyone to get in the way of how he molds his characters…that is different than being shocking for shock’s sake.
In the time period in which the movie is ostensibly set, use of the word “nigger” did not mark one as *outré *or unusually bigoted. It was just a word, similar to “black” today.
I haven’t seen the movie, but that may be one aspect which is relatively historically accurate in the film.
And I suspect Tarantino uses it play with the endemic racial bias of that society, a bias which categorized people by their phenotype and ancestry (and still does, just with new terminology and definitions).
Also, because he likes rude people doing rude things in his movies. A lot.
Have you seen the movie I’m talking about? Like I said, it wasn’t just that he had SLJ use the word a lot - that’s perfectly in keeping with his character and is the way it works in all his other movies. It was that he had him use the word where anyone else would have used a pronoun, or just not used a noun even - it wasn’t in keeping with reality at all. I think SLJ had maybe ten lines that didn’t include it, and he had a lot of lines.
I have, I love Jackie Brown. It’s probably my favorite Tarantino, and you’re right, SLJ says it A LOT. I don’t know the LA street scene, though, so I can’t say how realistic it is.
Yes.
Did you not think his use of the word was a bit odd? Not excessive exactly, but odd. I’m fairly sure he used a pronoun only once or twice overall. It’s quite possible that it’s intentional, with it being basically a blaxploitation film and all.
I don’t know what to tell you, ScifFiSam. Like I said in my post, I use the word a ton. I know some people that use it to death. And I know some people that use the word ‘muthafucka’ to death. I don’t, but I know people who do, and it doesn’t seem odd to me. The only thing I can guess is that people greatly underestimate how often certain subcultures use/hear the word ‘nigger’.
Sometimes, it pops out of my mouth 30 times in one conversation. “This nigga here gon tell me he already paid me the money he owe me? I was like, nigga please. I’m tellin’ you if this nigga don’t pay me my money, this nigga gon have a problem. Oooh, he make me sick, playin with somebody money, knowing if a nigga play with HIS money, he be ready to kill a nigga.”
That is an entirely realistic monologue for me. I think Samuel L Jackson said the word a LOT in the film, but he said ‘muthafucka’ A LOT too, and it didn’t shock me because I know a lot of people who speak that way.
You can make that same argument for the character. That Ordell (SLJ) was over using the word as a cheap way to be provocative.
Ordell might act like he’s real smart, but he’s really an idiot. Jackie is smarter than he is, she’s always one step ahead of him. Max Cherry figures that he’s a drug dealer despite Ordell trying to keep it a secret. He kills Beaumont, but only after Beaumont already talks to the police. Melanie also says that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. Even though Melanie ain’t that bright either, her observation fits an overall pattern.
The point of all this is that Ordell is a guy who pretends to be smart. Using the n-word as a filler for other more descriptive words is a characteristic of someone who tries to make up for his linguistic shortcomings by being provocative. It fits his character perfectly.
It’s also a characteristic of an exploitation film, a film that exploits its audience by being provocative so that they won’t notice they are watching a film with no artistic merit. I’m not sure how to tie this observation into what I said about Ordell, but I don’t want to delete it.
Jackie isn’t exactly shy with the word herself.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but I remember her only using the word around Ordell. It could be her way of intimidating him.
Actually, she intimidated him by pressing a gun up against his dick and saying Take. Your. Hands. From. Around. My. Throat. Nigga. Ordell was intimidated, too, like a muthafucker. I love that scene, Jackie is badass!
I love that scene too…the way her voice lifts out of the darkness…she was the coolest freakin’ character.
On the Jimmy speech, there was a pretty good script reason for him to bitch out Jules as harshly as possible. It’s because this scene mirrors a scene just earlier, where Jules asks Brad in the apartment, “Does Marsellus Wallace look like a bitch?” Jules castigates Brad as pointedly and harshly as possible, using a totally rhetorical question. Two scenes later we have Jimmy castigating Jules exactly the same way, rhetorically asking if he saw a sign that said “dead nigger storage.” The harshness of the word and question points up the earlier scene and brings things full circle.
It’s not “obvious” in that Jimmy is married to a black girl, Marcellus is black, the Wolf calls him “his uncle” (although technically uncle-in-law) and that Jimmy seems pretty comfortible with the Wolf, Vince and Jules hanging around his house (except for the fact that they brought a dead n**er with them!)
Or he may just know all of them professionally. According to IMDB, Jimmie Dimmick may be related to Mr White (AKA Larry Dimmick) in Reservoir Dogs (also played by Harvey Keitel)
There’s no such thing as an uncle in law, and there is no reason to interpret this comment literally. If Jimmie were actually related to Marcellus, he would know Marcellus is rich and he would probably know without being told that Marcellus would compensate him. For that matter Wolf would probably know who Marcellus’ niece was and the scene prior to this one suggests he doesn’t know who these people are.
Yeah, it really is all in that quote you quoted. It is clear there that he is making a little jokey by calling himself his uncle.
“Were you Uncle Conrad and Aunt Ginny millionaires? […] Well, your Uncle Marsellus is.”
On top of all that, the word “uncle” itself is commonly used to describe a paternalistic relationship between individuals with no actual family ties. Hell, I’m an only child, and I’m an uncle three times over.