Movies And Their Profanity

[Gilbey]

There may be a lot more special effects that heightens our thrill with the movies nowadays, but they also come in a package deal with profanities. Well, I may just be referring to R rated movies, but why do they have to put it in there? It's just so plain degrading and disgusting to say the least. It's as if producers think that you don't get your fill if you didn't hear them actors cuss. When did the "F" word start anyway? Did it start with the golden era, or with the hippy 60's?? I don't recall ever seeing a movie at TCM or any old movie pre 1960 with profanity.

 

[KL15]

It's my understanding that the "F" word as it were was said in the 40's. Just not very often. Some soldiers said that in WWII. As for the movies of toady, this is another reason why I don't watch them. Personally I think it's cheap. The same as kids in their early teens that say those words because they think it makes them look tough or cool. After a bit of time it makes you look foolish, and like you have a limited vocabulary. I don't get it. The special effects are fantastic, but the substance of the film is usually downgraded with the language. Again this is one of many reason I don't watch films anymore.

 

[Spitfire]

Not in any way trying to come up with an excuse - merely trying to explain.
If you make a movie about certain groups in our society, they each use a certain vocabulary - ways to speak.
The poblem might be, that there are (too) many films produced about gangster, criminals, streetgangs, dropouts etc.
Just a thought.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

The "F" word started in the Middle Ages in England. I have the history somewhere and I'll try to dig it up.

OK, I just went through my notes from my linguistics studies at Rutgers and most of what I've learned I cannot write here, but allow me to say that the word traces back to Old English and Anglo Saxon and that there were similar Germanic words which meant much the same thing. It was considered a vulgarity, even in the 15th C. when monks used code to hide the word in their books.

So, as vulgar as it is, it has been with us a very long time.

 

[scotrace]

Yes, it's all in the context.



btw: that particular word dates back centuries, to Olde English.

 

[scotrace]

Neener Neener.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

And please everyone, let's keep this academic. We do not need examples of the words uses and any of these or any use of profanity, even with symbols inserted for vowels, will be deleted by the moderators.

Thank you,
HJ

 

[Rooster]

I beleive that term had something to do with long bowmen in the middle ages....Or maybe that had something to do with flipping the bird....anyway You could cut the middle finger off of a longbowman and he was as usefull as being dead as he couldn't shoot his bow anymore. Thus the jesture showing the finger in defiance. Seems that somehow the F word had something to do with all of this but I'm a little foggy on exactly how.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In a lot of cases, language is used by film producers to deliberately ensure that the film gets a PG-13 or R rating, since such a rating would tie in with their plans for marketing the film. In such cases it's a cold blooded business decision and not necessarily an example of cultural decadance in action.

But I do think there's no question the use of foul language has become much more prevalent in the last thirty years or so. My teenage niece -- a bright girl who's near the head of her class in school -- uses words I didn't even know existed until I was a working adult, and she uses them with a raw casualness that makes my skin crawl. So do all her friends -- it's just the "way things are now."

By contrast, I never heard my grandfather -- an unschooled working-class man born in 1904 -- use this kind of language in public, and very rarely even in private. I'm quite sure that if anyone had done so in front of we kids, he'd have belted them in the mouth -- and if we kids ourselves had dared to do it, well, we'd have gotten the belt somewhere else.

As far as use in WW2 is concerned, there's ample testimony to how foul the language of the troops tended to be, but interestingly, when Norman Mailer wrote his seminal war novel "The Naked and the Dead," he was required by his publisher to come up with a sanitized euphemism for the most commonly-used monosyllable.

 

[Smithy]

From what I have read and heard the infamous F word is a tricky chestnut to track down the origin of, probably because it is profane. There's a few theories and the best ones seem to be that is comes Old English, Old Norse, Latin or possibly even a combination.

Unsurprisingly it was used extensively during WWII. A wonderful anecdote that comes to mind is that when the badly burned RAF pilot Geoffrey Page was floating in the Channel after having been shot down. He was challenged by a British rescue boat who thought he may be German. Page, in immense pain, came out with some very colourful language (including the F word) conveying his frustation at the doubting of his nationality. Whereupon he was dragged onboard and one of the men in the rescue boat said "The minute you swore mate we knew you was an RAF officer"!

 

[Quigley Brown]

Back as a kid and watching tv if the words 'dam' and 'h e double-toothpicks' were spoken my mom would get up and flip the channel and we weren't allowed to watch that show anymore. I still remember the joke that banned me and my brothers from watching Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In ever again...

It shocks me what's now allowed on network tv shows.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Floating around the net are outtakes of 30s and 40s movies where the actors use profanities when they flub up.

Of course, these are just outtakes and aren't in the actual films....

 

[Viola]

Some movies require it. I love films like Pulp Fiction or Casino, and the raw, gritty dialogue is the perfect pitch for these kind of stories.

 

[Gilbey]

Profanity in dialogue enhances the line, like a cigarette enhances the character. It may not be needed, but when you are in a falling airplane plunging to your death, it's a lot more effective to swear than say, "good lord, Jesus Christ, we're going to die!"

Taking the Lord's name in vain is even worst than profanity IMO.

 

[Viola]

Honestly when you hit a certain level of non-profanity it only makes sense on the Dukes of Hazzard.

"That low-down dirty skunk done robbed the orphanage! Let's teach him a dang lesson, Luke!"

 

[Bebop]

I don't use profanity in my private life anywhere near as much as they seem to use it on screen but I do appreciate that those words are used to emphasize film characters. I am surprised to hear some people cussing up a storm in public and not because they are mad, but just while laughing or talking matter of factly. Cursing has been around for centuries. It is not something new. Now it is on the silvercreen because movie makers seem to want to make things "more real" and that is part of what constitutes "real" to a lot of screenwriters. Most of the audience does not mind, as long as the ratings let them know.

 

[Diamondback]

I'd argue that it is necessary sometimes, if it's true to the character's nature, but most screenwriters today are a bit too gratuitous with the four-letter language.

 

[Lady Day]

There was a time when penis, vagina and anus were considered profane. Some still think so. They are clinical terms for body parts, but now you can say them just fine, and a lot less people flinch.

I think its all relative to context. I see movies and a moment of tension, and I know the character would say the (insert 'bad word here') word, but it cuts the drama because the character is stuc saying some explination instead of (insert 'bad word here').

Yes, there is way more (insert 'bad word here') stuff said today in films, and that could be debated to the casualness of film trying to portray real life, to demand of the public.

Too much think on without my java, (insert 'bad word here').

LD

 

[Ben]

Interesting timing on this topic because I just got a DVD in the mail of old training films from the LAPD, FBI, US Military, and British military.

The one for the US military from WWII has some salty language in it that surprised me when I heard it because I was thinking that they ddidn't say those kinds of words on film back then. Some of the simulated combat was pretty graphic as well. Then I realized what I was watching, and understood that this was the army and they weren't playing around.

The one weird thing about the proliferation of profanity is that it makes somem of the milder terms seem like they pack more punch in comparison. It is a strange inversion that some of the words that seemed more appropriate, if a little off color when even I was a kid, now seem worse. Any one else notice the same thing?

 

[Salv]

I beleive that term had something to do with long bowmen in the middle ages....Or maybe that had something to do with flipping the bird....anyway You could cut the middle finger off of a longbowman and he was as usefull as being dead as he couldn't shoot his bow anymore. Thus the jesture showing the finger in defiance. Seems that somehow the F word had something to do with all of this but I'm a little foggy on exactly how.

This theory about archers at Agincourt actually refers not to the US middle finger salute, but to the British two-fingered salute, in which the index and middle fingers are raised in a V-sign, famously seen in the poster for the film Kes. However, Snopes reckons this is merely an urban legend.