What I'm Thinking About Today ...

I will admit to something a little embarrassing: I get a kick out of YouTube videos of parrots cursing. I find their innocent use of expletives hilarious, probably because I can only imagine that they have not the slightest inkling of the meaning behind their words. In those videos, tone is everything. 

I am not, on the other hand, fond of videos of children cursing. To me that seems too obvious, and too much of a rush to erase their innocence. The idea that parents would purposely teach their kids to say certain words is distasteful – nearly as distasteful as those that do not regularly interact with their children and instead place screens in front of them as a substitute for actually raising them. But I digress….

I have had the good fortune to hear and read countless arguments both for and against the use of a certain type of language. I agree that there are times when saltier language simply isn’t appropriate; children’s readings, academic and professional work, religious presentations, and family-based entertainment are just a few examples of communications where one should err on the side of restraint. Behavioral modeling has a powerful effect on children especially, and one is best reminded that things seen and heard cannot be unseen or unheard. 

Beyond that, there is the argument that use of such language constitutes a certain freedom of expression. That to me seems undeniable, and should give one pause for consideration. If one is not allowed to use such language, does this conflict with the question of ‘free speech’? 

An example: a recent thread on Nextdoor (one of my favorite social media sites) began with a ‘Neighbor’ decrying the use of a certain word with regard to one of the candidates from our last elections. The Original Poster’s complaint was that a small local business had placed a banner in full view from the street that displayed ‘F--- (candidate’s last name)!’ in large blue letters. The OP was quite vexed at this, and wanted to know if anything could ‘be done about’ it. Hundreds of fellow Neighbors weighed in on the issue, with many demanding that the sign be taken down and an equal number insisting that there was no issue. They justified their argument by using various incorrectly interpreted laws and policies pertaining to such speech. Almost everyone got it wrong, but that thread entertained me for several weeks. References to the Bill of Rights were countered with cries of ‘hate speech’ and ‘fascism.’ I found it incredibly amusing that such a simple word could be powerful enough to divide the whole community and get lots of people’s knickers in a twist. But given the atmosphere in politics as of late, I found it impossible to discern whether the vitriol tossed about centered on the actual use of the word or on the use of that particular candidate’s name. 

In the end, the sign stayed up through the election, and the topic was abandoned. The Neighbors went back to complaining about someone’s dog, and someone else’s kids riding dirt-bikes in the street. Interestingly, one of the people who had complained the most loudly about the offending sign was later barred from the platform for crude and inappropriate posts in German against the other candidate, a ploy he had hoped would circumvent the notice of the Moderators. A silly question: are certain expressions to be tolerated when made in a different language?

A quick perusal of contemporary popular media shows no lack of ‘colorful metaphors’ regularly employed. The problem, I think, comes down to the frequency with which such words are used. Overuse tends to erode. Since the point of writing is to have an impact of some sort on the reader, using a great deal of crude language dilutes the power of those words when their use might necessarily be most advantageous. Take, for instance, the HBO series ‘Deadwood,’ about the beginnings of the mining town in South Dakota that was famous primarily for the fact that Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down there by Jack McCall in 1876. The characters portrayed are rough-hewn frontiersmen and women who lived hardscrabble lives far from the genteel niceties of the bigger cities to the east. Their language, like their lives, is gritty and raw: the word ‘fuck’ is used as noun, verb, and adjective. Yet, in those settings, the coarseness seems somehow part of the charm of the period and place. These are unrefined people living unrefined lives. 

Compare that with the more recently created series ‘Succession.’ Given that the series is based on a well-to-do family portrayed as a pinnacle of elitism and wealth, that same word, used almost as a form of punctuation, seems jarringly tawdry, employed strictly for the sake of adding an ‘edge’ of sorts, to make the rather two-dimensional characters somehow more appealing. In that case, the ‘charm’ is erased and the characters seem to be simply uncouth.

So, what to make of the inclusion and intrusion of such language? Having admitted my fondness for cursing parrots, I realize that I myself am given to the use of choice words, more conspicuously on some days, but I will aver that I use them purposefully as opposed to mindlessly. Having heard these words from various people at various points in time, I still find them if not shocking then at least attention-getting. 

Imagine that.