More Bad Language Goes Mainstream

Posted on May 21, 2010 at 8:00 am

I have written before about the coarsening of language in the media, which continues to concern me. Two recent examples are in the titles of upcoming releases. While the movie and television series are not intended for children, I wonder whether it is appropriate for these titles to be advertised so widely as it is almost certain children will be exposed to them.
The first is “Dinner for Schmucks,” an American remake of the French film shown in the United States as “The Dinner Game.” It is a comedy about a cruel prank in which successful friends have a contest to see who can bring the biggest dork to dinner. The word “shmuck” is Yiddish slang often used to describe a hopeless loser or total idiot, but its literal meaning is the male genitalia.
The second is a just-announced television series from CBS called “$#*! My Dad Says,” based on the popular Twitter feed (yes, there is now a television show based on tweets) called S*** My Dad Says. CBS says the title is pronounced “Bleep My Dad Says.”
These quasi-euphemisms seem inadequate to me. And so does this response from CBS spokesman Phil Gonzales, who said. “Parents who choose to do so will find the show can easily be blocked using their V Chip.” How, Mr. Gonzales, do we block the advertising and news reports that will keep pushing this show’s title on our families?

Is it All Right for Children to Use Bad Words On Screen?

Posted on March 2, 2010 at 3:59 pm

As I have already discussed, the red-band (mature material) trailer for the upcoming film “Kick-Ass” has an 11-year-old character played by a now-13-year-old girl using extremely crude language. The New York Times article focused on the accessibility of the trailer online, though it is supposed to be limited to adult audiences. But there is another aspect I’d like to look at as well. This movie is the third in recent months to feature a child using very crude or obscene language as a source of humor or as a signifier of coolness. I think it is because we are now numb to the shock value of even the strongest language used by adults, so all that is left is to have those words said by children.
In Cop Out a child who is referred to as the top local car thief uses a string of obscene epithets, kicks another character in the crotch, and then is himself kicked in the crotch. Bobb’e J. Thompson, now 13, has pretty much made a career of being the outrageous kid in movies like the 2008 release Role Models, where his character’s extreme and raunchy language is supposed to be funny.
We have a lot of rules to protect child performers. Their work hours are limited and the production is responsible for making sure they do not miss schoolwork. Their earnings are set aside so they cannot be appropriated by managers or family members. I do not want to impinge on anyone’s freedom of expression or artistic integrity, but I do not think that is what is at stake here. This is just exploitation of children who are not capable of protecting themselves. If an adult approached a child in the playground and used that language, he’d be arrested as a sexual predator. Is it really all right for us to allow children to use that language in a movie?

Another Word Goes Mainstream?

Posted on November 18, 2009 at 8:00 am

In my concern for the continuing coarsening of language, I last wrote about whether the term “pimp” had become acceptable for children after it was used in the PG film “G-Force.”
The New York Times writes about another word that has crossed into the mainstream and has become a go-to insult on television and in movies.

On many nights this fall, it has been possible to tune in to broadcast network television during prime time and hear a character call someone else a “douche.”

In just the last several weeks, it has happened on CBS’s “The New Adventures of Old Christine” and the CW’s “The Vampire Diaries,” which are broadcast at 8 p.m., during what used to be known as the family hour. It has been heard this fall on Fox’s new series “The Cleveland Show,” which begins at 8:30, and on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” On NBC, its use has spanned the old and the new, blurted out on the freshman comedy “Community” and the seasoned drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

In total, the word has surfaced at least 76 times already this year on 26 prime-time network series, according to research by the Parents Television Council, which compiled the statistics at the request of The New York Times. That is up from 30 uses on 15 shows in all of 2007 and just six instances on four programs in 2005….And while the word “douche” is neither obscene nor profane — although this usage is certainly offensive to many people — it seems to represent the latest of broadcast television’s continuing efforts to expand the boundaries of taste, in part to stem the tide of defections by its audience to largely unregulated cable television….”As a writer, you’re always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk,” Dan Harmon, the creator of “Community,” said about the word “douche.” “This is a word that has evolved in the last couple of years — a thing that sounds like a thing you can’t say.”

Unquestionably, the language on television has become more vulgar. And the argument that this is acceptable because it can be limited to a particular time slot has become less supportable. When television programs like “Law and Order” and “CSI” (and their variations and spin-offs) seem to be on 24/7 and raunchy sit-coms like “Two and a Half Men” run in syndication in the early evening. I find this word particularly ugly and misogynistic and am sorry to see it become mainstream.

The FCC, the Supreme Court, and the F- and S-Words

Posted on November 4, 2008 at 8:00 am

As we go to the polls today, honoring our Constitution’s fundamental principles of representative democracy, another key element of Constitutional system of checks and balances is also at work. And it may include consideration of yet another key founding principle of the United States, the right of freedom of speech and the press under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations. The FCC, an independent agency of the federal government, will argue that it has the authority to ban “fleeting” expletives after the FCC issued warnings to broadcasters after celebrities used certain terms in live broadcasts.
The case is not strictly speaking a First Amendment case. As legal challenges often do, it relates more specifically to the procedures followed by the FCC in determining their policy on the words at issue. And as always happens with high-profile Supreme Court cases, there have been many filings by “amici” (“friends of the court”) — advocacy groups, television producers, even the pediatrician’s trade association — all expressing their views about who should decide what is appropriate, when they should decide it, and how the decision should be implemented. A group of former FCC Commissioners and staff wrote that while they were “not without sympathy” for the the FCC’s views on obscenity, they were concerned about:
decisions that have transformed a hitherto moderate policy of policing only the most extreme cases of indecent broadcast programming into a campaign of regulatory surveillance that will chill the production of all but the blandest of broadcast programming.
The words at issue raise an interesting problem in the arguments before the Court, where lawsuits are always argued with decorum and formality. According to the Supreme Court blog SCOTUS:
Unless Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., intervenes, some of the argument in the Supreme Court chamber next Tuesday morning may sound at times like a typical conversation in a seventh grade boys’ restroom — the uninhibited use of four-letter words.
And, if Roberts allows it, such a display of blue language will be heard on TV and radio — in the middle part of the day — across America, and may be read the next morning in many newspapers. But, apparently, not in every news outlet.
The Court may very well rule that the FCC may not interfere with the “fleeting” use of these words on the air. And they may do so without using the words themselves, as they did in the famous case where they upheld the use of the f-word in a political protest. They noted that the word could be considered indispensable to make exactly the objection that the protester wanted to without saying what the word was.
According to the book, The Brethren, Burger approached Justice John M. Harlan, the opinion’s author, and said: “John, you’re not going to use ‘that word’ in delivering the opinion are you? It would be the end of the Court if you use it, John.” And Harlan did not. It was included, though, in the Court’s opinion finding that Cohen’s First Amendment rights had been violated. Justice Harlan described Cohen’s message as one involving a “scurrilous epithet,” but he also wrote: “While the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”
What should the policy be about the language used on broadcast television? There are no restrictions on the language used on cable programs. The last time the Court ruled on this issue it made a distinction based on the unique availability of broadcast television and radio for children. But in a world of internet, podcasts, and DVDs (not to mention schoolyards, shopping malls, and newspaper articles), that distinction no longer applies. I look forward to reports on the arguments and to the Court’s decision.

Are Some Words Forbidden No Matter What?

Posted on September 6, 2008 at 8:00 am

Should some words be banned entirely? In a debate reminiscent of the battles over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a coalition of disability rights groups called for a boycott of Tropic Thunder over the use of the term “retard.” The Washington Post published an opinion piece criticizing “Tropic Thunder,” written by the mother of a developmentally disabled child that began with an anecdote about a cruel passer-by who used that term to insult her child.
She failed to understand that the movie used the term exactly the way she did — to demonstrate that the speaker is a misguided and ignorant person.
In discussing this issue on BDK’s radio show, I mentioned that when I reviewed First Sunday, the newspaper that printed the review used N**** instead of spelling out the first word in the name of Ice Cube’s rap group. But that story did not make it on the air. The radio station did not broadcast the word, even though the word was not being used as an epithet but a word chosen by a group of men about themselves as a way of removing the pejorative and diminishing aspects of the term and giving it power instead. I might not agree with that use of the word but I respect the right of people to determine for themselves what they want to be called and to determine whether they want anyone who is not a part of the group to use it.
And I oppose any effort to ban any word. It makes it impossible to have a conversation about the meaning of the word and it gives the word too much power.
Oh, and the very first protests of “Huckleberry Finn,” which began as soon as the book was published, also focused on language that was considered inappropriate and shocking. The objections were not to the n-word but to the use of terms like “sweat” instead of “perspiration.” And yet, like the music of NWA, it is the language Huck and Twain use that is central to the appeal and authenticity of the works.
Now there is a protest over the title of a new film called, as was the book it was based on, “Towelhead.” This is one of several cruel and insulting terms that the main character, the daughter of an American mother and a Lebanese father, is called by racists. The author of the book, Alicia Erian, and the director of the movie, Alan Ball (of “Six Feet Under” and “American Beauty”) have issued very thoughtful and compelling statements about the title and the term that are well worth reading, supported by the studio and by a group of scholars. Here are the statements in full:

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