In Defense of Honest Dialogue By Shale January 14, 2012 I work for a company that takes care of people with Developmental Disability. Oh, since a year or so now it has been called Intellectual Disability. And when I first started working in this field it was called Mental Retardation. But words go out of vogue after they fall into misuse in the common vernacular. That is what happened to 'idiot, moron & imbecile' once clinical words until the common man started bandying them about as pejoratives. Now 'retarded' has met that fate and I can understand the umbrage of people who work in this field and those who perhaps have intellectual disability. "That is so gay!" Yep, retard is not the only insensitive invective that is hurled at others in jest, often without a clue as to how hurtful it could be to a class of people and I can understand the professional organizations abandoning the word that used to be the 'R' in ARC (But which is now an acronym without words). However, the activists in these professional and support groups have relegated 'retarded' to the 'R' word, much like the offensive slang word '******' has become the 'N' word. (Which to me, represents 'Non-word') Using codes for words that people know (and if they didn't know, journalism requires you to offer a 'first citation' explanation) is to me both absurd and infantile. Yes, infantile as when some parents teach their children to use codes #1 and #2 for urinate and defecate. These are the words that dare not speak their names. However, there comes a problem when writing literature or screenplays where you want your characters to be believable. You want your dialogue to be real, to reflect the way people actually speak. Anything less becomes stilted. So, sometimes some backwater semi-literate lowlife will talk about those 'fucking niggers.' You can't expect the same face-slap of outrage to hit your audience if he says those 'F-word N-words.' Besides it becomes even more cumbersome if that lowlife is ranting on those 'fucking faggots.' (F-word F-word?) So now there are groups whose intent is to "Spread the Word to End the Word," which is a great idea if they confine it to educating people to not use it. But they have taken an activist role in trying to get people to boycott any entertainment that uses the word retarded or retard in their script, and that is where I get pissed. I wish to defend the use of this now 'bad' word when used to convey how people actually talk. Some recent examples were movies that showed insensitive people in casual conversation with friends using these words. In the movie The Change-Up, Ryan Reynolds character, who is the partying, irresponsible womanizer is at his married friends house being his usual obnoxious, crude self. He asks Jason Bateman’s character about his young twins. “Why can’t they talk yet? Are they retarded or something?” Then goes on to say, “the one on the left looks a little Downsy.” Did I say crude? Perhaps insensitive. But remember, we the audience are are not really supposed to be in the room eavesdropping on these private conversations between two buddies who have known each other all their lives and engage in this kind of childhood banter. The other movie is The Descendants one that I did not see, but here is the reported greivance: Clooney’s character Matt says, “You are so retarded.” Nick Krause’s character Sid replies, “That’s not nice. I have a retarded brother.” Matt looks shocked. Sid goes on to say, “I’m just kidding. I don’t have a retarded brother. Sometimes when old people and retarded people are slow I just want to make them hurry up.” This dialogue is very similar to what Kaui Hart Hemmings wrote in her novel of the same name. The story involves a family with some dysfunction, discord, affairs and basically dramatic stuff. The author thot this dialogue fit, as do I, and it apparently was acceptable by the 89% of the aggregate reviewers that gave the movie good marks and to the multiple award nominations. It is not like the characters in either of these movies are yelling RETARD! at a bunch of people in a Special Olympics event. And yet, Special Olympics is one of the organizations that has taken a stance against this movie. Which really irritates me as I have worked with that group for my clients and have been a member for the past two years. But, ya know what? In these troubling economic times, when I have taken a pay cut because the funding is being cut to our agency, I have found a way to save a few bucks this year. By not renewing that membership. This is what I thot Special Olympics was about Mission Statement The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.
I decided I wanted to keep this thread to one subject: Words So, my other rant "In Defense of Bad TV" was moved to the Gay News Forum http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=443056
The Honest essay really touches stuff I think about a lot: profanity and offense in arts and entertainment. Nicely said. Also, my husband works with 'tards.
I know this is dated but somehow it fits with defending 'Words.' Oh, I shoulda put a disclaimer that I was mentored as a young man by the late George Carlin, who had a funny way of telling-it-like-it-is. Has anyone encountered a 'profanity filter' lately? But in the early days of my first PC and Usenet and all the University, County Library and other free ISP systems that I used we were actually limited in what we could send across the Net. However, as pointed out in this article - the bots of the day were inadequate to the task of figuring out the difference between 'bad' words and 'good' words. (This article was published in Moon Magazine, Gainesville, Florida, March 20, 1996 titled "Sun.ONE's Cunning Linguistics") PROFANITY by Shale March 9, 1996 Bullshit! One of my favorite expressions of social commentary stopped my letter to the editor of The Gainesville Sun in mid sentence. I had made the mistake of following their suggestion and writing to them electronically on Sun.ONE (Online News & Entertainment), only to discover that the system has a "profanity filter" that automatically highlights and prevents the use of certain unacceptable words. An irritating but minor inconvenience. I mailed the letter, and the editor either deleted my colorful expression or reduced it to bull. So now I knew better, and figured that if I avoided those "seven words you can never say on television" that George Carlin enumerated in 1972, my letters would pass through the filters unobstructed. I figured wrong. While uploading another letter on Sun.ONE that I knew contained no vulgarities, it too was stopped with the sign "PROFANITY. There is profane language within your message that is not allowed on this system. The offending word has been highlighted." The offending word was "orgasm." Dave Carlson, the director of the Interactive Media Lab at UF, explained that the profanity filter is built into the MajorBBS software and they can't control the words it selects. He said that they too have a problem with the word selection and have been in contact with the programmers about it. He's afraid to just turn the damn thing off because someone might use language that others on the MajorNet systems find offensive. Fortunately Alachua FreeNet has not found it necessary to install a profanity filter on its mail service, as this e-mailed letter proves. These are the nineties, and censorship goes beyond the obvious dirty words of the seventies (shit, piss, fuck, ****, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits) and now includes an arbitrary selection of words that some computer programmer with no life thinks are profane. This effort to protect polite society from dangerous words has produced a list that excludes scientifically valid words for body parts and bodily functions, while allowing some common slang usage, including a couple on Carlin's seven word list. America OnLine's fiasco with "breast" in Nov. 95, shows the absurdity of letting computer nerds decide which words are dangerous. It took just one day of widespread protest, particularly from breast cancer forums and educators, to teach AOL that a breast is just a part of human anatomy that sometimes must be discussed online. Even Sun.ONE allows you to write "breast." You can even write "areola," and the previously unmentionable "tits," but you can't write "nipple." Go figure! Apparently, the protectors of decency are trying to keep any intelligent discussion of sex or sexuality from Sun.ONE. Therefore you can't send a message with the words penis, scrotum, vulva, or vagina. Cock, balls, and snatch are your only recourse. "Butt" is acceptable, and you can send messages about "tits" and "ass." Of Course they figured out that "dick" is a slang word for cock, so writing about the old primer "Fun With Dick and Jane" might be profane. Sexual activities such as "fellatio" and "cunnilingus" can't be discussed. However, "cocksucker" and "muff diver" are acceptable terms on this system. And, if you're trying to convey a message about the safe sex practice of "masturbation," you'll have to say "jerk off, jack off, beat your meat, choke your chicken, or diddle." "Ejaculate," like "orgasm" is considered profane, so "cum" will have to be the word to express your "climax." You can't send messages on Sun.ONE about bodily functions either. You can discuss being full of "urine" or "feces," but you are not allowed to "urinate" or "defecate." The profanity filter won't allow you to write about "crap," or even about the 19th century inventor, Thomas "Crapper," who developed the modern flush toilet. If you really must be disgusting, you can write about "snot" and "boogers." Carlin, in his 1972 routine, mentioned the two-way words which could change from good to bad. His example was, "it's alright to prick your finger, but don't finger your prick." On Sun.ONE "prick" has been singularly declared profane. The Gainesville Sun has had a run-in with the two-way word though. In 1992, while mentioning a sketch on the TV show "In Living Color" depicting a talk show with two gay men called "Men on Men," The Sun considered "men" both a bad word and a good word and wrote it as "Men on ..." Ah, yes. The dots. You can always get around these bad words by disguising them with a bunch of f...ing dots so that only those jaded and vulgar people will know what is being written. Like most 7-year-olds. Makes you wonder who we're supposed to be fooling. Has it occurred to anyone else that if these bad words are so dangerous that they can't be safely communicated, then what happened to the guy who programmed them into the profanity filter? Is he now tucked safely away in a padded cell somewhere? A quarter century ago George Carlin made a comedy routine out of the simplistic morality behind designating certain commonly used words as bad. Missing from his list were "virgin" and "pregnant" which were banned from TV broadcast in 1952. It appeared we were making progress against this absurd censorship, but Sun.ONE, at the beginning of a new age of mass communication pricked that balloon of hope (Here's an interesting post script. On March 6, Dave Carlson told me that they can't select which words are suppressed. However, after showing this essay to Rob Oglesby, the Director of New Media, on March 10, the words dick, prick, crap, and crapper, are miraculously no longer "profane" and can now be written on Sun.ONE. Unfortunately, all the other ridiculously excluded words mentioned here, remain so at this time. Looks to me like some prick in the system is feeding someone a bunch of bullshit.)
When my kids were growing up, I taught them that there are no bad words. Just bad meanings. I'll stick with that.
