Well since I am gaining and losing followers quickly these days, here goes another you'll love it or hate it post. (and I will warn you now that this post contains the "n" word as do the video clips)
So apparently a new addition of Huckleberry Finn is being published and this version will replace the word nigger with the word slave- all 219 times it appears in the book. At first glance, it seems like maybe it is a positive change. It is probably one of the most emotionally charged words in the English language. It is a word that holds open the ugliness of a time when African Americans were less that human and it leaves no room to hide from that truth. How many white kids are uncomfortable reading the book because of that word, how many black kids feel singled out (or worse degraded), how many schools just don't teach it so they don't have to deal with the issue? Why wouldn't we get rid of it?
Except that to remove it removes part of our history- a history I know many would prefer to forget. To (and pardon the pun) whitewash that aspect of the book changes both the book and the learning opportunities for students. If anything, the fact that Huck and Jim are friends despite the fact Jim is "a nigger" ( something that Twain makes no bones about) is a valuable message. Huck knows the score, he knows the value that society places on Jim and he befriends him anyway- isn't that the lesson students should learn. To look past the labels, to look past the perceptions of society and to make judgments about the worth of people based on those people- not public opinion.
Yes- the original version makes people uncomfortable- it should. It is a reminder of our past ugliness but it also offers hope for the future. How many of the lessons we have learned best were learned BECAUSE they were uncomfortable. And remember, the book isn't typically being read by elementary school children- it is taught in high school with children in their teens and approaching adulthood. If they can't handle this because it makes them uncomfortable- how on Earth will they handle the hundreds of uncomfortable things that happen in adulthood. This is one of those difficult lessons that will shape young people into global citizens- but not if they never have to do the hard work.
Here is another example of how you change the meaning by removing certain words. I searched the web for an edited clip (the version that is shown on TV has the word nigger removed) but couldn't find one so you will have to use your imagination. (Sorry). This is the original clip from Blazing Saddles (so you have to imagine how much less of an impact it has when the last word is deleted- or replaced with a less offensive term)
And this review of the movie and the relevance of not deleting the offensive words. Find the original here in it's entirety. (and yes, I realize this is a comedy and Huck Finn is not- but the parallels are the same)
The brilliance of Mel Brooks, back in his heyday at least, was that Blazing Saddles embodied both and all of these things. If his gleefully raunchy farce were about only its "bad taste" or the number of times the word "nigger" gets deployed, then it would be just another forgettable splat on the ever-growing mountain of in-your-face shock comedies.
Instead, as a satirical flag waving in the racial and social winds of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Blazing Saddles' casual vulgarity, racial epithets, and pants-dropping silliness are spread like the very best butter over the more serious business of iconoclastically upturning expectations and tropes, especially some shibboleths found not just in old-fashioned cowboy movies. Its humor is the palliative that lets Brooks mock prejudices and, with gloves off, prejudiced people. Not that Brooks sought to make a "message film," oh hell no. After all, we still get the famous campfire beans-and-farts scene, which is about nothing more than being the first beans-and-farts scene in cinema history. Still, it's fair to say that Blazing Saddles broke ground as well as wind.
What keeps the potentially offensive from being genuinely offensive is something that may not be obvious at first viewing. Cleavon Little's Bart is never played as a victim. This intelligent, good-looking, elegant, well-spoken black man knows exactly how to play off the idiocy of the asinine white crackers that surround him. "These are people of the land," consoles the Waco Kid, summarizing Bart's antagonists with perfect deadpan, "The common clay of the new West. You know," — here's where nobody times a pause better than Wilder — "morons."
A fundamental ingredient that Brooks' latterday genre parodies lack is a sense of purpose beyond their hit-or-miss humor. Blazing Saddles faced down contemporary racist attitudes, ending with its foot triumphantly planted on racism's chest.....
Blazing Saddles laughs at racists, not with them, recalling Brooks' objective in The Producers to "dance on Hitler's grave." While its broadsides pointed at institutional redneckery are projected against the most conservative of movie genres, there's nothing mean-spirited here. Blazing Saddles is playfully disarming at every turn, downright joyful even. You can search through the movie with calipers, a magnifying glass, and a Geiger counter and still not find an angry, whiny, or uptight moment. Here is cinema's most affable, most happy-to-meet-you movie to include an apple-cheeked old granny barking "Up yours, nigger!" from under her bonnet. Anyone actually offended by Blazing Saddles is someone in dire need of a hearty offending....
Now, thirty years on, we have trouble imagining any A-list studio, including Warner Brothers, having the gumption and guts to let Brooks, or anyone else, ring some of those bells today. But heaven knows they should. And don't start with calling Blazing Saddles "politically incorrect," a lazy-ass term redefined and misused so often that it's bled dry of any useful meaning. In these times when sanctimony and sound-bite puritanism are treated as virtues, we need a Blazing Saddles, a wry, bold, good-hearted taboo-buster that deflates bigots (and their fear that others would monger), while simultaneously suggesting we unclench our sphincters and get over ourselves.
I decided (after much internal debate) to go ahead and use the word, rather than a euphemism like "the n-word" for many of the same reasons. If I can't use the word while discussing this story, how could I expect teachers and students to be able to use it when discussing Huck Fin. I apologize if it has been used in a way that is perceived as offensive- no offense was intended but I felt it we are really going to discuss it, it was time to drop the safe words and discuss it.
And let me also add, even though I used the term PC in the title- I don't think this is really a PC issue. (PC itself is a loaded term- you either believe that society should acknowledge that not everyone is a cookie cutter white middle class Christian or you don't. PC is a label slammed at those in the first group by those in the second- but I digress) Anyway, I think this is not so much an issue of trying to be PC but an issue of cowardice- it is easier this new way. Many of the hardest conversations don't have to happen if Jim is only a slave.
Or for another take on the issue
1 comment:
Amen, and luckily there will be millions of copies "out there" that have not been whitewashed.
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