Dirty Words

I recently watched a six-episode series on Netflix titled “History of Swear Words,” and it was pretty eye-opening.

The series is hosted by Nicholas Cage, with a series of clips from commentators ranging from scholars to comedians to actors to sociologists and each episode has a featured swear word where we get to learn about its origins, its uses and its impact.

Now, I won’t actually use any of these words here, as this is a fairly family-friendly publication, and we try to limit the use of profanity to quotes as they pertain to the relevance of a news story, the most recent example of which comes to mind when several months ago the mayor of West Memphis advised everyone to stay at home… well, not all of your body… just a certain part of your anatomy.

You get it, right.

Well, the Netflix show doesn’t bleep or censor or skirt around the use of these words, so if that sort of thing offends you, I can’t recommend the show, but I found it quite informative and entertaining.

The best part of each episode, to me, was tracing how this word and that word actually became profane at all. We are the ones who made them “swear” words or “curse” words and gave them that power. And that’s really what profanity is — it’s power. Adding a four-letter-word to a sentence expresses an exponentially more powerful sentiment to it (both positively and negatively), and somewhere along the way, we decided which of these words we were going to set aside and not use them in certain situations.

Continued on Page 5 VIEWPOINT (cont.)

I don’t think I’m spoiling either the Netflix series or the movie itself, but much of the debate goes back to the 1939 movie adaptation of “Gone with the Wind,” and how the studio fought against the Hays Code (the Motion Picture Association of America of its time) to include Rhett Butler’s famous diss of Scarlett O’Hara at the film’s conclusion. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think we’d all be saying, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot” today (which is one of several alternatives that were recommended).

The series also explores how over the years profanity has become less and less of an issue. Oh, it’s still used in great quantity, perhaps even more now than ever, when the President of the United States is quoted uncensored on CNN using it. But people just seem to care less about it, the shock value of it having been diminished and the use of it being more or less accepted.

In fact, one of the biggest takeaways that I got from the show was the results of a survey of younger people (I think it was people under 30) who overwhelmingly said they were more offended by slurs than by profanity.

In a way, I find that comforting. It’s like my children and my children’s children will live in a world where no one bats an eye at an F-bomb but we simply will phase out terms like the N-word or other derogatory labels.

And I think that pretty %@#$ cool.