Rosanna Arquette is speaking out against Quentin Tarantino’s excessive usage of the N-word in his films.
Arquette, who played Jody, the girlfriend of drug dealer Lance (played by Eric Stoltz) in Pulp Fiction, reflected on her role in the cult classic 1994 film during an interview with The Times of London published Saturday.
“It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels,” the actor, 66, told the outlet about the movie.
“But personally I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”
The racial slur is used 20 times in the movie, which took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Tarantino’s use of the N-word has been condemned in the past, especially over his 2012 film Django Unchained, which includes over 110 instances in which both Black and white characters use the N-word.
Filmmaker Spike Lee has been an outspoken critic of Tarantino’s decisions, telling Vibe magazine about Django in 2012 that the language was “disrespectful to my ancestors.” Following the release of Tarantino’s 1997 movie Jackie Brown, Lee said, “I have a definite problem with Quentin Tarantino’s excessive use of the N-word. And let the record state that I never said that he cannot use that word — I’ve used that word in many of my films — but I think something is wrong with him.”
Actor Samuel L. Jackson, who starred in Pulp Fiction as well as Django Unchained, defended Tarantino’s use of the N-word during his appearance in QT8: The First Eight, the 2019 documentary about Tarantino’s films.
“You take 12 Years a Slave, which is supposedly made by an auteur. Steve McQueen is very different than Quentin,” Jackson said. “When you have a song that says [the N-word] in it 300 times, nobody says s***. So it’s ok for Steve McQueen to use [the N-word] because he’s artistically attacking the system and the way people think and feel, but Quentin is just doing it to just strike the blackboard with his nails?
“That’s not true. There’s no dishonesty in anything that [Quentin] writes or how people talk, feel, or speak [in his movies].”
Tarantino addressed the backlash against his use of offensive language in 2022, telling critics to watch “something else.”
“Then see something else,” the director responded at the time. “If you have a problem with my movies, then they aren’t the movies to go see. Apparently, I’m not making them for you.”
