Filthy English, page 36
Listening to the Carlin routine at thirty years’ distance, though, tells us something else. Or, rather listening to his audience does. As he gets into his riff, they are deeply, deeply shocked. They love him for it. They love themselves for loving it. But they are shocked. They are not used to words like this being said out loud, onstage, in Santa Monica. Yet that’s not how we hear it now. We don’t hear a comic being shocking but a comic showing us how shocking he can be. It’s clever, it’s funny and it has a pay-off line that still pays out, ten bob on the shilling. Carlin points out that, on television, you can talk about pricking your finger but never about fingering your prick. Otherwise, though, his monologue is a little sweet and old-fashioned.
Yet what Carlin said, as a result of all those court cases which devolved from it, set the rules for US media. The FCC actually based its rulings on the seven dirty words till 1987, when it replaced them with a ‘generic’ definition of indecency. I can’t help finding something indicative in the fact that, in England, it was a pop guitarist who set off the debate – which has since been conducted primarily in the media. By contrast, in the US, the debate was instigated by a comic (and a driver in Florida) and has subsequently been played out mostly in the courts.
The shakedown from Carlin’s seven-minute riff sat behind the four years of legal wranglings over Bono swearing, live on TV, at the 2003 Golden Globes and it shaped the judgement about Janet Jackson letting her nipple slipple as part of the half-time entertainment in 2004’s Superbowl XXXVIII – and the fact that after four years of the matter being lawyered around, a federal appeals court revoked the $550,000 fine initially levied by the FCC.
In recent years, some US radio stations have taken self-censorship a step further by, for example, banning the Black-Eyed Peas’ ‘Don’t Phunk with My Heart’. In 2002, Randall Kennedy was promoting his sober and clever book Nigger: The Strange Career Of A Troublesome Word. Detroit’s WCHB-AM wouldn’t let him even say ‘nigger’. He got round it by spelling it out or saying ‘the n-word’ – ‘while my self-conscious screening on air only stoked my desire to say the word out loud’.
In May 2007, the satellite radio network XM suspended a pair of ‘shock jocks’ for a segment in which a character named Homeless Charlie said of Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Queen Elizabeth, in turn, ‘I’d love to fuck that bitch.’ As a satellite station, XM isn’t even subject to FCC regulation or punishment but it wasn’t taking any chances. It needed FCC approval for its proposed merger with its competitor, Sirius. Which it did eventually get more than a year later, on 25 July 2008, when the FCC approved it with a scant 3–2 vote.
In late 2004, John Crigler, a lawyer for the Pacifica network, flew down from Los Angeles to give a talk to staff at its Houston affiliate, KPFT, about the current state of the FCC guidelines. He handed them a sheet outlining what they could and couldn’t do on air. Among other things, it told them they couldn’t refer to oral or non-heterosexual sex in any manner – ‘patently offensive’. They couldn’t make dirty jokes or puns – ‘Liberace was great on the piano but sucked on the organ’ is the example he gave. They couldn’t play ‘popular songs which contain repeated references to sex or sexual organs’. In particular, it told them they couldn’t play ‘Jet Boy, Jet Girl’. And, yes, Carlin’s ‘heavy seven’ were still forbidden.
In November 2008, George Carlin was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. The event featured his riff on seven words that will ‘infect your soul, curve your spine and lose the war for the Allies’. Only the actual words were all bleeped out – ‘a veritable censorious symphony’ in the words of the Washington Post’s report. Why? Either because the event would later be shown on public television – or as an ironic dig at broadcast censorship by the producers. The piece being in the Post, of course, it didn’t actually mention the words themselves, just euphemistically indicate them. Fuck appeared as ‘word that rhymes with buck’.
In the US, indecent speech is protected by the First Amendment so it can’t actually be banned, only what is called ‘channeled’ into the ‘safe harbour’ of 10 p.m.–6 a.m. In the UK, we have the TV watershed of 9 p.m.–5.30 a.m. The idea – okay, yes, I agree, it’s a laughable one – is that under-15s won’t be watching TV in that period. So they only need to be protected outside the watershed. Of course it’s a stupid and self-serving lie but it’s what the Ofcom Broadcasting Code says. Exactly what are under-15s not allowed to see, then? Drug-taking, smoking, drinking, violence – all should be minimized and definitely not ‘glamourised’. There must no exorcisms or occult practice. And ‘the most offensive language’ is not allowed. Which is? The words that the British found most offensive when Ofcom surveyed them, as detailed in its 2005 publication, the fashionably titled Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation.
It’s actually an interesting and subtle piece of work, relativist rather than absolutist, an interesting barometer of changes in both word-usage and attitudes to particular words. One of the programmes it showed to its focus groups was Only Fools and Horses, the wide-boy sitcom set in south London. To my surprise, there are three uses of ‘paki’ in the first few minutes of one episode. It’s an old episode from a time when, in the words of the report, ‘casual uses of racist language were habitual, and this would not be tolerated now’. I was still a little surprised, though, shocked even by the recentness of that attitudinal change. Another clip shown, from My Parents Are Aliens, a children’s programme, featured the word ‘retard’. This evoked surprisingly – to me, anyway – strong reactions. ‘Just like saying you are a paki,’ said a British Asian female parent of young children. ‘Well out of order,’ said a childless 18–25-year-old male. ‘The most offensive thing I saw on the clips tonight. I was slightly less offended by “mong” in Only Fools and Horses – but I still think it was unnecessary.’
The researchers also showed former Sex Pistol John Lydon informing his fellow jungle bunnies on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me out of Here that they were ‘fucking cunts’. While some were offended, a male, non-parent, 25–34, said: ‘I wasn’t offended by Johnny Rotten saying “cunt” because a) it was spontaneous, b) it was Johnny Rotten and you know he’s going to do that and c) kids have got to learn these words at some time so they might as well learn from the master.’
So what were the actual words and phrases that the report marked as very offensive? In the religious category, Jesus Fucking Christ and Jesus Shitting Christ – the simple Jesus Christ only offended the religious, otherwise it was ‘mild, everyday’. In the body part and function section, there was only cunt – ‘never really acceptable’ and ‘particularly disliked by women’. Intriguingly, cock was seen as more offensive than dick or prick or knob, particularly by British Asian females. Faggot and queer were more offensive than poof and batty boy was seen as ‘mild slang by African-Caribbean and British Asian groups’. Motherfucker and cocksucker were both very offensive. Fuck was offensive ‘but occasional toe-stubbing use appears tolerated’. Fuck off was seen as worse than fuck alone. Shag was quite offensive, particularly to British Asians. Bugger was the ‘least offensive’ slang word for sex. Paki and nigger were both very offensive. Other racial and cultural words were, too – if the viewers knew them. Very few had previously heard kike, papist, pikey, spade or yid. So, in essence cunt, fuck, motherfucker, cocksucker, nigger, paki – those are the words not allowed on TV before the 9 p.m. watershed.
What about the rest of the world? I guess I’d always assumed that the watershed was a British, slightly puritanical thing but it’s not, far from it. Its boundaries do vary quite a bit around the world, though. In Argentina, it’s 10 p.m.–8 a.m. In Australia, there is an effective 8.30 p.m. limit on what they call MA15+ programming – and R18+ stuff is not allowed at all. In Austria and Germany, the safe harbour is 11 p.m. to 5.30 a.m. In Canada, it’s 9 p.m.–6 a.m. Finland has four levels: no 11+ material before 5 p.m.; no 13+ before 7 p.m., no 15+ before 9 p.m.; and no 18+ before 11 p.m. Greece has a 7 p.m.–6 a.m. watershed with coloured blobs shown at the start of programmes to indicate what’s offensive about them – a white triangle on an orange field means mild violence and a bit of bad language while a white X on a red background means adults only. In Ireland, it’s 9 p.m. to 5.30 a.m. Italy only allows ‘general audience’ programmes between 7–10.30 p.m. and no 18+ material at all. New Zealand has a 8.30 p.m.–5.30 a.m. watershed plus extra safe harbours on schooldays at midday and 3.30 p.m.
The modern media has also introduced what is known as ‘the Scunthorpe problem’. That is, the inclination of computer firewalls to be as squeamish as an ageing aunt. A touch of the Talibans. The name of the problem comes from the period in which the town of Scunthorpe was banished from the electronic world, on account of its second to fifth digits. Firewalls just won’t let words like cunt or fuck through. In fact, they’re often stricter than that. Take what happened in 2004, to the story about the increasing acceptability of ‘cunt’ which caused the Chicago Tribune to have its entire staff pull out the offending WomanNews section by hand. ‘In retrospect,’ said the writer Lisa Bertagnoli, ‘the warning might have been that I couldn’t get the story through their e-mail system.’ Not that she used the word itself. The Tribune filters kept rejecting it for words such as bitch and faggot. In the end, Bertagnoli had to route it via WomanNews editor Cassandra West’s home email.
A friend of mine, Claire, held a senior post at the Horniman Museum, an idiosyncratic collection of anthropological and animal stuff in Forest Hill, south London. Regularly, she and her colleagues would find they weren’t getting replies to emails. It took time but their IT people finally figured it out. Firewalls had decided it was really the ‘horny man’ museum trying to put one past them.
I’ve had the problem, too. Leaning on the inspiration of Ian Dury, I wanted to call this book Arseholes, Bastards, Fucking Cunts and Pricks. My agent had no problem with it. If the publisher had a problem with it, nothing was said. But the name had to be changed. It wasn’t people who did the censoring. It was technology. We discovered that the title was automatically blocked by big companies’ firewalls. Which, at best, would have made it very difficult to get it on to online databases. It would have become a non-book, electronically censored into non-existence.
‘No one has ever spelled out how the mere hearing of a word could corrupt one’s morals.’ Steven Pinker said that in 2002. ‘Obscenity lies not in words or things, but in attitudes that people have about words and things.’ The great philologist Allen Walker Read said that in 1935. So what and who is all this euphemism and asterisking and watershedding protecting? What is actually going on? All but the smallest child knows that f*** and f**k are fuck. After all, it’s extremely unlikely that they’re not fully familiar with the word itself. In the oddest way, censors, euphemizers and oath-mincers have a greater feel for words’ weight than mere swearers ever could. They walk ever in fear of cursing’s hidden powers. They know the devil when they see him, and his name is *****. Don’t say the word, don’t see the thing. That’s the idea.
Looking back now, though, at our head-banging campaign to get fuck rather than f*** or **** or f--k into print, two things surprise me. One, the extent to which it was a battle we lost but a war we won. Within a year, the Sex Pistols had Never Mind the Bollocks in the shops – its title crafted by the same man whose swearing had caused such offence on tea-time TV, guitarist Steve Jones. Bollocks isn’t quite ‘fuck’, it’s true, but in 1977 it was still a serious profanity. But the legal attempt to ban it failed. A Nottingham court decided that bollocks was now acceptable in a shop window. Within a year or so, Ian Dury’s swear-filled album New Boots and Panties would be a chart fixture. And by 1989, Thames TV felt differently enough about its Sex Pistols moment to include it in its twenty-first-anniversary celebration of broadcasting to Londoners.
The other thing that surprises me is the passion that sat behind our drive to get fucking words into the paper. What was so important about it? What were we thinking – why were swear words so significant to us? Why do we swear anyway?
† Cape Cod carpenters use the acronym RCH, for red cunt hair, to indicate ‘the smallest measurement known to mankind’.
Chapter Eleven
The Couch, the Football Match and the Romantic French Poet
It was a Saturday afternoon, February turning to March. There was sun, a chilly wind and a faint air of warm alcohol on people’s breath. We were at a football match, my younger son and I. He was then fifteen turning sixteen. We’d been going to matches together ever since he decided he wanted to – six or seven years or so. We weren’t in the most expensive seats but, at Arsenal, even the cheapest seats are expensive. The view was great, the grass was green, the shirts were red, the shorts were white.
It could have been any game, in a way, but it was Arsenal vs. Aston Villa. Arsenal were top of the league and, whatever happened in the game, they would still be top at the end of it. What did happen was that, despite spending most of the match 1–0 down and despite not playing at all well, they would equalise in the deepest depths of added time. Clearly, their minds were on the next game – three days away, in Milan – which they would win in great style.
It was early in the second half when the man emerged from the smell of the crowd, the way he so often does. It’s never the same man. But it is really. This man is a universal. I’ve seen him – and heard him – at Spurs, at QPR, at Chelsea (particularly at Chelsea), at Stoke (even more particularly at Stoke, where he also sings ‘Delilah’, that anthem of male impotence turned murderous). My friend Paul has only ever been to one football game in his life. An Anglo-Frenchman who lives in Paris, he took his son to watch Paris St Germain play at the Stade de France. And there the man was, right in front of Paul and his young son, in the front row of the balcony.
On this sunny, wintry day in north London, the man was a row or two behind us, about ten metres to our right. We couldn’t see him but we could hear him. This is what he had to say: ‘You are complete and utter fucking useless cunts.’ To a team that was top of the league. To the team that he thought of as his team, with all that is implied by that kind of ownership and possession. All that emotion, expense, post-match discussion in the pub, Sky Sports subscription, daily devotions at your newspaper’s back pages. His team.
He had this to say, too: ‘You are the most complete and fucking utter fucking useless bunch of fucking cunts that I’ve ever seen in my complete fucking life.’ Of course, he didn’t actually say it, he shouted it. He also shouted: ‘You are fucking wankers, the whole fucking cunting fucking lot of you.’
In time, it all got too much, though, even for him. About ten or fifteen minutes from the end, he stood up, gathered his friends and left. As he went, he shouted again: ‘Fuck, fuck, cunt, fuck, cunt, wank, fuck, cunt, wanker, wanker, cunt, fuck, cunt.’ Something like that, anyway. I wasn’t taking notes.
A couple of days later, I talked about him with Yoram, a cousin-by-marriage, an Israeli, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and an occasional visitor to football matches. ‘It’s his transitional object,’ said Yoram. ‘The team is his transitional object. As the teddy bear is to the small child, so his team is to him. In his imagination, his team is perfect and when reality shows him it’s not perfect, he attacks it for not being perfect.’ And, each week, life never being perfect, he returns to attack it again.
Which is okay so far as it goes but what is the football swearer getting out of it? Why should he be so drawn to such pain? And why are swear words so central to his expression of that pain?
Some weeks later, I was in a room in central London, five floors up, with a view of fire escapes, air-conditioning machinery and rooftop lift housings. Outside, it was the end of a Friday lunch hour on Tottenham Court Road. Takeaway sandwiches, quick trips to the supermarket, one last cigarette before getting back to work.
A man was talking. A small group of us, a dozen or so, listened to him talk. He was talking about children and adults and shame and guilt. Only he was using words like shit and piss and fuck and mind-fuck. Words you don’t normally hear in university seminar rooms or lecture halls, even when they’re the most obvious words for what’s being talked about. Perhaps especially so when they’re the most obvious words for what’s being talked about. Academic Latin was long used to hide the obvious from the non-academic.
The talking man was a psychoanalyst. The rest of us were students, working towards an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies. Theoretical? No patients, no couch work, just course work. Psychoanalytic Studies? Freud etc. I was back at university after a very long gap. Why? Basically, because part of me wanted to take up where I’d left off first time at university. I suppose I was giving that part of me the chance to – belatedly – live an alternative possible existence. A kind of retaking of a road untaken. Like other mature students, I was doing it after having lived a life beyond academia in which I’d learned, amongst other things, that infinitives can be split, for fun and for clarity. Oh, and to really, really irritate pedants and language conservatives.
It was a polyglot, polynational group in the seminar. Polysexual, too, I’d imagine – though no one mentioned it. Every gathering has its elephant on the sofa, brooding silently, wondering why he’s not being included in the conversation. There was New European, Mittel European, American, Asian, Balkan, Brazilian, east London and Home Counties even. All fluent in English, or almost. Half male, half female, roughly. I was the oldest but not by much. There was a wide age-spread and there were certainly no babes-in-arms. And yet, and yet, there was an unmistakable sense of unease when the lecturer – a very senior figure in British psychoanalysis – started using language that you wouldn’t …
