The Importance of Swearing 05 November 2009

Last week, Jimmy Carr told a joke.

Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012.

Quoted verbatim in the Guardian, the joke had morphed into “we’re going to have a ******* good paralympic team in 2012” by the time it had got to the Daily Mail.

The Guardian is more liberal than most newspapers when it comes to language, but why do we do this? You know what Jimmy Carr said, I know what Jimmy Carr said. Asterisks are just a cop-out. If the word “fuck” accidentally slips out during daytime television, the programme is temporary derailed, an immediate apology is offered up. Why is swearing still such a huge issue? Who’s sensitive eyes and ears are being protected? Children very quickly learn “the rude words”, mostly from overhearing their parents.

The BBC Trust, (in a never-ending demonstration of lacking balls), intends to crack down on swearing in its programs. New guidelines required the use of strong language to be “editorially justified”, approved by an “output controller”.

Even after the 9pm watershed, more care had to be taken to “make careful judgements about the use of the strongest language post-watershed and ensure it is clearly signposted”.

When a section of content is editorially justified but the slot, channel or context are not appropriate for strong language, it may be necessary to edit or bleep language, even post-watershed.

Following the Ross/Brand affair last year, thousands of people complained to the BBC. Very few, if any had actually heard the broadcast. Jerry Springer the Opera elicited around 55,000 complaints to the BBC before the programme was even broadcast. The intending audience for these programs aren’t offended, it is the other audience that read about it in the papers who are offended. This is a case of the BBC being scared by the letter writers. The complainers.

How is restricting swearing to a post 9pm watershed hour going to protect children from seeing or hearing the word? What is the point of savaging the creative freedoms of adult programming for the sensitivities of children or adults who can choose not to watch? Given that today the internet gives children extremely easy access to the word “fuck”, as well as graphic images and video of the act, what are we trying to protect them from again?

If you restrict how and why certain words can be used, if you apply limits on how drama, comedy, and news can express a thought or an idea though the full breadth of language, you make it harder for writers to script dialogue remotely similar to how much of us actually talk.