Profanity is tits. “Tits” isn’t profanity, but I wish it
was.
I was really, really not allowed to use profanity as a
child. I still don’t curse around my parents. I sincerely hope my mother does
not read this. Ever. But as I became an avid reader and sometimes writer, I
developed affection for the spectrum of words. Profanity makes good things
great. It is the MSG of language.
Don’t act all offended. I believe that if you looked into
your heart, you would agree with me. Your favorite line from Gone with the Wind contains profanity.
Your favorite line from Die Hard
contains profanity. The dialogue of The
Big Lebowski (according to unlicensed, unbonded sources on the interwebs)
includes 271 incidences of the word “fuck,” and it is the best movie ever made.
Now, it should be noted that there is a time and a place for
such juicy vocabulary choices. People betray their ignorance when they cannot
differentiate betwixt formal and informal communication. I am a high school English
teacher. I would never, ever use profanity in the classroom, in written or
spoken feedback to students, or in conversation with my colleagues. This blog,
by contrast, is quite informal. Its objective is to amuse and possibly generate
thought and conversation. You dipshits.
Here are my thoughts on profanity:
·
Words are
words. I wish I could mutter “lumos,”
all Harry Potter-style and illuminate my darkened bathroom in the dead of
night. But sadly, words are just words. “Shit” and “poo” mean the same thing.
If the objective of language is to communicate, profanity succeeds in doing so.
All profanity that I know has synonyms. None exclusively represents a concept
so reprehensible that avoiding it would brighten humanity’s existence in any
way.
·
Variety
is good. Language is like food, in that it is best to seek out the widest
variety of both that can be acquired without causing harm. I would prefer to
eschew food that results from force-feeding geese or putting calves in boxes or
gutting pregnant fish; meanwhile, extended exposure to profanity fails to even
blister the skin.
·
Profanity
drinks the blood of its enemies. What do I mean by this? Connotation. Let’s
say Ned comes across the word “bitch” in the novel he is perusing. In that
instant, he recalls every annoying tsk noise,
every lowered brow, every shaken head, every “Oh dear, oh my,” that he has
witnessed in association with this word. Then he thinks, “Well damn! The author
must really mean what he or she says here.” The more people react, the more of
an effect the word will have. It’s brilliant, really. Like Chinese finger
cuffs. Or quicksand, maybe.
My editor tells me to add more profanity to make the article
edgier.
“Ass.”
Fine. I don’t have an editor.
Strangely, I am interested in my readers’ thoughts on this.
I may have been arrogant in putting the apostrophe after the
“s” there. Time will tell. Leave a comment!
Hi, Rebecca! Sent here back to the past from a blog by Chuck Wendig, in re an app called "Clean Reader" that apparently edits the profanity from eBooks. Personally, I call that censorship, no matter that it is on a one-work basis or not.
ReplyDeleteI swear. Sometimes I swear too much, and I go on a quest to stop swearing so much. In my life it's often a way to vent stress, but in my life there are better ways, and I should try to use those. In my books, however, that is how my character talks. Real people talk that way, regardless of whether we'd like them to or not. If I want my character to come across as real to the reader, then he had best act the way that he would in the real world. Don't like how my characters talk? Then perhaps you should be reading something else.
Or pull the stick out and recognize that your way is not the only way.
And keep that apostrophe after the "s" -- I'll be adding your blog to my list of reading material!