What’s Funny About “The Departed”

‘Nigger’ is a word white people don’t get to use. My Year 8 students ask me why: “Black people call each other that all the time, Miss!”

I stammer: “There’s connotations—meanings—in that word that suggests ‘hate’, when white people say it to black people.”

My students constantly voice their disgust for things by saying, “That’s gay!”

As a female teacher, who also happens to be married to a woman, I ask them, “What do you mean by that?” They stare blankly at me and line up for tickets to the Tight-Arse Tuesday showing of The Departed.

In this film, legendary acting tough-guy (and one of my personal favs), Jack Nicholson’s opening line refers to the social rise of the blacks in Boston. Throughout the voiceover he calls them “chappies” and “niggers”.

We read in our class novel, dealing with racism: “Listen here, boy,” says the white man to the black man. I know the question before they ask it. “Miss, why does the white man call the black man, ‘boy’?”

Throughout the musically charged justice-seeking film, the headlining crew of Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Whalberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen continue to make their audience laugh with superfluous racist, homophobic, violent and anti-religious humour.

I laughed, my wife didn’t. After the film, she itched to leave. I made faces of awe at the number of famous actors, and was mesmerized by the energy behind the concluding song.

“It was a great parody of organized religions,” I think I intellectually comment.

“I hated it. Why did we fly across the world to educate people against homophobia to then waste two hours of energy on that film?”

I’m shocked.

“Don’t you think it was satirical?”

“Huh?”

“Wasn’t it a film which poked at western societal human weaknesses to make us recognize our follies? Encouraging us towards change?”

“More than half of the world makes uninformed decisions as to who they are going to vote for in government! Social justice is not a big concern at large. How many people walk out of that theatre, after laughing at those jokes, and actually have this conversation?”

In university, I read a journal article by a Canadian U of T professor who argued that the problem with communicating through irony is context. How do the authors mean it?

I wonder, in films like The Departed, and The Wedding Crashers (where the only gay person is a perverted homosexual—there’s an old stereotype re-surfacing in the 21st Century), or the even more recent Borat film…what is it really that we are laughing at?

A teacher once made me a very frustrated Year 8 student, having me write an essay to answer: “What is humour?” I hated it. But the lesson sticks with me now. I gave a “conditional” argument and was penalised for ‘sitting on the fence.’ But what is the context of the irony behind these films?

The Vagina Monologues attempts an empowering reclamation of the used-to-be-god-awful word: “cunt” and there’s the new proud reference to being “queer”.

What is the significance of our western world popular culture that uses the discriminatory insults “nigger”, “fag”, or “gay” in comedy?

Are we re-claiming these words?

Or are we just ignorant?

Tags: departed, gay, pop culture, racism, racism in schools, Teacher Talk, teaching issues, vagina monologues, wedding crashers