Is "fuck" really that offensive?

Cafe Society
21

“Bad” words are generally associated with private things. Fuck, piss, shit, cunt, dick, etc.

We live in a society here, and unless you want people fucking and shitting all over the streets why do you want to hear about it from every other person? It’s not so much the words as their harshness and the mental connotations.

I think the people most in favor of relaxed decency standards are those without children. If you go around exposing kids to “fuck” and “shit” every other word, that’s exactly how they’ll talk.

22

But when you’re watching a documentary about the most gruesome foreign terrorist act on American soil, you think it’s somehow appropriate to censor the word “fuck” and its ilk, for fear of offending somebody’s delicate sensibilities? This makes no sense. If you’re willing to have your children exposed to real images of people dying, then surely a swear word or two will help the life lesson along.

23

I don’t disagree.

I was responding more to those that say “fuck, it’s hot in here” isn’t offensive. The word fuck is offensive, whether it’s a noun or verb, or adverb, or whatever.

24

.

What’s to explain? Nobody ever told me what “fuck” and “jagoff” and “cocksucker” meant when I was growing up, but I knew well enough not to use it. I just knew adults could use that word, but not children.

Wow. Did you honestly never hear these words? I think I knew all the swear words by the time I was three. I also knew not to say them, lest I get smacked.

25

I think that bleeping the words out provides a suitable middle ground. It delete the word itself, yet adequately conveys the speaker’s level of anger, pain or frustration.

26

I don’t think it’s necessarily offensive to everybody, but I wouldn’t use it in polite or unfamiliar company. I certainly wouldn’t say it knowingly around children.

With certain company in certain situations, I will liberally swear. In those contexts, the words are not meant to be offensive much of the time, and I don’t think they are offensive. In a case like “fuck, it’s hot,” I’d say it’s offensive if I said it to my grandmother (because she would take exception to that word), but not if I said it around my brother (where “fuck” would simply be an emphatic interjection.)

27

Why a middle ground? If you’re showing people jumping to their deaths and are willing to watch that, then you should be willing to endure the language. Otherwise, turn off the tv. I hate bleeping, and I hate hate hate when newspapers sanitize newsworthy stories with words like “m----- f-----.” If it’s news, print the word.

28

Exactly. But the problem is not everyone has that judgement any more. Go to the beach, cursing. Go to a store, cursing. They don’t care who’s kids or who’s grandmother is around. What the fuck?

29

There’s nothing newsworthy about the word itself. So a firefighter yells “Fuck!” while running down a fiery stairwell. That’s not news.

People jumping to their deaths is an essential and significant part of the news. The expletives that a firefighter uses are not. That’s why I say that bleeping the words out is a suitable middle ground; it adequately conveys the emotional state of the swearer without expressing the language itself.

30

Just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is ok, as long as we don’t use naughty language!

31

But the words are part of the event, part of the history. There is no good reason to sensor them. Why not just mute the whole thing, then?

32

That was a good post, SA. I think similarly.

-Kris

33

Conversations about profanity always amuse me because of the ever-changing nature of it.

'Twas a time when David O. Selznick had to vehemently defend his use of a “profanity” in Gone With the Wind. (“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”) I’ve read the memo that he wrote, demonstrating eith definitions and examples of non-profane usage that “damn” was not profanity. He ended up just paying the fine. I’m sure there were many “concerned parents” who probably had a fit about it.

'Twas a time when “bloody” was a foul word. (And it still is in some areas.)

'Twas a time when “swive” was a filthy way of saying “sex”-- the equivellent of “fuck.”

'Twas a time when “piss” was not a “bad word.” Hell, the King James version of the Bible uses it twice that I know of: “Kill all who piss against the wall.” (Kill all the men.)

'Twas a time when it was “obscene” to mention body parts, eliminatory functions or sex even on vague terms. (Which is why we have terms like “white meat” and “dark meat” so that one doesn’t have to sully themselves by saying “thigh” or-- God help you–“breast.”) Books containing sex scenes, even if they were never narrated, were banned. Television shows weren’t allowed to show couples in the same bed, or an image of a toilet. There once was intense debate over whether to show Jeannie’s belly button.

Words and images have only the power which is granted to them by the listener. Society will not crumble if a word is “normalized” and we do a fine job of corsening ourselves even with the FCC “protecting” us from today’s naughty words or from seeing a nipple. (French children must have to be shielded from looking at money which has an image Liberty on it.)

As Phantom Dennis said, trying to sheild children from profanity is like trying to sheild then from the color blue. They’re going to hear it. They’re going to see boobies. The only variable is the parents’ reaction. Screaming, “No, Johnny, that’s a filthy, horrible word which you must never say!” gives the word a witchy and intoxicating power and virtually guarantees he’s going to want to say it at every opprotunity. Calmy saying, “That’s not a word you should use in polite company,” robs it of its “forbidden, naughty” power.

As an aside, I remember the first time I said “shit” in front of my very lady-like grandmother. She just looked at me and said, “What was that you said, dear?” as if she didn’t hear me. I was embarassed and didn’t say that word in front of her again for* years.*

34

Horribile, deplorable violence will get you an “R” rating, too.

35

It happened too quick for those organisations with “family” in their titles to whip up email campaigns to the FCC against it.

I have no doubt that if they would have, if it were possible.

36

I also am offended that they removed the swear words from this show. It seems to tamper with history in some way. I also find it odd that this is the first time I can remember feeling this way. Surely the Founding Fathers swore.

I am also curious re what “once upon a time” Starving Artist is referring to. He (she?) might not have been exposed to certain words as a young child, but that is not the norm. On the playground of my upper middle class, predominantly white school in the mid 60s on up, swear words were known, but they were considered “bad” words. It was very daring for any child to say them, up to about 5th grade or so. This still holds true today with my now 3rd grader. Last year he was much taken with who was saying “bad words” and who wasn’t. He began to differentiate the mild ones from the really “bad” ones. IOW,“damn” was seen as mild, but “shit” was not.

Now, I consider shit to be a mild swear word-if one at all. But to watch my kids figure out what is offensive and what is just frowned on was an interesting lesson in social developement.

I do not believe that this type of behavior has changed radically over the past decades. Certainly there are neighborhoods where such talk is more common and more tolerated. Such has been the case for centuries. And?
I can’t help but think that there has been much sentimentalizing regarding the past here.

37

There is a special airing on CBS on Sunday, Sept.10, called “9/11.” It has profanity in it which CBS has aired twice before without editing, and will again be shown intact on Sunday. Martin Franks, executive VP of CBS, said, “We don’t think it’s appropriate to sanitize the reality of the hell of Sept. 11th. It shows the incredible stress that these heroes were under. To sanitize it in some way robs it of the horror they faced.”

Some stations want cursing out of “9/11”

I applaud CBS and their decision to air this documentary intact. I hope that no matter how many complaints the FCC gets, that they take no action against CBS and recognize the context in which the profanities are uttered.

38

Although legend persists that the Hays Office fined Selznick $5,000 for using the word “damn”, in fact the Motion Picture Association board passed an amendment to the Production Code on November 1, 1939 (a month before the release of GWTW), to ensure that Selznick would be in compliance with the code. Henceforth, the words “hell” and “damn” would be banned except when their use “shall be essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore . . . or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste.” With that amendment, the Production Code Administration had no further objection to Rhett’s closing line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Source: Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code, pp. 107-108.

39

That broadcast of it was on after 1:00 AM, but the first broadcast started at 9:00 PM eastern.

40

Well, that wasn’t exactly my point* but since you bring it up, no, not really. Most violent action movies today simply avoid nipples, bush, and too many uses of the F-word so they can get a PG-13 and make a lot more money.

*see: South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, the source of the quote, for a better idea of what my point was)