Offensive word in a movie

VaughanJB said:
There are few swear words that are really offensive, imo. But when I was in Australia I was shocked to find liberal use of the "C" word! Now that took me back. Be careful of Aussies! :D
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That is one of the words that cause a very negative reaction from me. That and the use of the word for a female canine. The person using either of them in my hearing loses any respect I might have had for him/her.
 

I highly recommend watching the movie “American Fiction”. It’s a great satire/comedy on racism and what people think they must do and not do regarding racism. A lot of stereotypes get gored. The ending is an unusual construction and quite entertaining.

The main character is a scholarly, distinguished, African American college professor who can’t make much money writing scholarly books on racial issues. So he resorts to writing a trashy novel about the “Hood”.

Or you could read the book Erasure by Everett that the movie is based on.
 
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One thing that might help against racism is doing what some TV, movie, and theatre producers are doing: They are mixing up the races, as if the race of a character is totally irrelevant. It is never even mentioned. So, in Bridgerton (Netflix), people who are any and all races are having mad, passionate love affairs, and many of them eventually get married with their family's blessing. The queen of England is even played by a Black woman!

In that series, everyone is royal (except the servants, who are minor characters in this series), So all kinds of royal characters, whether good, bad, slightly eccentric, etc. are played by all races, which is of no more importance than the color of someone's eyes. Once you get used to it, you don't even notice it.

In the show Hamilton, they do a little of that also, though I did feel that making Thomas Jefferson a Black man was a bit much. (All the other main characters are White or Asian.) I don't remember if anyone ever mentions the fact that Jefferson had many slaves, and one of them was his mistress, and possibly had children with him.

To get back to the original question, I still do think that including that silly jingle was unnecessary and had no importance to the plot, so why not just cut it? Movies are edited all the time, mainly for length reasons, but sometimes because a scene is too horrible or something like that. If the Eeny Meeney thing had some kind of dramatic significance, I could be wrong about wishing they had removed it. But I don't see it. Maybe I'll watch it again and get some new enlightenment. I do know I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more without it.
 
Sunny said:
In the show Hamilton, they do a little of that also, though I did feel that making Thomas Jefferson a Black man was a bit much. (All the other main characters are White or Asian.)
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Hamilton does a LOT of that.
Aaron Burr, George Washington, two of the three Schuyler sisters, and many others.

But maybe the production you attended was quite different from those I attended....
 
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"The rhyme starts with eenie, meanie, minie, mo..." came to my mind immediately. One day my kindergarten daughter & son happily said it together shocking the heck out of me. Which showed as I told them to never use that "word" again! They then looked startled and confused. I don't remember explaining why to them. They never said it again. They must've heard it on the school playground......around 62 years ago.
 
Sunny said:
One thing that might help against racism is doing what some TV, movie, and theatre producers are doing: They are mixing up the races, as if the race of a character is totally irrelevant. It is never even mentioned. So, in Bridgerton (Netflix), people who are any and all races are having mad, passionate love affairs, and many of them eventually get married with their family's blessing. The queen of England is even played by a Black woman!
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I've noticed this in movies too, and frankly I don't like it. It's so gratuitous, and unrealistic. It's just another agenda being pushed by Hollywood. Instead they should concentrate on better writing. What's next, have everyone appear in wheelchairs so we get better at accepting the disabled? IMO.
 
I'm in the UK and I've never come across anything being blanked out on TV - perhaps it's done if it's aired before the 'watershed', which is before 9pm. (Anything likely to cause offence in some way is usually aired after 9pm).

If, when showing old films/programmes where some language used (or whatever) of that era may cause offence - they give pre-warnings and the programme is still aired as is.
 
I learned "catch a tiger by its toe. " But no, I don't think the old movies should be censored. It's history. I'm of Polish background and there were a lot of offensive jokes of " dumb Polacks " in the past on TV, in Mad Magazine, etc. It just showed my family who the " dumb" people really were, the ones making the jokes.
 
VaughanJB said:
I've noticed this in movies too, and frankly I don't like it. It's so gratuitous, and unrealistic. It's just another agenda being pushed by Hollywood. Instead they should concentrate on better writing. What's next, have everyone appear in wheelchairs so we get better at accepting the disabled? IMO.
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Bridgerton is hardly a realistic portrayal of anything so the "it is unrealistic" objection doesn't really apply.

I think when a real person is portrayed i n a historical film/series, it can matter - hardly so in a work of total fiction like Bridgerton though.

and yes, showing people in wheelchairs or with dwarfism or other disabilities in everyday parts in movies and series is good too - obviously not everyone i n the show but some character and shown i n a way that it is just about the character not their disability

and that is much more realistic than showing only able bodied or one race people - that isnt realistic of real life at all.
 
Quackers said:
I'm in the UK and I've never come across anything being blanked out on TV - perhaps it's done if it's aired before the 'watershed', which is before 9pm. (Anything likely to cause offence in some way is usually aired after 9pm).

If, when showing old films/programmes where some language used (or whatever) of that era may cause offence - they give pre-warnings and the programme is still aired as is.
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but you wouldn't notice it blanked out unless you had seen the original to compare - that bit would just be seamlessly removed or the dialogue seamlessly changed - the viewer would not notice

I agree with Sunny - if the overtly racist words or part was not important to the plot, remove or change it.

Just like Agatha Christie's novel title was changed from "Ten little ******s' to "And then there were none" - it didn't change the story line so no need t o keep the original offensive title.
 
January said:
Bridgerton is hardly a realistic portrayal of anything so the "it is unrealistic" objection doesn't really apply.
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I don't know the show, so can't be specific. However, drama's usually want to sell you their reality. As such, it would likely bother me. As I say, gratuitous mixing of couples in drama's for no good reason doesn't work for me. I've no issue with actual mixed race relationships, but I don't want it force fed me in every movie I watch.

January said:
and yes, showing people in wheelchairs or with dwarfism or other disabilities in everyday parts in movies and series is good too - obviously not everyone i n the show but some character and shown i n a way that it is just about the character not their disability
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But that was my point. These days it feels as though they'd have everyone in a wheelchair. Even Superman. Coz, equality y'all!

I guess this is a case of personal preferences. For me it breaks the suspension of belief when this stuff happens. I'm taken out of the narrative and made aware of how politically correct the movie is try to be.
 
Bridgerton is a fantasy drama/romance show - nobody claims it is realistic

It suspends belief when there are characters with disabilities or in wheelchairs doing everyday things?? why?? - that is more realistic or true to life than everyone being able bodied

Ive never felt a show would have everyone in a wheelchair - that seems a perception on your part rather than a reflection of any show.
 
For many years at work I was called many offensive words, but I just grew a thicker skin.
Now, I find myself calling myself many of those offensive words when I forget things, drop things, burn my toast, spill my tea, or fail to get to the loo quick enough when I need a pee.
They are just words. 😊
 
timoc said:
For many years at work I was called many offensive words, but I just grew a thicker skin.
Now, I find myself calling myself many of those offensive words when I forget things, drop things, burn my toast, spill my tea, or fail to get to the loo quick enough when I need a pee.
They are just words. 😊
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No such thing as "just words," Timoc. Words are very important. The alternative: we could all return to being cavemen bashing each other over the head with clubs. Would that be better?
 
There is a lot more offensive stuff going on in movies than choice of words. You'd think from the casts that some of them were produced in the 3rd world.

This is a big part of why Hollywood is going belly up these days. People are disgusted and turning to media produced before insanity struck.
 
I remember that movie. It was hilarious, I thought. I wasn't offended by anything in it because the times were different in the '40s. It's offensive now because we are taught and influenced in that direction. I had a Virginian relative who used that word. It's not for me and I don't use it but our past is our past. I suppose they could edit it out without destroying the film.
 
True, Chic. I think the word felt so offensive because it is such a mean, hateful word, totally out of place in the context of that movie, which
is basically a good-natured satire. No one is supposed to take the murders seriously, or care. So hearing that word from two elegant, manipulative but sort of likable characters feels like suddenly being hit by a bucket of cold water. I just felt it didn't belong in that movie, and I never really saw where quoting a silly nursery rhyme (with or without the offensive word) was even relevant.

Strangely, if a character in, say, a crime movie or a movie about southern "rednecks" uses the word, it wouldn't bother me at all; in fact, it would make the movie seem realistic. I think it was the context that seemed all wrong.

Times were different in the 40's, that's true, but not so different that the N word was considered OK in at least half of the U.S. or apparently, England. If the word was OK in those times, why all the tigers, nickels, and other substitutions?
 
Sunny said:
Last night, I streamed an old English film, Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring the late, great Alec Guinness. I thought the movie was marvelous, even though it was made in 1949. Sir Alec plays 8 parts, one of them a woman! But I got a shock near the end.

One of the characters, a woman, plus the Alec Guinness character, are amusing themselves by remembering a childhood playground rhyme, which contains an extremely offensive word. Apparently it was not so offensive in England in the 1940's. I probably couldn't even use that word on this forum, and would not want to. I felt like I had received a punch in the stomach!

Any ideas on this?
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Could you imagine censoring "To kill a mockingbird?" "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain?" "Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck" "Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell"

Even the most recent Django movie, man the n word was tossed like confetti.

I prefer seeing our history knowing how bad we were then and how enlightened we have become.
 
Disgustedman said:
Could you imagine censoring "To kill a mockingbird?" "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain?" "Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck" "Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell"

Even the most recent Django movie, man the n word was tossed like confetti.

I prefer seeing our history knowing how bad we were then and how enlightened we have become.
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you see all of those movies where there are word that are demed offensive..in the UK.. the censors bleep them out..it makes a mockery of the story...
 
I remember asking a co-worker if she had taken her young son to see the movie "Babe" because I had seen it that weekend and thought it was delightful.

She said, "Oh, no, there's a bad word in it and I don't take him to see movies with bad words!"

Bad word? What bad word? Well, there was a scene where Babe the pig was trying to get the attention of the sheep so he could herd them and he said, "Listen up, you butt-heads!"

Well, apparently that was enough to rule out a movie that was about friendship, loyalty, kindness, etc. The kid was 7 years old. I'm sure he had heard much worse words than that at school.

Such pearl-clutching.
 
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