Cussing on TV

The first new Daily Show said sh!t without it being bleeped. I just saw a new South park that said the s word without it being bleeped. I guess sh!t is now OK on Comedy Central.

 

When George Carlin did his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" bit, they never could be said.

We're down to four now. Although still heavily discouraged by the FCC, s**t, p*ss, and tit occasionally make it through on network television without incident. It just depends on the situation. The other four are still big no-no's.

 

For what it's worth, they swore far more. Robert Louis Stevenson's wife wrote that she was amazed that at least fifty percent of all word used by those in the territories were obscene. These were people who chose to live in outlaw territory, and several of the Deadwood characters were pimps and whores. Not everyone used the same amount of language. What Deadwood also did not use was all the blasphemy, because it would have sounded ineffective to modern audiences. There was eventually a lot of academic research into this, at the behest of creator David Milch, who was after all the Robert Penn Warren chair in English at Yale. Could there have been less swearing? Probably? No one was counting. Really. In all the rewriting that we did, which was considerable, the swearing wasn't a focus. In fact, it wasn't until HBO posted it out after the fifth script that it became more of a discussion.

As for Dexter's sister, I found it silly and annoying, short of it highlighting Dexter's puritanical nature.

 

Sex Pistols made a career out of it.
But, all those day type tv Jerry Springer shows with their actors/real people and their wtf m f expletives firing away every 10 seconds makes me glad I don't live next door to those noisey m f.

 

Jon's last show didn't bleep it. Also, from times when I watched it after midnight, that word got through. I think it was more of a time slot issue, than anything.

 

Most workplaces that treat their employees like adults usually don't have much objection to a limited amount of non-work-related surfing during the workday so long as it doesn't interfere with work. On the other hand, most workplaces would not hesitate to discipline an employee that was observed to have nudity visible on his or her computer monitor.

 

What can ya say? It's the world we live in in 2015, a decidedly R-rated society to be sure. Still, TV's come a long way with language since Alan Alda called Mako a son of a b--ch on M*A*S*H back in 1979...that had to have been one of the first times (if not the first) that kind of language was used on prime-time.

Hey, I swear like a trooper (though I do try to restrain and/or self-censor myself on this 'family friendly' forum) but I also have a toddler in the house who is at the mimicking stage, so my missus has been getting on my case about swearing around the kid lately, especially since he has dropped an "F" or "S" bomb on occasion in emulation of his old man But on the weekend I decided to introduce my wife to The Sopranos -a show on which most of the characters spoke in fluent "f--kanese" as I call it. I insisted we wait to watch it until our kid was asleep. Before the end of the first episode my wife said, "Yeah...good idea we put him to bed before we started watching this!".

Sure, there seems to be a larger than normal amount of swearing on TV these days, and, yeah, it might be a sign of the dumbing down of our vocabulary and all that, but at the same time it does add a certain amount of realism. People swear, just like people have sex and do commit violent acts. Bottom line: got a problem with any or all of the above? Don't watch the show, change the channel- or, better yet, turn off the g-ddamn idiot box and read a book or log on to the Forum or something!

 

Nudity perhaps, but not the harmless avatars that were being discussed.

 

It is appropriate in Cop shows (that bleeping in "Southland" was the worst and hypocritical to no end IMO - only topped by "fracking" in the new Battlestar series ) and War movies/shows, because ....... well just watch some real footage from combat or cops (although it is mostly the civilians that are cussing that a sailor would blush) on LiveLeak or such - it is a reality and that is what I want and expect from good TV shows to a degree.

 

Agree on "Deadwood" it was completely over the top. Almost distracting.

 

I agree about Deadwood I really wanted to watch and like it but the constant swearing got old really really fast. I didn't even finish watching the first season.

 

While my vocabulary of tasteless and obscene expressions is certainly nothing to be proud of, I also am put off by the language on TV and in film nowadays.

I remember back in the mid-1980s hearing the expression "son-of-a-b**ch" on an episode of Cagney and Lacey and being somewhat shocked. But the line was absolutely appropriate to the scene, and if anything added to it. But then the OCCASIONAL use of anything stronger than "damn" or "hell" turned into a cesspool of truly offensive vulgarity in the last 10 - 15 years.

The more you use an expression, it begins to become just tasteless noise and loses its' "bite." That first "s-o-b" on Cagney & Lacey probably almost 30 years ago actually added to the scene in which it was used, but now it's just over-used in modern TV.

Or maybe it's just that I'm an old fossil.....

I think screenwriters owe it to the younger generation to vastly improve their craft and use vulgarity ONLY when it's a natural and appropriate part of a scene.

 

There is a race to the bottom.

 

I prefer my entertainment to rise to the level of art. And I especially like quality dialogue.

If Tolkien can write incredible dialogue, where his characters can battle the forces of Mordor without a string of profanities, I would think TV and movies today could do much better.

 

I rarely use bad language, but, at the same time, thought "Breaking Bad" should have used More!
A bit more use of certain words would have made it all the more realistic to me.

Hearing Jessy utter Bi_tch 157 times, just not the same.

 

I don't have a problem with it at all.

 

First off, thank you for Deadwood. I understand HBO has nothing to do with the choice of how much profanity to use, and also understand that FX does not choose their choice of words, either. In the case of Deadwood, your choice to include the vast amount of profanity was just that - your choice. I liked the show, but as a viewer that amount of profanity constantly took me out of the moment. I understand that your research led you to this decision, and that's what you went with. For me, however, it had the same effect Vidiot mentioned above with Dexter's sister's constant F-bombing - it was a constant distraction while watching.

This is just my own opinion I'm sharing, but your decision to go with the amount of profanity episode after episode in Deadwood was a real hindrance to my enjoyment of the show. I'm glad I have the opportunity to tell you this. Understand that I still liked Deadwood, but I probably would have loved it had more restraint been used.

I agree it's apples and oranges. I'm not basing my enjoyment of both series simply on Olyphant's characters. Personally, I enjoyed his portrayal of Raylan Givens more than his portrayal of Seth Bullock, simply because Givens is a more interesting character, in my opinion. I'm in no way "blaming" that on the writers or creators of Deadwood - it's just my personal preference. I still really like the character of Seth Bullock, and the bottom line is that both shows were lucky to have Olyphant as he was awesome in both roles.

 

One strange by-product of all of this is that it has created more sanitized programming for children. The Disney and Nickelodeon channels provide relatively wholesome television, 24/7. When I was a kid, we had Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers during the day, but in prime time we watched All In The Family, Maude, and One Day At A Time because that was what was on. Now, if parents want to sit their kids in front of the TV in the evening, they can sit them in front of Jessie, Good Luck Charlie, and Dog With A Blog. Stupid programming, to be sure, but mostly harmless.

If you know how to block channels properly, your kids (or grandkids) can watch TV forever and never be aware that Family Guy exists.

 

It's also an example of what TV and film people consider liberating(and because they are liberated they feel the need to use it all the time rather than for dramatic effect.

I'll give an example--on the episode City on The Edge of Forever after Kirk has experienced personal loss the guardian of forever offers them the opportunity to see and visit any time in the past having none of the I sight a human might have about theconsequences of the act of going I to the past (amd, perhaps, explaining why the civilization is now dead) . Kirk's only response is direct and succint-- "Let's get the hell out of here". That single curse word as mild as it is coming for a character who never used it provided enormous emotional power to the episode.

The use of bad language in Film and TV has robbed it of the emotional and dramatic impact it once had. Let's be honest--I don't talk to my kids like that all day long or my coworkers. There is a disadvantage for too much liberal use of sex scenes, bad language and the like. Don't get me wrong--I'm not a prude but most times these shows show it because they can not because it adds to the dramatic power.

Sadly entertainment has, in some respects, lost its way positioning something as freedom that becomes confining and loses the emotional meaning of such words and scenes.

When this stuff becomes common place we lose a powerful tool of communication that should not be used all the time but only when needed robbing entertaining of a rich element that results in less meaning not more. The old says g goes just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and this applies in this case as well.

 

The net result is that entertainment has helped divide families rather than letting families at least spend time together and discuss what the show or movie truly means.

 

Actually, Maude said "son of a bitch" a few years before that. The censor couldn't think of a better, funny, line for it, so they kept it in.

 

it's the way of the world right now, very commonplace almost everywhere.....IMHO another negative that is caused by the internet and cell phones.......so much easier access to it at at much younger age.

 

On Aussie broadcast TV the language restrictions are dropped from 8:30pm IIRC. So after that it's not unusual to hear F-bombs. I've heard the C-bomb a couple of times but that may be for later timeslots.

--Geoff

 

"Godfrey Daniel!" "Cheese and crackers got all muddy!"

 

I think lack of home training is a bigger factor. I got to lick a bar of Ivory soap for calling my brother a "turd." My kids didn't have to eat soap, but they had consequences for unacceptable behavior, including bad language. They are all now between 30 and 4o, by no means choirboys, but refreshingly spare in their use of gratuitous profanity.