Racial epithets
First off, I'll ask you all to refer to the thread "similar war movies" under the board for John Frankenheimer's 1964 movie "The Train." I referenced "The Hook" as a similar sort of story where the big picture is not affected by the action of the film, but something profound happens for the characters in the story. This film may be a little preachy, and maybe Douglas' performance is a little limited. I thought it serviceable for the purposes of this movie.
But my comment was censored because I referred to Enrique Magalona's character by the name he was most commonly called in the course of the film: a coarse racial epithet used to name and dehumanize the North Korean enemy in the Korean War. Apparently IMDb's program automatically censors certain terms, and this is one of them.
I'm aware this slur has gone on, that it persisted along with others in referring to the VC and NVA during the Vietnam war, and that it is not a pretty thing. That's true about any racial epithet. But I'm not sure we can just wave a magic wand and make the words go away. This is dangerous ground, I realize, and I don't like using the terms as a direct point of reference myself. But like Lenny Bruce, I don't think we've reached the point where the words have lost their power, and we may need portrayals of that ugliness for a while yet until we do get beyond that. I realize that can be an excuse for all kinds of meaningless, hurtful poison to be spewed forth. But there's a point where automatic censorship gets out of hand.
This film is certainly a case in point. Any comments?
"I'm not from here, I just live here. . ."
-James Mc Murtry