Oh, Expletive Deleted.
I just watched the documentary, 'Fuck,' which is a film about the f word. I'm not sure at which audience the director aimed this documentary; I guess that this film, like a great many over the past few years, was meant more as edification than enlightenment.
The film has made me nostalgic. From an early age, I felt all the emotions associated with 'fuck': guilt, curiosity, disgust, titillation, dread, horror, pride, obligation, dedication, anger, satisfaction, contradiction... I understood, when I was, I dunno, 9 or 10, that expression was important, and that people should use words that they feel like using; I was also the child of a Baptist and a Church of Christer, and so couldn't bring myself to use naughty words. Unless I wrote them.
So for a while, any story I wrote was chock full of cursing. My parents, to their credit, didn't do much to discourage my freedom of cursing, aside from complaining that I cursed too much in my writing (later on, when I learned that people didn't just have a right to SAY fuck, but to DO it as much as they wanted, I did the same thing: I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I'd certainly write about it as much as possible. And then my parents suddenly became a two-person Hays Commission).
I used to wonder if I wrote 'fuck' so often because I liked feeling naughty. Or that perhaps my adolescent need to rebel against pretty permissive parents had left me with no options other that to rebel against a culture that was, even then, becoming more and more uptight (I support Al Gore, but my earliest political memories are of his wife Tipper's push to get the parental advisory sticker on every goddamn CD ever produced, and I hated Tipper Gore then, and still have a distrust for her). But I got older, and realized that profanity is a kissing cousin to profound.
Saying 'bad' words is a stupid idea, because words aren't inherently bad. Even the meanings we give them aren't bad. People are pretty fucking bad, and acts that are committed by people--those things are bad. But if bullets don't kill people, then words don't kill people either.
Saying 'fuck' has little or no influence on the life and death of a human being. If anything, the people who try to tell us how awful some words are are more responsible for death than those of us who spout those same words like a laundry list. Because when you're taught to avoid certain words (and I include 'faggot' and 'nigger' in this), you're really being taught to avoid certain aspects of society. I know, believe me, the context of 'faggot,' but rather than punish those who use 'faggot,' we should force those people to use the word at a gay pride parade.
To my knowledge, Fred Phelps, who thinks nothing of protesting the funerals of soldiers and accidental gay icons, has never tried to protest the gay pride parade in the Village. It'd be more appropriate for him to hold up his signs about 'Fags Must Die' and 'God Hates Fags' in Greenwich than to hold them up at funerals for dead soldiers and Matthew Shepard, and he knows that. He's not interested in the appropriate use of the word 'faggot' anymore than the KKK--a group that sticks to the suburbs and to small Southern towns--is interested in the proper use of 'nigger'. Hell, the KKK never marches in places that truly matter, like Harlem, or Detroit, or, i dunno, Kenya. Or Palm Springs. Or Hawaii. Or anywhere that minorities have thrived and survived and interbred with the master race..
Jesus, are the KKK still going? I have no idea. And could we send THEM to Liberia? I'd love to see what happens...
Anyway.
Phelps knows that society, as a whole, actually believes that there is an appropriate and inappropriate way to use words, and doesn't wish to have an actual confrontation with people that are not hobbled by grief, or want to pay immediate attention to him. He, like the KKK, wants to focus on our weakest moments, rather than our most proud moments, where we might feel obligated to call him on his bullshit.
Correct use of language is possible. Contextual use of language is possible. But it is impossible to be inappropriate when using a word.
It is wholly possible to be a goddamn moron when using a word, but all words are appropriate all of the time. Words convey the essence of who we are.
Take Strom Thurmond. Poor guy used a lot of creative language to tell the US that he hated black people, without ever publicly using the word 'nigger.' Imagine what we would have learned about Strom had he known that it was okay to say that word during his racist speeches. He might've eventually come to the conclusion that 'niggers' were pretty good people, and had admitted that he'd not only had an affair with an African-American woman, but had fathered a child with her.
Same with Thomas Jefferson and a host of other white guys.
Same with Roy Cohn and other faggots who were taught that bad words are bad subjects, and that bad subjects are to be avoided. 'Faggot' is a bad word; therefore faggots are bad; therefore one should not be a faggot.
I'm a faggot. Call me that if you wish, even in anger. You might as well be calling me an asshole or a prick.
Which brings me back to 'Fuck.'
One of the segments in the film sort of attempts to deal with the way children are used as a cock-block for obscenity. Rev. Lovejoy's wife's cries of 'Think of the children!' came to mind. Janet Jackson's nipple not only came to mind, but came to the screen, as the director used that nipple moment as the ultimate example of children being used as a reason for censorship. A conservative radio talk show host--a segment of society I find much more vulgar than any word you can think of because they use hate and fear to manipulate--goes on and on about how terrible it was for America to see that nipple. "Children! Half-time at the Super Bowl! Scandal! Horror!'
Kids must be taught the context of such things. Michael Powell, then head of the FCC, still son of UN Colin, says that Janet Jackson's nipple was 'demeaning to women.'
Is that the proper context for a black chick's nipple? Should we teach our daughters that their nipples are so evil that showing one means a hefty fine and a public out-cry? Or should we teach our daughters that there is nothing wrong with their bodies?
Should we teach our children that they are bad and evil for thinking or uttering dirty words, or should we teach them HOW to use those words, those bodies?
In context, nudity can be pretty fucking great. Out of context, nudity can be a sign of a less than intelligent, perhaps intelligence-altered, human being. And anyway, everyone malfunctions.
In context, there's nothing wrong with the use of 'faggot' or 'nigger.' There's nothing wrong with 'shit' or 'cock' or 'fuck.' These words can usually enhance, rather than hinder, vocabulary and comprehension of the world. And I'd argue that what we call ethnic or social slurs are totally different from good, old fashioned curse words, but I already brought them up so can't abandon them here at the end of my rant.
I like cursing. I swear as much as I can, and will even read a syllable-heavy passage of, say, Dickens, and feel the need to sit back and reduce my wonder of the language to a single utterance: "Fuck."
A single syllable that expresses admiration, envy, wonder and respect for a sentence that was intricately designed, and used enough five dollar vocab words to make Bennet Cerf cream his tweeds.
Maybe that's why we hate foul words so much? They take the most complex, the most intricate, the most profound, the most scholarly terms of expression, and reduce those expressions to one word? Fuck conveys a lot. So does faggot. So does nigger. So does hebe and cunt and dick.
My favorite passage in literature is the final passage of 'The Dead.' Joyce takes several paragraphs to convey Gabriel's response to his sleeping wife, Greta, a woman marginalized for most of the 40 pages preceding this one moment, where he looks over at her as she sleeps, and reflects on all the things that he does not know about her. He reflects in beautiful prose, and heartbreaking prose, and all of those words culminate in the most beautiful final lines of anything I've ever read.
But the truth is, Gabriel probably looked at his wife, felt those flurry of emotions and thoughts, and simply said, 'Fucking hell...'
Because 'Fucking hell...' sums it all up pretty nicely.
The film has made me nostalgic. From an early age, I felt all the emotions associated with 'fuck': guilt, curiosity, disgust, titillation, dread, horror, pride, obligation, dedication, anger, satisfaction, contradiction... I understood, when I was, I dunno, 9 or 10, that expression was important, and that people should use words that they feel like using; I was also the child of a Baptist and a Church of Christer, and so couldn't bring myself to use naughty words. Unless I wrote them.
So for a while, any story I wrote was chock full of cursing. My parents, to their credit, didn't do much to discourage my freedom of cursing, aside from complaining that I cursed too much in my writing (later on, when I learned that people didn't just have a right to SAY fuck, but to DO it as much as they wanted, I did the same thing: I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I'd certainly write about it as much as possible. And then my parents suddenly became a two-person Hays Commission).
I used to wonder if I wrote 'fuck' so often because I liked feeling naughty. Or that perhaps my adolescent need to rebel against pretty permissive parents had left me with no options other that to rebel against a culture that was, even then, becoming more and more uptight (I support Al Gore, but my earliest political memories are of his wife Tipper's push to get the parental advisory sticker on every goddamn CD ever produced, and I hated Tipper Gore then, and still have a distrust for her). But I got older, and realized that profanity is a kissing cousin to profound.
Saying 'bad' words is a stupid idea, because words aren't inherently bad. Even the meanings we give them aren't bad. People are pretty fucking bad, and acts that are committed by people--those things are bad. But if bullets don't kill people, then words don't kill people either.
Saying 'fuck' has little or no influence on the life and death of a human being. If anything, the people who try to tell us how awful some words are are more responsible for death than those of us who spout those same words like a laundry list. Because when you're taught to avoid certain words (and I include 'faggot' and 'nigger' in this), you're really being taught to avoid certain aspects of society. I know, believe me, the context of 'faggot,' but rather than punish those who use 'faggot,' we should force those people to use the word at a gay pride parade.
To my knowledge, Fred Phelps, who thinks nothing of protesting the funerals of soldiers and accidental gay icons, has never tried to protest the gay pride parade in the Village. It'd be more appropriate for him to hold up his signs about 'Fags Must Die' and 'God Hates Fags' in Greenwich than to hold them up at funerals for dead soldiers and Matthew Shepard, and he knows that. He's not interested in the appropriate use of the word 'faggot' anymore than the KKK--a group that sticks to the suburbs and to small Southern towns--is interested in the proper use of 'nigger'. Hell, the KKK never marches in places that truly matter, like Harlem, or Detroit, or, i dunno, Kenya. Or Palm Springs. Or Hawaii. Or anywhere that minorities have thrived and survived and interbred with the master race..
Jesus, are the KKK still going? I have no idea. And could we send THEM to Liberia? I'd love to see what happens...
Anyway.
Phelps knows that society, as a whole, actually believes that there is an appropriate and inappropriate way to use words, and doesn't wish to have an actual confrontation with people that are not hobbled by grief, or want to pay immediate attention to him. He, like the KKK, wants to focus on our weakest moments, rather than our most proud moments, where we might feel obligated to call him on his bullshit.
Correct use of language is possible. Contextual use of language is possible. But it is impossible to be inappropriate when using a word.
It is wholly possible to be a goddamn moron when using a word, but all words are appropriate all of the time. Words convey the essence of who we are.
Take Strom Thurmond. Poor guy used a lot of creative language to tell the US that he hated black people, without ever publicly using the word 'nigger.' Imagine what we would have learned about Strom had he known that it was okay to say that word during his racist speeches. He might've eventually come to the conclusion that 'niggers' were pretty good people, and had admitted that he'd not only had an affair with an African-American woman, but had fathered a child with her.
Same with Thomas Jefferson and a host of other white guys.
Same with Roy Cohn and other faggots who were taught that bad words are bad subjects, and that bad subjects are to be avoided. 'Faggot' is a bad word; therefore faggots are bad; therefore one should not be a faggot.
I'm a faggot. Call me that if you wish, even in anger. You might as well be calling me an asshole or a prick.
Which brings me back to 'Fuck.'
One of the segments in the film sort of attempts to deal with the way children are used as a cock-block for obscenity. Rev. Lovejoy's wife's cries of 'Think of the children!' came to mind. Janet Jackson's nipple not only came to mind, but came to the screen, as the director used that nipple moment as the ultimate example of children being used as a reason for censorship. A conservative radio talk show host--a segment of society I find much more vulgar than any word you can think of because they use hate and fear to manipulate--goes on and on about how terrible it was for America to see that nipple. "Children! Half-time at the Super Bowl! Scandal! Horror!'
Kids must be taught the context of such things. Michael Powell, then head of the FCC, still son of UN Colin, says that Janet Jackson's nipple was 'demeaning to women.'
Is that the proper context for a black chick's nipple? Should we teach our daughters that their nipples are so evil that showing one means a hefty fine and a public out-cry? Or should we teach our daughters that there is nothing wrong with their bodies?
Should we teach our children that they are bad and evil for thinking or uttering dirty words, or should we teach them HOW to use those words, those bodies?
In context, nudity can be pretty fucking great. Out of context, nudity can be a sign of a less than intelligent, perhaps intelligence-altered, human being. And anyway, everyone malfunctions.
In context, there's nothing wrong with the use of 'faggot' or 'nigger.' There's nothing wrong with 'shit' or 'cock' or 'fuck.' These words can usually enhance, rather than hinder, vocabulary and comprehension of the world. And I'd argue that what we call ethnic or social slurs are totally different from good, old fashioned curse words, but I already brought them up so can't abandon them here at the end of my rant.
I like cursing. I swear as much as I can, and will even read a syllable-heavy passage of, say, Dickens, and feel the need to sit back and reduce my wonder of the language to a single utterance: "Fuck."
A single syllable that expresses admiration, envy, wonder and respect for a sentence that was intricately designed, and used enough five dollar vocab words to make Bennet Cerf cream his tweeds.
Maybe that's why we hate foul words so much? They take the most complex, the most intricate, the most profound, the most scholarly terms of expression, and reduce those expressions to one word? Fuck conveys a lot. So does faggot. So does nigger. So does hebe and cunt and dick.
My favorite passage in literature is the final passage of 'The Dead.' Joyce takes several paragraphs to convey Gabriel's response to his sleeping wife, Greta, a woman marginalized for most of the 40 pages preceding this one moment, where he looks over at her as she sleeps, and reflects on all the things that he does not know about her. He reflects in beautiful prose, and heartbreaking prose, and all of those words culminate in the most beautiful final lines of anything I've ever read.
But the truth is, Gabriel probably looked at his wife, felt those flurry of emotions and thoughts, and simply said, 'Fucking hell...'
Because 'Fucking hell...' sums it all up pretty nicely.