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Forum namePass The Popcorn Archives
Topic subjectthey're not in the majority of his films.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=23&topic_id=54488&mesg_id=54599
54599, they're not in the majority of his films.
Posted by Mynoriti, Sat Mar-17-07 08:56 PM
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.