Just finished the first season of The Leftovers on HBO. It takes place in a town not too dissimilar to the one I live in and the people appear to be much like the folks I interact with every day. In a single episode the script has the characters say the word “fuck” more frequently than I will ever hear it used over a year (outside of TV or movie consumption).
How many “fucks” (or “fuck” variations) do you hear and use every day?
More these days than before. Under the circumstance of the show, it’s actually understandable that a lot of the verbal guardrails will have disappeared along with some of the population.
It’s varied a lot over my lifetime. The years not long after college where I was working as a supervisor in manufacturing and spending one weekend a month in uniform I heard and said it very often. We could be talking about dozens of times a day. I can think of years around a certain NCO where I could hear it a couple dozen times in a short conversation with him on my drill weekends. That’s not an exaggeration.
Now, I hear and use it a lot less. I suspect I still use fuck and a host of other swear words more than you are used to. You might not notice if I were your neighbor. Swearing is part of my code shifting for the expected audience. It might not be your town but people adjusting how they talk when around you.
If 2% of the population simply disappeared without explanation, I suspect my experienced fuck to day ratio would increase.
When I was in college and the Navy, probably dozens of times per day (from friends in college, and from shipmates and friends in the Navy).
We watched *It *(2017) again last weekend in preparation for watching It Chapter Two this weekend (we saw the former when it was in theaters two years ago), and I remarked to my wife that screenplay’s usage of the word “fuck” by boys in their young teens was extremely realistic (and it may not have been in the screenplay; I’ve read that a lot of the dialog was ad-libbed). It starts early, or at least it started early for my friends and me.
I would guess that I personally say “fuck” and its variations at least 10 times a day, mostly on my commute to and from work. I’m also with E-DUB; there was a time when I tried to temper my language but that’s over now.
I “drop f-bombs” throughout the day. I try to watch when kids are present, but some slip through.
first thing I thought of reading OP (spoilered for brief partial nudity):
edited: I don’t think spoilering satisfies the two-click rule. search for “The Wire F***” and you’ll find the scene.
I don’t curse in general. When I drop something on my toe something sort of like a four letter word comes out … usually. But not always.
I generally don’t enjoy people who curse a lot. OTOH, that scene from The Wire is great.
It’s always about how the word is used, not the word itself. Bunk and McNutty were demonstrating the power of communication using a limited vocabulary.
I never curse IRL. (I’m angelic;))
I curse more here on the Dope than I ever have. Funny that.
Little anecdote, Mid-dau’s oldest went to 1st grade and promptly told a kid at his table to ‘fuck-off’, they got called to school. They told the school peeps they would discipline him at home. After about…idk…the 5th time they got called to the school Daughter told them to discipline him at school, as needed… He quit cursing within a week.
In both the entertainment world and real life, “fuck” is used so often it’s lost nearly all its power to shock and offend. It’s where “goddamn” (or even just “damn”) was 50 years ago. I think in another century, the f-word will be about as offensive as we think the British use of “bloody” is now.
[quote=“madsircool, post:8, topic:839995”]
[/QUOTE]I have to admit, I saw the youtube cite, and thought it was this infamous scene from “The Wire.” Fantastic acting. The best example I’ve seen of some comedian’s observation that the word, “Fuck,” usage in contemporary society was similar to how Hawaiians were popularly thought to have used, “Aloha.”
Scene is behind spoiler tags to comply with two click rule: Edit: besides profanity, scene has photos of a deceased, naked female the detectives are using at the crime scene. So really NSFW.
Aloha-you just doesn’t quite pack the same force.
I hear more than I give.
It seems to be one of those things where some segments of the culture use the word all the time, and some don’t use it at all. Someone mentioned “code switching” which I think is an appropriate description. In groups that use the word extensively, one joins in to signal group affinity, and vice versa. For me, I work in office settings and university settings, and my out-of-work associations are with the same people - the word is just not used.
Consequently, when I hear the word used frequently in TV/Movies, for me it calls attention to itself. I don’t automatically reject hearing it, I’m not a pearl clutching type, but I do find myself taken out of the story a bit and asking, “Is that too much? Is that situationally or character appropriate?”
When it’s used by energetic pre-teen boy characters or small children I find it to be a too common trope (Ha ha, how many times have I seen THAT before?). Sometimes I find myself thinking, based on what’s been presented, that those children aren’t being raised in a home where that language is acceptable, so it comes off as clanky in the dialog.
But, there are many many characters and situations where the common use of the word fits. It then becomes a creative choice as to using the word.
The all-time winner for greatest number of gratuitous f-bombs in a movie may be “Eight Million Ways To Die”.
I’m thinking in particular of a scene at a deserted warehouse where the bad guys have Rosanna Arquette duct-taped to a shotgun and are attempting to trade her to Jeff Bridges for a stash of drugs. The lengthy and unintentionally laughable scene escalates in tension to the point where the protagonists are semi-continuously screaming FUCK YOU!!! and related pleasantries at each other.
Yet another instance of an audio segment which would be fun to play over the P.A. system at work on one’s last day.
Yep. And sometimes some people just use it far more than others. I have two very close drinking buddies. One hardly ever uses fuck and the other basically says it every other sentence.
With me, it’s gotten to the point where I scarcely notice it unless it’s called attention to in the scene (e.g., the Scarface link). When that happens, you can almost always guarantee the character complaining about another character’s language will end up dropping a few f-bombs herself. That’s why the scene in Inside Llewellyn Davis where the title character of gets admonished by his sister for using “fuck” and other expletives was so subversive. You fully expect the sister will get angry and start swearing a blue streak but it doesn’t happen.
Dozens I would guess. It’s a normal part of my vocabulary; I try to watch it around kids (although I will let it slip around my kids sometimes). With people I don’t know, I will also curb it, but my natural flow of speech is peppered with emphatic “fucks” and their variations.
I mean, put it this way, I’ve never watched a TV show or a movie and thought to myself, “that is an unrealistic number of f-bombs in that dialogue.” I mean, maybe if it was My Little Pony dialogue, I might be like, what the fuck is going on here, but, otherwise, no.