Quote:
Originally Posted by antikristuseke
(Post 1683498)
The acceptability of words in a social situation should depend on the context the given word is used in, no word itself should be concidered inherently offensive.
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I'm with antikristuseke on this one. It might also have something to do with historical differences. As Finland hasn't had similar minority of black people, let alone slavery in the past, the word "******", while not acceptable these days, doesn't necessarily conjure such harsh images in here either.
To give an example, I have seen some old school books and adverts that use the word. Some of them are circulating the internet too, as far as I know. There are poems, stories and "facts" that in our modern times seem weird, but were in their own era considered scientifical facts. Even from my own childhood, in the early 1990s, I remember there was a popular candy called "the ******'s kiss", which was at some point renamed to something more politically correct.
The word in here has been mostly benevolent. It was
the word that was used when talking about black people. Like it or not, it is part of our history. That doesn't mean that I'm running around calling every black person ****** these days, obviously not, since it's now politically incorrect in here too. But I have also had some heated debates concerning if
all the people in the 20th century were obvious racists, since they used the word on regular basis. People who think like that are doing exactly what should not be done according to majority of historians, that is, trying to impose our moral views and codes on the past and then trying to understand it based on that. It doesn't work.
Should the word be in a movie? I really don't care, I just want to see the film. It's a film: if I want to study history, I have a whole university for that and I'm doing it there daily anyway. If I got to choose, I would keep the dog's name as it was. But it doesn't ruin the film for me if it isn't.
