The latest scandal shocking Australia is the revelation that a previous Prime Minister used words which, as far as I know, haven’t appeared on the ABC Drum as yet.
Well, let me be the first. For those easily shocked, move outside your room and close the door. Lock up your children and keep away all girls under sixteen and /or unmarried women. The word, and here it comes……f u c k…….
Unbelievably, we are still here, undamaged and much the same as before that word. No sword or hell-fire has struck us down. Open the doors and let in some fresh air. Phew! We must all have heard on the news that our previous PM, Mr. Kevin Rudd has uttered swear words in front of a camera. Dear oh dear, what has the world come to? Saying those ‘unseemly’ words have always been a difficult issue, especially in Anglo countries.
In the fifties and even sixties, swearing was common between men. But as far as doing it in front of a woman, it was definitely a no, no. Strange that swearing then was so delineated between the sexes. If swearing was vulgar, unseemly and a bad thing to use in our language, why was it perfectly alright between men but not in front of a woman? Of course now, 2012, women have heard those words and are very happy to swear amongst each other and in front of men as well.
Of course, those words such as fuck, cnut, ( see, even now I am cautious) dick, balls, tits and others have had some kind of liberation recently, they have been set free, unshackled by the conventions of a society which believed that those words should never be used except between men only and even then preferably only in pubs or factories. Never in polite company, and never in front of ‘ladies’.
But, lately and especially on the television and… especially… on the ABC television, those ‘naughty’ words have become almost the norm. Who can forget the run those words enjoyed on Chris Lilley’s “Angry Boys” with the Dunt twins Daniel & Nathan Sims and their prison officer grandmother Gran.. And as recent as some weeks ago we were treated to the same words on the start of the TV series “The Straits” and before that with “The Slap”. We loved those series, lapped up all the words including the four letter ones.
Of course the king-hit of the four letter word usage, unrivalled anywhere ever, would have to be the BBC’s political TV comedy drama “The Thick of It”. I believe that the success of those series was very much if not entirely due to the exquisite use, and hence our enjoyments, of the expletives. The odd thing is that even though bad language is used in all those series, it isn’t actually offensive. In fact, without the high level of bad language, the series would have been a lot less successful.
We claim that times have moved on, but have they? The triviality of a person having used expletives still deemed to be newsworthy seems to prove that the issue of some words being less palatable than others still exists. It is worth noting that those feared swear words in the Anglo world usually consist of vulgar forms of naming genitals or sex while in the languages of Europe, swearing is mainly in the domain of religion, calling down the devil and eternal hell fire etc, seeking the gods to vent their fury on our enemy…Why is it that so many expletives in English have sexual connotations? There is a lot still there to ponder about.
The video uploaded on YouTube containing Kevin Rudd’s swearwords is now seen as being the final act and catalyst in a predicted forthcoming challenge to the leadership. It’s whispered to have come from both sides, those opposing Rudd to the leadership from the present government side together with those on the pro-Rudd side of politics. It is just proof that whatever happens in the next few weeks, those four letter words still contain a mighty punch.
There are going to be some awful weeks ahead of us. Fuck! The media, as ever, has been braying for a leadership spill ever since Rudd was removed. They must be swirling and jumping around like besotted dervishes in what is to come, a dance macabre if ever there was.
Tags: abc., balls, BBC, Chris Lilley, Fuck, Gillard, K.Rudd, prick, The slap, The Straits
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
In 2004, Christchurch Uni put on my Lysistrata so I was invited (at my own expense, thank you very much!) to go and watch the rehearsals etc. Luckily the Classics prof invited me to… nevermind, I’ll go on about the play.
It has the word cunt many times and it is more often uttered by the women personae.
The actors, however, decided that they wouldn’t use the word. I asked one why she didn’t want to use the word (preferred pussy) and she said she objected to it. Fair enough, though, I couldn’t work out why “pussy” would be more acceptable, particularly in this play which is all about sex and withdrawal… I mean withdrawing sex from the males until they signed a peace treaty among themselves and stopped the bloody endless wars.
I mean some of the scenes are extremely raunchy but, no, the word cunt could not be uttered.
No objections from me. Never would be because I understand fully the need for the director to work with his/her actors and with his/her audiences.
However, what made it more puzzling to me was the fact that there were two directors. Both young, both students at that uni and one of them was a woman who told me that she was mightily pissed off that the actor objected to the word cunt. “What does she think we’ve got down there, vaginas?” She told me!
I loved her T-shirt. She had delightful tits and across them were the words “my face is up there!” Soooo clever!
Anyhoo, there you go! Some like it, some don’t.
By the way, the show was a brilliant success. I saw it for four nights and the audience -quite a large one at that- were in hysterics from the moment the curtains opened, until the last words was uttered.
Never saw it like that before!
LikeLike
Granmatical dysfunction because I’m very sleepy and grumpy because the lady of the house just called from work where she was having a hard time with her bosses (who are hopelessly young, inexperienced and lack a basic knowledge of poople skills!)
Sorry!
LikeLike
Funnily enough, words such as fuck and cunt were used in common parlance prior to WWI.
I recently found an interesting excerpt from the minutes of the School of Medicine at Sydney Uni from about 1905. The main concern was the admission of ‘cunt doctors’ into the course. Cunt doctors were men who had failed to gain admission into medicine, so trained as midwives, gained some clinical experience, then re-applied to the uni, and were often admitted. This became an unofficial ‘back-door’ into medicine. Hence, what to do about cunt doctors.
By the same logic one could describe me as a kind of cunt doctor!
LikeLike
Funny in many place in China thats what they’re called.
LikeLike
Be a proud C**t Doctor, Big M, I say…
LikeLike
I think, in the modern context, swearing in excess is uncouth and reflects a poor vocabulary and a lack of imagination; though the effective use of the OCCASIONAL ‘F’-word can have some kind of shock-value should such a conversational tactic prove necessary. However, it should also be noted that its ‘shock-value’ derives first and foremost from the relative rarity of its appearance in the user’s normal speech patterns.
On the other fucking hand, there are fucking morons who fucking use the word fuck or fucking just about every other fucking word as if it’s the fucking only fucking adjective or fucking adverb they fucking know; and this just gets fucking tedious, dunnit?
😉
PS: The reason for the earlier masculinist territoriality with regard to this word, which you describe above, Gerard, is ultimately down to ‘machismo’: the necessity of a man amongst men to prove his manhood by his willing acceptance of all things ‘rough and manly’…
Interestingly, many ‘swear-words’ actually are evidence of the self-assumed ‘cultural superiority’ of the language of an invading culture: thus, ‘merde’ becomes ‘mud’, a common enough word for dirt; but one must note that in this instance it is good, clean, dirt! And the word ‘mud’ is not a ‘swear’-word, whereas the Anglo-Saxon ‘shit’, whose meaning was probably pretty much identical to the original semantic content of the medieval french word ‘merde’, IS… Similarly ‘baisser’ is not considered a ‘swear-word’ in french, though the Anglo-Saxon ‘fuck’ is…
Essentially this tendency to devalue the status of the language of an invaded country is a reflection of how language is used as a tool of colonial domination by the reduction in status of indiginous languages to the perception of ‘vulgarity’, or even ‘barbarity’… the double-standard exhibited by any imposition of hierarchy is particularly noticable… So there is also a very strong element of rebellion against imposed authority in the act of ‘swearing’ simply in its rejection of the imposed ‘superior’ language; this therefore also, as you have noted, has obvious ‘territorial’ connotations and thus also signifies identification with and within specific cultural groupings.
🙂
LikeLike
I’ve got this very freaky feeling!
I hadn’t read this piece Gez before I had written a joke (still waiting moderation because I used another nic) about swearing!
I wonder if Rudd’s ears are burning? Wen Jiaobao’s, perhaps?
LikeLike
The most common swear words in Finnish. ‘saatana’, ‘perkele,’ ‘piru’ are indeed other words for the devil.
Then we have ‘jumalauta’ that means simply God Help…
The worst word is ‘vittu’ that translates into the other non mentionable ‘c**t,’ they are both words i never use in either language…of course it’s easier to swear in a foreign language than in one’s mother tongue, so when the kids are not around, I don’t mind telling hubby to f**k off….
LikeLike
Anjin Thai, as I recall was a pretty bad insult in Java.
LikeLike
VL, what does it mean in English, I thought ‘anjin’ was ‘a dog’…is being called a dog the worst insult in Indonesia…I have forgotten most of my tourist Indonesian, and can’t bother to find the dictionaries…
Google translations don’t make much sense 🙂
LikeLike
Dogs being “unclean” to most moslems would make any epithet invloving dogs that much stronger.
LikeLike
Ten to one it’s the name of a Javanese Labor Party politician. 🙂
LikeLike
I had never thought about it that I suppose calling someone a bitch/dog is the same ordure.
Odd word ordure, that was what spontaneously came to top.
LikeLike