You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘quotes’ tag.
Jules: Hello, George.
George: Hey Gorgeous. Having a good time?
Jules: Not particularly, but I did what I came to do.
George: What, you split them up?
Jules: No, I said ‘goodbye.’
George: Good girl. I’m proud of you. I’d be prouder still if you were dancing.
Jules: Oh, I have big plans for dancing. Just give me thirty, thirty- five years.
George: Oh, the misery, the exquisite tragedy…the Susan Hayward of it all. [laughs] I can just picture you sitting there alone at your table in your lavender gown…
Jules: Did I tell you my gown was lavender?
George: Hair swept up, haven’t touched your cake. Probably drumming your fingernails on the white linen table cloth, the way you do when you’re really feeling down. I see you looking at those nails thinking, ‘God, I should have stopped in all my evil plotting to have that manicure!’ But it’s too late now.
Jules: George, I didn’t tell you my gown was lavender.
George: Suddenly, a familiar song. Then, you’re off your chair in one exquisite movement. Wondering, searching, sniffing the wind like a daffelled deer. Has God heard your little prayer? Will Cinderella dance again? And then, suddenly, the crowds part. And there he is. Sleek. Stylish. Radiant with charisma. It’s only, he’s on the telephone. But then, so are you. And he comes towards you, the moves of a jungle cat. And although you quite correctly sense that he is gay, like most devastatingly handsome single men of his age are, you think, ‘What the hell? Life goes on.’ Maybe there won’t be marriage. Maybe there won’t be sex. But by God, there will be dancing!
“Judge me for my own merits, or lack of them, but do not look upon me as a mere appendage to this great general or that great scholar, this star that shines at the court of France or that famed author. I am in my own right a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that I am, all that I say, all that I do. It may be that there are metaphysicians and philosophers whose learning is greater than mine, although I have not met them. Yet, they are but frail humans, too, and have their faults; so, when I add the sum total of my graces, I confess I am inferior to no one.”
“No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.”
Patterns of Culture. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.
Last saturday, Danilo Gentili, one of the guys who run ‘CQC’, a very well-known tv show in Brazil, made a polemic joke on Twitter. He said:
“King Kong, um macaco que, depois que vai para a cidade e fica famoso, pega uma loira. Quem ele acha que é? Jogador de futebol?”
Translating it, it would be something like:
“King Kong, a monkey that, after going to the city and getting famous, hits on* a blonde girl. Who does he think he is? A soccer player?”
*There’s a pun here in Portuguese. ‘Pegar’, which means ‘to get’, is also a slang for ‘date’.
Since it’s not a Portuguese language’s exclusive privilege to make racist jokes using the word ‘monkey’, you may well have already understood what happened. Off course, in a country where brown and black people make up for 50% of the population – statistically; although I think it might be way more -, and considering that Gentili has approximately 15.000 followers, there were A LOT of people feeling offended about what he said.
Since I don’t follow him on Twitter, I didn’t know about this mess until today, when someone sent me an article about it. At first, I didn’t understand. No, I didn’t see the racism in his joke. And I personally think he sincerely didn’t meant that as racist.
Later in that night he posted a tweet saying he wasn’t referring to one’s color, but to the fact that blondes always date famous soccer players for money – a typical steriotyped relationship in Brazil.
I see a – pardon my words – fucking lot of trouble in here. In his statement, in what people understood and in the way he tried to explain himself. First, no, I don’t think that it was racist. At least, at first, I got what he intended to say. And I think it would have gone like that if nobody told me about the problem. Maybe I don’t have a very good sense for this kind of thing, but I really think it wasn’t supposed to go that way.
Then there was the people reacting pretty disgusted. Ok. That’s good. You should always reject prejudice. The thing is, those are the same people that see no trouble on calling gays ‘veados’ (something like ‘fag’, but still felt as pretty offensive), or using the word ‘elephant’ to refer to fat people, as Gentili correctly pointed out on his blog today (27-07-09 – it doesn’t allow direct links, sorry). There’s a HUGE taboo in Brazil about racism. It’s a crime – and Gentili will be investigated – and people will always tell you how horrible that is. But they think it’s ok to be homophobes or bullies when it comes to anything else.
And last, but not least – and this is where I have to say I’m disappointed, though not shocked, about what Gentilli said – there was him talking about ‘the blondes’. On trying to get himself out of the racist accusations, he ended up acting in a terribly misogynistic way. Yes, it’s true that there are many women after good marriages with famous soccer players – and whoever is under the spotlight -, but saying that as a joke does not help combating such a behaviour. As associating monkeys with humans wouldn’t help on the fight against racism either.
I think Gentili has given a quite satisfactory explanation on his blog, and I’m looking forward to see what the Justice will conclude of all of this, but I really think we should calm down our nerves for now – or try to act on everything else that has been left behind.
“Remember when Emma Goldman said, “if there is no dancing at the revolution I’m not coming”? Well, tonight we have both. Thanks to Betty, thanks to Heart, and thanks to all of you we have the revolution. And tonight we are gonna need it. Because there’s a guy in the White House who represents all those religious extremists, that people came to this country to escape. But, that’s because there is a backlash against all the great social justice movements, and if we hadn’t had a front lash we wouldn’t now be having a backlash. So we keep going, and do it more and better. We’re not only going to vote, but reform the way we vote. We’re going to contribute not only when we’re asked, but every time we pay our bills. We’re not only going to change women to fit the world, but the change the world to fit women. And we’re going to become the change we want to see in the world. So, first tonight then the world.”
Gloria Steinem, The L Word (Season 2, episode 13: Lacuna)
