Quentin Tarantino’s continued use of the N-word in his films is “racist and creepy”, according to Pulp Fiction actress Rosanna Arquette.
The film director’s continued use of the word in his work has split opinion since the 1990s.
Reflecting on the 1994 classic, Pulp Fiction, Arquette questioned why the 62-year-old had been given a “hall pass” to use it in his work.
Arquette had a minor but memorable role in the film, playing the wife of a drug dealer and telling John Travolta’s character, Vincent Vega, that she had pierced her tongue as a “sex thing”.
She told The Sunday Times: “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally, I am over the use of the N-word – I hate it. I cannot stand that he [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”
Tarantino’s scripts, including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Django Unchained, have featured characters who often use the N-word during dialogue, but he has defended this in the past as being authentic to the story.
Fellow film-makers, Spike Lee and Lee Daniels, have criticised him for overly focusing on the word and the casualness with which it is used, questioning whether it is necessary.
However, actors such as Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson, frequent collaborators with Tarantino, have regularly jumped to the defence of the storyteller.
Last year, Foxx told Vanity Fair about how Leonardo DiCaprio has struggled with saying the N-word, which is used about 100 times in the 2012 film Django Unchained.
“I told Leo that in slavery days we would never talk to each other,” Foxx said. “I’m not your friend. I’m not Jamie Foxx. I’m Django. And I told him, you won’t really be able to play that character until you understand what slavery is about.”
Jackson previously said that he and Tarantino told DiCaprio that he had to say the N-word even if it made him uncomfortable.
“Every time someone wants an example of overuse of the N-word, they go to Quentin – it’s unfair,” Jackson told The New York Times. “He’s just telling the story, and the characters do talk like that. When Steve McQueen does it, it’s art. He’s an artiste. Quentin’s just a popcorn film-maker.”
It comes just weeks after John Davidson, a Tourette’s syndrome campaigner, yelled the N-word at the Baftas while actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan were on stage at the ceremony.
Davidson, who was the inspiration behind the Bafta-winning film I swear, said the BBC should have done more to protect him, knowing that the condition causes tics.
On Instagram, Foxx said this was “unacceptable” and that “out of all the words you could’ve said, Tourette’s made you say that”, adding he “meant that”.
Explaining how it had been broadcast by the BBC despite a two-hour time delay, Tim Davie, outgoing director-general, said staff editing the programme had only heard one of the two occasions when it had been shouted out.
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