Today’s Agenda

When, in 1939, Rhett Butler said on screen to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” the language was a scandal. Family newspapers like this one wouldn’t print it, just d--- if they were daring. But as a word becomes widely used, its value as profanity diminishes and more shocking words must be found.

One result, says social psychologist Carol Tavris, is that “what may be a terribly shocking word to parents may be an ordinary word to a kid.” True, says one of those kids, in Platform.

“If I were to talk (to friends) like I do to my parents or teachers, my friends would think I was talking down to them,” says Felipe Perez, 17, of Bell Gardens. “I really don’t think it’s a big deal.”

Clinical psychologist Michelle H. Wierson, an assistant professor of psychology at Pomona College, attributes the increase in profanity among kids in part to the “media image of a cool and powerful teen-ager as one who uses a lot of profanity.

“It’s part of the identity process, trying on different roles,” Wierson says. “One of them is the ‘bad kid’ role. Profanity increase in early puberty, then declines as kids start to feel they have more individual identity.”

Finally, she notes, teens want to separate themselves from adults--and push the boundaries a bit. This is especially true for boys. For them, says Wierson, “an easy way to appear ‘tough’ is to use tough language.”

Again, no big deal.

What Tavris does see as a big deal, though, is the decline of commonly accepted manners in the larger society: “When my husband says to someone in a parking lot that her lights are off, and she responds with “---- you,” that’s a real concern. I don’t mind the word itself, but its use as an insult. If you ask someone to be quiet at the movies, the same thing can happen.” Or worse.

L.A. Times Magazine columnist Patt Morrison wrote last fall of a young woman in Stockton, a passenger in a car, shot dead when the driver gestured at a teen-age motorist to tell him that his lights weren’t on. When caught, the teen-ager told police he thought the gesture insulting.

Gang worker Gus Frias agrees that media images greatly influence teen-agers, and in Gripe, he points particularly at movies. “Aside from glorifying gang violence, (they) harshly reinforce racist stereotypes against Mexican-Americans.” He’s particularly upset right now about “La Vida Loca,” and asks filmmakers to provide kids with “road maps” to success and achievement, not just portraits of violence and drugs.

The Rev. Norman V. Naylor admits finding himself almost glad when he hears of gang members killing one another, then horrified when he realizes what he’s feeling.

“And what of communitarian values?” asks Naylor in Sermon. “How can there be a sense of community if we can’t walk or drive freely where we will?” How, indeed--but we must, he says:

“From the moment of birth we haven’t known when, where or how we will die. We must live every day to the fullest, as though death does not exist.”