I'm in the middle of Raymond Chandler's Big Sleep. I watched the movie some time in the last few years but I don't remember what happens, and in any case usually movies diverge from books they're based on a great deal.
I was interested in the political incorrectness I discovered in The Big Sleep. The book was written in 1939, so it incorporated the common prejudices of the time.
Early on in the book, Philip Marlowe describes a minor character as looking like an "intelligent Jewess."
But the homosexual stereotype is what got me to sit up and take notice. Read this bit of dialogue. Philip Marlowe is investigating a pimp who runs a dirty book business. The pimp gets murdered, so his homosexual boyfriend gets revenge and kills the man he thinks killed his lover. Philip Marlowe chases him down and they have this confrontation.
"Who said I had a key?"
"Don't kid me son. The fag gave you one. You've got a nice clean manly little room in there. He shooed you out and locked it up when he had lady visitors. He was like Caesar, a husband to woman and a wife to men. Think I can't figure people like him and you out?"
I still held the automatic more or less pointed at him, but he swung on me just the same. It caught me flush on the chin. I backstepped fast enough to keep from falling, but I took plenty of the punch. It was meant to be a hard one, but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like.
***
I also found it interesting how they used to wouldn't let writers use the f-word.
The homosexual character's only line in the book which he repeated over and over was Go---yourself.
Raymond Chandler had to use a long emm dash in place of the word.
A decade later in The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer had to substitute the word, fug which his characters said constantly.
One night when he went to a party, Norman Mailer noted that a lady met him and said, "you're the writer who doesn't know how to spell fuck."
I was interested in the political incorrectness I discovered in The Big Sleep. The book was written in 1939, so it incorporated the common prejudices of the time.
Early on in the book, Philip Marlowe describes a minor character as looking like an "intelligent Jewess."
But the homosexual stereotype is what got me to sit up and take notice. Read this bit of dialogue. Philip Marlowe is investigating a pimp who runs a dirty book business. The pimp gets murdered, so his homosexual boyfriend gets revenge and kills the man he thinks killed his lover. Philip Marlowe chases him down and they have this confrontation.
"Who said I had a key?"
"Don't kid me son. The fag gave you one. You've got a nice clean manly little room in there. He shooed you out and locked it up when he had lady visitors. He was like Caesar, a husband to woman and a wife to men. Think I can't figure people like him and you out?"
I still held the automatic more or less pointed at him, but he swung on me just the same. It caught me flush on the chin. I backstepped fast enough to keep from falling, but I took plenty of the punch. It was meant to be a hard one, but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like.
***
I also found it interesting how they used to wouldn't let writers use the f-word.
The homosexual character's only line in the book which he repeated over and over was Go---yourself.
Raymond Chandler had to use a long emm dash in place of the word.
A decade later in The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer had to substitute the word, fug which his characters said constantly.
One night when he went to a party, Norman Mailer noted that a lady met him and said, "you're the writer who doesn't know how to spell fuck."
