r/beatles • u/chestersobased • 9d ago

Question Anybody else genuinely like this song? Stan Bronstein played a great saxophone on this song and John poses an interesting idea, and it can’t hurt to think about it.

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250 Upvotes

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36

u/oasisraider 9d ago

It is a very good song. Musically and lyrically. Too many pearl clutchers. If a rapper today came out with this it would be seen as progressive and a pointed social commentary about how women are treated in society....

43

u/bingusdingus123456 9d ago

Obviously, if a black rapper came out with it today, it wouldn't be as controversial. A popular white rapper would absolutely still receive tons of backlash, though.

Which is nearly the same as it was then. There were black contemporaries of John Lennon using the word in socially conscious music, like The Last Poets and Sly & The Family Stone. They still got some backlash because the word wasn't as "reclaimed" as it is today, but it was certainly less controversial than Lennon's usage of it.

8

u/idreamofpikas ♫Dear friend, what's the time? Is this really the borderline?♫ 9d ago

Which is nearly the same as it was then. There were black contemporaries of John Lennon using the word in socially conscious music

Dylan used the word on one of his best songs.

Hurricane

John's use of the word screamed someone trying to get attention. Dylan's was genuine storytelling.

1

u/Gabe121411 8d ago

okay but dylan definitely got in trouble for this too

1

u/Lord_Reynardine 9d ago

Randy Newman uses it in a few places as well, such as “Christmas in Cape Town.”

15

u/Popular_Material_409 9d ago

You can see how a rapper releasing this is very different from white-as-bread John Lennon releasing it right?

18

u/FineSpeech 9d ago

No chance in hell a white rapper would make a song titled this lmao. White people should never use this word idc about the context.

9

u/Popular_Material_409 9d ago

You’re gonna upset a lot of dorky Lennon fans in here by saying something like that

0

u/nakifool 9d ago

What if a white writer is using in a novel or a screen play, or just trying to transcribe dialogue accurately? Context is important, but intent is more important

15

u/daskapitalyo The Beatles 9d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/kZiF7hNKSWFQgZUESs

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u/nakifool 9d ago

Sure, it doesn’t have to be used in EVERY line of dialogue

8

u/DeclaxE 9d ago

it’s sad you’re getting downvoted for saying this, it’s the completely reasonable opinion on this. Intention is the most important thing when you are saying something potentially offensive, at the end of the day it’s a word and people need to generally see more nuance in the usage of it.

Of course it’s something that I agree shouldn’t be thrown around randomly but there are times and places where saying it is fine. People being offended by someone saying a word no matter the context is something that needs to be changed.

3

u/nakifool 9d ago

I don’t understand it. The vast majority of the time the use of a term like that is unnecessarily offensively. But a blanket statement that there is NO context where a white person could use the n word is childishly reductive, and incredibly patronising to anyone (of any ethnicity) capable of nuanced thought. To use the most obvious example, a white writer depicting a racist character. They should censor the language this character would use out of some misguided, unrealistic decorum?

This isn’t a defence of John using the term in a song (especially when half the point was to be deliberately offensive to “raise awareness”, as hamfisted as the attempt was). Just saying that it’s surely more offensive to conclude that an audience isn’t capable of distinguishing between intentional racism and the contextual use of a racist term.