What exactly did Arquette say? I found this paragraph, from 3 days ago, in the London Times, “Rosanna Arquette: ‘I paid a price for saying no to Harvey Weinstein’/The actress shot to fame 40 years ago alongside Madonna — and is back in a film, The Moment, with Charli XCX. She talks marriage, motherhood and surviving Hollywood”:
In 1994 Arquette had a minor but memorable role in Pulp Fiction, playing the drug dealer Eric Stoltz’s wife and telling John Travolta why she’d pierced her tongue (“Sex thing. Helps fellatio”). “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that he [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”
I don’t think she’s saying the whole film is “not art.” She’s rejecting the idea that the “n-word” can be used if only it’s within what is genuinely art. She’s saying it’s still “racist and creepy” — even when the work of art was made at a time when the taboo on saying the word wasn’t so strong. I note that Tarantino himself avoided any use of it in his last film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019).
It’s one thing to say that using the word inflicts harm and we ought to avoid it out of kindness and quite another thing to say that to use it at all — even in fictional character dialogue — is racist. Arquette got so harsh. She hates it, cannot stand it. Why flare up and call out Tarantino now?
Well, of course, Tarantino answers the question.
He attributes bad motivations to her. His insinuation is subtle, barely stated at all, but it hits harder than “racist and creepy,” because it’s more believable: You’re a washed up old actress hungry for publicity.
That hurts harder because Arquette actually has a new movie and she’s attempting to publicize it. Maybe ideas about racism — or males with hall passes — is relevant to the movie. Here’s the trailer, which I found very unpleasant to watch and (especially) hear. It’s some kind of pop music mockumentary with a lot of talk about something you may have forgotten (“brat summer”):