I keep experiencing a problem, a problem I'm sure that you've experienced as well if you read a lot or watch TV and movies or listen to music.
It wasn't a serious problem when I was growing up in the '70s, but it's become an epidemic in the past 25 years and it has invaded the entertainment industry like a wildfire raging through a forest, having taken a few hesitant steps and gaining momentum through the years.
I'm talking about profanity.
To understand profanity, we have to understand the root word -- profane. Merriam-Webster defines profane as (1) to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt; (2) to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use. Therefore, profanity is profane language or the utterance of profane language. Merriam-Webster defines it even more simply as offensive language. In my lifetime I've heard it also referred to as bad language, strong language, coarse language, foul language, bad words, vulgar language, lewd language, swearing, cursing, cussing, or using expletives.
"But everyone talks that way," I hear from more than one person. No, they don't. There are a lot of people who have never had a "four-letter word" cross their lips and never will.
So, what is my problem with profanity? A lot of it has to do with the way I was raised. My parents rarely, if ever, uttered a curse word. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I tried a few out when I was younger. I'd hear a word, sound it out a time or two -- take it for a test run, so to speak -- and then toss it aside. I knew if I tried using the word in a conversation with my family I'd be drinking dish soap for dinner. And no matter how good that soap may smell, the taste is horrible.
Later, in my teen years, good friends introduced me to a saying attributed to Spencer W. Kimball that has stuck with me: Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly.
George Carlin performed a monologue, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," beginning in 1972. Those seven words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Comedian Lenny Bruce said he was arrested in 1966 for saying those seven words and two others -- ass and balls -- in alphabetical order. I'd probably add a couple more: bitch and god damn. Fifty years later, every single one of those words has wormed its way into one or more forms of mainstream entertainment. Admittedly, I find some of those words far more offensive than others.
(I am particularly bothered by the use of "god damn" as it violates the third commandment given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. I realize that not everyone subscribes to Christianity as I do; however, I find it disconcerting that it is "okay" to take God's name in vain but not Allah's, Krishna's, or any other religion's major deity. To be perfectly clear, it's not cool to take the name of any religion's major deity in vain. That's a discussion for another time, perhaps.)
What gets me most upset about the use of profanity is how the occasional profane word, used emphatically, has become commonplace. How do I determine if the word is necessary or not? It's simple. If you can remove the word from the sentence without it changing the meaning of the sentence, it is unnecessary.
Truly, it is as simple as that.
I recently read a book (GJS II) where the F-bomb was used repeatedly. I don't believe there was a single page of the 500+ page novel where the word didn't appear. Some pages found the word in use multiple times. A recent movie based on a comic book, Deadpool, also suffers from excessive F-bomb dropping, and received an R rating where a PG-13 could have been given if the words had been removed from the script.
When did entertainment become "adult" based on the amount of profanity used instead of the contextual themes in the story? When did using certain words make the work more "real" than if they were excluded. I don't know.
As society continues to embrace social media in place of face-to-face or long-form written communication, verbal skills will further erode. Maybe that's why the use of profanity continues to grow, because people just don't have the vocabulary to express themselves without it.
And that may be the saddest commentary of them all.
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