Forgive Our Transgressives

There ought to be a law about “transgressive.” Major newspapers are using the word with decadent abandon -- 308 times in the last 13 months, an 85% increase since 2000. It described cannon fire, the films of Pedro Almodovar, ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” a play about bestiality, all the best music and “hallucinatory Process Art” (New York Times). During the season to describe Super Bowl and Mardi Gras events, giddy critics seeking cred hurl it like confetti.

“Transgressive” has technical meanings in genetics and geology, but it also caught on in the 1990s in literary theory to explain such things as pirates’ “homo-sociality” and Emily Dickinson’s body.

In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal used its participle to dupe the editors of a prestigious academic journal into publishing “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”

When high-brow readers finally caught on that they’d been pondering a parody, Sokal noted: “Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the 21st floor.)”

Still, with Janet Jackson and Britney Spears, 2004 was a breakout year for brand-name cultural scofflaws and for the term that naughty critics trot out to define them. Roger Ebert, usually able to contain himself to a few utterances of the T-word, transgressed 10 times, finding one South Korean love story about a rapist and his victim to be “brave and transgressive.”

Webster’s says one meaning of transgress is “to go beyond or over (a limit or boundary).” Note to commentators seeking an outre image: The line’s been crossed.

--Brendan Buhler