Springtime for Schmucks
Marty Kaplan
HuffPost
If I hadn't seen the word plastered on a billboard on La Brea Avenue, I would never have remotely considered using it in print myself. But there it is, in a five-foot font, just a few miles from the West Hollywood club where Lenny Bruce was arrested for saying it in 1963. Soon, no doubt, promoting a movie that will open on July 30, it will be seen on buses and benches and 30-second television ads airing in family-friendly prime time, and on the robotic lips of Mr. Moviephone: "Please confirm your order! You have purchased TWO tickets for the 7:20 showing of DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS."
Whether this constitutes a deeply troubling milestone in the coarsening of American culture depends on two things.
The first is whether the word really is obscene. It is arguable that its original meaning - a Yiddish profanity for penis, often part of an insult beginning with "You are such a - " and ending with an exclamation point - has been so diluted by widespread usage that nowadays it's no more offensive than any other common synonym for "jerk." This would explain why, at High Holy Day services at my synagogue last year, the associate rabbi, a lovely mother of three young children, could innocently say the word from the pulpit without imagining for a moment that it would cause the shocked sharp intake of breath among half the congregants that followed.
Languages are living organisms. They evolve. A generation or two ago, network censors wouldn't let shows use words like "pregnant" or "abortion" during prime time. For a long time, words like "suck" and "crap" were beyond the public pale. Presidents once used "ass" and its compound variants only when they thought the microphone was off, or in off-the-record trash-talk designed to macho up their images. Until quite recently, elected officials wouldn't dream of saying on television the synonym for turd that George Carlin included among the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." But today -- from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to senators Jim Bunning, Clair McCaskill and Carl Levin -- the boundaries of acceptable discourse have been remapped.
(More here.)
HuffPost
If I hadn't seen the word plastered on a billboard on La Brea Avenue, I would never have remotely considered using it in print myself. But there it is, in a five-foot font, just a few miles from the West Hollywood club where Lenny Bruce was arrested for saying it in 1963. Soon, no doubt, promoting a movie that will open on July 30, it will be seen on buses and benches and 30-second television ads airing in family-friendly prime time, and on the robotic lips of Mr. Moviephone: "Please confirm your order! You have purchased TWO tickets for the 7:20 showing of DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS."
Whether this constitutes a deeply troubling milestone in the coarsening of American culture depends on two things.
The first is whether the word really is obscene. It is arguable that its original meaning - a Yiddish profanity for penis, often part of an insult beginning with "You are such a - " and ending with an exclamation point - has been so diluted by widespread usage that nowadays it's no more offensive than any other common synonym for "jerk." This would explain why, at High Holy Day services at my synagogue last year, the associate rabbi, a lovely mother of three young children, could innocently say the word from the pulpit without imagining for a moment that it would cause the shocked sharp intake of breath among half the congregants that followed.
Languages are living organisms. They evolve. A generation or two ago, network censors wouldn't let shows use words like "pregnant" or "abortion" during prime time. For a long time, words like "suck" and "crap" were beyond the public pale. Presidents once used "ass" and its compound variants only when they thought the microphone was off, or in off-the-record trash-talk designed to macho up their images. Until quite recently, elected officials wouldn't dream of saying on television the synonym for turd that George Carlin included among the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." But today -- from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to senators Jim Bunning, Clair McCaskill and Carl Levin -- the boundaries of acceptable discourse have been remapped.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home