This is an apparently true line from a Simpson’s show (one that I haven’t seen):
Bart: You’re watching PBS?
Homer: Hey, I’m as surprised as you, but I stumbled across the
most delicious British sitcom.
[the title of the show appears on the screen]
Bart: [reading it] “Do Shut Up”?
Homer: It’s about a hard-drinking yet loving family of soccer
hooligans. If they’re not having a go with the birds,
they’re having a row with the wankers.
Bart: Cheeky.
if so it is absolutely fabulous! Apart from summing up life chez Owl pretty much perfectly.
Am I to assume that “wankers” isn’t in common use in the USA?
Are there any other things that have slipped under the censor’s radar?
(And just in case you didn’t know; wanking is masturbating - and it’s quite a rude word in Britain)
The BBC cut the word ‘wankers’ out of the U2 episode ‘Trash of the Titans’, although that word only comes up occasionally, and isn’t as offensive in America.
This isn’t unique, really. There are a lot of expressions that are viewed as vulgar on one side of the pond, but not on the other. No one in America ever used “shag” as a synonym for having sex, so no one in America thought Austin Powers was saying anything obscene. I think Brits are more inclined to think of “shag” as vulgar, rather than humorous or cute.
“Wanker” is used very, very rarely in the US - I don’t think most people even know what it means or would think to use it. And, as others have said, it’s a pretty inoffensive thing to say, here (probably because its meaning isn’t understood).
Mostly, it seems that those who are familiar with the term are folks who’ve watched a lot of Britcoms…
Alot of British profanity is much, much milder in the US.
Wanker, bloody, shag, bollocks. We know what they mean, for the most part, but these words have no power for us. A low-class British character on a US show will use them all the time, if only to show how funny and British he is.
I don’t know, I would think anyone who doesn’t know the word is a little out of it. I knew the word long before I ever knew a single British person. And I’m not a Monty Python nerd or anything either. But I agree that it’s not really officially recongized as vulgar because it’s not used that much.
Actually, the most common use of “wanking” that I can think of is probably in reference to excessive guitar solos.
Peg’s maiden name (Ha!) on Married With Children was Wanker. There was an episode where she meets her high school friends who chant, “Peggy Wanker! No need to thank 'er!” At the time I was surprised they used that word on television and wondered if the censors knew what it meant.
There was a film about the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War where the soldiers built a “wanker” (I think it was a box with a hole in it, with a crank-operated – no, not that crank! – feathered mechanism inside). They presented it as a joke to the chaplain, who said, “Oh, a wanker! Nice construction. This is probably the best wanker I’ve ever seen.”
The Mitsubishi Montero is known in the rest of the world as the Pajero. Legend has it that in some Spanish-speaking countries that “pajero” is slang for “masturbator”. (I did find a site with Spanish-language slang, and “pajero” was so described.) Personally, I think “Mitsubishi Masturbator” has a nice ring to it.
So what do they do in England when “Married with Children” episodes refer to Peggy’s hometown, in Wanker County? (Or would that be Wankershire to ya’ll?)
Hmm, I also pretty much knew what it meant without having to be told. Actually I can’t imagine that there’s any common euphemism to masturbation that would be automatically cut from a prime time show. Or maybe I just read between the lines too much and don’t notice when they tip-toe around stuff like that.
The only British naughty word I didn’t know was bugger, although I find out in the most amusing way.
It just gets refered to as Wanker County. Brit TV is no were near as prudish as US network TV. Fuck, piss etc. are all heard after the watershed (9pm) on Brit. network TV.
Try to remember when the Simpsons visited Japan, Bart and Homer had a short conversation in Japanese.
From the above conversation, ‘row’ is a much more obscure word for Americans. Only die hard britcom fans know a row (which rhymes with a ship’s bow) is a fight.
There was also an episode of Mork and Mindy with guest characters called Mr and MRS wanker, who were referred to very loudly by name several times.
Wanker really is quite a heavy swearword over here. You wouldn’t hear it said in a British TV show before the 9pm watershed.
The American attitude to British swearwords (they don’t really count 'cause we don’t use them) explains why there was swearing in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Ron said ‘bloody hell,’ and I was quite shocked. My four-year-old watches that movie, it’s not the kind of language I want her to think is OK! If <i>she</i> says anything like that, she knows she’s in trouble!
One of the funniest things I heard when I was a 18 year old living in the UK was an American lady who entered the restaurant I was tending bar at. I talked to her about the spate of cold weather we were having and she told me in a voice loud enough for other people to hear that she had slipped on the ice and fallen “right on her fanny” that morning.
It wasn’t until I was in the US a couple of years later and I saw an ad on TV for a videotape with the title “Firm your Fanny” that I realised the were talking about the bum.