Are You Offended?

I don't remember the word hottentots in the movie? where is it said? Anyway, as Jon says, PG is just a spicy U so I don't think anyone's parents are gonna stress over Mary Poppins.

On the question "what will offend us next?"... Could be anything! Being offended is nothing new. Many people who clutch their pearls and decry today's generation as being too fragile were also probably born in a time when it was considered "too offensive" to say the word "pregnant" on TV...

Had someone asked me, I'd have said I’ve never heard the word before. But it’s here…



Daft old man sees a group of soot-blackened chimney sweeps dancing in a circle and instantly thinks marauding African tribe. Now that I actually know the word, I can see why someone (with a very good vocabulary) might find it offensive. But it’s also quite funny.

I think a lot of old films are getting flagged for discriminatory language now.

BBFC ratings are crazy to me sometimes. The 90s Casper film was recently upped to 12, whereas Fight Club’s just been lowered to 15, having previously been censored at 18.

In the printed version of Stoppard's Leopoldstadt the word is used - some joke about marrying a Hottentot - but in the version on stage the word was replaced by Eskimo - softer, old-fashioned, but less likely to make an audience uncomfortable. I think that jokes whose butt is black people, even in the mouths of those who might have made them in the past, do make audiences feel uncomfortable.

I saw some people on social media complaining about this, but I suspect they aren't half as bothered as they claimed, and complaining about the world gone mad is a hobby for them.

I don't see the big deal with reclassifications. It makes total sense, especially as our views on what counts as offensive have changed. It's not just realising that a joke confusing chimney sweeps for black people will make a lot of us uncomfortable, assuming we get the joke, but words that were thought of as serious swear words are not treated as punctuation. I also suspect some original classifications were dodgy, or at least inconsistent, especially before the 12A rating was available.

I doubt most parents pay much attention to a U vs PG rating, especially for a story they are already familiar with, but I do wonder why eight year olds are expected to cope fine with dated racial language their parents probably won't understand, but four year olds can't.

I didn’t even spot that this was a racial reference as a child 30+ years ago, it was dated then. Particularly as people covered is soot are just people covered in soot and don’t actually look like a different race. It seemed like a made-up nonsense word. I can’t imagine a modern child recognising it at 8, 12 or 4.

This change isn’t about the kids, is it. It’s about people who are much older than 12.

But saying that, it is essentially harmless. I doubt anyone allowing their child to watch Mary Poppins is going to be unfamiliar enough with the film’s content to need an age-advisory.

Only real impact might be to make some parents take a 12A rating more lightly that they should on new films. There’s some 12A films that are genuinely scary for little kids.