There was a bit of a creepy coincidence for us in the Twin Cities – just before the show started, the 20 second news thing came on and the announcer mentioned a circus performer fell to her death during the Ringling Brothers show at the Xcel Energy Center, then the Simpsons had a sight gag with an acrobat missing a cue and another acrobat falling (presumably to her death).
Cf. Spike, née “William the Bloody” on Buffy. This practice irritates the crap out of me, especially when it’s used on a show (like Buffy) that ought to know better. (Would Victorian gentlemen of William’s class use “bloody” so casually, or at all? I didn’t think so.)
A good episode.
My favorite line, from when Lisa is interviewing the students to work on her paper:
Lisa: So what’s your experience?
Nelson: I dunno. I’m good at making nerds cry.
Lisa: Great! You can be our television critic.
The OP wasn’t the only one who had a “did he really say that?” reaction when Willie said “shite.” I had to rewind the VCR and turn on the captions to double-check.
No, “cunt” is worse over here than it is over there. Worse.
Yeah, but here in America, we can peruse the Fanny Farmer Cookbook and not think twice about it.
I think you’ve rather missed the point of the character…
The foul language, like the working class accent, is an affectation - well, was an affectation. After a couple decades, it probably became habit. The genteel William is dead, Spike is a low-class tough guy, complete with dirty words he never would have used when he was alive.
I was convinced that in one episode of Friends Chandler called Joey a “wank”. Which would be odd, as I didn’t even know Americans had heard of it, let alone its usefulness as a noun.
I think you’ve missed the origin of the character. He was called William the Bloody by others. he didn’t adopt the name himself.
“Married With Children” used “Wanker” as Peggy Bundy’s maiden name years before “Friends.”
Yes, many argue it’s the single most offensive word in American English.
And more specifically, William the Bloody (Awful Poet).
Yes, that was a top story on CNN and other places all of yesterday (today, too). It was a very unfortunate coincidence.
You can already say “asshole” on network TV. I remember Mr. T saying it on the “A Team.”
Spike’s the only one using it casually - the jerk who gave him the nickname used it once (maybe twice, I can’t remember the exact line of dialogue) in the course of an insult - and, while I may have misread the comment I was replying to I took it as referring to William, not the other fellow, anyway.
I understand that censors would let certain swear words go because, well, in America, they just don’t mean anything (I remember my mother who was born in Liverpool being flaberghasted when she saw and ad for Austin Powers; the Spy Who Shagged Me). Hell, in a television show directed at your standard English speaking audience, you can have Spanish speaking characters go off on rants of cuss words and noone bats an eye.
Still, “Shite” and “Shit” are way too much alike to just be passed over. I can’t believe that there’s a single censor out there that would be swayed by the “He didn’t say shit” argument. That’s like having a censor be oblivious to a man pronouncing “Fuck” as “Fook”. You could tell from the context exactly what Willie was saying and what was meant by his statement, which makes me really wonder how they managed to get that done. “Shite” is not a different word, it’s a phonetic spelling of “shit” with a heavy accent.
I’d swear one time (years ago) when Muttley was doing one of his "sassafrassing … " cusses he said fuck in there somewhere …
I think [not that I’m an expert on anything] that there’s a difference between saying bugger and buggar (as in one is the sexual one and the other isn’t)
I was terribly amused, when I was in America a few years back, to see the posters for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Over here it was Austin Powers: The Spy Who S*****d Me
In the movie Johnny Dangerously one of the characters is always saying “Fargin’,” which is just how he says f—ing. The TV censors didn’t bother cutting it from the TV release of the movie.
No it’s not … shite is what they say over here, shit is what they say in the US. Nothing to do with accent. Same as ass and arse are not two different pronunciations of the same word …
Was that in Ireland or the UK? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t censored here…it certainly wasn’t for pre-watershed TV the other day
Firefly got away with all kinds of profanity by simply using Chinese words…and “gornam” instead of “goddamn”
As Tengu pointed out, Spike used it to distinguish himself from William. As for the people who invented the name William the Bloody–I think the actual authenticity of the language was sacrificed for the joke. The audience was no doubt expecting the origin of the nickname to be more frightening than bad poetry.