h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jackson is remaking The Dam Busters, a 1954 English WW2 movie based on real life events and characters. In the original is a black labrador called N*gg*r, which is the name of the dog in the RL events. The dog's name is also radio code for the success of the operation.

Apparently the original played in the US with N*gg*r overdubbed by Trigger.

Jackson feels he is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't in terms of using the dog's original real life name.

Curious to see what h2ers think is a good solution.

(I've starred out n*gg*r as an attempt to get this through the filter, although given the context I shouldn't really have to).

This came up before. The general concensus was that the dog should be renamed. I suggested Nigel. A more radical suggestion was to change the dog's character into Flight Lieutenant Stryker, Gibson's right hand man who dies in a tragic accident just before the mission. In a twist of irony, Stryker is played by Samuel L Jackson .

Seriously, I don't know what the answer is. To change things would be altering history, but Hollywood does that without hesitation anyway. It's not as if it's a crucial element of the story.

History be damned! The studio will not call the dog n****r, cos an accountant will work out that it will cost them money. Which is fair enough, as a movie like this is business first, entertainment second, and history is way down the list somewhere,

The word in question is deeply offensive to many people, of various races, and therefore should be doomed to the dustbin of history, along with other demeaning "historically accurate" things such as human slavery.

Morning JCN

If I am reading you right you seem to be suggesting that 'unpleasnat' parts of history should be dumped somewhere and never looked at or referred to again.

Would this apply to The Holocaust, or Stalin's purges? Would that mean that the most important lessons of history would no longer be referred to?

Novo

You most definitely are NOT reading me correctly, whether by design or by accident I don't know. Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear. What I'd hoped to convey is that, for example, people who have been subjected to the Holocaust in the course of history should not now also need to suffer the additional degradation of having people calling them by racial epithets, or of having people using hurtful racial epithets lightly.

OK, understood , so that's all right then.

Novo

I'll give it one last try to get my thought across: racial epithets, of whatever stripe, should be doomed to the dustbin of history. They are not helpful in any way toward moving civilization in a positive direction. Historically accurate, unfortunately yes, but not helpful.

I understand your point JCN, but that route carries dangers too. If we whitewash history, re-write the books and fluffify Hollywood, we will have a generation who will have no sense of context.

For example, slavery and emancipation. If we do not describe how an entire society regarded negroes as little more than wallpaper, how could someone relate to the Civil Rights movement?

Someone should have told the producer and black actors in the Shaft remake film it was wrong to use the "n" word then, let alone in music today.
As to deleating slavery, wouldn't that have made a series like "Roots" a little difficult to make.
Films are never that historically acurate anyway, you never hear the truth that North Africans took around one and a half million Europeans as slaves to use in their galleys, etc (including whole coastal British villages) or that Africans were using other black Africans as slaves before the horrific slave trade began.

Going back to the Dambusters; I think Peter Jackson's remake is going to try and be more faithful to the real events than the 1954 film (ie about the sucess of the mission and of Guy Gibson's personality).

The name of the dog is another matter; when Guy Gibson named it N**ger it was as a joke and not seen as offensive. Although it would be historically accurate to call the dog N**ger it would seem that Peter Jackson was also making the joke and that is what would be seen as unnacceptable nowadays (and rightly so).

It isn't a question of fluffing over the bad bits of history but thinking about the how things have changed; what is now unnacceptable used to be normal and visa versa.

SP

You couldn't make Schindler's List without mentioning the Holocaust, but there's a difference between that and having a character in something else calling his dog "Jewboy" when it isn't important to the plot.

There's another reason for changing it - it will jar in the ears of a modern audience every time he calls his dog, and detract from the film as a film.

Why does this need to be so difficult? I'm not talking about "whitewashing" history! I'm simply saying, obviously not very effectively, that we should avoid the needless, casual, and pointless perpetuation of offensive racial epithets. They serve no useful purpose. Yes, of course such things have sadly been a part of our history. And of course nobody is without some sort of historical sin when it comes to perpetrating evil on their fellow humans. We sasdly appear to have a proclivity for it. This does not make it a characteristic that should be needlessly perpetuated.

Surely it's possible to distinguish between the vital and the non-vital bits of history, and between important and insignificant details?

For example, if someone were to make a new film version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' it would be okay to put racist expressions and terms into the mouths of the actors as it is key to the plot. The story of TKAM is timeless to a certain extent, but is also about a particular time and place where racial prejudice was widespread. It would do TKAM an injustice to say that it's just about racism and prejudice, because it's about other things too, but the literay and historical context would justify the use of terms of racist abuse, particularly as the story contains a strong anti-racist message.

However, the Dam Busters is not about racism or prejudice as far as I remember - although I only saw the original once and a very long time ago. Although the name of the dog might tell us something about the prevailing attitudes at the time, it doesn't add anything to the plot or to the film as spectacle - that's just not what the film is *about*. TKAM without racism would be like Hamlet without the Prince. Changing the dog's name in DB will make absolutely no difference as far as I can see.

JCN, it isn't difficult, but the point is that the only people who seem to be using the "n" word these days are black...I don't remember the original Shaft film, a very good film, using the "n" word, the remake a couple of years ago has it in it, quite a lot if I remember.
Also the same with some modern music.....

And so ...? You conclude from this that it's fine for you or me to use the word? Exactly what's your point?

You know, it's the repeated highlighting of the name that is causin the problem. If we didn't go on about it so and twist ourselves into moral knots over it, it wouldn't really be an issue.

Make the film. Keep the dog's name. If anyone asks, that was it's actual name. I would hope that the remake would be good enough that there will be other bits a little more memorable.

Why not highlight the fact that bombing dams killed hundreds of innocent civilians?

What I conclude from this is you should be talking to the actors, film makers and musicians who use the "n" word, no one on H2G2 uses the word!

Yes, that's certainly one positive note! Maybe we're making progress!

The thing is SWL, I think it will actually make it a worse film by drawing the attention of the audience to something which isn't that important to the plot, and away from whatever else is happening on-screen. The attitudes when the old version was made were very different, and it wouldn't have had that effect.