Charcoal Down Joaquin Phoenix's Throat
In the scene, near the beginning of the movie, where the cops raid the club, they pour charcoal down Joaquin Phoenix's throat. Does anybody know why?
Flaming Globes of Sigmund
To humiliate him. He spit his gum in an officer's face. They also had cause to arrest him, allegedly, because he had cocaine in his pocket.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
It seems that activated charcoal can be used to cancel out the effects of cocaine or at least to test for the presence of it.
I cannot find any exact google hits, but I think that the "charcoal" is meant to be an 80's version of the "paraffin" test, but for coke instead of gunpowder.
Activated charcoal is used to absorb ingested drugs or poisons. It is not used to test for anything. It usually induces vomiting.
Even Vets use it on pets in cases of suspected poisoning.
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
It's used (irish said) to get drugs out of your stomach. They use it in hospitals when someone has taken too many pills, and it induces vomiting.
-R
Since activated charcoal induces vomiting, can't the regurgitated mixture subsequently be checked for narcotic substances? I just really don't think they used it to humiliate him. I mean think about it, they might as well each whip out markers and write cuss words on his face, and make much less of a mess too.
shareNo. They would have had his stomach pumped at a hospital to investigate it's contents.. Charcoal is used to prevent absorption. Yes, most of the time it induces vomiting. It's really messy for all involved in it's administration.
Markers...Less messy...more time consuming.
The charcoal was there. The cop he spat his gum at was pissed. Would you go off looking for a pen when you had charcoal in your hand?
"a malcontent who knows how to spell"
It annoys me the abuse that it means, in the movie, and that no one does nothing to stop it.
"The Love you take is equal to the Love you make" The Beatles.
Right because when cops with huge guns are raiding the club you're at, you definitely want to go and defend the guy with the charcoal in his mouth when you have no idea what's going on. That would TOTALLY happen.
And yes, it's painfully obvious they poured the charcoal down his throat for humiliation. You don't just spit gum in a cop's face and expect to get away with it. They knew he probably wasn't high and nuts. He spat in a cop's face and kept asking who authorized the raid and they charcoaled him to embarrass him and shut him up.
Um
I'm like thinking that it looked kinda cool
I so think the director liked the look & what it said
& thought like lets have some fun with this
& like make a statment about "the man" on the east side of the States in the like 80's near NyC
there's like a lotta statements being maid
in this one
so
anyway
the look is what it was all about
U can get happy in the same pant U got pissed in. - Sue
so_earthling can u lyke type more retarded do0d
it was charcoal in his mouth to humiliate him and get back at a "punk" drug user at a club. They say in the dialog "He's high on drugs. Get the charcoal, get the charcoal" Obviously they know it's not necessary but they can claim the right by testifying later that he was exhibiting drug use behavior and they used the charcoal as a means to sober him up (possibly even save his life). As we know he wasn't doing any of this, they did this for humiliation. That's it.