I don't trust people who don't curse.
I'm not saying every other word out of your mouth should be the f-bomb. That makes you sound ignorant. I have a tape of me talking when I was eighteen years old, and I'm cursing like a sailor (do sailors curse a lot?). It's embarrassing because I sound uneducated. Obviously I don't drop f-bombs in front of children or while I'm teaching, but if you smash your thumb in the car door, you should curse. If your favorite team fumbles while driving for the winning touchdown, that's a perfect opportunity to let the expletives fly. If you're reciting a movie line, and you say flipping instead of fucking, that's weird. For example, imagine the tame version of this Fight Club line:
You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your flipping khakis.
Loses its impact. Loses its luster.
When you really want to emphasize how angry or happy you are, cursing answers the call.
"That steak was delicious." Boring.
"That steak was fucking awesome." Now that's a meal.
And don't even think about throwing this Bible verse at me (Ephesians 4:29): "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."
If our words should be used to build others up, that enthusiastic second sentence would surely encourage a chef more than the bland first sentence. Reverse scripture throw down!
And what are curse words? Our culture decided shit was an awful word, but poop is okay? They're synonyms. Ass = bad; butt = perfectly fine. Language is arbitrary. Only a species as crazy as humans would take two words that mean the exact same thing and decide one is acceptable and the other is taboo.
It especially drives me crazy when authors and screenwriters choose to substitute bland language for a more authentic curse word. If you're writing a character who doesn't curse, that makes sense. If you're writing a scene in which cursing wouldn't naturally flow from the characters, no problem. But if 99.9 percent of people would say fuck instead of freak after losing their life savings, and you choose the word freak because "cursing is offensive," then your story just became nonsense.
Stephen King said it well in On Writing:
"It is important to tell the truth; so much depends upon it...The Legion of Decency might not like the word shit, and you might not like it much either, but sometimes you're just stuck with it—no kid ever ran to his mother and said that his little sister just defecated in the tub...You must tell the truth if your dialogue is to have resonance and realism. That holds true all the way down to what folks say when they hit their thumb with the hammer. If you substitute 'Oh sugar!' for 'Oh shit!' because you're thinking about the Legion of Decency, you are breaking the unspoken contract that exists between reader and writer—your promise to express the truth of how people act and talk through the medium of a made-up story...The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies' Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest...I grew up as a part of America's lower middle class...They say shit more often than sugar when they bang their thumbs...Some people don't want to hear the truth, of course, but that's not your problem. What would be [a problem] is wanting to be a writer without wanting to shoot straight."
I seem to have the same problem with storytellers and people who don't occasionally curse—they both seem fake. I'll take authentic and messy over proper and phony. But that's just me. You mother freakers can do whatever you want.
2 comments:
Malcolm X said when a man cusses he is demonstrating his lack of sufficient vocabulary in which to otherwise express himself. I disagree with him. Language is a beautiful, glorious human invention, surpassing even that of fire in its usefulness. It is the task of the individual to reach into the teeming sea of language and draw forth the exact words that best fit what he or she is attempting to communicate, be it the delight of a beautiful sunset or the singular agony of a kicked coin purse. Therefore at times a good old-fashioned four-letter monosyllable succeeds where all other words might fail. There is a proper moment and setting for the employment of our venerable, perennially-popular swear words. Long may they reign in ignoble glory!
Hi Steve,
If words don't matter "why don't you say, "blessed in Jesus's name" or "sugar!" instead of the curse words?
Why take a word like "f..." which is used to demean, to attack, to describe horrific attitudes of vulgar men toward women and use it in your conversation?
I used to be a truck driver for a chrome company, etc. I see no point in most of the cursing I heard. And as for glorifying Jesus...you already know.
Here's my secular take on this, a poem of mine that was published on this very topic:
Giving Talk 'A' Grade
Ever notice the uh lowdown
All-purpose
Graded scale of modern
Uh one-worded
Communication where
Everyone and uh each thing gets
An uh F?
Deep in the uh night
You give your uh wife a lot of F,
Yet when the idiot in the uh Chev
Cuts you off on uh the freeway
You yell F to uh him not her,
And at the ref, too, on Friday night.
But your uh sweet wife's fantastic
Dish of lasagna gets an uh F n' good!
While your uh pooch when he poops
On the new red carpet is F'd,
Not her.
And uh don't forget the brownnoser
At work who uh falsely blamed
You. He gets an F uh too.
Nor should you forget the
F n' uh hammer
When you uh your thumb.
Yes, talk is one four-letter grade;
The grade is uh F-ine.
But,
Well, let's uh remember
The other side of the grading scale--
The A's;
Most everyone gets an uh A too,
They're all uh donkey holes;
Sidekicks of your uh mouthing,
Yeah uh right, uh ya' know uh…
Daniel Wilcox
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