{"id":157,"date":"2015-11-30T15:24:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T22:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/?p=157"},"modified":"2020-02-15T20:35:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:35:32","slug":"the-coarse-playwrights-guide-to-coarse-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/2015\/11\/30\/the-coarse-playwrights-guide-to-coarse-language\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coarse Playwright’s Guide to Coarse Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note<\/strong>: I have tried to write this in a way that won\u2019t cause offence to most people. It does not contain any \u201cbad\u201d swear words until the very last line, but alludes to them several times.<\/p>\n

During my research for this article, I was shocked to discover that there is a significant and very vocal body of people whose opinion of what constitutes profanity is much less tolerant than mine. Rather than risk this article provoking a similar debate, I have decided to include the following request.<\/p>\n

\n

If you are someone who may confuse religious and\/or political beliefs with secular opinions on arts and culture, I recommend that you stop here and go and browse some of my other articles. That way, I can continue to respect your right to hold those beliefs in the same way that I would expect you to respect my right to have my own belief system.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I\u2019m sitting at my computer writing dialogue for my plays, I obviously have to consider how the various characters would express themselves, and that frequently includes consideration of various forms and levels of profanity.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m not a potty mouth by most interpretations of the term, there is only one \u201cbad\u201d word that I rarely use and one other that I never use. There are many other words that I use only in appropriate company, and then only occasionally.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve created my own \u201cline in the sand\u201d and I try not to cross it. Either side of me there are the theoretical lines in the sand drawn by my characters who are on the one side more conservative than me and on the other side, more liberal.<\/p>\n

(As an aside \u2013 can lines in the sand that are only figurative be theoretical as well?
\nWrite your answers on a piece of toast and place it on your nearest bird feeding station.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How should I approach and cross the no man\u2019s land between my line in the sand and my fictional characters\u2019?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thought that triggered this article. And as usual, I\u2019m intrigued by the history of the subject.<\/p>\n

Back in the Good Old Days<\/h3>\n

When I was young, there were lots of words that couldn\u2019t be said on TV. Because they were bad words, it was fun saying them with your mates. We would sing songs containing most of those words while sitting in a section of unused 36 inch diameter sewer pipe that happened to be in the school playground, directly below the staff room window three floors up. I was ten or eleven at the time, growing up in the dilapidated Victorian row housing just east of London. I don\u2019t think my parents ever learned about those particular musical gifts of mine.<\/p>\n

(As an aside \u2013 These songs are known as \u201crugby songs\u201d in the UK for some unfathomable reason \u2013 perhaps they\u2019re mandatory repertoire for pupils at that famous public school. Or perhaps not.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coarse Language on TV<\/h3>\n

Back then, the first \u201cF\u201d word on British TV had only just been uttered (Nov 13, 1965), but racial and sexual-orientation slurs were acceptable. The Sex Pistols upped the ante substantially in December 1976 when guitarist Steve Jones fired off a stream of profanities at show host Bill Grundy, who admittedly had encouraged the Pistols to shock him. The interview cost Grundy his career. If you\u2019re curious about what went on in that interview, it\u2019s on YouTube here<\/a>.\u00a0 Be warned \u2013 it contains the \u201cF\u201d word and several other not-niceties.<\/p>\n

In 1972 in the US, George Carlin wrote and performed a monologue called Seven Words You Can Never Say<\/em> on Television. The performance got him arrested for disturbing the peace at Summerfest in Milwaukee. His list of words went on to become an informal guideline for what cannot be said on radio and TV, and six out of his seven words appeared in a bill introduced in the American Congress in 2003 aiming to designate certain words as profane in the U.S. Code.<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve heard every one of Carlin\u2019s words on TV; even the \u201cC\u201d word, which I have to say, shocked me. Shows such as The Sopranos<\/em> (which I never saw) and the UK\u2019s The Inbetweeners<\/em> either pushed the barriers back or revelled in the new freedoms.<\/p>\n

Coarse Language on Film<\/h3>\n

Before talkies, the actors could say what the #*!* they liked \u2013 only lip readers would know. And they did, as this story<\/a> about a 1916 silent movie attests.<\/p>\n

In the 1930s, along came the \u201cdamn\u201d word, and the story (myth?) that Clark Gable had to emphasize \u201cgive\u201d and not \u201cdamn\u201d in his final line<\/a> in Gone with the Wind<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Since the 1970s, things have got to the point where people measure movie dialogue in \u201cfpm\u201d \u2013 the number of \u201cF\u201d words per minute. Did you know that there are websites dedicated to rating movies via various profanity indexes, including fpm, total \u201cF\u201d count, the ratio of bad words to total words in the movie, and so on?<\/p>\n

Apparently, the current record holder is the movie Swearnet: The Movie<\/em>; it has 935 \u201cF\u201d words in its 112 minute runtime. This movie also has the dubious distinction of being Canadian. Gosh, that makes me proud!<\/p>\n

Another movie, The Wolf of Wall Street<\/em> apparently has 506 \u201cF\u201d words spread over 180 minutes.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia even has an article <\/a>that ranks movies by their \u201cF\u201d word content.
\nWhy people would devote time and effort to creating and maintaining such websites eludes me, but the normal answer where the internet is concerned is, \u201cbecause they can\u201d.<\/p>\n

Coarse Language on Stage<\/h3>\n

Shakespeare used the word \u201cpissing\u201d in King Henry VI, Part II<\/em> (Act IV, Scene VI). Other than that, his coarse language was largely limited to the taking of the (Christian) Lord\u2019s name in vain in various ways.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw or Noel Coward would have considered having one of their characters utter the \u201cF\u201d word or the \u201cC\u201d word. Having said that, the phrase \u201cnot bloody likely\u201d caused a furor when it was uttered on a stage in England in 1914. The play \u2013 Pygmalion<\/em> \u2013 the playwright \u2013 George Bernard Shaw.<\/p>\n

Evidence of the next major milestone eludes me, unless it\u2019s the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK in 1968. That seemed to be the trigger for shows such as Hair<\/em>, and for mainstream TV presenters and comedians to use the worst of the bad words.<\/p>\n

In the interests of keeping the length of this article manageable (and its publication date in this century!), I\u2019ve chosen not to examine the adoption of coarse language on stage elsewhere in the world. Perhaps a future update will do so.<\/p>\n

Coarse Language in Other Media<\/h3>\n

\u201cThose words\u201d have appeared on the radio and in books and video games, but itemizing them here really won\u2019t contribute anything further to the thrust of this piece, so we\u2019ll move on.<\/p>\n

(As an aside \u2013 would anyone construe \u201cthrust\u201d as coarse language?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What About the Characters in My Writings?<\/h3>\n

Yes indeed.<\/p>\n

At the time of writing this article, I\u2019ve written four plays that have been or are about to be produced on stage.<\/p>\n

The first, a British pantomime, contains nothing that isn\u2019t family-friendly (but needs updating).<\/p>\n

The second, Julia<\/em>, is the story of a woman of a certain age who receives a call from her husband informing her that he\u2019s leaving her. I felt her character would use the \u201cbrown word\u201d, so she uses it seven times. At one point, in a cry of hopelessness, she utters the \u201cF\u201d word once.<\/p>\n

The third, Act III<\/em> tells the story of three ladies of a certain age who enter into a pact to help their respective husbands adjust to retirement. Although one of the characters is somewhat less inhibited than the other two, none of them uses any bad language, other than one \u201ccrap\u201d. There is some innuendo, but no coarse language.<\/p>\n

The most recent, Trail Mix and Chips<\/em>, is about a young couple who get stranded in the back country of the Rocky Mountains after running out of gas. It contains four instances of the \u201cbrown word\u201d, one of which occurs when \u201che\u201d reads the title of a book about back country camping etiquette. The other three are distributed \u2013 one to each of the three characters. Would the script stand up without them? Possibly \u2013 this play is fresh off the printer and doesn\u2019t go into rehearsal for another four weeks yet, so I might remove some or all of them.<\/p>\n

One of my Works in Progress (WIPs) is about a rock band whose members are contemplating reforming after 30-odd years. Having watched interviews with many bands, and having been in bands myself, I envisage the need for a lot of colourful language, but my gut tells me that my plays\u2019 usual audiences won\u2019t be comfortable, so I now have to make a choice: script the thing how I believe it should sound in order to be authentic; script it using my own substitute words, such as \u201ccuff\u201d and \u201cshik\u201d; or throw the WIP in the shredder and start work on another synopsis.<\/p>\n

At the end of the clich\u00e9-ridden day, a writer has to be comfortable with his or her subject matter and characters. The market I\u2019m writing these one act plays for is largely comprised of community theatre groups that want something different to enter into a competitive festival. My experience of these festivals is that adjudicators look for something that\u2019s edgy, or that pushes the boundaries a little. Having a recovered drug addict who spent ten or fifteen years playing rock gigs around two or more continents say something like, \u201cWe must be out of our cuffing heads if we think we can tour with a shik set list like that.\u201d just doesn\u2019t seem authentic to me, but the alternative, when multiplied by the number of lines in a 30-minute play, might be too much for some audiences and adjudicators.<\/p>\n

#%!*^#!**!<\/h3>\n

These days, it seems that words that are considered racist, or that are disrespectful to the LGBT community, are more offensive than \u201cF\u201d or \u201cC\u201d. Agatha Christie wrote a book called Ten Little Niggers<\/em> (which is now called And Then There Were None<\/em>), but I\u2019m sure she would never have contemplated a sequel called Ten Massive F____ers<\/em>. By contrast, these days, a theatre production can get away with the odd F-bomb here and there, especially if the audience is expecting it, but my impression is that a playwright or Director or Producer needs to think long and hard before including the \u201cN\u201d word.<\/p>\n

Given that coarseness of language is only one of countless choices a person has to make when crafting a credible play, I have to ask, \u201cWho said writing is easy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Post Script: Why “Coarse Playwright”?<\/h3>\n

Many people involved in amateur drama in the UK will have heard of a book called, The Art of Coarse Acting<\/em>, one of a series of The Art of\u2026<\/em> by humourist Michael Green. The book is still available on Amazon (and likely elsewhere).There are Wikipedia articles on the book <\/a>and the author<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Being aware of my relative inexperience and exposure to criticism, I\u2019ve chosen to refer to myself as a \u201ccoarse playwright\u201d for the purposes of this article primarily because I was amused by the pun.<\/p>\n

Your Turn<\/h2>\n

Where is your \u201cline in the sand\u201d in real life? What are your thoughts on characters using authentic vocabulary, even if that includes \u201cbad\u201d words? Have you watched plays, movies or TV shows that have used \u201cbad\u201d words gratuitously? If so, which ones? What are your thoughts on less ancient \u201cbad\u201d words (I provide these as examples because they\u2019re less well-known and I can\u2019t think of a way to hint at what they are: \u201cclunge\u201d, \u201csmegging\u201d, \u201cfricking\u201d, \u201cfracking\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: I have tried to write this in a way that won\u2019t cause offence to most people. It does not contain any \u201cbad\u201d swear words until the very last line, but alludes to them several times. During my research for this article, I was shocked to discover that there is a significant and very vocal body of people whose opinion… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[667],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}