Sony Picture Classics’ upcoming release of Kirk Jones I Swear (4.24). an origin story about Tourette’s syndrome sufferer John Davidson in the ’80s and ’90s, is suddenly a hot-potato thing.
Davidson sparked a furor during the recent 2026 BAFTA award ceremony by shouting out the N-word while Sinners costars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage. Davidson’s Tourette-spasm outburst led to Jordan winning the Best Actor prize at the SAG Actor awards a week later, primarily due to a virtue-signalling sympathy vote.
Suggested slogan for SPC’s I Swear poster: “He said it, but he didn’t mean it.”
Posted on 2.23.26: Tourette’s sufferers have no ability to control their tics, spasms and vocalizings, but it’s hard to believe that Davidson’s terminology had nothing to do with Jordan and Lindo being front-and-center. Davidson is more specifically grappling with coprolalia, or “the utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.”
Did Davidson shout out “ferris wheel!” or “muff diver!” or “Lamborghini!” or “muscle car”? No, he shouted out a racial slur. How can anyone argue that this wasn’t a form of commentary?
Consider the famous Tourette’s scene from Ruben Ostlund‘s The Square (’17).
During a one-on-one between Dominic West‘s Julian, a famous artist, and Annica Liljeblad‘s Sonja, a Tourette’s sufferer starts interrupting with sexually provocative taunts like “show us your boobs!,” “whore!” and “camel-toe!”
These remarks were responses to Liljeblad, an attractive Nordic blonde with great gams. The Square guy didn’t blurt out anything racial or scatalogical — he went sexual for an obvious reason.