.....black men typically don't say the word "cock." We'll say, "dick," "meat" or some other word, but you'll almost never hear a black man refer to a penis as a "cock." Just like you won't likely hear a black person say the C-word. In the film, Dale has a scene where he says "cock" four or five times. It just didn't ring true to me. This is one of the things that Linklater got wrong.
Sister, when I've raised hell, you'll know it!
I didn't know you were aware how every black person in the world talks
shareDale wasn't exactly your typical black man anyway
Howard Hughes was Italian?
What does that mean?
Sister, when I've raised hell, you'll know it!
You engaged in something that people nowadays seem incapable of doing: you made a generalization.
I don't know when this became so unacceptable. People seem conditioned today to respond to generalizations with "that doesn't mean every....!" But no one said "every", or "never" (you said "almost never", which is different). Of course, generalizations are extremely important because it allows us to recognize patterns in life and gauge pretty much everything. An exception to the generalization is what typically proves the rule.
The only question is whether or not a generalization is accurate. In this case, if it is, then the movie - on this point - is inaccurate, generally speaking. Perhaps Dale is one of those rare exceptions.
I could've elaborated a little more but given the people Dale hung around, I highly doubt he'd have the same vernacular as a black male who didn't engage in the same activities with said crowd. Hanging around them so often probably influenced his vocab n' choice of words (Like "cock")
Or, much like anyone else, he could just be an odd exception to the rule. I'm sure they existed.
Howard Hughes was Italian?
Also when the guys were jamming to some tune in the car, their rhythmic hand gestures looked modern day, not from 1980. However, it didn't bother me. Just a small nitpick.
shareI started to agree with you but I thought about it a little further. Black people don't "typically" say cock but he wasn't your "typical" black dude. I can't remember if they ever even showed him interacting with another black guy. He hung around white people all the time, that likely plays a part in his vernacular. I don't see a problem with it.
That's almost like saying baseball isn't "typically" a black American's choice of sport.
I hadn't noticed that my black male friends don't say "cock," but I think that's a good point to make. I was at Texas A&M University during 1980 and I noticed then that much of Texas had very very few blacks at all. I almost never saw black people at all outside of Houston or Dallas. So the presence of only one black man in the movie actually seemed like an accurate representation of most Texas universities in 1980 to me. And I did notice then that the few black students I met talked a lot more like white guys than I was accustomed to.
I noticed this also in Seattle, which around the same time had rather few black folks, and the blacks who were there seemed to act and talk "white" to me, compared to my black friends in Atlanta and DC.
The guys singing "Rapper's Delight" in the car at the end of the movie did surprise me. I sadly suspect the white jocks of 1980 rarely knew any rap. But it was such a delightful scene that I can forgive Linklater for putting it in there. Sometimes it's nice not to see how things really WERE, but how they SHOULD have been... and since there's really not any point to this movie... why not?
Don't you find it weird that the actor is actually black and he should have pointed it out?
Dale says cock when he's quoting Finnegan, but when he shifts into his own analysis of Finnegan's move, Dale switches to saying dick
shareKeep in mind that as a college baseball player in Texas in 1980 he probably wasn't hanging out with a lot of other black guys. Groups of friends who spend a lot of time together tend to end up sounding all the same. They'll use the same phrases and inflections as one another eventually. Given that he wasn't a freshman or a transfer, he clearly spent at least one school year with these guys so it would make sense that he talks like them.
In other words, socially he likely identifies more with a 1980's college baseball player than a current black man.