Movies And Their Profanity

[Feng_Li]

I don't see any delicacy being claimed, or anyone saying that they blush when certain words are used. I see people saying they don't enjoy it or find it offensive, which is different. Yes, we are exposed to profanity everyday. We are also exposed to rude people, bad odors, poorly dressed people, traffic jams, MS Windows and CNN. Simply because a thing is a part of the world on a daily basis doesn't mean I have to like it.

Compare printed material from the present and the not-too-distant past, and it becomes readily apparent that the reading level is higher. This is strong evidence that the average person possessed a larger and richer vocabulary than he does now. He was probably capable of expressing himself in much greater variety, and therefore did not have to fall back on his profanity as often. When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.

I am living proof that the current generation is utterly incapable of sophisticated expression. My brother laughed his head off the other day, not because I smashed my finger, but because I was unable even to curse, and instead let fly with a torrent of alphabet soup.

 

[Quigley Brown]

I'm going to guess that the films with the hightest CPMs (curses per minute) are the way-overboard action flicks so in reality no one actually speaks like that.

 

[Feng_Li]

I think Al Pacino's Scarface may hold the record.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Re: films with the highest CPM's, I haven't seen Scarface so can't discern if that is the record holder, but did see Glengarry Glenn Ross and it had so many F-words in it, it finally annoyed me. How much of one word can you listen to before you want to plug your ears and/or leave?

As for the reality, yes, I know there are groups of young men who talk like that, I've heard them. Ever hear inner city kids standing around on the mean streets? Oh, boy!

karol

 

[Pink Dahlia]

This is from screenit.com:

Martin Lawrence Runteldat - 649 / 311
The Original Kings of Comedy - 517 / 184
Nil By Mouth - 497 / 428
Pulp Fiction - 429 / 260
Dysfunktional Family - 411 / 200
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - 407 / 227
Made - 376 / 253
Narc - 359 / 242
The Big Lebowski - 357 / 259
Gridlock'd - 341 / 227
Magnolia - 306 / 189
South Park - 219 / 133

The first number is the total number of expletives and the second number is the number of "F" bombs.

 

[The Wingnut]

I hear high schoolers and college kids speaking in such a manner all the time, usually when I'm waiting in line on my lunch break.

I don't use profanity in normal conversation. It's offensive and makes the speaker seem trashy. I'm no saint, I'll let fly with the occasional profanity (such as when I blindly walked into a low-hanging UHF antenna under my plane last month, knocking myself onto the pavement), but I'll usually feel as if I'd lost control of myself afterward.

I move in all manner of social circles and the well-heeled and blue collar alike now spit profanity. I've noticed the most popular and seemingly likable, regardless of their level of affluence, are rarely heard cursing.

Movies are movies. They're not reality. They shouldn't be treated as such, referenced to for such, or held up as an example thereof. Just because you saw it on the silver screen doesn't mean it's appropriate. Life may imitate art, but that doesn't mean that it should.

...if you find it offensive, shut it off, walk out, maybe even get your money back. That'll speak loudly.


...and the implication that someone who dislikes profanity is thereby 'delicate' is arrogant. It takes considerable strength to control one's tounge and more base impulses.

 

[dr greg]

I am to come I was

Not surprisingly, Irene Pappas is my favorite actress. I got to see her play in The Bacchae in NYC.

karol

Who can forget her sterling effort vocally on 666 by Aphrodite's Child?

 

[Feng_Li]

The implication that someone who dislikes profanity is thereby 'delicate' is arrogant. It takes considerable strength to control one's tongue and more base impulses.

Hear, hear!:eusa_clap

 

[Dr Doran]

...and the implication that someone who dislikes profanity is thereby 'delicate' is arrogant. It takes considerable strength to control one's tounge and more base impulses.

Well-said.

Wingnut, after meeting you at the Presidio Club I am determined to cut out at least 50% of my profanity. THAT'LL STILL LEAVE A LOT, unfortunately.

 

[Doh!]

The swearing in season one was overdone. In the later seasons, their dialogue changed to a mesh in a slip in proper English etiquette with the commonality of talk used today. I loved it!

LD

If people cursed a lot in the actual Old West (or so Deadwood would have you believe), and then it became less acceptable to do so beginning in the early 20th century until the 1960s (at least on film), but now people seem to curse more freely again, does that mean the pendulum is due to swing back the other direction and profanity will one day be deemed unacceptable again?*

I doubt it, frankly.



*(sorry for the run-on sentence)

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Maybe not unacceptable, but perhaps passe. Who knows?

I catch myself using the standard two words, and I fear it's becoming a habit. Gotta use some different words.

Maybe some German stuff, or maybe French?

Pardon my French.

 

[dr greg]

lost in translation

I don't think there is a french equivalent of our favourite F-word, unlike German Dutch etc, which makes one wonder where the expression 'excuse my french' came from

 

[Pink Dahlia]

Pardon my French.

From spareink.com

"This phrase, in which French refers to "bad language", is employed when the speaker feels compelled to use an obscenity despite having listeners who might be offended. It's a late 19th century euphemism which first appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1895.

It is thought that the term French is employed in this sense as it
already had a history of association with things considered vulgar.
As far back as the early 16th century, French pox and the French
disease were synonyms for genital herpes, and French-sick was another
term for syphillis."

 

[The Wingnut]

Well-said.

Wingnut, after meeting you at the Presidio Club I am determined to cut out at least 50% of my profanity. THAT'LL STILL LEAVE A LOT, unfortunately.

Doran, I'm flattered. Glad I've made an impression...

Hey, half is better than none, right?

 

[Feraud]

The Dude abides..

Any Big Lebowski fans out there?
Walter and The Dude might be in a silent film w/out all the cussin' they do.

 

[Haversack]

Using the adverb "French" as a euphamism for someting considered loose, libertine, or sexual in the English language, (French-leave, -letter, -kiss), is part of the rivalry/emnity that has existed between the two peoples for several centuries. And it goes both ways, until recently, le Malaise Anglais also referred to Syphilis.

When the Dutch were England's (and her North American colonies') biggest rival, they too came in for a slanging which remains with us, (e.g. Dutch courage, uncle, justice). Here, the connotation was something that ws rough. "To give someone Dutch" was to "rip someone a new one", to use a more modern euphamism. Profanity again.

Because of the censoring they had to pass in the past, movies by themselves are not are really a good source for reflecting common language usage. They are useful as a guage of what might be called the least-common denominator of what might offend people. (And that opens up an entire pallet-load of canned worms). For the Golden Age, it is useful to compare the language of a play with the language of the movie version of the same play. Live-theatre goers were considered a better-educated, more sophisticated audience than were movie-goers. Therefore there was greater lassitude in what was permitted.

[Warning: Spoiler Follows]

For example, in the play _Arsenic and Old Lace_, when Mortimer Brewster finds out that he is not, in fact, a blood member of the Brewster Family, he yells repeatedly for all the world to hear, "I'm a ba***rd!" In the movie, made at the same time the play was running on Broadway, Mortimer yells, "I'm a son of a sea-cook!" (Which is an entirely other euphamism.) One can also go even further back to Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore for yet another example of this. "What never?..."

Haversack.

 

[Doh!]

If profanity is not your cup of tea, stay far, FAR away from the Halloween remake. A couple of times, characters managed to hit the F-word trifecta by using it at the beginning, middle, and end of a sentence.

Yeesh!

 

[Dr Doran]

If people cursed a lot in the actual Old West (or so Deadwood would have you believe), and then it became less acceptable to do so beginning in the early 20th century until the 1960s (at least on film), but now people seem to curse more freely again, does that mean the pendulum is due to swing back the other direction and profanity will one day be deemed unacceptable again?*

Pendulums do swing ... look at cuffs vs non-cuffed pants, look at hair length ... even Shakespeare was disliked by many of the Romantics before he got back in style ...

Maybe not unacceptable, but perhaps passe. Who knows?

I think that's more like it.

 

[Dr Doran]

Any Big Lebowski fans out there?
Walter and The Dude might be in a silent film w/out all the cussin' they do.

fftopic: That film depressed me.

 

[Viola]

Maybe not unacceptable, but perhaps passe. Who knows?

I catch myself using the standard two words, and I fear it's becoming a habit. Gotta use some different words.

Maybe some German stuff, or maybe French?

Pardon my French.

I curse in Yiddish a lot, but I'm sad I can't remember the Italian my grandmother "taught" me as a kid. (By riding shotgun in her tiny, badly driven car. lol )