i finally watched 'the departed', and, having seen the trailer/ reading the plot summary, i thought for once i would see a scorcese flick without the use of the N word, amongst other niggery. wrong. like 4 seconds into the movie there it was --- Nigger. even the ricans caught the shaft. why does he always go out of his way to do this? im not mad at the man, im just wondering.

just sayin'.

and it IS a legitimate question.

if you're going to go after marty, then go after bet as well.

it's not okay that the script (which scorcese didn't write btw) uses that word, but a lot of what airs on bet is just fine and dandy.

i don't get it.

He did not mention BET at all in his question, therefore you do not know his views on BET and it's portrayal of Black people. So since you don't have that information, you claiming hypocrisy is misplaced and unnecesary.

and to think that he actually thinks he's making sense!

mindblowing.

>if you're going to go after marty, then go after bet as
>well.

When has Black Entertainment Television EVER received a pass on these here boards? Never.

But aside from that, when do you hear "nigger" on BET? If The Departed had displayed BET-style coonin, then I could see your point about hypocrisy, but we're talking about 2 different types of degradation

>it's not okay that the script (which scorcese didn't write
>btw) uses that word, but a lot of what airs on bet is just
>fine and dandy.

Nobody said anything was fine and dandy.

>i don't get it.

Evidently, you must not. If you can't see that there's a difference between black people degrading themselves, and black people being degraded by a white director and his screenwriter.

If you think degradation is degradation, and that it's all the same, then that's another discussion.

The problem is that you simply assumed that the poster had no problem with BET, which is just unfair.

And then you just assumed that degradation is the same no matter the source, white (Monahan and Scorcese) or black (Deborah Lee and Steven Hill), when that's not something to be assumed, especially if you're not black (I don't know if you are or not).

You can't go after Scorcese without attacking Marvel and DC...just sayin.


!sig!
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"When I heard they were banning the word Nigger I got on the phone with my accountant and told him to buy 800 shares of Coon" - Chris Rock

...in the media?

Mech

i mean, it's not like frank costello was supposed to be revered, the dude was scumbag to the highest extent...him busting out the n-bomb was a little shocking, but i can't say it was marty trying to drag blacks down, more about a guy like costello dragging down everyone and everything around him

Mech

...and the racism is part of it. It's the same thing with, say, James Ellroy books. He writes about corrupt asshole cops in the 50's and those guys were most likely racists...

of course, his novela are usually narrated from a first-person POV so you could argue that the reason the black characters come off that way is because they're filtered through the eyes of racist characters... but still, i wonder about him

When he's writing in third person for example and still use the "n"-word, it's a bit disturbing but I always thought of it as him trying to catch some sort of "sleazy", evil vibe, maybe I'm just trying to justify it. Hasn't he always refused to talk about his opinions on racism, politics and stuff in interviews?

(such as in the features he used to write for GQ a few years agoon subjects like Bill Clinton - who he hates more than evil itself, OJ Simpson and Bill O'Reilly - who he seems to love)

he still uses that sleazy, 1950s-style argot

he doesn't use the N-word in these, of course... but it's still pretty much the same idiom. (he doesn't shy away from talking about "camel jockeys" and "dune coons" of course)

i do think dude is a racist, but i admire his refusal to admit to or deny his racism.

i thought he was unabashedly racist

Lloyd Hopkins a liberal. I'm not sure, but I think Ellroy said that writing liberal characters wasn't interesting to him.

Dude is disturbed, though, so I think its best read everything he writes with that in mind.

As far as Scorsese, the characters in his films come from a certain background and that background lends itself to that type of jargon.

in Brown's Requiem

there wasn't too much said about his political orientation and he didn't seem particularly racist (apart from some remarks about "beaners" and "taco wagons")

he loved Beethoven instead of Wagner, though

who's Lloyd Hopkins? is that the protagonist of Clandestine?

You're right. I was referring to Brown.

Lloyd Hopkins:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Hopkins_Trilogy

>i do think dude is a racist, but i admire his refusal to admit
>to or deny his racism.

What's so admirable about that?

n/m

Mech

and it annoyed me. But i don't know if it's fair to blame Scorcese when he didn't write the script and Nicholson is the one who actually said it.

But even tho it did annoy me, i'm also aware that film is art. and art is allowed to be provocative.

cuz if it was in the script, it was the writer's fault.

i would also like to point out that assigning blame ultimately is useless unless anyone is prepared to actually do something about it.

I mean, we're learning right off the bat that this dude is a deplorable, racist asshole. It's getting to the core of a character, not trying to present some view on race from the director.

We also see Costigan's asshole cousin make fun of Puerto Ricans, and Costello later call the chinese guys 'chinks' and make the 'no ticky, no laundry' joke.

I don't see how these moves could be interpreted as the director's feelings. They allow us to gain insights into these characters, in the former case, a low-life loser criminal and in the latter, as I said above, a deplorable racist asshole scumbag. Should they be presenting this with watered down terms that don't cut as deep and in turn water down the characters?

As for the rest of his movies, as much as I hate to say it, being full-blood Italian, it's not like Italians have the best reputation when it comes to racial relations. And in Departed, it may not be Italians, but again, it's not like the Boston Irish have the best reputation with racial relations either. These are depictions of the reality with these characters, not gratuitous shots at black people.

------------
I'm a free born man of the USA.

Mech

i think these posts are ridiculous and stupid

Blaming the actor for saying a word while delivering the lines written by the writer of the script....

Wow


If I were you, i'd go back to your old approach to posting...which, judging by the number of your posts coupled with your your charter member status means, would consist of keeping your mouth shut so as not to sound like you have an extra chromosome

...what did you expect?

but for real, I don't think that he goes out of his way to be racist, at least not in this film.
just because characters in a film may be racist, doesn't mean the filmmaker is.

If he decided to do a sequal or re-make of 'birth of a nation' that would be a different story.

peace
7c

that the metro boston area is predominantly black? why do people act as if boston is the most racist place in the world? i live here like tons of other people and i been other places too. Boston is as racist as NYC or any other city for that matter. these stereotypes need to stop for real. Im not on some aggressive tip, just letting you know that this is the deaddest horse of them all

My mom was born and raised in Roxbury and I have a number of friends who live and have lived in Boston. All of them speak about the huge levels of racism that they have seen or were subjected to.

I don't think that boston is the most racist city in the world, but it definitely is far more racist than NYC. When I hear the world 'tolerance', Boston is definitely not the first place that comes to mind.

I don't mean to hate on your city, it's a pretty dope town, but you can't deny that there are still a lot of biggoted people that live there.

peace
7c

Overall, the prevailing notion that Boston is horribly racist is based on the 70s moreso than today. There's still some racism, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Gentrification probably helps that as well. I think as the neighborhoods get less ethnic, different people are accepted a lot easier.

But that reputation is tough to live down.

------------
I'm a free born man of the USA.

people are always shown or think about the busing riots that took place in Southie in the 70's...even though it *really* wasnt about race the way people think

And other thing is, its just easier/more convenient/trendy in a way, for people to simply equate boston as THE racist city, because thats what they've heard from other ill informed people. Like someone said in another thread this week, the Problem exists across the board in this country, but in Boston, people wear their hearts on their sleeves a bit more, so something that isnt racist as much as it is ignorant, comes off as being straight up racist to those who dont know what the deal is.

>Overall, the prevailing notion that Boston is horribly racist
>is based on the 70s moreso than today. There's still some
>racism, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
>Gentrification probably helps that as well. I think as the
>neighborhoods get less ethnic, different people are accepted a
>lot easier.

Yup, look at the South end right now...It went from a not so great place, mainly dwelled in by minorities, to a section of town that is on the comeup real estate wise, and in terms of race, is getting more and more diverse...Not its filled with black folk, latino, white and a large group of gay folks as well

but it kinda makes sense after the movie is done

... pull that shit are usually Gangsters too. Bad guys. I never really took any of that to heart. I mean any time i hear some racist shit it is always jarring, but at the same time that's the world we live in.



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R.I.P. 3rd i

well, aren't most of those guys racists too? if they didn't throw around racial slurs, it'd be about as realistic as police dramas on network tv where the cops & criminals don't curse.

That would be my guess.

--Maurice

to me it seemed too arbitrary... kinda forced

like "hey... let's say something racist so's the audience knows this is SOUTHIE, man!"

(that is referring specifically to The Departed, of course, and not Marty's other films)

because at the end of the opening sequence, i was like, 'how is this really salient to the remainder of the story?'

it's not even really relavent to the introduction of the characters: we get the hint that nicholson's a lecherous douchebag from the time he meets matt damon as a kid, and his general bigotry was pronounced throughout the movie. It almost felt to me like had stock footage laying around and was like 'hey let's not let this go to waste'

Look at the characters in the movies where these comments were made. They're deplorable human beings that probably really think like this.

In Goodfellas, you got Henry Hill talking about the only people that go to jail are "nigger stick up men who fall asleep in the getaway car" and then later in the film you have, ironically, Stax Edwards driving the getaway car, fucking up the disposal of the car and Tommy killing him. Incidentally, in The Heist, a book based on Lufthansa, Stax and Tommy turned out to be childhood friends and it tore Tommy up to kill him, but they told him he'd probably be made on that murder.

Earlier in Goodfellas, you got the truck driver who, after Henry and Tommy stole his truck stormed into the diner declaring, "Two niggers stole my truck". That's how these guys were back then and are now. The racism in Scorsese movies is no worse than the average Tony Soprano racism.

It is present in most of his movies from Travis' racist undertones in Taxi Driver to the blatant and murderous racism in Gangs of New York, but that is the world these movies inhabit and that world is based in fact.

especially in an episode like "Unidentified Black Males"

>especially in an episode like "Unidentified Black Males"


I take it you didn't see the "racists are big meanies" sledgehammering episode in season 4 titled "Christopher".

I've seen after-school specials that were subtler in delivering their one-note messages.

i know a lot of people hate that ep and view it as "A Very Special Episode of Sopranos," which i suppose it is, to some degree

but for a long time, it was my favorite episode of the show, hamfisted "message" and all

the message wasn't anti-racist per se... it was anti-racial narcissist and anti-collectivist.

I don't hate it but it feels like a lost episode that should be only available on dvd or something.

I mean the opening scene is actual footage from the busing riots of the 70's.

but yeah it seemed a little too blunt to lead off like that.

people talk about Scorsese as if he just makes his films and everything in them
he's a director
and people talk about Nicolson as if he makes up his own lines
he's an actor

although i suppose scorsese does collaborate on the script often and also i've heard nicolson just wrote his own dialogue in a lot of films

but surely it's the writer you've got to start with

that particular line and Scorsese liked it and decided to keep it in, unless you have a copy of the script in front of you...

And as to the next question that I'm almost certain will be asked, William Monahan didn't just win the Oscar based on the dialogue alone, but also because he did a fine job of taking the basic storyline of Infernal Affairs and making it unique to Boston -- which includes dialogue, yes, but also includes locations and a working knowledge of how people in the city behave.
_____________________________________________________________________
freak out
in a moonage daydream
oh yeah

fall back
lol

And does one have to watch the Oscars to know that he won the Oscar?
_____________________________________________________________________
freak out
in a moonage daydream
oh yeah

the oppurtunity to say 'fall back'
i know who got best director (since it was famously scorsese's first), best actor, best picture
i don't know any of that other stuff though

isn't there a copy of The Departed original screenplay on the net
it didn't sound like the sort of lines an actor would improvise
i mean for a start wasn't it a voiceover

blaming him for something because you "dont know if he was improvising" is fuckin retarded

Proof Positive that people here bitch just to see/hear themselves bitch and thats all

And he's from Somerville, just outside of Boston. No-one knows how shit goes down in Southie, UNLESS they grew up there.

always disturbed me

and yes it did seem like in Th Departed, the use of the n-word was forced and had nothing to do with the story

but then again maybe it did as in "take shit" in a mob way etc because the world is fucked and you dont actually get what you deserve so you have to do what ya gotta do to get yours

devils advocate but its still a bit disturbing ..because if the line wasn't used it wouldn't have hurt the film at all, regardless if it's Boston racism they are trying to imply...as if we don't already know that it's there

I remember The Departed initial thread here when someone wrote about her going to see the flick in the afternoon in a theater with not many people in it , and when the line came up she chuckled and said to herself "ok..now Scorcese has got his n-word out of the way..." which is telling

I fit hasn't already been done, one day I'd like this subject matter to be part of a Scorcese interview and hear his view/explanation of his use of it in his films

he was the passenger?

that nigger guy?

people fail to realize that nicholson's character was degrading EVERY ethnic race...that was his character

i swear, we need to let go of our sensitivity...

as for most scorcese film, he always try to be reality based (even while being over-the-top at the sametime), and in the real world we HAVE a multitude of bigotists especially those who live the life of crime, who ever HEARD of a fuckin' "politically correct" criminal???

niggers.

and southie especially...and dot

Wow.

OE wasn't BSing.

he just kinda clueless about some and more subtle about others.

You think they don't use it?

But i'm Irish, grew up in Boston, Parents are from Southie and Dorchester and were and still remain working class folks...and that word has absolutely NEVER been used in my house...
Some of us were raised better than that
I know it shatters the illusions that too many here hold on to that all white folks use the word when we're alone, or together with only white folks
But the fact of the matter is, that aint the way it is

nm

And it was more than unacceptable in my family.

Not to say that it doesn't exist...I've been in many houses where the various slurs were thrown around willy-nilly. But as my man said above, some of us were raised better than that.

Getting back to the topic, however, like so many folks have said in this thread, he's directing films about people who throw slurs around.

.....

------------
I'm a free born man of the USA.

it was especially forced in The Departed. He seems to have black characters as "things" rather than "people" in his movies.

you can say "white people use the n-word" in *any* US setting so I don't buy that excuse 100%.

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R.I.P. 3rd i

nobody has called me an N word yet

(to my hearing, anyway)

From what I understand, Southie has a considerable Black population now, along with various groups of Asians.

To tell the truth, whenever my family goes to Boston...if they want to get their Irish on, they go to Charlestown.

'cism all the way

--
"Personally, I prefer socialised healthcare and education for entirely selfish reasons. I don't like diseased, ignorant poor people."

the 'realistic potrayal' thing is nonsense because it was in a voiceover, not in a encounter with a black character

i went to the shop to buy The Departed today but decided not to when i saw the £17 price tag ($30... wtf)

so i can't analyse it

from what i remember
1. he's talking about some gang-fighting history? was it directly related to his own emergence as a crime-lord
2. the opening montage was incredibly brutal. the bit where they executed the blindfolded couple on the beach, even in this day and age, was ultra-violent film-making. maybe they were using the racist speech as an emotional lever to make you hate the character.

"You're gonna like this guy, alright, but we're gonna make sure right off the bat that you know what he's really about."

People are going to want to root for Nicholson.

Also, it sets up the key hypocrisy of Costello. He condemns black people for having things given to him (the busing, for instance) and says that if you want it in America, you have to take it. In reality though, he's really been given everything. He's a snitch, the Feds set him up. He demeans black people to help promote the false image that he's some self-made man.

Also, I think it would have been fitting to hear part of Nicholson's speech while he was walking into his apartment. I would have gotten rid of the girlfriend finding out about Damon too so Matt's character is walking into his apartment, a new man having sealed his past and become the star cop who killed Costello and is on the move in the department. He opens the door and you hear, "When you're facing a loaded weapon, does it really make a difference?" as he then walks into Wahlberg with the gun.

SPOILER TOO








The girlfriend finding out was a straight parallel to Infernal Affairs, and I think it did have added impact to this one since they were both with her to some extent. But your version is pretty damn cool in its own right, I wish they had shot an alternate ending like that so I can see it for real.

was raised at costigan, those words ran through my head
they set it up so you would remember it
also they used that line in the TV adverts and the trailer

>
>from what i remember
>1. he's talking about some gang-fighting history? was it
>directly related to his own emergence as a crime-lord
>2. the opening montage was incredibly brutal. the bit where
>they executed the blindfolded couple on the beach, even in
>this day and age, was ultra-violent film-making. maybe they
>were using the racist speech as an emotional lever to make you
>hate the character.


i also see it in this way as well...making the audience hate costello

and also about the beach....well he was basing costello on whitey bulger and bulger did execute and bury bodies in the beach. i remember when the fbi went digging for them but i dont think they ever recovered the bodies. (another reason why i never went to the beach in boston)

Thoughts?

the guy who actually fucked up, and got killed for it.

I mean, the guys who DIDN'T fuck up were killed also, so I don't see an issue with sam.

but yeah, i googled "dead nigger storage" and um...

I really feel sick about the n-word. like, physically sick to my stomach.

'nigger' yet still respect him at all?
if he actually admitted to doing that i would be disgusted

obviously, though, he doesn't do that
you just haven't figured out what part of the story/character/message it serves
and whether there's other ways to view his choice to play the role

p.s. he said it about 3 times, as part of the same sppeech , not 20 times

eh, true. so to be fair he aint really say the n-word 20 times.

I think that Spike's misgivings with QT over the word is somewhat the source of the thought that he (Quentin) gets off saying/writing it. Not necessarily denegrating, but grating enough, y'know?

it's easy for a writer to say something controversial but someone else has to deliver it. hell look at this post, people are blaming scorsese or saying nicolson must have improvised it. i'm the only person who even mentioned the writer!

that you called out the writer. like, a director can have misgivings about the script which he has to take up witht he writer. same with the actor.

I can respect Q as well. I guess I'm not really as mad as I had thought I was, since Tarantino is one of my favorite directors, and he's no doubt a fantastic writer. as of late that word has been making me think about chappelle's impact on the majority community and their newfound complacency with sayin the n word all day erryday. kramer comes out the wooodwork with pitchfork talk... i guess I'm more put off by the guy i work with. He's white, and in a band with all whites and one latino. they all have "nigga" names. He's a fat guy, so he's the "Bigga nigga". There's another dude named "nigga please". the latino is called the "spigga nigga". and he makes it a point to emphasize the "uh" as opposed to "er" so he CAINT be racist!

WRONG. might not be racist, but that shit is still steeped highly in stupidity.

he'll come in and be like "they spinnin nigga they spinnin" like bigger and blacker came out yesterday. Start quoting Rick James ala Chappelle...et al. I've checked him a couple times (two times two many without jabbin him in the face), after he gets all his ignorant ranting out, and he tries to retort with "but yous my nigga tho right?"

"I AINT NOBODY'S NIGGER!" (c) 40 y/o virgin. that shit is not cool, period. He's not in my department anymore, but still i hear my fair share of white people tryin to slide one by... especially when using "dead nigger storage" as their crutch.

*Anti-nword rant over* i just feel like sometimes cats hear that shit said in the arts, in high profile art like taht of scorsese and of tarantino, miss the point, and then it's like they got a 90 day pass for niggering it up like it's 1899.

I didnt even read all the post because this is so goofy. Does anyone honestly believe Scorcese goes out of his way to degrade blacks? cmon man.

>*Anti-nword rant over* i just feel like sometimes cats hear
>that shit said in the arts, in high profile art like taht of
>scorsese and of tarantino, miss the point, and then it's like
>they got a 90 day pass for niggering it up like it's 1899.

yeah it's true that the lots of people are guilty of missing the point ESPECIALLY with Tarantino
it's quite an intellectual film about dysfunctional morality in modern american culture
but i've heard so many people say it's 'all style' or 'just a cool film that doesn't mean anything'
which is a big problem cause a lot of evil stuff happens in that film. it may have a veneer of style/coolness but you MUST peel that back

in the case of 'dead nigger storage' specifically though, it's tied into the theme of miscegenation. Jimmy is actually married to a black woman for a start, black and white is a visual motif throughout the film... it would take me ages to explain all this, but you get the picture that mixing of people from different backgrounds often produces inappropriate speech patterns, inappropriate behavior and so on.

also i'm not sure if people even get the D.N.S. scene anymore, it's become almost mythical.
'i'm not in the business of storing dead fucking niggers!' is the key line
Jimmy is not casually using the word 'nigger' there like Marsellus or Jules do in the film or insultingly like Lance (the drug dealer who says 'Am I a nigger? Discerning white people know...') does
he's saying 'am I some sort of Klu Klux Klan safehouse??'
if Jules had been a white character, then this would be a purely dismissive sentiment
but since Jules is black, Jimmy is sort of calling attention to his actions, ie. kidnapping and killing a black man then disposing of the body

i mean think about it, Jimmy/Tarantino took an already extremely offensive word, then cranked it up several more degrees by putting 'Dead' before it and 'Storage' after it. he's basically saying 'this is foul, the sort of foulness that would imply a sign saying Dead Nigger Storage'

it's like if i knew some jewish people, and one day they came to my door with a murdered jewish person, wanting to dispose of the body, and i, shocked (yet somewhat used to crime), said 'Is the Holocaust back on or something?? Did you see a sign on my gate saying Aushwitz 2.0: Cleanse your Kikes?'

tarantino's shit ain't nowhere near that deep to me. He has yet to make a film with any kind of message whatsoever, other than "Damn I wish I was Sam Peckinpah. And I like the word nigger. A LOT."

i don't get how people can watch a film with so much detailed writing put into it and then feel safe to conclude that it didn't attempt to convey any messages, or that you have to do 'gymnatics' to interpret it in an intellectual way

to be honest i think most intellectual activity must be 'gmynastics' to people who say that

lol

I am not an expert on Scorcese's work but The Departed is an excellant film. Boston is a very racist place and the use of the racial slurs just provided a realistic backdrop, that's all.

Frank costello
"That’s what the black chappies never realized. No one gives it to you. You have to take it.”

Have black people made any gains via negotiation alone? I don't think so. You may be uncomfortable with the language but the statement is the truth.

Please don't tell me you was upset about a penguin that was tap dancing. Did you cry a fit about that too?

"Boston is a very racist place"

Fuck
Outta
Here

Especially folks here that are always quick to bring up other shit that should be attacked, when anyone complains about one thing. "You think that's rascist? Why weren't you yelling back when _____ came out???" Which is the lamest defense ever for anything.

Yeah. They had the word nigger once in the movie, just once, and it stuck out like a really sore thumb. And then on top of that the movie had exactly one black actor in the whole movie, and he was pretty much the only selfless, unconniving guy in the movie and he gets shot in the head because of it.

Anthony Anderson was almost like Scorcese's kinda/sorta apology for even using the word. Like, look guys, I'm not rascist, the nigger in my movie is the only guy with a heart!!!

The movie was okay, but...I don't know, it seems like a lot of tough guy movies now will have dialogue with white characters saying nigger just to show how tough and un-PC they are. You know, like 'look everybody, this guy must be tough if he's not scared of getting an ass whooping by saying nigger out loud without looking around first'. A lot of times, like with this one, it just seems forced. I mean it didn't really serve much purpose. Especially when race isn't much of an issue in the plot, not really, not even involving the one black guy in it...

Why then does there seem to be at least one character in the large majority of Scorsese's films that has these same feelings and says similar, if not the same, types of things.

What I have debated for a long time is whether he truly finds this to be bad or whether its just something he uses to telegraph badness. Because if he is just using it to telegraph... I don't like that. Find other ways to do it without including racism in so many of your films. But if it is because he thinks these thoughts are evil, why aren't people ever punished directly for saying racist things and why aren't there more minority characters to counter these racist opinions?

But maybe thats just me.

just his most notable ones. I think he's interested in racial themes but not to the point that he wants to make them a focal point of his movies.

>What I have debated for a long time is whether he truly finds
>this to be bad or whether its just something he uses to
>telegraph badness. Because if he is just using it to
>telegraph... I don't like that. Find other ways to do it
>without including racism in so many of your films.

I don't think you can boil it down to one reason that translates to all of his films. Sometimes it's just used as an added sense of realism, sometimes it's a little more. In The Departed, he seems to be doing what you said (along with a way of telling the audience 'this is southie), and it's the only one of his films where the word felt out of place to me. Partially because it's damn near the first word you hear in the movie. But different movies/scenes/characters = different reasons.

In Goodfellas, a criminal truck driver who just took part in his own hijack runs into the diner screaming "two niggers just stole my truck". Aside from the obvious hypocrisy, the scene also speaks on society, since the man was certain no one in this diner full of whites (especially back in the 60s). would question his claim if he blamed two black boogeymen.

Or the idiocy of Henry speaking on how only "nigger stickup men" go to jail, and of course he winds up in prison not long after.

Sometimes it's just used to add a sense of reality to an environment. like where Tommy berates his girlfriend for finding Sammy Davis Jr attractive. it might not be a 'necessary' scene but it's pretty safe to assume that's the reaction you would hear from a low ranking, lowlife Italian mobster.

I think in Taxi Driver the Scorsese/Taxi scene was used to add to the ugliness surrounding an already racist character. Kind of fueling his fire. (random trivia: Keitel's pimp character was originally supposed to be black)

those are a few that come to mind.

he's an old school style gangster. With his age and status, how would he NOT be racist?

My grandparents on both sides, along with my father, grew up in those southie projects...So I know a lot of old school southie guys that you could interchange with Frank Costello...

and yes, he's dead on...

just that it sticks out because the movie opens with it, so it came off a little forced.

shit, that whole opening scene... gimme shelter + mobster + n-bomb = marty screaming "I'm back bitches!"

I aint mad at him.

>shit, that whole opening scene... gimme shelter + mobster +
>n-bomb = marty screaming "I'm back bitches!"

that people constantly talk about how racist this society is and white people in particular. On these boards you constantly see cats saying stuff like, "well, You know all white people use that word as soon as their safe in their surroundings" blah blah blah( bullshit by the way, but hey, cats are gonna think what they want)
And then the word is used once in a movie and people *act* all up in arms questioning how so and so could possibly justify using that word in a script based on realism...

I mean, I know people stay bitching just to bitch on this site, but...

>I mean, I know people stay bitching just to bitch on this
>site, but...

...truer

It's been a GOOD minute.

It's funny, 'cause the Puerto Rican family across the street...their sister got knocked up by a Black dude (a guy I graduated with...far from "a bum"), and I heard the N-word more that whole week than I think I ever heard in my life lol

And no talk of his litany of racial slurs against the asians in The Departed?

You all can be so narrow minded. One of the least dynamic discussions of race I've seen, especially as one pretending to be something relatively high minded.

It's almost funny the way this post has fleshed out.

It opened up with the bussing riots. I'm not sure if the timeline is right,...if Costello was woo'ing young Colin during the riots timeframe (that appears to be what they're going for),

With the OBVIOUS footage of the riots at the beginning of the movie (something I understood as "This is what this area of Boston is known for"), it seemed that Nicholson was coming off LESS 'racist', and more matter-of-factly.

They showed footage of these racist riots, and Nicholson came in to say "I don't have a problem with'em, personally...yadda yadda" (yes, I have the movie, I'm just paraphrasing to make a point). He said the N-word 'cause that's how ALOT of people talk...especially in the 70's...especially in Boston...

I also thought the footage of the white Southie people running around and throwing punches...along with a black man saying "It puts hate in your heart"....showed the opposite. The guy seemed real calm, and civilized...taking into consideration what was going on. If you ask me, it made the Irish Southie people look more like assholes than Costello using the N-word could ever do. Showing the young black girls smiling on the bus with painted "NO"'s on mailboxes and people hooping and hollaring made Southie look even worse.

This is what Southie was known for.

I think it was important for the movie to start there. Especially if it was in this timeframe that Costello was getting into Colin's head. This was the enviroment both of them spawned from.

Costello said what he said @ the beginning because it went with what they were showing. He also brought up "guineas" because they were making the segueway into organized crime. He was bringing up how the Irish had to control their part of the city.

Sean Costigan said Puerto Ricans are stupid, when it was made known NUMEROUS times that Sean himself was a grade-A dumbass. Especially when they were bumping Nas. Alot of books about Southie pointed this types of contradictions out...which is one of the main points being made. Alot of the Irish kids living in the projects hated talked shit about the Black kids living in THEIR projects. The Irish junkies called the Black people junkies, etc...

The kids in Old Colony projects said don't associate with the kids in the D-Street projects 'cause they were "white niggers"...but the D-Street kids were saying the exact same thing about the Old Colony kids.

Not making excuses, but there is a method to the madness. People act like Marty makes great movies and throws in the N-word a few times just to be a prick lol

I'm from Boston, and alot of people that come here from other cities are surprised that you have white people living in public housing, more so than racism towards Blacks.

it went deeper than that...
its hard to explain, but its the truth...

It was the fact that Southie was being "controlled" by an outsider (and Irish politician), whom they wanted on a stick...

Southie was being "infultrated" by outsiders...in thise case, Black people. Even still, Southie felt uncomfortable with outsiders @ that point. Even other Irish people who came to Southie...they were not welcome and viewed as "suspicious" with a sideways eye. You had to pay your dues, put in work, etc... get known...before you were considered "official".

Hell, they nabbed Costiagn for the job because he had the last name. he was "connected". They knew without that last name, sending him into Southie...even if he beat up 20 wiseguys...no one would throw him a bone.

but yeah, the riots weren't just about White people wanting to kill the Black kids. It was alot of variables involved.

Also, alot of Southie people complained how the media were focusing on the Irish people rioting against the bussing, when in Roxbury, all the Southie kids getting bussed out of town were getting beatdown and stabbed by the people over there. Practically an entire generation of youth dropped out of school due to the forced bussing. They wanted to go to a school in their own tight-knit community. It was a socio-experiement gone wrong...mixing poor Whites with poor Blacks, and when the smoke cleared...it was "racist riot footage".

None of the politicians responsible took notice of the powder keg that was obviously fixing to blow. They still said all steam ahead and proceeded with their socio-curiosities.

A good damn post.

lol

The banker pissed him off, he was calling him Irish...

Sharon Stone pissed him off....she became Irish.

Poor Dominick WAS Irish, and he squished his head 'till his eyeball exploded lol

mick, guinea, mick, guinea, mick, guinea....

i think hes just tryinta keep it real.
lol.



______

my bad.

http://www.last.fm/user/EmpressEricka
http://www.myspace.com/kakiking

.

The Irish-American assimulation program was simple.

"Hey, we're getting the shitty jobs, if ANY jobs...w're broke, hungry, and we've got families"

"Yeah, we need to assimulate and get some of this money that these other white people are getting"

Aristocrat: "Hey, here's an idea...we'll let you join SOME of the fruits of our little 'white american' club if you do some things for us"

"Name it!"

"We'll give you jobs as policeman and fireman, as public servants, and you play the frontlines"

"Deal!"

Irish people...traditionally, are in denial about alot of things. They are still the poorest European-American ethnic group in America.

They tended to hate on minorities to help distance themselves from their own roots.

or paint with broad brush strokes..cause that would just be ignorant

thank god you dont do that

he wasn't degrading blacks. he was degrading niggers.

1) Martin Scorcese is a director... he takes a story, and involves the person watching into the characters and the plot as much as he can, racism is a STRONG way to make you feel a certain way about a character or give you a hint of how that character's personality is... take that into context with the year the plot is based and also the location and what is going on. Movies like Goodfellas, Departed, etc., its all within the the context of the characters and their own nationality and how they sterotypically think. Scorcese isn't to blame for this, he is trying to paint the most capitivating picture he can, and racism is something that comes into effect. You think Goodfellas would have been compelling without the racist aspects with Samuel L Jackson and the comments Pesci made during the concert in the club. These plot points build emotion in the scene and Scorcese is a genius at doing this and thats why his movies have so much depth.

2) Martin Scorcese has movies where he doesn't advocate racism. You ever seen Bringing Out The Dead? One of the main character is Vingh Rhames and he's a hero in that movie. Also I cant really pinpoint and black racism in Gangs of New York or Aviator, so I think your point is invalid, your beef should be with the characters and environment in Scorceses "mobster" themed movies not with the director himself.

Peace



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the ignorance that is present in the criminal mind set. I think its a conscious effort to make sure that certain characters are truly seen as bad people, and not someone to idolize.

If the sometimes racist characters in his films reflect on Marty himself, it also becomes very likely that he is intentionally advancing the stereotype that Italians are all involved in the Mafia. We're not supposed to like many of the characters in his films. I think he is very aware of what he is doing. Scorsese has been doing this for quite a while.

What could be a problem is that so many other directors use this same approach but don't seem to understand the purpose or at least don't pull it off as well. Tarantino's "dead nigger storage" line just has an air of trying to be cool more than anything else.

Has anyone watched the documentary in "Gangs of New York"? I thought it did a decent job in explaining some of the racist attitudes in New York. A lot of the shit seems deeply rooted. Everyone seems to have been pitted against each other in their attempts to survive in the U.S. after their arrival.
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