Cussing on TV

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Peace N. Love, Oct 7, 2015.

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  1. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

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    Houston, TX
    [​IMG]
     
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  2. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

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    "There are no bad words, only bad intentions." - George Carlin
     
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  3. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

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    It's really a shame, you don't need it to have a good show.
     
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  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    But writers and producers should have the freedom and ability to use whatever language helps them tell the story. Godfather and Goodfellas would not be the same if the actors said "oh, fudge" or "gosh darn it." In some cases, you can't get away from the reality of the way people speak in real life.

    No, I believe the first use of "son of a bitch" in a prime time sitcom was with Norman Lear's Maude, where her husband had a heart attack while having an affair and then confessed the truth to Maude while recovering in the hospital. That was late September, 1974 -- "Walter's Heart Attack." We actually got a few calls at the CBS affiliate I worked for the day this show aired.

    Saturday Night Live is another show with changing standards. In the first five years of the show, you couldn't say the word "d@uchebag." In one of the final 1980 sketches, they used the word about 35 times as the name of a character ("lord and lady D@uchebag"), which I think was an F you to the censors since everybody on the show was leaving.
     
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  5. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

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    I'm not talking about movies like GOODFELLAS (and I'd add THE EXORCIST). We're talking about TV shows.
     
  6. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

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    I would much rather hear the actual curse words than hear the *safe* equivalents they use instead. Laughable. It's not 1950 any longer, let's get over it.
     
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  7. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
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    Too bad it's not. People acted with more decorum back then. And even while people could curse, there was no reason to have it on TV too, thus perpetuating that very climate even further and leading to de-sensitization. Shows like I LOVE LUCY and THE HONEYMOONERS, for example, are still among the most well-written, and hilariously re-watchable shows ever -- and not one sex joke or toilet laced humor, nor cussing in the entire run of either.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2015
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  8. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

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    If you seriously believe profanity is somehow a measurement of the "class" of a person then you belong in the 1950s. Please go buy a DeLorean and leave the 21st century. Thanks.
     
  9. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

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    *sigh* ... If that were only possible... :(
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Well, I don't think The Sopranos would have had the impact it did if the characters said "oh, fudge" or "gosh darn it," either. Same with The Wire. Both were powerful, memorable, award-winning shows that would have been dulled down if they had been forced to temper their use of language. If you're doing a show on crime and criminals in modern times, I don't see how you can avoid some use of foul language. It's what I hear on the street. (Heck, I heard the F word on elementary school playgrounds in 1962, so these words are not new.)

    To me, modern audiences under 30 see no difference between TV shows and movies. For a lot of them, entertainment just arrives in their living room on their home screens. It all gets lumped into one thing.

    I think there are shows that exercise huge restraint, like House of Cards, where they will use the famous 14-letter word that starts with "M" and ends with "R," but only on rare occasions. And usually it's done to make an extreme point. The rest of the time, people are fairly civil. But it's clearly an adult show, and there is a line drawn where I'd say it's a very mild "R", maybe a "PG-13" that pushes the limit a little over. But the creators of that show (and every other show) need the freedom to do what they think is right -- not what they think the audience thinks is right. If you don't want to hear this language, change the channel.

    BTW, coincidentally, I just got off the phone with a producer where we're going in and making a "less nudity" version of a film I'm working on. We haven't talked yet about the language, which is also very raunchy and R-rated, but I'm just involved with the picture on this one. So there are distributors who have lines and rules that can't be crossed, but this is a question of commerce, not censorship per se.
     
  11. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    vote for the most cursing on a TV show...DEADWOOD. LOL...
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    I could swear (ahem) that's been covered in this thread already...

    BTW, I was shocked to discover that Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to a list of movies with the most use of the F word:

    http://bit.ly/1eZt4C9

    The biggest movie anybody has actually seen with the most curse words was the recent Wolf of Wall Street, which had an astonishing 569 F-words. Summer of Sam had 435, and Casino (which I believe was the record holder for many years had 422.). Me, I don't give an F*** as long as the films are entertaining, the stories make sense, and the characters are engaging.

    BTW, among sitcoms, I think the raunchiest comedy out there is probably Veep, which I think is a hilarious series that (deservedly) wins a ton of awards and does a great job. But I know people who won't watch it because -- to them -- the amount of bad language wears them down over time and dulls the comedy. It works for me, but maybe I'm immune to having heard this stuff for far too long.
     
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  13. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    yes neither do I...people curse some more than others...real life, baby.
     
  14. dlokazip

    dlokazip Forum Transient

    Location:
    Austin, TX, USA
    I get so sick of people bringing up I Love Lucy, as if everything that came after it was crap. It's like all of American culture went to hell after that.

    The truth is, I Love Lucy was to phenomenal comedy, so it's unassailable. You can't tear it apart. It transcends generations. But, I get the impression that the programs they really want back are Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet. Thankfully, those programs are utterly forgettable and have had little to no lasting impact on American culture. Besides, I always got the impression that they were BS anyway. No family really acted that way. They just convinced gullible people that they did.
     
  15. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    Oh, our kid gets his daily dose of PBS Kids both in the morning and in the afternoon. We try not to let him rot his brain too much:laugh: Probably the most 'outrageous' show he watches -granted, it wouldn't make much sense to a two and half year old- is The Simpsons. I can't stand any of Seth MacFarlane's shows, so my kid is safe there. For now, at least...
    Yer right, and I have no issue with the language used on The Sopranos, but it's probably worth pointing out that when it came to depicting crime and criminals, etc The Godfather (and Part II) pulled it off with a minimum of swearing, oddly enough. Only time I recall the ol' F-bomb being used in either of those movies is when Senator Geary tells Michael what he thinks of his "f--king family" near the beginning of Part II.
    House Of Cards was another show where we made damned sure our kid was in bed before we watched it. Even if that famous 14 letter word is one of my personal favourites...:laugh:
     
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  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    I have mixed feelings on the issues of what kids can and can't watch. I'm old enough to remember when movie ratings came in, and suddenly we had GP (later PG), R, and X (now NC-17). The theater owners were so confused, they actually kicked me out of some GP movies, despite the fact that I was 12 or 13 at the time.

    I would be reluctant to let any kids under 10 or 11 watch a show as intense as Walking Dead or Breaking Bad, both of which are just on cable. R-rated stuff on HBO, no way. Once they're in junior high and they're 12 or 13, I think it'd be on a case-by-case basis. In truth, I'd rather they watch something intelligent and thoughtful that has occasional foul language -- like House of Cards -- than an R-rated show where people are getting their eyes gouged out. I think extreme violence is far worse than language.

    I concede that it's the parents' right to control what their kids see and hear as they grow up. One thing you gotta remember, though... they can see far worse stuff on the net, even YouTube. And they're gonna get exposed to all kinds of nasty stuff at their friends' houses, particularly when parents are not around. We thought it was racy to see Playboy when I was a little kid; now, it's midget/torture/snuff porn tied in with Human Centipede. Just unimaginably twisted stuff that's wrong in every way. I think there should be a new rating that says, "Audiences Under 42 Are Prohibited."
     
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  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    I can recall asking my mom around 1962-1963, "hey! Howcum you don't act like Donna Reed?" She told me to shut the f*** up.
     
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  18. Trapper J

    Trapper J Senior Member

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    Great White North
    I won't bother getting into my thoughts on it, aside from the fact that I agree with you. It's bad writing and lazy. I also cuss like a sailor at times (often too much), and I wish I didn't. I wish I could better elaborate with constructive words, rather than resorting to that numskullery. <--- feel free to use that one :D

    I remember a guy I used to work with one mentioned how a certain rap/hip-hop artist never swore in his lyrics. I can't remember the artist, but I remember them being one of these artist that had a couple hits on the radio, but didn't go very far (from what I could tell). But my coworker had respect for them, and after that was pointed out to me so did I,. He said that it takes effort to not cuss when it comes to music and writing, and that it was a respectable feat.

    I agree.
     
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  19. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    Yeah, I can remember when I was a kid, when we bought our first VCR (Sony top loader:righton:) and the first movie my parents rented was the original Vacation with Chevy Chase. I would have been six or seven at the time; they let me watch it with them...my folks let me watch all that kind of stuff, Eddie Murphy and whatnot (they drew the line at his standup videos, though, like Delirious)...lots of swearing or violence in a movie my parents had no issue with ("If you don't want yer kids to see violence, then don't let 'em watch the news!" as my mum used to say) but sex was right out- for example they didn't let me watch A Fish Called Wanda (though when I eventually saw it I could sort of understand why) but then my parents were pretty free with the language, which I suppose rubbed off on me.

    But, no question, the stuff available for viewing now is a helluva lot raunchier than it was thirty years ago...
     
  20. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    As soon as I wrote my last post, I knew you'd mention THE SOPRANOS. :) I like THE SOPRANOS, but that is also another exception where yes, cussing is fine and expected -- but we're talking about HBO, on Cable TV there. I was under the impression that we were mainly referring to "standard TV", on regular channels now starting to allow more swearing and whatever else.

    As much as I think it works with movies like GOODFELLAS, it can also get ridiculously overboard, no? I mean, haven't you heard the old joke where people would count how many times the "F Bomb" is dropped in GOODFELLAS? I mean, THE GODFATHER was a real classic way before GOODFELLAS, and they didn't say "F" every other word. Back in 1931, SCARFACE with Paul Muni did not contain such language and it worked fine. Same thing with many James Cagney gangster films.

    Yes, but what I'm suggesting is that we don't have to perpetuate this on TV too, and have cussing and general unruliness everywhere, do we? There was a time when we did not aspire to the lowest common denominator. I do believe that we create our own climate out there -- just as violence begets more violence, so too would I say that cussing everywhere begets even more acceptable cussing everywhere.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2015
  21. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    There were wholesome families back then who really did have values and acted that way. And for the ones that didn't, well -- we didn't need every show on TV to reflect the down sides of everything all the time. I hear your opinion often these days, and I think it's sad... that every time there is anything nice or wholesome presented, we've gotten to a point where we feel it is "fake", or "unreal life". There ARE families out there like The Waltons or The Brady Bunch -- no, REALLY. The problem is, there's been so much ugliness and depravity blatantly expressed for so long that people now feel anything not is "artificial"...!

    The truth is, of course there is good and bad and has always been ... but I think we're focusing too much these days on the 'bad' and dysfunctional. A good analogy is like seeing the glass as either half-empty or half-full. I think TV used to present the glass as half to three quarters full; but today there's only a few drops of water in it. Instead of focusing on dad always being drunk and beating on mom and the kids, TV once offered more escapism and upbeat fun. When you wanted the gloom, you could turn on CHILLER THEATER and watch a horror film, or maybe catch TV Cop shows like TOMA or BARETTA .
     
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  22. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    You want to see the perfect example today of how low we've sunk into depravity and carelessness? Try watching an episode of TWO BROKE GIRLS. You can't turn it on without hearing some kind of sexual language in five seconds. Seriously -- just after I left this discussion last night I was channel surfing the TV, and I hit TWO BROKE GIRLS on TBS (now syndicated for all the kids to see - how wonderful). within seconds, the "ladies" were joking about "handling a man's junk". It was a scene where the two women were visiting a stripper to talk to her, and when they sat down on her couch she turned on the "neon" light, which resulted in exposing all the "whites" in the room -- including semen stains all over the couch, as the girls started to squirm to find a clean spot to sit on. -- This is all in a prime-time comedy! Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm no prude --- but to cater to such garbage right there all the time... no talent at all, just smut... they can't write any gags unless it involves porn. And this type of thing prevails as you channel surf -- it's similar depravity all around.
     
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  23. vamborules

    vamborules Forum Resident

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    Only prudes say this.
     
  24. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    LOL! Suit yourself -- but you don't actually know me! :D

    So ... can't address the actual points made?
     
  25. Trapper J

    Trapper J Senior Member

    Location:
    Great White North
    Great point about the godfather, though I've never seen it. Cursing is not needed to intimidate. It's a sign of lazy writing I think.
    Another thing is that, truly I don't think anyone can picture the president being one that swears a lot... Or any person in a position of power. Everybody knows swearing is a sign of your vocabulary skills, or lack of... And to me, I find one who swears less to seem more empowered than one who swears a lot. If you swear a lot, it shows frustration I think, and I would assume that as with the weakness of your vocabulary, there are probably weaknesses throughout the rest of your character that could be exploited to ones advantage..

    But again, this is the problem with movies and books.. Writers can throw any combination of character traits together, to create the story they're going for. Doesn't matter if it makes sense in the real world or not. Unlike the characters in movies and books, real life people take a lifetime to form.
     
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