When I popped into Netflix this morning, it burst out with The Queen's Gambit, a tv series about a chess prodigy. I'm sort of interested in chess, so I started watching:
Scene 1: A young woman with carrot-red hair wakes up in a French hotel room, late for something. She rushes to dress (no nude scene, thankfully), runs to an elevator (where she stares at a little girl who is staring at her -- it's not rude in France) -- and rushes past reporters and photographers to start an important chess match with a glowering older man.
Scene 2: Someplace rural and antiquated. A pile-up of old-fashioned cars, and a little girl standing by herself on a bridge.
Scene 3: A matron tells her that her mother has "passed away" and drives her to a children's home. No Dickensian orphanage, it's well-appointed and quite comfortable. She meets the headmaster, the etiquette teacher and Mr. Ferguson (Akemnji Ndifornyen). We don't hear what he does at the home.
Suddenly a resident yells "You're all a bunch of fucking cocksuckers!"
A homophobic slur?
Mr. Ferguson goes to tell her to shut up, and she yells "You fucking cocksucker!"
Another homophobic slur? I'm out.
Ok, it's the 1950s, and the unnamed character might not necessarily be a good guy, but still, a homophobic slur is unnecessary and offensive.
In their review, the AV Club calls this a "humorous scene." Would they think it was humorous if the girl was bandying around the n-word? It's the same thing.
I understand from the review that there's a blink-and-you-miss it gay character later on, and there are a lot of hunks in the cast, like Matthew Dennis Lewis (top photo) and his twin brother Russell Dennis Lewis; Jacob Fortune (left).
Elvis Nowatzki
And let's not forget big bear Bill Camp, who teaches the girl how to play chess.
Yes, she calls him a "cocksucker."
I'm definitely not watching this.
Yeah, no one ever made a comedy where the n-word was said so much.
ReplyDeleteI need more context. Obviously in Blazing Saddles, the whole point was that the local yokels knew they needed a sheriff, but they wanted a white one.