Rebirth of a Word, a Film, a Slur

"It is like writing history with Lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." – President Woodrow Wilson, quoted in early prints of D.W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation.

About a decade back, Bangladeshi and Pakistani teenagers in England began re-appropriating the dreaded "Paki" word. Once a vicious epithet flung on London streets by white skinheads, the word was now a symbol of an assertive brown community. "Paki Power" graffiti appeared, a clothing label called "Pak1" did the rounds and Aki Nawaz of punk-asian band Fun^Da^Men^Tal told the press, "We're not Pacifists, we're Pakifists!"

"Taking back" racist epithets has long been a cultural touchstone, and a touchy one at that. I took to greeting my British Asian friends with "Paki", but only when we were alone, never in front of white Brits. One day, I called my friend Usman and his father answered the phone. Mistaking his voice for his son, I launched into "Oii Paki, it's Naeem!" The long, pained silence on the other end spoke volumes about how the older generation viewed this act of re-appropriation. He was horrified and disappointed in our lack of "historical context."

I was reminded of this incident recently as another "old man" grabbed headlines with his livid denunciation of "nigger" or the "n word." In a Jesse Jackson-hosted event, Bill Cosby told the audience, "When you put on a record and that record is yelling 'n – – - this and n – – - that' and you've got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that."

It's easy to dismiss Cosby as out of touch with youth culture. But the debate he touched off is raging elsewhere as well. Re-appropriation has now spread to other areas of race, gender and sexual identity. It is also not limited to words, but includes images, songs and films. The best example in film is musician and conceptual artist DJ Spooky's audacious new work, Rebirth of a Nation, a re-imagining of D.W. Griffith's racism-infected masterpiece Birth of a Nation. In the 2004 reincarnation, Spooky combines segments of the Griffith film overlaid with hallucinatory visual effects, including footage of dance legend Bill T. Jones in a piece inspired by Black Southern history.

In the original Birth of a Nation, the accompanying music for racially loaded imagery was suitably epic pieces like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Wagner's "Die Walkure." In the 2004 incarnation, the soundtrack is a seamless mesh of hip-hop, jungle, dub, space rock, ambient sounds and violin performed live by Daniel Bernard Roumain. This time around, the film is not premiering in national theaters, but rather at a star-studded debut at New York's Lincoln Center as a live audio-video event, with the film projecting on three stages.

Take It Back

In the world of re-appropriation, the "n word" has probably had the most truly circuitous journey in post civil-rights America. By the 1950s, "polite" society was distancing itself from the word, and Agatha Christie's best-selling crime novel, "Ten Little Niggers" had to be renamed "Ten Little Indians" for US release. But by the 70s, Gil Scott Heron began the process of defiant reclamation in the novel The Nigger Factory. The mainstream received its shock dosage when Richard Pryor debuted his incendiary standup act, and finally hip-hop culture and gangsta rap codified its modern day usage. The banality of the latest incarnation is revealed when books are published with titles like Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success.

Although the black community pioneered the revolutionary act of "taking back" hurtful words, many other communities have now followed their example. Besides the use of "Paki" by British South Asian youth, Australian immigrants have started a gleeful website called "WogLife" and for the Jewish community there's the in-your-face magazine "Heeb." The mainstreaming of gay culture came through "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy," "Queer Nation," "Queer Theory" and the slogan that started it all: "We're Here/We're Queer." Gay activists now argue in The Advocate that "queer" is more inclusive than "gay" or "LGBT." Playwright Larry Kramer has now taken it one step further with his new book Faggots.