TheAgitator.com
The Value of S#*T (and other words of such impact)
Sunday, October 12th, 2003The Chicago Sun Times this weekend published this editorial. In case you haven’t heard, Bono, the lead singer for the rock band U2, said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech, “”fucking brilliant.” (Sorry Mom and Dad.)
The Federal Communications Commission has decided that the word “may be crude and offensive, but in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities.” The Chicago Sun Times has a problem with that. Their problem, however, is not because the word itself is offensive. Rather, they have a problem because obscenity belongs in context.
According to the Sun Times “profanity and obscenity, like any cultural product, are devalued if the market is flooded. First it annoys, then it desensitizes people to the word, and it becomes just another verb. With obscenities tossed freely about for no reason on broadcast television, what is left to a person to say when he hits his thumb with a hammer?”
As I read it, what the Sun Times is really saying is that we need, nay want, words that shock and appall. But why? Why should we have a set of sounds that we can’t say for fear of offending someone? Why should we have words that we can’t print for fear of delicate eyes reading them? Why protect curse words?
That we already have such words is not my concern. But why save their impact? I can completely see why a mother would not want her child to hear curse words now. But when the Sun Times recognizes that usage of the cuss word will diminish its value to the point that it loses all meaning, and they come out against that, I don’t see the point. If we get rid of the stigma, what have we lost? A word to say when we hit ourselves with a hammer. A word that makes us feel a little naughty because its a word we maybe shouldn’t say. That seems a little lame to me.
I’ll stop short of encouraging ya’all to go out an cuss up a storm. My only point is, perhaps we should consider what we are protecting. When we keep cuss words off network television, are we protecting virgin ears from being offended, or are we protecting our ability to offend virgin ears? According to the Sun Times, it seems we want to be able to offend when we feel the time is right. If the words become common, we can’t do that. I disagree with that goal.
“Dirty” words are only dirty because we have made them so. If we taught our kids that words are just words (just like if we teach kids that nudity is no big deal) I think we would all be healthier. (as an aside it is interesting that “dirty” words in Norwegian and most other languages have less to do with body functions than English ones. What is the American obsession with making the body, and its functions, obscene?)
And really, I use the word that is appropriate to convey what I mean. If I say, “Golly, it sure is darn cold out” that has a different meaning than, “Damn, it’s fucking cold!” Sometimes the word fuck is the only appropriate adjective.
Well…since English is spoken in quite a few countries besides the US, I don’t think that there is necessarily an “American obsession with making the body, and its functions, obscene”. Perhaps an Anglophone obsession.
Regardless of how the language or culture may change, I’d like to think that I will always be capable of being offensive when I want to be. Even if I have to work at it.
Ahhhh….
reminds me of an old joke, re: the power of language….
http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue9/polishfighterpilot1.html
Platosearwax proves the point of the Chicago Sun Times. The word “darn” has been used so much over time that it’s lost its meaning and relative shock value. Rather than say, “it’s quite cold” or “it’s extremely cold”, people in the past said “it’s darn cold”. Now the language has evolved to require “it’s fucking cold” to maintain the contextual feeling of the descriptive word “fucking” over “darn”.
Two things come to mind about this topic:
1) This was Lenny Bruce’s argument about other bad words (such as the N-word).
2) This topic was covered, with a different twist, by South Park. Suprisingly, they even got into the context of the word. The example was “Aw shit!” is ok, but “I have to take a shit” was not ok.
Agreed. Sometimes no other word fits for its poignancy than the word FUCK.
If the word is officially sanctioned to be ok, then it looses its shock value. I say we KEEP swear words off the airwaves so it can maintain its powerful effect when I use the word FUCK.