Cursing Means Power to People : Trends: Dirty words have been around since the dawn of time. But what were once words of anger that adults murmured under their breaths have extended to all ages for all occasions.
Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ But not in those words.
--Woody Allen
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Kathleen Kelly was in an ice cream parlor with her daughter when some boys breezed in on a blue streak. “Everything was f-this and f-that,” said the Long Island elementary school principal. “Listen, I’m no prude but I finally turned to them and said, ‘Gentlemen, please!’ They looked at me as if I had nine heads.”
Four-letter words are flying everywhere these days--on the street and at the mall and in the hall at school, in rock and rap music, on television and in the movies, in fancy bars and subway cars.
“Dirty words used to come in a plain brown wrapper, you know, in private, and now everywhere you go you’re assaulted by them,” said Kelly, 52.
More than half a century ago the world gulped when Clark Gable in “Gone With The Wind” uttered: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Now, a kindergartner says the same word when she snaps a crayon in class.
Profanity used to be polite society’s dirty little secret. Adults did it behind closed doors. Kids did it when the grown-ups were gone. Nobody did it in front of Aunt Alice. But now, Americans young and old seem proud to be profane--anytime, anywhere. And as the words fly around in the fast lane, feelings, like fenders, are getting all bent out of shape.
“I think profanity offends a lot of people,” Kelly said, “but we have become so used to hearing it that we don’t object. It’s become socially acceptable, so the kids pick it up. I have to confess that I’m not that offended when I hear it on television or in a movie, but I am offended when I hear it in the hallways at school. And when it’s directed at me I get absolutely nuts.”
A generation ago, the nation went nuts over George Carlin’s comedy routine about the Seven Dirty Words banned from broadcast by the Federal Communications Commission--hereafter referred to as the Salty Seven. New York radio station WBAI-FM broadcast Carlin’s bit, and a man riding in his car with his son heard it and complained to the FCC. In 1978, the Supreme Court agreed with the complaint, allowing the FCC to ban certain words from the airwaves. The case defined broadcast indecency, but the dirty words didn’t even appear in the opinion.
The Salty Seven refer to body parts, body products or sexual acts, and they’re not all four-letter words. A couple have fewer than four and two are hyphenated words that contain 10 and 12 letters.
Take a moment here to try to identify these words . . .
. . . Finished? If so, you’ve made a point: You don’t have to see the words in print to be familiar with them. We all know that a blue streak runs right through the heart of America.
The Salty Seven pepper our culture. They’re in the dictionary now. They’re on T-shirts and television sitcoms, in PG-rated movies and on bumper stickers. They’re baked on cakes and stuffed inside X-rated fortune cookies. They rise from the gut of America--from the angry black ghettos to the towns of the white working class.
How did our language become a demolition derby? Are old-fashioned notions of civilized speech dead? Are kids being corrupted? In a democracy should we have Word Police? Should we march against profanity or laugh at it? Ignore it or ban it?
First, let’s consult with a Doctor of Dirty Words, Timothy Jay, a 43-year-old psychology professor at North Adams State College in Massachusetts. He has a book out--”Cursing in America.” Jay, who has studied how and why Americans swear for more than 20 years, traces the nation’s growing use of public profanity to the “in your face” counterculture of the 1960s.
Jay sees swearing as a kind of power grab at a time when more and more people are doubting the American Dream.
“People who feel powerless or discriminated against use these words to empower themselves, to intimidate,” he said. “Women, for instance, are swearing more now, especially in the workplace.”
Are the ‘90s the Filth Decade?
“If I had to go to court it would be hard to prove that we are swearing more now than they did in Chaucer’s time,” Jay said on the telephone. “Our lives are more intricate than ever. We’re hassled more and these words have value. They allow us to relieve frustration and stress and express rage without becoming physically violent.”
Others see greater danger in dirty words. Betty Wein of the watchdog group Morality in Media in New York believes the Salty Seven are symbols of moral decay. She blames the media for a lot of it.
“The media always uses the excuse that they’re reflecting reality,” Wein said. “I don’t believe it. They’re creating it now. The use of four-letter words is so incredibly gratuitous. It used to be that you had to go out of your way to find filth. Now you have to go out of your way to avoid it.”
At the movies, some people are choking on their popcorn at explicit scenes of sex and violence. Timothy Jay’s book charts the progression of dirty words in movies, including Clark Gable’s solo “damn” 54 years ago. That one word cost producer David O. Selznick a $5,000 fine for violating the film code of the time. By comparison, the 1984 movie “Scarface” had 299 cuss words and the 1990 gangster film “GoodFellas” contained 246 f-words alone.
The foul words flew around in the ice cream parlor that day, but Kathleen Kelly, nine heads and all, managed to get the boys to cool their blue streak. “My daughter was embarrassed,” Kelly said. “She said what most people say--that it’s not our job to correct other people. But you know what? It is.”
