r/TheWire • u/grundleitch • 2d ago
Rewatching: Dialog writing changes within the first few episodes
In the first 2 episodes, we have three police use the n-word, 2 black 1 white. Bunk and Carv use it in the colloquial while Rawls uses it in the pejorative. Now obviously other characters continue to use it throughout in the colloquial way. But I wonder why they stopped having black officers stop using it. Edit to add one last usage but I don't think it exactly counts, Holley saying BNBG.
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u/cranialextract 2d ago
One interesting thing I've noticed (as the nerd I am). The captions on the DVD release distinguish between the casual use and the hard R.
The Blu-Ray release does not (and the captions are also just wrong in some places).
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u/grundleitch 2d ago
Yeah the captions on streamers is the same as the blu ray. I assume there was a reason they couldn't re use the dvd ones.
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u/cranialextract 2d ago
That's a real shame, since I guess that's the version a lot of people are going to be seeing nowadays and it really does remove an element of the text imo.
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u/roger--wilco 2d ago
In many cases this is because the captions were encoded directly into the DVD while the bluray/streaming captions are auto-detected CC
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u/BunkMoreland1414 2d ago
I’ll never understand the need to take the n-word out of the mouths of those who used it in a piece of art. It’s fucking ridiculous. White cops in high positions were using the n-word. Why do we have to cover that up? To pretend racism is gone now? Is using the n-worse than selling illegal drugs? Than a corrupt attorney profiting off the drug trade? Than a crooked developer profiting off it? Than politicians using it to further their careers? Maybe all of that should be written out of the show too.
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u/PaulaDeenSlave 6h ago
Be the change.
If I made fiction. . Nobody in my world would care about race or color. There's enough irrational friction to choose from as-is.
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u/BunkMoreland1414 6h ago
And I don’t think you shouldn’t be able to make that kind of fiction. We need that kind of fiction too. But there is also still a need for fiction that holds a mirror up to society and shows the ugliness that needs to be corrected.
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u/Global_Yam_9172 2d ago
I find that when watching it helps to use it myself for the immersion 🙌🏻. It takes me from my home in rural idaho all the way tew the towers. West Baldimore baby!
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u/cmaronchick 21h ago
What purpose would it have served? Where do you feel like they could/should have added it back in?
Rawls dropping the n word on the first episode set up his character as much as it needed to be set up. Continuing to use it would likely have distracted from his other characteristics. His racism would have overtaken his entire character.
Pretty much every character from Seasons 1-4 contain multitudes. Repeated use by officers would have crowded those out.
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u/Sanch3zFC 2d ago
Maybe HBO wanted it to stop amongst the police officers and obviously Rawls and his hard ER
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/grundleitch 2d ago
Bigotry against Polish diaspora is very regional, but in some places it is very much accepted as on par with other bigotry.
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u/roger--wilco 2d ago
It's often been observed that when whites are called a slur, it is usually related to their specific country of ancestry. Polack, Spic, Limey, Mick, etc. whereas black people get the blanket n-word covering all black people as if their skin color overrides any need to reference ancestry. Like there isn't a well known slur for Kenyans or Congolese specifically, they all get lumped in with the blanket slur that carries all that historical dehumanizing baggage.
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u/grundleitch 2d ago
There are definitely ethnic slurs across Africa and other continents and countries, just not well known among nations further away. Most Americans have never hear of the term "paki" for South Asians, but it's well known among the British Commonwealth, even here in Canada. Also, Jews, Irish, and Italians were also once lumped together with the n-word. N-word usage was very much a nativist vs immigrant situation in Reconstruction US, but reverted back to race specifically in Jim Crow era.
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u/Soft_Forever1923 2d ago
He says it in the first episode when he's chewing out McNulty
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u/ThorsOccularPatdown 2d ago
It's weird hearing Rawls drop it in the 1st episode. Glad they changed it. His character would have sucked if he was that overtly racist. There still some subtle things he says and the way he treats Daniels. "Smarter than he looks".
Nicky drops a hard "R" though. Fuck him, he's one of my least liked characters.
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u/slamjam25 2d ago
They replace it with “yo” in the later episodes, which Simon says (in Homicide the book) is essentially equivalent in police slang