Turning Hearts – Pastor Tim Salzarulo

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Cursing Under Cover

I found this article below on Plugged in Online and it was very interesting so i thought i might pass it on to you, our Parents. Love ya all. _pastor tim Cursing Under Cover One of the more tedious duties I have, as a Plugged In movie reviewer, is counting profanities. Trust me, people, it's harder than you'd think. While the folks around me are laughing and crying and screaming, I'm making messy little scribbles in my notebook and asking myself, "Did he just say what I thought he said?" That happened a lot just recently as I was watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. All through it, my swear-o-meter was buzzing. It wasn't so much because it contained lots of f-words—technically, it steered clear of those. What gave me writer's cramp was all the f-word euphemisms: "Frigging," "fricking," "effing," even "pork." Ultimately I was confronted with a bewildering array of cuss substitutes. How many were there? Twenty? Thirty? I lost count somewhere in all the explosions. But there were enough to make me think that the PG-13 Transformers film—already one of the summer's biggest blockbusters—is really an R-rated movie in disguise. Turns out, Transformers 2 is hardly alone. According to Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education for the Parents Television Council, f-word euphemisms are on the rise in both movies and television. And the PTC doesn't like it one bit. "It creates an environment that promotes and cedes ground, that it's OK to drop in that kind of language in normal conversation," she told Plugged In. "And I don't think we should stand for that." Curses! Foiled Again! Using euphemisms as swear word stand-ins is nothing new, of course. It's as old as swearing itself, and that likely dates back to the origins of language ("The Tower of Babel will never be finished now, dagnabit!"). The very word euphemism goes back to ancient Greece—eupheme being the sunnier, happier antonym forblaspheme. And, because language changes all the time, today's euphemism might well be tomorrow's blasphemy, or vice versa. And you don't have to look any farther than the King James translation of the Bible for proof. That widely revered manuscript uses a few perfectly acceptable 17th century words that, if I were to write them here—out of context—my editor would feel compelled to bleep them out with little hyphens before you were allowed to read this column. Historically, euphemisms were designed to protect society from unwanted, unneeded vulgarity. The British so hated talking about going to the "toilet room" (in itself a euphemism) that they changed the term to "bathroom," then "water closet," then "W.C." It was their way of distancing themselves from the impolite activities that often take place behind the W.C.'s closed doors—the very same instinct that leads us to say that we're "going to see a man about a horse." Phrases like "passed away," "differently abled," "enhanced interrogation" and pert near everything that comes out of Yosemite Sam's mouth are euphemisms. Even reverently using the word God is a euphemistic stand-in, of sorts, for His true name—a name so sacred and holy that, for millennia, few dared utter it at all. Plugged In Online's typographical use of "the f-word" is itself a euphemism—one that alerts our readers to the presence of a salacious swear word without (hopefully) offending their sensibilities. But today's Hollywood screenplay writers appear to be using f-word euphemisms for a different purpose: to skirt the censors, wink to their audience and swear under the radar. What's in a Name? The f-word, despite its growing acceptance in some societal circles, is still linguistic radon in most public forums. Use more than two in a movie, and you can kiss your PG-13 rating good-bye. Use one in prime-time broadcast television, and you'll subject your station to a potential Federal Communications Commission fine. The Supreme Court ruled this spring that even a fleeting use of the f-word on broadcast TV—in an awards show, for example—can legitimately bring down the wrath of the FCC. Because of this, television broadcasters—even many on basic cable—are very cautious about introducing the f-bomb into regular programming. Movie studios, too, know R ratings can hurt a movie's bottom line: The new Transformers movie, which made more than $200 million its first week in theaters, would've likely banked a fourth or fifth of that had the film been given an R. The result? Well, in the case of Revenge of the Fallen, we get Autobots that talk about "frigging" and "freaking" and a character who runs a website called "The Real Effing Deal." In the Sci Fi channel's landmark series Battlestar Galactica, we hear characters regularly use the word "frak" as a noun, verb, adjective and interjection—much as its inspiration, the f-word, would be used. In NBC's 30 Rock, we learn of a fictional TV series titledMILF, which is a sexualized acronym involving the f-word that I can't even begin to detail here. And then there's Scrubs, in which Dr. Elliot Reid (played by Sarah Chalke) has a fondness for the word "frik." "There have been episodes where she strings five or six of them together," Henson of the PTC said. In these instances, euphemisms aren't used to soften a vulgarity: Rather, they're designed to call that very vulgarity to mind—making them not so much euphemisms as profanity placeholders: We'll use this word, the creators seem to say, and you insert the real one. "It's not so much the word itself [that's offensive]," Henson continued. "It's the meaning behind it, the feeling behind it. It's the emotion behind it that carries the weight." Or, as Shakespeare might say, What's in a name? An f-word by any other name will still sound as foul. Word Up There's very little relief in sight from such creative use of euphemisms. The FCC, when it's tried to enforce decency standards, has run into significant interference, so it's unlikely the agency will zealously tackle words that aren't technically indecent. And the truth is, even if the FCC or the Motion Picture Association of America did decide to clamp down on the word "frik," another made-up term would spawn to take its place. Language—particularly profane language—is like that. But it does give us a chance to learn—and teach—something about the nature of language itself: that words have power. We invest that power into the words we use and wield it every time we open our mouths. And, as Spider-Man always says, "With great power comes great responsibility." So my issue with the f-word and all its derivatives is three-fold: First, it's offensive—that's a given. Second, it's unneeded. I'd submit that few people, even the most crass among us, decided to see Revenge of the Fallen because they heard the producers employed a lot of almost-swear words. Third, it's simply downright lazy. In a language filled with hundreds of thousands of beautiful, powerful words, it's a crying shame to see talented people resort to this vulgar crutch again and again and again. To me, it signals a paradoxical lack of creativity—a cinematic security blanket that retards any ability to grapple with the world's ideas, problems and people in bigger, better ways. If the English language is a Ferrari, it's as if the entertainment industry insists on disengaging most of the cylinders, powering the beautiful chassis with an engine that weakly putters along on monosyllabic micro-explosions.

Posted By Tim Salzarulo At 11:34 AM •

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