Saturday, May 15, 2010

Play review

posted by The Vidiot @ 9:52 AM Permalink

We went to see "A Behanding in Spokane" last night for Teen Vidiot's 15th (yikes) birthday. It was, odd. Well, Christopher Walken is odd. I wasn't crazy about all the swearing (mind you, I can swear like a longshoreman and it bothered ME a bit) and some of the plot was a little ridiculous (even Teen Vidiot pointed that out). But I mostly liked it. Though, I had been warned in advance that some of the critics had panned it as too racist. Well, obviously, that's the part that made me laugh.

The first time Walken said "nigger" you could hear subtle little gasps in the audience. And that made me laugh. Those gasps were only slightly audible, of course, when the black guy called the Walken character a "crazy assed mutherfuckin' cracker" so THAT made me laugh too. (No worries. Walken made me laugh too. He's just so bloody weird.)

I think it's funny how folks are so sensitive about "those words." What they fail to understand is if they just stopped caring about them, "those words" would lose their power and ignorant, mean people wouldn't be able to use them to hurt people any more.

I saw the play's usage of "those words" less racist and more about taking the piss out of them. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just toooo liberal.

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2 Comments:

At 11:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmm,

Now tell me, did C. Walken say "Nigger," or did he really pronounce it "Nigga?" Equally, did the "Black guy" pronounce it "cracker," or did he actually say "cracka'?" the pronunciation of casual profanity tells us exactly how indepth a director (or perhaps even the actor) may be.

Chances are, I'll never see this play. Though, since the script was apparently written by a "Cracker's Nigger (a phrase describing newly imperialist America's immigrated Irishman)," as a consequent descendant, I could probably relate to the Paddy-banter of it all.

Can "black" comedy also be a light farce? From the hyperlink's comments section, it sounds like this production may qualify.

DanD

 
At 5:07 PM, Blogger The Vidiot said...

You know, I can't recall if they used the "a" ending or not. I just know it didn't bother me.

 

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