Writers' "sneaking through" of dubious items

Cafe Society
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Prompted by the “Pussy Galore” thread in Cafe Society (and in preference to derailing that one): wondering what other examples come to mind, of things in “art in words” generally, to which severe exception might have been taken; but which the author nonetheless managed to “sneak – or negotiate – through”.

One which occcurs to me, is in Watership Down (book) – in the crazy tale narrated by Dandelion, the group’s story-telling specialist, of “Rowsby Woof and the Fairy Wogdog”. The premise being a couple of rabbits bamboozling the watchdog Rowsby Woof, to get them access to the product of his master’s vegetable garden. To this end, they impersonate the said Wogdog, emissary of the supposed canine-fairy queen of the distant East. “Wog” in colloquial British English, denotes a non-white person: it has definitely uncomplimentary connotations, though perhaps less strongly than does the N-word (the latter usually reckoned not quite so foul in Britain as in the US, though nasty enough). “Wog” (has particular overtones of “people and places out East”, though expanded to refer to darkish-skinned folk from anywhere on the globe) can however be seen at times, as used in a condescending but not necessarily hateful way.

Richard Adams – while generally reckoned per the bulk of his writings and via those who knew him in real life, to have been a generally benign and non-bigoted guy – inclined to the conservative side in his general approach to life, and would have been a product of his times (born 1920). I see his lighting on the “Fairy Wogdog” thing as, in his view, robust but affectionate fun vis-a-vis eastern / non-white people, rather than “hate speech”.

Watership Down was first published in 1972, when in the UK, automatic “landing with both feet” on anything suspected of being even remotely racist, was probably less in evidence than now; but I’d imagine Adams reckoning even then, that he was pushing his luck a bit – not figuring that he was doing wrong, but having in view “the temper of the times”. Would see him guessing that he would most likely be OK; what with the “Wogdog” material essentially restricted to a few pages’ “aside” to the main thrust of the book, and with social-righteousness zealots then, unlikely to take much notice of books where the main characters are talking animals… I’d feel that any book published nowadays, with an orientally-focused character with such a name (albeit with no actual existence even within the fiction context, and confined to a brief segment of the book), would set off a shit-storm of great magnitude.

Harry Flashman, in the books by George MacDonald Fraser, spouts epithets and sentiments now regarded as hateful, in great profusion – but he and his author can be seen as having an immunity guaranteed by its being made plain in the books, that Flashman is a thoroughly loathsome individual, characterised by all the sins and none of the virtues; he readily admits so, and his one and only redeeming feature is that in these his “memoirs”, he’s honest about himself, and about what a self-serving (and unrepentant) bastard he’s been for his entire life. It’s a given that any virtue-seeking reader would see as a general guideline, “What would Flashman do? – then do the exact opposite”: so Flashy can be quoted as saying / thinking, anything whatsoever.

Would be interested in anyone else’s thoughts re “dubious stuff snuck through”.

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I’m not convinced that “wog” in this name is really meant to connote anything more than the doggy idea of “wag”, in keeping with the other doggy (and emphatically non-“oriental”) names in the same story: Dripslobber, Postwiddle and Sniffbottom.

I mean, maybe Adams considered the syllable “wog” to sound extra ludicrous because of its familiarity as a term of disparagement, but I just don’t buy that the intention was really to suggest that the Fairy Wogdog was some kind of “Asiatic”.

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There are plenty of examples, especially years ago when there were actual censors.

Best example was Dashiell Hammett sneaking “gunsel” into The Maltese Falcon (and the term remained in the movie) because no one understood what it meant (i.e., a younger gay man who has a sexual relationship with an older man). The Hayes Office also was unaware of the meaning and let it slide. Of course, it evolved to mean “gunman” and was common usage in that sense.

There’s a famous example of a story in Astounding which referred to a ball bearing mousetrap, which was revealed to be a tomcat (unneutered, of course).

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You took the one I was coming in to say.

James Branch Cabell was considered scandalous because a lot of his careful circumlocutions apparently still weren’t obscure enough. My favorite example is in Jurgen where he speaks of the hero taking his dagger and “placing it where she could not possibly see it.”
He wasn’t talking about a knife.

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That’s what makes Flashman so hysterical though, and the books so clever. He’s a unrepentant coward, asshole, schemer, etc… and despite all that, keeps landing on his feet and fooling everyone.

I never took anything in there as being an authorly attempt to sneak anything through- he’s very forthright about Flashman’s general awfulness, and if anything, draws attention to it for literary purposes. It doesn’t do to have a massive asshole as the protagonist if his assholery isn’t broadcast in technicolor, you know.

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Even so, Fraser softened Flashman a good deal from the first book. He was utterly nasty in that one, for example attempting to rape and beating his father’s mistress when she wouldn’t give him another go after a initial romp. I think Fraser came to realize he couldn’t have his antihero be quite so hateful if he was going to sustain a series. In the later books he’s still an asshole but not so much a sadist.

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Here’s a possible one from the 1960s series “Batman.”

A character in a story was going to be called the “Mifftiff of Furderber.” Censors say, “Nope. It sounds dirty.” So the writers came up with some other name, which (they claimed) was Arabic for “SOB.”

I saw that in a documentary about the series probably 20 years ago, and one of the writers actually made that claim, but until someone can identify which episode, I don’t buy it.

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Shakespeare. All of Shakespeare. Any of Shakespeare. Throw a dart at a page and some double intendre phrase will be landed on.Exampes

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[quote=“Sangahyando, post:1, topic:831708”]

Prompted by the “Pussy Galore” thread in Cafe Society (and in preference to derailing that one): wondering what other examples come to mind, of things in “art in words” generally, to which severe exception might have been taken; but which the author nonetheless managed to “sneak – or negotiate – through”./QUOTE

Not a “professional” piece, but a classmate of my father’s managed to get the phrase “Get some Poontang” as his reply to the “life’s ambition” question printed under his senior picture in a 1963 high school yearbook. :eek:

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In threads like this there always has to be That Guy who points out that there’s a trope for that.

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And I’d reckon myself 97% sure that the “oriental” connection is there, and intended – in the story, the tricksters carry on in detail about the glories of Dripslobber’s realm in the “gorgeous East”; and at one point someone says (story character, or hearer enriching his vocabulary from the story – I forget), words to the effect of, “let’s move ! Quicker than Wogdog from the Tartar’s bow !”

Of course, neither you nor I are the late Richard Adams; so there’s no way of attaining total certainty on this point :slight_smile: .

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There are entire books devoted to explicating the often obscure dirty jokes in Shakespeare. Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy is probably the most scholarly and well-known, but I’ve got at least one other on the topic.

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They’re probably only “hidden” to modern audiences because of the arcane language. Shakespeare’s contemporaries probably would have understood most of them.

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(I’ve forgotten how the multi-quote function works. Could some kind person please remind me?)

The “getting stuff past” re Flashman and Fraser, I see mainly as a “quarantining” ploy, rather than – in this case – doing it by stealth: as we concur, I think, Flashy’s assholery is on a huge and flamboyant scale, and from him, thus, “anything goes” because there’s agreement throughout – including from him – that he’s a monster. One example: the N-word is used very copiously in the books, and is present there today – hard to imagine any other kind of circumstance, in which many would not be outraged and clamour for its removal. I’ve not heard of anyone of a liberal and progressive turn of mind, being upset by this word’s occurring thus in “Flashman” – maybe that happens, but with me being unaware.
Colibri writes: “Even so, Fraser softened Flashman a good deal from the first book. He was utterly nasty in that one, for example attempting to rape and beating his father’s mistress when she wouldn’t give him another go after an initial romp. I think Fraser came to realise he couldn’t have his antihero be quite so hateful if he was going to sustain a series. In the latter books he’s still an asshole but not so much a sadist.”

I think you and I have exchanged opinions on this point before. I tend toward the view that in the first novel of the series, Flashman is extremely young – IIRC, he’s just short of twenty years old when he gets his Army commission and is sent east. It’s well-known that the very young human male is liable to be pretty obnoxious, even if in most cases he stays on the right side of rape, and violence toward women. I incline to see the changes as the series goes on: as organic, rather than made by the author for a purpose. IMO Flashy remains as wicked as ever – but as he gets older, his ability for self-control increases; and / or his skills improve, for hiding his bent for evil from people who he would have think well of him (he can still frequently be violent to helpless underlings and menials). No more rape by him, it’s true – but that can be ascribed to his deciding that it’s really not all that much fun (the business is more agreeable with the woman’s consent), and can have unpleasant consequences for the perpetrator.

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Link to old thread (should we merge them?)

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I find it impossible to believe that a British writer like Adams was unaware of the significance of “wog,” and used it unaware of its meaning, especially since the canine was supposed to be from the East. (However, in his autobiography Days Gone By he refers to his trying to stop British soldiers in Palestine from calling the Arab laborers "wog bastards.)

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These sound like things of which the British humorist “Beachcomber” (J.B. Morton), who wrote a hilarious newspaper column several times a week for half a century, would have been proud. He had a great flair for inventing titles of exotic foreign potentates: I remember the M’babwa of M’gonkawiwi, and the Sheikh Spittin El Kuspidor of Rub-Ub-Dubdub-three-men-in-a-tub. I’m ready to see this stuff, as in affectionate fun: “Beachconber” was basically a gentle soul, and his fiercest mockery was reserved for bureaucratic idiocy in his own country; but I suspect that if he were doing his stuff nowadays, the M’babwa and the Sheikh would bring down people’s righteous anger on him from various quarters.

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Click the QuotePlus button for every post except the last that you want to multiquote. For the last item, click the regular Quote button.

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According to one explanation (probably nonsense), the word “wog” originated as an acronym of “wily oriental gentleman” – which could be seen as quite complimentary, in its way !

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I think the go-to example for this is Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.

In which quaint and cunt weren’t fully differentiated (at the time of his writing).