Back in 1972, the great standup comic George Carlin unveiled one of his best routines, called The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say On TV. It was Carlin at his scatological, logical best.
Those words, if you’re interested, are (BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEEEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP).
It was 36 years ago that Carlin came up with The Seven Dirty Words, and for most of those years, it held up pretty well.
But, today, you not only can say the Seven Dirty Words, you’re almost expected to say them. With the advent of cable TV and outfits like HBO, Showtime and Netflix, the list looks as antiquated as an episode of Leave it to Beaver (which, ironically, is a show title you could use on network TV in the 1960s, but not in the 2000s).
I know I’m going to sound like an old coot (which I find offensive … I am, at worst, a young coot), but there is too much foul language on TV and movies. Man, when I write that down, it really does sound old cootish. But bear with me.
I suspect that most of you reading this are Baby Boomers, or "The Silent Generation," the little-used term to describe people born between 1925 and 1946. If you are, you probably grew up in a non-swearing household, even an almost non-swearing world. I never heard my mom utter anything even close to a "curse word"; we couldn’t even say something like “Oh my God,” because that was using the Lord’s name in vain. My dad would change an offensive word for a random, inoffensive word, resulting in expressions like “son of a biscuit,” which gave me a twisted idea of what went on inside a box of Ritz.
Even in high school in the 1970s, I rarely heard crude language, which either says something about my high school, or how few people I conversed with. It wasn’t until I went into the working world that I first heard people drop "F-bombs" casually into conversation, and to be truthful, I was shocked.
Maybe it's because of that background, but I’ve never been comfortable with hearing crude language in TV and movies.
Of course, what is crude long ago is not crude today. Back in 1939, when Clark Gable told Vivian Leigh, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in Gone With The Wind, the line was considered quite scandalous. The studio, MGM, had to obtain a special dispensation from the Hays Office, the censors of the time, to use the word damn. But in case they didn't get it, producer David O. Selznick asked his staff for possible substitute lines. Some of the actual suggestions included "I just don't care", "I don't give a hoot!", "I don't give a whoop!" and my favourite, "I don't give a straw." And I thought “son of a biscuit” was weird.
Nobody wants to go back to a time when damn was considered too hot for the movies, but now we’ve gone in the opposite direction. Take the F-word – please.
The thing about the F-word is that, used judiciously, it can be perfect. There’s a scene in the wonderful comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin blows a gasket and launches a profanity-laced tirade (18-F-bombs in one scene, that resulted in the film getting an R-rating in an otherwise G-rated film) at a car rental company employee. It’s hilarious, and the clerk's response is even funnier. But it’s a rarity.
There are shows and movies where the gloves are off when it comes to language, and it works. The Sopranos would look pretty stupid if Tony called anyone a “melon farmer,” which is an actual euphemism. You would expect Mafioso to be extremely foul mouthed, so I’m OK with it. For anything set in the criminal world – shows like The Wire from HBO, and almost anything from Martin Scorsese – use of colourful language is to be expected.
But today, particularly on HBO series and Netflix, the F-word is used almost as if there is a quota to be reached. Everyday folks are routinely pictured as incapable of completing the most basic English sentence without an obscenity. Does anyone in the real world talk this way?
Maybe they do. Maybe I'm just out of step with the modern world. As one of my sons delights in telling me whenever I go into old man mode, "Welcome to the 21st century, old man."
Sometimes, I feel like I'm the only person left who still gives a straw.
- reprinted from Calgary Prime Times, a Great West newspaper.
