The Dam Busters Dog

[BinkieBaumont]

In the Uk up until the early 1960's anything in a Chocolate brown colour was referred to as Nigger Brown as it was before the influx of migrants nobody paid any attention to it

 

[Shangas]

In 1955 when the original film was made a lot of white people used the words Nigger, Darkie and Wog in everyday speech.....very few of them had even seen a black person.... it was socially acceptable and they thought it was fine...

In 2011 it obviously isn't.......... changing one letter of the black dogs name is a small accuracy price to pay in my opinion....now if the uniforms and planes aren't correct that will be an issue

Well that's just my point. It's not referring to a person. It's a dog. So it shouldn't matter that the filmmmakers keep the original name.

 

[Lady Day]

I give up.

 

[dhermann1]

Bartender . . . . PLEEEASE close this thread! I think everything that can be said has been said.
I think it's great they're making the movie. The word was just as offensive and violent then as it is now. It should be left out.

 

[Smithy]

so intentionally derogatory of the time, and so lighting bolt offensive to the masses now tells me how disconnected you all are to the knife to the heart effect that word can have on people. There is nothing I can say to you all because you see it as just a word, but its not. Its a weapon. Its the one word that is the acceptation to the rule. So just leave it at that.

That's as it may in a US context. And for that fact as I mentioned above, perhaps the film should have a higher classification in the US than in other countries or be changed for release in American cinemas. What is wrong with that?

It is a part of WWII history that is legendary for my generation and earlier in Commonwealth countries (my uncle actually had a Maori shearing hand on the farm who had a black lab named after said dog due to his own granddad being on Lancs during the war).

If you want to change a story which is legendary for many of a certain age in the Commonwelath for a US audience then do so, but let other audiences and especially those of the Commonwealth for which the story is most relevant make their own minds up.

It is also why traditionally classifications for films are left up to individual countries.

 

[Shangas]

I think Smithy has summed it up rather nicely. It should be made as it should be, and left up to individual countries as to what rating or country-specific censorships they decide to put on it.

"The Dambusters: A Dog Called Nigger"
[video=youtube;QgePEO7GUtE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgePEO7GUtE[/video]

 

[djd]

I really don't think some of you guys are living in the real world. As I said before, I'm British and many of the decent Afro caribean people I know would be offended by the word. Its use in the film would be akin to accepting that it was 'ok' again like it was up until the 50s. The only people I know who use the word now are rascist and neo nazi nutters. THEY would love it to be used in a main stream film. I don't think we want to paint Gibson as the hero of these people do we? Yes it's altering history but if you're telling a story / making a film one of the key things is making the audience care about the characters. This would just make that process more difficult. In today's society it would be like making him a pedophile and expecting us to care what happened to him.

 

[Saint-Just]

This is getting sooo silly.

It is a film made for entertainment purposes, NOT a documentary.
If they could not model Lancasters and used Mitchells instead, it would be totally inaccurate but it would not distract from the story, which would be just as good and worth telling.

Just take a look at any war film on imdb.com, and look at the list of goofs, anachronisms, inaccuracies or factual errors! As an example, have a look at the list of goofs from "The Longest Day"!

I do not think that any of those distracted but the most retentive from being captivated by a brilliant story worth telling.
Lest we forget.

 

[Smithy]

Using the word in the context of the film, that is that it was the name of a dog and the subsequent code word for the successful outcome of one part of the raid is not suddenly going to spark widespread use of the word or change anything markedly. Anyone right at this exact point in time can walk into a bookshop or library, pick up a book about the raid and be confronted by that fact. Changing history to suit modern sensibilities is a dangerous slope. History is full of inconvenient truths and pretending that they don't exist means perhaps that we won't learn from them. And the fact of the matter is that that word played a part in this historical event and many people in the Commonwealth know this.

Saying that and as Corto explained above, the word holds more connotation and has a stronger effect in the USA and for that reason, it could be removed or replaced for the US market and other countries left to determine whether the word was included or not due to their own classification system and relevant government department. Surely the US isn't the moral barometer for the rest of the world about what can and can't be included in film.

It would've been nice if the film was made historically accurate and then individual countries' film censors determined whether it should be included or not for their own individual populations.

 

[Saint-Just]

It seems a much more dangerous slope to trust the film industry to teach history. It can tell real stories, and if it gives you the urge to walk into the nearest library and read about it, then you'll have the pleasure to discover for yourself that the mission wasn't named after an Aussie slang but referred to the colour of the dog. That, and a million other things that will be in the book that were left out of the film because it did not make good entertainment.

 

[Pompidou]

I think the movie should be made with the word intact. If the movie offends people, all the better. They'll remember it. If the movie is controversial, that's great. People will see it. Will people make judgements? Of course. But, people will make judgements no matter what, so it might as well be on the facts. I'm never in favor of sanitizing history. Besides, if the movie is so polarizing that half the viewers leave thinking "heroes" and the other half leave thinking "racists", that'll spur dialogue.

 

[PADDY]

Doggonit! - More than enough has been said on this topic.

Just go and see the film folks when it eventually comes out and enjoy it for what it is - as there aren't that many vintage inspired films being made nowadays.

Paddy.