aNewDomain — Pardon my foul language, but %&%&$#@! I forgot this was not an X rated website. But it does seem one cannot go anywhere without hearing swear words. Not just on the street, either. Swearing is especially all over the movies and TV, too.
A brief history of foul language
What words are considered bad depends on your point of view and the times you’re living in.On an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Ricky hired a tutor so Little Ricky would learn proper English. The tutor told the Ricardos and the Mertzes that there are two words they should never say. One of them is “lousy” and the other is “swell,” he said.
So Fred said, “Why don’t you tell us the lousy one first?”
In the Music Man, while enlightening the town to the perils of a pool table, Harold Hill asks, “Are certain words creeping into his conversation? Words like swell … and so is your old man.” Those words aren’t considered bad anymore.
Who knows — our current set of swear words might become accepted as well. George Carlin has a list of seven. Time will tell. The funny thing is, if you watch regular channel TV shows today, they still throw plenty of four letter words out there. They just mask them — with bleeps or, for instance, they’ll say “efing” instead of … well, you know. All this despite the fact that everyone watching knows exactly what they’re saying.
So, why bother to cover it up? We need to keep that bit of forbidden fruit out there to tantalize us. On the other hand, South Park gets away with murder. Those kids have the foulest mouths on TV. But it’s funny because they are little kids.
In Home Alone, Joe Pesci uttered many a bad word. He just pronounced them cleanly. “Friggin frigg mmm fraggn …” That kept it clean enough for our children to safely watch.
Eventually we’ll probably need a new set of swear words for the same reason swell and lousy are not so bad anymore. This is all a strange offshoot of free speech. How different would it be if Clark Gable rephrased the most famous Hollywood line of all time and said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a f___”?
For aNewDomain, I’m Tom Sloan.
