Most of us growing up were
taught or at least encouraged not to “cuss”, a more raw form of the word
“curse”. Our parents did not like it
when we used what has been referred to as foul language, unless one or the
other or both parents were in the habit of doing the same. Great pains have been taken during the course
of civilization (at least western civilization) to shield the kiddies’ ears
from exposure to such language as the barons of society deemed harmful in the
shaping of their character.
Not until the 1960s did we
start hearing “God damn” on the soundtracks of American movies. It was some years later during the following
decade that the F word and “shit” began popping up and joining the movie vernacular. We had something called the Hays Office and
the various state boards of censors that listened to those soundtracks with a
scrupulous ear. Whether any of them ever
took into consideration the fact that even the most well brought up kids were daily
exposed to cussing on the school grounds or on the playing fields is difficult
to determine. By the time the kids
started on a regular diet of motion pictures the exposure had already taken
place. (Currently certain words are
still being bleeped out of news broadcasts and even some dramatic shows so that
those delicate little ears miss out on them.)
Are those restraints really
missed? Well, let us consider the query.
I know that I often find
myself using “damn” or “hell” when I am at home and for the most part alone,
mostly in reference to some inanimate object that is not obeying my
instructions properly and causing me delay or frustration. I even sometimes cuss out people who have
“gotten my goat”, but not so that they can hear me. It is more a conversation I have with myself. “Four letter words” we have come to call
them, which in a way is misleading, because “love” is itself a four letter term
as are “kind” and “meek”.
We of course as a society
have done tricks with foul expressions to make them seem less foul. Goddamn-it has been disguised as
dog-gone-it. You see, dog is God spelled
backward, and gone-it is another way of wishing for somebody or something to be
banished. We want God to “gone it”, that
is, send it to – well, maybe not literally hell. Few of us have any clear idea what a literal
hell would look like anyhow. But at the
very least we want something that is annoying or confounding us to be cleared
out of our space, to be removed from our path.
Send it away from me, not to be seen or encountered anymore.
Or sometimes we settle simply
for the lone word “damn” as a substitute, a shortened, abbreviated form of the
whole mouthful. We just assume that when
we “damn” something we are counting on powers beyond our own control to do the
dispatching. God is the silent
participant, maybe the elephant in the room.
We have even softened the edge of this word by itself; we have traded it
in for “dern”.
Oaths, as they were called in
the ancient world, were always thought to involve wishing harm to come to
someone or something else. If you cursed
you were releasing the fury of heaven upon human mortals. An individual had it in her or his power to
literally place a curse, in some cases carelessly, upon their worst
enemies. And in so doing they were
supposed to place it upon themselves as well.
A kind of black magic! In the
movie “Gone with the Wind” Scarlett O’Hara is seeing Ashley Wilkes back to the
battlefront, when he begins talking in pessimistic terms about the outcome of
the war, and she upbraids him about talking that way and tells him anxiously
“Say a prayer quick!” Erase the spell
quickly before God (or the Devil) has time to act on your wish, as if the man
has really wished for it!
Traditionally held to be the
worst form of profanity is the utterance of words that defame deity. The Decalogue is explicit in its condemnation
of language that takes “the name of the Lord thy God in vain”. We are enjoined
not to speak of anything or anyone deserving of respect in a loose or defamatory
manner. And especially is this supposed
to apply to the name of deity or to anything deemed sacred. To profane that name or things that are
considered holy is to speak of them with contempt, or with disregard for their
holiness.
Another term for this is
blasphemy. Jesus among other things was
accused of it when he seemed to be rewriting the Judaic Law. “The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans
for the Sabbath.” He was considered a
blasphemer just by the fact that he healed on the Sabbath. He offended the Sanhedrin’s sense of propriety
and seemed to be claiming for himself the power and privilege that belonged
only to the Almighty. Once I heard a
very misguided fellow minister report that he had been spending time listening
to words uttered on TV commercials and serving as a one-man censor board. He wrote to the network complaining about the
“blasphemous” use of the term “holy cow” on one occasion. His action was frowned upon and ridiculed by
his fellow clergy (including me), but the fact remains that at one time in our
Christian history the understanding of blasphemy was carried to just such a
ridiculous length. I have never been
quite sure what in this man’s view was being blasphemed, the cow or the God who
created the animals of the field. It can
get quite confusing. Was deity being
ascribed to the animal?
You would be hard pressed
today to find devout souls who are rabid about offending the ear of the unseen
God. Many who are sensitive to the use
of verbal profanity oppose its use more on the grounds of what is inappropriate
or disrespectful, not strict religious taboo.
It should be apparent to all moderns by now that four letter utterances
that are meant in a crude or unkind or flagrant way are really a means of
releasing frustration or to holler about the frustration. They express anger; they do not amount to
condemnation. “Damn” is a manner of
saying “I can do without this” or “I can’t believe this happened or that I
heard that or that such an occurrence is possible”. But it gets really risky when it is directed
at individuals. In such a case you might
not be cursing another person’s soul, but after enough of it you might be
cursing the space between you and the intended other. You may be sewing the seeds of acrimony or
creating an abiding hatred. You can
poison the air between you and the other person or persons. The language becomes divisive, lays the
groundwork for alienation or scorn or outright enmity.
We have all probably met
persons whose lives have been so oppressive, due to deplorable circumstances in
which they grew up or by choices or failures or the plague of associations with
evil company that their entire outlook on life is poisoned, and it shows up
with an almost endless flurry of expletives that fill the air they sit or stand
or walk in. The words fall like confetti
all around them, except they are not let loose to celebrate anything. For them it has become a blighting
habit. So pitiful! So sad and heartbreaking! The only one they have cursed it seems is
themselves.
Have you ever noticed that in
movies that have their setting in ancient times, there is no attempt made to
simulate profane speech? How could there
be? The fact is that we do not know
exactly what a cuss word in ancient Latin or Greek sounded like. To hear English words like “damn” or “shit”
or “hell” or the F word spewing out of the mouth of Julius Caesar or Mark
Anthony or even one of Jesus’ disciples would seem quite bizarre and anachronistic. To say the least, it would be laughable! There was a motion picture version of Lloyd
C. Douglas’ book “The Big Fisherman” that put in a very brief appearance back
in the late 1950s, a tale about Simon Peter and his struggle to come to terms with
the advent of the man Jesus Christ.
Peter was portrayed as a rough cut individual who was acquainted with
lowlife ways and did not know what to make of this strange man who taught
forgiveness and kindness and humility.
It was not a very well written work, and it is not surprising that it never
really caught on with the public. But
there was one exceptional scene in it I shall never forget.
Peter comes up against two
ruffians who make fun of his new attachment to the carpenter’s son and decide
to test his new faith. First of all they
slap him in the face. Peter feeling the
urge to fight back mutters “Deliver me from temptation”. A second time one of them slaps him he
repeats the prayer a little more earnestly, “Deliver me from temptation”, and
yet a third time he is struck and repeats the words obviously very riled up and
gritting his teeth to keep from yielding.
Suddenly one of them socks him on the jaw and he goes sprawling to the
ground. That pushes him over the edge
and as he rises to his feet he changes his prayer to “Forgive us our
trespasses” and knocks both of his enemies down in one swing. They scamper away and do not bother him
anymore. At once he is seized with
self-disgust and cries out “You’d better give up on me, God. I’m not your type.” But in a few moments he is begging God not to
give up on him. He falls into a sobbing
heap on the floor of his fishing boat where he remains until he hears Jesus
calling him to follow. A very touching
moment! No ugly words necessary! What a shame that the rest of the splashy spectacle
was so asinine and nauseously contrived.
It has predictably disappeared from the repertoire.
If a scene like that were set
in modern times, a new convert butting heads with hoodlums on the street
perhaps, we can be pretty certain that we would hear some cussing in our own
language, the man cussing first at his attackers and then at himself for having
such a tough time putting his new faith into practice. How would we depict that profanity in a Biblical
setting? Interesting question!
Recently I saw and reviewed
that short series “One Day at a Time” and I was impressed by how much strong
emotion, even near volcanic emotion, was put across, especially by the mother,
without weakening the fiber of that continuing tale by any profusion of
cussing. Yes, a word or two sneaks in
but never did the writers perform as if the gutsiness of it depended upon a
full outlay of gross terminology.
Where are we now regarding
the use of what is sometimes called “colorful” language in dramatizations,
especially in motion pictures? Has
someone torn open a Pandora’s Box? Is it
“anything goes” now in contrast to where we were a century ago? I suppose so!
But have we made so much of it tiresome on the ear? How much does the impact of human personalities
portrayed on the screen depend upon dropping or scattering these ugly terms of
human conversation into the script?
It all depends upon the kind
of people you are setting out to portray.
If one is dealing in something lurid or violent, explicit or not, it
seems more authentic not to impose any kind of strict ban on salty language
that people watching would expect to hear.
But I have seen movies in recent years in which the F word was heard far
more than seems believable. Go into any
dive or men’s locker room or even into any prison ward and how much in the
space of an hour would you hear it? It
is heard, yes, and frequently, but not with every other breath that is taken. If it cannot add force where it is needed, if
it becomes a kind of tic or verbal spasm, a kind of show and blow, a pointless
monotony, does it really serve the purpose of good dramatic art any more so
than those taboos of yore? I would say
not.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know about me, consult the
autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.
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