Film industry term to be retired
A Cree man in Montreal who received a document titled Casting sauvage from a film production house was offended, so the term – which is used to refer to open casting and has nothing to do with indigenous people or roles – will be retired from the film industry.
Francesco 10:27 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
Is there another word for “wild” in French? I know an “open” casting call can be called something other than wild, but how will I know when the myrtilles-des-bois show up at JT later this month? I’ve only ever seen them called “bleuets sauvages.”
Kate 11:00 on 2020-07-01 Permalink
I was also wondering about longtime postering company Publicité sauvage. It’s a tricky one.
Chris 13:27 on 2020-07-02 Permalink
Is it me or does the CBC article read very biased in agreement with Daybi?
If you’re an anglo reading this, you don’t learn until paragraph 14 that the word’s primary meaning is *not* a slur. Paragraph 5 gives the opposite impression: “In French, the term sauvage is a slur when used to describe an Indigenous person. It translates to “savage.”” The next paragraph says “In both English and French, the word has a colonial history as it was used by European settlers to refer to Indigenous people.” which conveniently omits that “savage” is a ‘false friend’, i.e. it seems like it translates directly because it’s a word in both languages, but in fact the English meaning does not include the primary French meaning: wild. Paragraph 1 also says “a Cree man turned down a gig because of a word deemed offensive used in the file name of his contract.” Deemed by who? The public at large, like the n-word? No. By anyone other than Daybi himself?
I guess we better stop saying “photo shoots” too. “shoot” conjures police violence and I’m sure someone somewhere is offended.
Blork 15:17 on 2020-07-02 Permalink
While I see Daybi’s point, and I could understand him bringing up the issue with the production company, turning down the job because of it just comes off as shooting himself in the foot. As has been abundantly explained, sauvage has two meanings in French. “Casting sauvage” is widely used in the industry, so it’s not like they sent him that document specifically because they were casting a first nations person.
I have no objection to most of the calls to re-think the terminology we use, but some are just silly, like this one. Clearly the “sauvage” in this case is used in the sense of “wild.” Is he also going to boycott wild rice (riz sauvage)?
Azrhey 15:31 on 2020-07-02 Permalink
*puts on my linguist of the french language hat*
Sauvage when used against a human or group of humans is a slur, because it is a word that originally used for non-human things, so it was used to dehumanize native peoples. In the hierarchy of colonial racism, you had civilized people (whites, but not all whites), sauvages were untamed wild beings that needed to be domesticated by civilized people. Once civilized , they became chattel, aka slaves, as that was the best they could become. hey at least they were useful for work, or so the idea was.
*excuse me while I go throw up*
So you have nature sauvage, animaux sauvages ( as opposed to animaux domestiques ), affichage sauvage, fraises sauvages, camping sauvage, etc. Semantically, all those are ok ( I didn’t know about casting sauvage before this post, but IMO, why not? ) because it all means undomesticated, or uncivilized, or outside of what is common habits. It is just not a word that you can/should apply to a human being ever. period.
Because it has as a primary meaning not human.
OTOH I don’t wan to diminish this person’s anguish over the word, so maybe changing the word for that type of casting is the easy way out?
*takes off linguist hat*
maybe this person had the same reaction to casting sauvage that I have every time I hear English speaking persons using “pet” as a term of endearment to their SO? My romance language heart balks at the “people are not animaux de compagnie ni des possessions!”