I was a prude. I really was. Well, perhaps prude is the wrong word. But I remember in sixth grade, one of our fellow classmates telling us he’d discovered a “new” curse word. The word he had “discovered” was "the f word." Maybe in your circles, you learned of this word much earlier than age 10 or 11, but we were in a private Baptist elementary school and were raised by God-fearing folks (otherwise we wouldn’t have been there) and the f word was news to most of the classmates.
I had heard it before and, even though I can’t remember anyone telling me specifically it was a bad word, I somehow knew. Back then, if I heard a curse word, a chill would run up and down my spine. I can’t really explain it except to say I’ve always tried to be a good boy. In some ways, I am the same little Baptist boy trying to do good now. But I had heard the word because, even though I was not allowed to see R-rated films, there were a few films in the ‘80s that were rated PG (before there was PG-13) that let the word sneak in. I’m not sure I understood the meaning of the f word, but if I had known, I might have fainted.
This disdain for profanity lasted well into my teens. As an actor at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA), I refused to use even "the d word," mutilating texts by Arthur Miller, William Congreve, and other great writers. My teacher took my requests seriously and she always obliged—grudgingly—but I’m still not sure to this day, even though I acted until I was 26 years old, that I’ve ever used profanity onstage. My prudishness made me wince when my oldest theatre friend first played me the score for Jonathan Larson's Rent.
As a teenager, I would chastise those around me for being vulgar, although there was a fair share of kids at ASFA who were profane to say the least. I remember stopping by a conversation in the hallway where one student was summarizing The Scarlet Letter for another student using salty language about the goings-on of Hester and Dimmesdale. I protested. She looked at me calmly, then looked back at the other student and repeated the word calmly and I left, feeling like the dumb one (I often did).
Incidentally, my father also didn’t care for profanity, although I can’t be sure he just didn’t care for it when it was used around me. But he was frank in admitting if Richard Pryor or Redd Foxx used the f word, he was somehow totally fine with it. A double standard to be sure, but I think he saw in Pryor in particular the way the word helped certain jokes land. He was equally enamored with Samuel L. Jackson in the way he could make the word somehow not shocking.
A turning point was the South Park movie. Among many of the great films that came out in 1999, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut was the first film I sat through where I was not offended but wouldn’t admit it. The opening musical number had me laughing hysterically on the inside, but I was truly worried the film would unleash a litany of profanity in the world that would become so much a part of our speech that the words would no longer have any power (even though Pulp Fiction preceded it by six years).
So, we were at school the following Monday debating South Park. I loved the movie but was taking the anti-profanity argument. The response from my debater was, “They’re just words.” I’ve still not fully accepted this argument. I’ve always believed profanity in film and television should be safe, legal, and rare. Otherwise, the words end up not having any power and, I think, when they’re used, they should have power.
Perhaps the world was always potty mouthed, but it certainly seems we’re in an age where no words really have power save the few words currently being policed by our modern-day Victorian grandmothers. But even some of the rules have changed. When I was a child, if “G-d d-mn” was used on television, it was bleeped out. Now, if the program is on after 11EST/10CDT, it can be used with no bleeping. Watch a recent episode of Saturday Night Live (God help you, it’s as bad now as it was in the early ‘80s), and you can hear the word used, uncensored, uncut. Being a Christian, I’ve always been most affected by that one in a negative way but I’m afraid we live in an increasingly irreligious society with weak Christians who have no real sway anymore, so here we are.
But the real reason I’m writing this is because of a trend I’ve noticed recently that I was always afraid would happen, but still troubles me. I’m no longer the prude of old and can find myself in times of distress dropping bombs not suited for church, but profanity still troubles me in the way it always has. It seems the language of the un or ill-educated, the feeble-minded, and those who accept a world that has no boundaries between what can be said in the street and what can be said in the office.
HBO, for quite some time, was a bastion of hope for television, especially in the bleak years when the three-camera sitcom was dying, limping to the proverbial barn. HBO was always the place where you could get away with anything—nudity, profanity, and the curious addition of before-show warnings—smoking. I’m sorry, but I always laugh when I see, “This program is rated TV-MA for adult language, adult situations, graphic nudity, violence, and smoking.” One is most certainly not like the others.
But recently I’ve found HBO has declined in quality to the degree that the shows we’re mostly talking about are on some other streaming platform, save Succession and Euphoria, two critically lauded shows that seem, to me at least, to be devoid of any real substance whatsoever. I mean, I suppose if drug-addled teens staring listlessly at walls is you’re thing, Euphoria might be the Hamlet of that genre, but so far, I’ve seen nothing in it worth watching. It’s not the things the Parents Council on Television are upset about (I survived the UK Skins relatively intact), it’s just that it sucks. Plain and simple. But Succession, which has recently concluded its run, is the real bugger that chaps my “a-double-s.”
Starring Brian Cox, who I believe (at least in comparison to his UK-colleagues) has never turned in a performance I could describe as anything but adequate (save his work in Yasmina Reza’s hysterically funny play Art), it is another boring show about rich people (when will they realize the rich are fundamentally uninteresting?) and, at this point, the only shocking language in an HBO show would be words like “and” or “the”—you know, the ones they occasionally use between fits of the dreaded f word.
Now I’m sure people talk like that. They must or otherwise writers wouldn’t use these words so much, right? But where is HBO to go now? How could they possibly shock anymore? We’ve had some of the more salacious aspects of stinkers like The White Lotus and such, but the only place they could go now to shock would be to have a show rated TV-G with no profanity. After Succession, where can you possibly go? Perhaps this is why they acquired the rights to Sesame Street, I don’t know.
But watching Ben Affleck’s bloody brilliant Air a couple of weeks ago (some of the finest acting I’ve seen in many moons), I noticed these Hollywood writers (and I’m all for the strike, don’t get me wrong), may have become so enamored of the freedom they have, they’ve forgotten common sense.
In a crucial scene where Nike is trying to convince Michael Jordan’s family to accept their deal, Matt Damon’s character drops an f bomb right in front of Deloris Jordan (brilliantly played, as always, by Viola Davis) before he turns a bad pitch into a winner. Now, let’s go back to the early ‘80s—a time where usage of the f word might have been common on the street, but you would certainly not use it in a corporate setting in front of a lady. You see what I mean? Damon mumbles it under his breath, but it's there. And Deloris would have heard it. There is no way on God’s green earth such a moment would have occurred. I’m all for dramatic license but it’s possible we’ve lost sight of the reason such words used sparingly have more affect. And they certainly should be used properly in the contexts that dictate certain scenes. Another show which just ended, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, has a tad more reason to exploit the word, being about dirty showbusiness in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, but even it was still excessive. Alex Borstein’s character made a Tarantino screenplay look like a script for Saved by the Bell.
I no longer judge people who use profanity, except of course in situations where it ought to be off limits, but we find ourselves in a world with decreasing limits. We are much the same on the streets as we are in our homes. Millennials and Gen Z regularly go to stores in pajamas, glorified tee-shirts become “blouses” in office settings. Good Lord I’m sounding like I’m from the 1950s, aren’t I? But there are limits to this breaking down of walls.
Writers must use common sense and historical knowledge to make their choices on the page. Now I know as well as you do the f word goes back many centuries. But it was not always as accepted in public conversation the way it is now. If you’re writing a scene that occurs in a public place with strangers in a past time, the flagrant use of the word would have been the end of the discussion, no matter what city you were in or how your character felt.
Safe, legal, and rare should be profanity’s place. I think of David Lynch’s film The Straight Story, starring the late Richard Farnsworth. Lynch, who had made himself famous with salacious (and remarkable) films such as Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, went a completely different way with his 1997 offering, a G-rated film about a man’s cross-country journey on a tractor. Maybe it’s time we had a little G-rated fun. Again, this is not to stifle creativity. I’m just certain, since we live in an age where most people slightly younger than me don’t really understand the difference between the 1860s and the 1960s, that historical common sense and spare usage of profanity should be the key. Just because you’re on HBO doesn’t mean everyone has to talk like some Jersey Shore burnout.
Profanity no longer has the stigma attached to it as it once did. Perhaps this is a good thing, but abusing it is abusing one of your greatest gifts—the gift of being able to use words to make points land. When Richard Pryor or George Carlin—Hell, even Lenny Bruce—used them, it was for an effect. The f word is not the same word as “mayonnaise.” It still should carry power when used effectively and we are not using it effectively. The moment it becomes as ubiquitous a word as “either,” you may need to wash your mouth out. It’s an effective punishment.
Agree or disagree. Leave a comment. Prove me wrong, the prude I no longer am.
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