{"id":260,"date":"2008-09-22T11:23:56","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T17:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=260"},"modified":"2008-09-22T11:23:56","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T17:23:56","slug":"a-sociologist-weighs-in-on-tropic-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/09\/22\/a-sociologist-weighs-in-on-tropic-thunder\/","title":{"rendered":"a sociologist weighs in on &#8216;tropic thunder&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/magazine\/7629376.stm\">BBCnews.com<\/a> posted an article entitled &#8216;The Path from Cinema to the Playground,&#8217; which poses the following question to its readers:<strong> <\/strong>&#8220;A new film [Tropic Thunder] repeatedly uses the word &#8220;retard&#8221;. Can it be acceptable to use satirically or is it intrinsically offensive and a quick route to playground and workplace insults?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read the details of the use of this word in the film, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/magazine\/7629376.stm\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Reporter <span class=\"byl\">Finlo Rohrer <\/span> writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the opponents of Tropic Thunder, the path between film and television and &#8220;hate speech&#8221; is clear.<\/p>\n<p>The UK provides an interesting crucible. While the word &#8220;retard&#8221; is extremely common in the US and crops up regularly in films, in the UK other epithets are more common. But it still has an immense power to offend, topping a poll by the BBC&#8217;s Ouch website for the most offensive disability-related words.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The sociologist weighs in&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If there are more school-children using the word &#8220;retard&#8221; in playgrounds this week, some might take that as an indicator of the malign power of the film.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The media is very powerful, whether it&#8217;s films or comedy,&#8221; says sociologist Prof Colin Barnes, who studies the relationship between the media and disability. &#8220;Subliminal messages are distributed. &#8216;Spaz&#8217; was popularised by Rik Mayall in the Young Ones. That really took off in the 1980s in schools.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the full story at <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/magazine\/7629376.stm\">BBCnews.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning BBCnews.com posted an article entitled &#8216;The Path from Cinema to the Playground,&#8217; which poses the following question to its readers: &#8220;A new film [Tropic Thunder] repeatedly uses the word &#8220;retard&#8221;. Can it be acceptable to use satirically or is it intrinsically offensive and a quick route to playground and workplace insults?&#8221; Read the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,129,117],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-media","tag-trends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}