"Cracker" does indeed have a meaning and I find find it very insulting when it is used against me. It is derisive and demeaning.

And I think Richards was way out of line. BTW non of my black friends use epithets against any other black people.

There some enlightened minds left on this earth.....at least someone gets it. I was beginning to think you all were getting ready to justify KKK rallies and parades as being ok next.

Define what you mean by "being ok."

This is a really interesting discussion to follow, because I can really see both sides of the issue. (there I go sounding all Canadian again :) )

On the one hand, any discrimination based on skin colour is by definition racism. But as has been pointed out, it's not so black and white. Racism can have certian degrees, or at least the language of it can.

For example, guage your reaction to the following words:
honkey
cracker
spic
kike
nigger

They get progressively more loaded, I'd say. That's the nature of words. These terms all have the same basic meaning, (i.e. discrimination based on skin colour) but some are more loaded than others (honkey vs. nigger).

As for some people adopting the word nigger in self-reference, to suggest this is to keep old wounds open is ludicrous. (but not Ludacris! :D ) Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the history of rap and hiphop, I think it was originally adopted as a shocking, "take back the power" move, and has now just become commonplace. But I think blacks are the only ones to have adopted their own racial slur. You never hear jews calling each other kikes, do you?

Rednecks call each other "rednecks", Christien, in the same spirit blacks call each other "nigger". It seems to be acceptable when done among themselves, but they very much resent it when heard from the "outside". Identical to the situation with blacks, in every respect but one.

That "redneck" is very much a racial slur seems to have been lost in our modern, politically correct society. It is perfectly acceptable for a black man to use the term "redneck" with all the vile hatred a white man can put behind "nigger", yet somehow we tolerate the black man when he does this.

We have white comedians (Jeff Foxworthy is the best known) that use the term "redneck" throughout their acts, just as black comedians use "nigger". The difference is we also have black comedians that regularly use the term "redneck" and people laugh. Strange double standard, no?

no it isn't. Didn't you read my or the's posts? Or do you just disagree?

Tell me when people used the word Honkey when describing a slave. Tell me when honkey was used when when a white person couldn't be admitted into a certain building or area, tell me when honkey was used when they had to drink out of different water fountains, tell me when honkey was used when whites couldn't vote in this country, or when being arrested, or when a white man dated a white girl.

You guys don't really get it.
And it's ok. You are a product of your environment.

Tarantino's self-played character asks in Pulp Fiction: "What the hell is a dead nigger doing in my garage?" And that's not the least bit racially charged? If so, then what's the meaning of the dialogue? Is the character just saying it to say it, making it really a throwaway line, and in some respects, a flaw in the script?

No, Tarantino is not that talentless. His characters are highly motivated and meaningful - to the film. So, if you as a fan tout his abilities as highly as you have, you will also tout his scriptwriting abilities at revealing the characters' innermost cores - and in doing that, you cannot deny that several of the characters' innermost cores were motivated at least partly on a racial level, bringing the movie, in part, to light on a racial level.

Was the film's overall theme racially motivated? No. But as I've said, use of "nigger" no longer coincides with frivilous dialogue - the word has power and impact. And because Tarantino invests in powerful characters, such words pack much stronger connotations than if Shane Black or Joe Esterhaus used them.

Angry for no reason. No, I have reasons.

One reason, in fact, is how some - you included - would rather excuse so-called technical talent, edgy thematics, and overall coolness as a legitimate sounding block for sensationalism in language and violence. Speeder tagged it correctly about Tarantino being juvenile at the core of his movies, and believe me, no film making ability - technically to say the least, or stylizations to a theme, can supplant the story's overall message when brought to the table - which in Tarantino's case, involves characters that I believe Hollywood would think twice about utilizing, if not shun altogether.

But really, since you bring up the comparison of Tarantino "in certain academic circles" to Ford, Hitchcock and Wells; while staying on the subject of this thread, can you tell me which movie, if any, directed by Ford, Hitchcock or Wells, used "nigger" in its dialogue, and which of either directors' films were thematically based within racial parameters and stereotypes in the same way as Tarantino's?

If at all, when given the entire body of Tarantino's nine films, the critics regard him as just a B-level filmmaker as this link shows:
http://movies.yahoo.com/mvc/dls?lid=255-25834&iid=255-94773

B-level or not, i like his films a hellofalot better then 90% of the other ****e that comes out of Hollywood...


furthemore, he hasn't made 9 movies at all
the following aren't his as director
Little Nicky (Sandler)
Dusk till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez )
Natural Born Killers ( Oliver Stone)
Four Rooms (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez )


and Kill Bill, i would consider 1 movie in 2 episodes..
and imho he has 4 actual movies under his belt...

and no matter how you sort the movies, either on user grade, average user grade, or critics grade... all 4 Tarantino movies do rank higher then all the other movies i just listed as beeing by somebody else...

nough said

You also forgot True Romance...as script writer/bit part

wasn't on the yahoo list ...
besides, i only rate it a Tarantino movie , if he also directed it...
scriptwriting in general does not make it "the writers" movie

Yeah we do get it. You're not endowed with some special insight that others don't have. What you don't seem to get is the hatred used behind ANY racial slur, including cracker or honky. Those aren't complimentary terms pal.

You can't possible be arguing that the word nigger and the word redneck carry the same weight, can you? That's just crazy. "Redneck" doesn't carry anywhere near the amount of hate that "nigger" does, and I don't think anybody would deny that. I could walk up to any friend of mine who was, say, wearing a pair of overalls and a plaid shirt and say "hey man, you look funny, you look like a redneck" and probably get a laugh. If the same guy were wearing heavy gold chains and bright white Adidas and I said "hey man, you look funny, you look like a nigger", well, I'd better have a damn good explanation. It's like saying you want to make love to a woman, vs. wanting to f**k her. Sure, technically it means the same thing, but the connotation is completely different.

The fact that we have multiple words for what is technically the same definition is why we speak a language, rather than computer code.

Redneck does not even denote a person's race, and was never a hardcore slur. I see the problem w/ race relations right here on this board, there is a lot of ingrained ignorance left in society. Also a lot of pathological victim mentality amongst the poor, oppressed suburban white man. Pathetic.

I'm sorry, dd74, the uttering of one word by a minor character does not for me define a movie. Are you saying that if Tarantino would have had a hard time shopping PULP FICTION today because of his character's throwaway line? What if he just nicked the line? Would he have a hard time shopping the movie then because of the violence? If so, then what about the countless sub-B-level action movies that get green-lighted every year? I find your argument to be flawed.

I also am having trouble with your argument about Tarantino's characters being less-than attractive by Hollywood standards; if anything, I find that, despite the predeliction toward juvenile violence and language, Tarantino's films have a surprisingly conservative moral core about them. Of course, there are exceptions (NATURAL BORN KILLERS), but for the most part it is clear which characters are meant to be identified with (for example, Mr. White vs. Mr. Blonde in RD).

Well, if sub-B level is what you're aiming for, I'm sure it's easier to achieve than A-level. Maybe...Don't know as I've outgrown Tarantino in many ways.

But that leaves us in quite a quandry -- doesn't it. Because history is full of incredible offenses committed by one group of people onto another. A short list for reference...

English against the Irish
Germans against the Jews
The Japanese against a whole slew of Asians
The Russians against most of Eastern and Central Europeans
The French against their colonies
The Belgiens against their Colonies
The Chinese against countless smaller cultures
The Turks against the Armenians
The Iranians and the Iraqi's
The Muslems against the Jews and Christians at various times, and the reverse at other times.
Various tribes of people against others (The Mohawks had a particularly bad reputation if my memory is correct)
The Homo Sapians against the Neanderthals
Etc.
etc.

Everyone's got a beef against someone else. If the only way to make it right is to stir up hatred and attack the other -- what's that say about our future? The only way out of the circle of violence is for someone at some point to forgive. When you forgive, you let it go. You don't forget necessarily, but you do have to let it go so that it no longer creates anger and hatred.

What Richards said and did was wrong. He obviously has a lot of hatred. But he's not the only person or group in our society who still filled with that much hatred. And until they let it go, it's just going to continue to eat them up from the inside out.

More Sammyworld, his "barely in the news" example is on the front page of the LA Times today, above the fold. And it's being prosecuted (rightly) as a hate crime.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hate23nov23,0,5926932.story?coll=la-home-headlines

What's it like living in your world, Sammy? The white man's burden, and all? ;)

Don't stop spouting your ignorance, though. You're what's known as "the gift that keeps on giving" on a BBS. :cool:

You are of course right - although this is a very utopian view.

In many parts of the world the hatred and anger is escalating. I don't see too many people letting go of their anger anytime soon.

Coincidentally - on the subject of anger - I saw a film called 'Edmond' last night. Best film I have ever seen on this subject. Brilliant in fact. Worth heading down to Blockbuster for.

hmmm, my mother and law was called nigger repeatedly as she was being hosed down while walking the streets with Martin luther King. She had a lot of time to reflect on that as she sat in the jail cell afterwards. She was twelve years old then. Make no mistake, that word hurts just as much today as it then did. Hell, it might hurt more today just based on the fact that you can not be a white person in america today and not have a clue as to the depth of that word. When you use it, your using it to cut deep.

It's funny, During Thanksgiving today. We had a house full of both young and old black people. Lots of family and friends coming and going. I did not hear the words nigger or nigga used once as a greeting

We don't use that word in my household, In fact, I don't know of any black people that do use the word. Just because you've heard it on a rap song or heard Samuel Jackson or David Chappelle use it doesn't mean it's endorsed by the black community.

Have I been called a nigger? yep, while being chased down the street, simple because I was walking down that street and happened to be black. As an adult, I won't be chased down the street anymore. Have I been called a nigga? Yep. Don't care for that one either and I let the person know. The difference is the person calling me a nigger has complete and utter hate for who I am as a human being.

MR lost it. Is he a racist? I don't think so. I think he was being heckled by a black man and in order to cut him down he called him a nigger. it was personal, it was deliberate. he knew exactly what he was doing. he wasn't trying to be funny( he'd already failed at that, that's why he was being heckled in the first place) he was trying to belittle the man in the biggest possible way.