|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: "Deadwood" and the F-bomb
|
William Leland III
Master Film Handler
Posts: 336
From: Charleston, SC,
Registered: Aug 2002
|
posted 05-04-2004 02:06 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2004-05-02-deadwood-cursing_x.htm
Bobby H. just for you :
"Deadwood?" says David Canary, who played ranch hand Candy on the '60s Western Bonanza, which chronicled the adventures of the Cartwright clan. (Related item: Deadwood livens South Dakota namesake)
"I hear they swear a lot," he says.
That's right, pardner.
The cowboys, prospectors, prostitutes, Calamity Jane — just about everybody — in HBO's take on the Black Hills town of 1876 is rough and gritty and grimy. They regularly use extremely vulgar language.
Particularly in this era of increased media scrutiny, the tally seems to flaunt how much pay-cable can get away with. On Sunday's show, there were at least 63 mentions of the f-word in the hour.
HBO programs are known to stir up controversy. Deadwood, the channel's first Western — and the creation of David Milch, whose NYPD Blue is known for breaking network taboos — is no exception.
Though Westerns have flourished in movies since the silent era, and on TV in the 1950s and '60s, the genre faded fast in the 1970s. Today it's represented mostly by occasional cable films and rare hit movies (Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven). Now with Deadwood comes not only the first new hit TV Western in years, but also what the producers claim is one of the most authentic portraits ever of life in an Old West gold mining town.
Or is it?
"I have a prejudice against the Deadwood thing because, to make it that real, and bring in the swearing, I think that's really messing with the genre," Canary says.
He says he hasn't seen Deadwood. Neither has Dennis Weaver, who played Deputy Chester Goode from 1955 to 1964 on Gunsmoke and now is a host on the Starz Western cable channel.
But both object to the profanity on principle. "When you use it and use it, it loses its emphasis and loses its dramatic effect." Weaver says. "That doesn't mean to say that the people in the West didn't use pretty raw language."
The question is: Was the language this raw? These frontier characters use the f-word, plus other sexual slang, in a number of variations. Has David Milch created a West designed to shock and draw viewers, or is he merely showing how harsh life really was? The evidence isn't clear.
Novelist Pete Dexter wrote a book in the mid-1980s called Deadwood. It featured Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, along with Al Swearengen, owner of the Gem Theater; Seth Bullock, a hardware store owner, and his partner Sol Star — all featured in HBO's Deadwood. In Dexter's Deadwood, there is little cursing.
Dexter, who has no connection to the series, says he did a lot of research for his novel and spent time in the Black Hills. He never came across the use of that much profanity. "It seems to me it's condescending to the viewer to think that throwing those kinds of words often makes a style point."
Mary Kopko, director of the Adams Museum in the real town of Deadwood, can't confirm the use of profanity. She points out that a law was passed making profanity illegal in 1878, which suggests, she says, that it was used to excess.
But Dexter says: "The idea a law was passed doesn't mean it was an everyday occurrence. If the FCC passes a law against people ripping off Janet Jackson's top, it's not because that happened all the time, but because it happened once."
Other historians say it's more a matter of degree. Rick Slatta, author of several books on cowboys including The Mythical West: An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture (ABC-CLIO), says that Bonanza's portrait of cowboys was "sanitized to the nth degree."
But he says Deadwood is the other extreme. "Cowboy and frontier types — these were vulgar people. I think HBO, in typical Hollywood fashion, has taken some social element and exaggerated it 100-fold."
"Men might say 'damn' ... or call each other 'bastard' or 'son of a bitch,' " but not the more modern cussing heard on Deadwood, says Frederick Bozeman, who has researched gold rush life in Montana and is working on a book due out in the fall.
Verifies says, "There are some letters that I have seen in history accounts. I know Wild Bill used the word damn. And Jack McCall (Hickok's killer) was reported to say, 'Take that, damn you.' "
She suggests that the profanity is being used to show class lines. And it's true that Deadwood's classiest character, a widow named Alma Garrett, never swears. "My personal feeling is that David Milch is really trying to separate the upper classes from the lower classes, and the profanity is probably somewhat of a literary device."
After all, this is television. This is entertainment in the 21st century.
"It's a really interesting blend of looking back at the old Westerns on TV, but taking the modern approach of filmmakers Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah in making it more edgy and realistic," says Holly George-Warren, author of Cowboy: How Hollywood Invented the Wild West (Reader's Digest). "That's what audiences want."
i had watched Sopranio's for the 3rd time and wanted to see "Deadwood". i love westerns and wanted this to be good, well i was very dissapointed. no action, no tradional western themes. i will try to watch the next episode, but make no promises. if you like Deadwood you might like Zane Grey, a true western writer.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 05-04-2004 08:31 AM
The producers of "Deadwood" claim all the cursing makes the show more authentic. IMHO, their device of profanity overuse is nothing more than a blaring distraction. The better parts of the show are being obscured and it will not last long in this form.
Further, I really sense a condescending attitude from the show's producers being directed at the not so sophisticated folks with southern/western accents. Some people on both the east and west coasts of the United States look down their noses at anyone in the south or southwest with a snotty, superior attitude, "they're just nothing but a bunch of trailer trash redneck racists." Honestly, I really have to say the most rascist behavior I witnessed was when I lived in New York City. Not the deep south or southwest. The level of cursing and cut-throat behavior on nearly all the characters threatens to drop them all into low-ball cliché.
Where was David Milch raised? New York City? L.A.? "Lonesome Dove" was probably the best western TV mini-series ever made. Pulitzer Prize winning author Larry McMurty lives near Archer City, TX, the same town where "The Last Picture Show" was filmed/based. With proper research, people from urban areas can write a good western. But they are at a disadvantage to writers who were actually raised in areas of this country personified by the Old West. Larry McMurty just has a lot more tools in his writing arsenal because of life experience. The characters of his westerns are pretty salty, but they also feel like real people too. Not foul-mouthed cardboard cutouts.
To the same extent, it would be very difficult for someone from the south to write an urban crime saga, or something that captures a slice of life in urban places like New York City. I never really got all the humor from Woody Allen movies or appreciated the authenticity of New York captured in Martin Scorsese's films until I lived there.
It all comes down to that Ernest Hemingway thing: write what you know.
[ 05-04-2004, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: Bobby Henderson ]
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic