Rude Kid from Viz understood it. Bearded Baby acknowledges it in these pages. The Minister positively worships it. Charlie Brooker understands it better than anyone. Swearing and saying rude stuff is fucking brilliant. Brooker, right back on form with his latest piece for the Graun, captures it perfectly when he says:
“…sweary tastelessness is a celebration of life, as soaring and majestic as a gospel choir in full flow, and no amount of tedious squeamishness can alter that. “
I’m preaching to the converted I know. And of course, swearing unimaginatively is dull and loads of people do that – principally, it has to be said, football fans. But a well-placed sweary insult, preferably over-exagerrated and inappropriate for the context, and, for a bonus point, entirely unnecessary, is a joy.
Literature is full of it. Not just Shakespeare, but Chaucer, Rabelais and Dylan Thomas. More recently, in Stephen Fry’s novel The Liar (Heinemann, 1991) the author recounts at length an episode as a young teacher, taking a group of 4th formers from prep school on an away trip to a local Cathedral school, probably in Dorset. Sadly I don’t have the text with me so you’ll have to go with my fuzzy memory, but I recall with some relish his wistful depictions of the innocence of youth, the bucolic landscape of the playing field at sundown, young ginger bowlers and batsmen whose kit was too big, “howzat sir?”, little handshakes after stumps, tea in the pavilion etc etc. Then, having transported you perfectly into the scene, he describes how, umpiring at the bowler’s end, he cheekily gives a boy from his own school not out, despite the youngster clearly having feathered the ball on the way to the keeper. At tea, his captain wanders across and after a brief discussion asks “But sir, you wouldn’t cheat would you?” Fry (for it is no doubt he) replies something along the lines of: “Young man, this is the most sacred game of Cricket. From its cradle in Hambledon, it has been played on the hallowed fields of England for a hundred and forty years, by knights, kings, princes and members of the holy orders. There is no sport in the land more noble, more perfect or more divine. I am your mentor, your guardian and your teacher and my solemn duty is to impart to you all the vitality and beauty of this majestic game. Of course I’m going to cunting well cheat.”
Now this is an interesting thread to start, if only because my own views are both contradictory and contrarian.
I love a good swear. It is a blissfull escape of rudeness coupled with the ability to feel like a naughty schoolboy. But I do believe it has its place.
The most extreme example of this was when I was doing my pupillage, but also living and working in a West London boozer. It was not a pub. It was a boozer.
During the day I had perfect language, but walk through the door of the boozer and I could make a docker blush. I was only topped by our potman/DJ/cleaner/handyman/cellarman/benefits cheat who once legendarily squeezed four “fuck”s into a sentence that would have otherwise only contained three words. I may be affected by rheumy eyed sentimentality, but I swear I applauded him.
So when I said yesterday about how conscious I am of how much I swear, I began to think more about one aspect of my view of swearing which is this: I swear like nobody’s business online, but swearing in newspapers drives me potty.
It genuinely brasses me off when I read supposedly educated papers littered with strong swearing. If I was a parent I would genuinely think twice about leaving even the Guardian Guide lying round.
I think this is because I think it is lazy journalism. It’s a very easy shortcut to appearing “edgy” (oh god that word…) For decades newspapers doubtlessly edited little asides and where none the worse for it, but nowadays it is all too common. I’ve always thought that if I ever got to edit a paper I’d spike any copy with any word I would feel embarrassed saying in front of a twelve year old. After all, we need to be encouraging them at that age to read newspapers, not to feel embarrassed reading something in front of their parents.
And it was an incident involving julesallen that actually confirmed this view. I sent an email to him a while ago that contained much foul language, not appreciating that this wouldn’t be kept between consenting gentlemen, and that there was a real risk that his children might read it. I was mortified when I found this out, and actually it still causes me caution to this day. I’ve only really let rip on this site when I took my cue from julesallen and realised that his children won’t see it.
But what I was thinking about when I was shaving this morning is the contradiction between this moralistic stance about print and what I do in blog. The way I justified it (and I hold my hands up and admit I use that word in the subjective “self-justifying” sense) was that blog is much more immediate – it is only a brief pause away from a pub conversation. I never delay publishing a comment (no matter how drunk I am). I may edit out spelling and grammatic errors, and once I’ve tweaked a phrase, but other than that it is pretty much as I think it.
So there you have it. I wouldn’t say these things around children, but I think that only illustrates civilisation – we are able as sentient beings to respond to the sensibilities and mores of others.
And finally I’ve managed to do a blog without saying cunt.
Oh fuck….
I concur re: kids swearing (though I think the Minister used to swear like a bastard when he was a kid), as I don’t think they are mature enough to know how to do it well. My kids aren’t allowed to access the ‘net without supervision and they wouldn’t be interested in this site anyway, so all is safe. It’s all about knowing your audience. My wife and I enjoy a good rendition of the word “twat” or a “mouthed” f-word and that’s the level. In the pub, things are different. On the rugby field, even worse etc. But this is just it – we’re old enough to know how to use swearing wisely and for good comic (or polemic) effect. I would judge swearing in print on its merits. TVGoHome was a celebratory masterpiece of swearing – but without the wit and understanding of the power of swearing, it would have been as awful as South African captain Graham Smith fielding in close and calling Michael Vaughan a “fucking poof” again and again and again, without any good reason whatsoever.
Actually, that is quite funny.