How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the F-bomb

James Gandolfini's death last week generated a lot of retrospectives on his role as Tony Soprano and the influence of HBO's The Sopranos on television and American popular culture.

If nothing else, that show was influential for making the f-bomb commonplace on the small screen.  In the 1980s and 1990s, American audiences were growing accustomed to that word on the big screen, but then came January 10, 1999, and the debut of The Sopranos.

That special word appeared in the first season of The Sopranos more than 400 times.  In the second season, more than 700 times.  There are several online homages to the F-bombs on the show, such as this.

Then came The Wire, a show more respected among TV critics than even The Sopranos.  It debuted in 2002, and it is famous for a scene in which two detectives examine a crime scene and the f-word is the only thing said between them -- numerous times with different inflections and meanings.

Then came Deadwood, which debuted in 2004. In its first season, the f-word was used more than 800 times. Season two: more than 1,000 times. Someone calculated the number of the f-bombs in the series' three seasons: 2,980.  That is 1.56 FPM.

In a 2010 report titled "Habitat for Profanity," the Parents Television Council claimed that between 2005 and 2010, prime time television experienced "a significant increase in both the number of instances of use of profanity and the harshness of the profanity used." Thanks, in part, to The Sopranos.

Most times, I believe, the f-bomb is used too cheaply.  It is used to give a character a veneer of coolness or distance or anger, but often times it is just that: a veneer, an artificial surface used to disguise the actual material underneath, to make particle board look like pine, for instance.  And the f-bomb can used by many writers as a simple way of generating tension or drama -- rather than creating real tension and drama through the personality of the characters or the quality of the dramatic situation.

Having said that, despite Deadwood winning the F Crown on HBO, I would say it was the best written show among the three I mentioned.   (I know that is not the consensus.)  For me, the f-word didn't stand out on that show; it seemed more of an ornament on the already convincing and compelling speech of its many well-imagined (though dark) characters.  An ornament enhances, whereas a veneer conceals.

Some people argue for cursing because they feel it adds a sense of realism to a story. But keep in mind that the stories are fake to begin with, and realism is only an illusion created by the writer/director.  Some might say that the three examples I have cited -- mobsters, police detectives and criminals, tortured souls in the Wild West -- would lend themselves quite easily to profuse profanity.  And they would.  But if that is done in the name of realism, why do those same shows flinch away from other realisms? Such as blood.  One of the characters in Deadwood likes to cut throats.  That is a rather messy way to kill someone, yet the victims leave hardly a puddle on the floor.  What is "real" on the screen is whatever I am convinced to believe is "real."

David Milch, the creator of Deadwood, even has addressed the artificial nature of the cursing in the series.  The curses used are not the curses of the late 1800s, he admits. But his characters would have sounded silly spouting the language considered foul in that era.  So to make the show seem "real," he had to resort to "fake" cursing.

The topic of potty mouths came to mind this week after I saw This Is The End -- apparently the world ends from the fallout of all the f-bombs dropped by a troop of stoner comedians. But before the movie started, I saw the trailer for The Heat, the buddy-cop movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.  A surprising number and variety of f-bombs exploded in that two-minute trailer, and even I felt a little assaulted.  (I heard it so much in This Is The End that I tuned it out.)  I hadn't recalled hearing such cursing in a movie trailer. Perhaps the trailers were R-rated because I was in the theater to see an R-rated film, but I had the impression that previews were prepared for "all audiences."

Sometimes in class I use a short story by Kurt Vonnegut titled "The Big Space Fuck."  It was published in 1972 and is a dystopian imagining of the planet's future -- and in some regards it was rather prophetic: "This was a period of great permissiveness in matters of language, so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody's feeling threatened or taking offense.  It was perfectly OK."  (I cited the story also when I discussed the advent of another word in "The Big Bitch Theory.")

As I have said before, I am not a language prude.  I do not shy away from using the right word for the right purpose.  But I can't help but think the proliferation of cursing in our popular storytelling can be a sign of laziness -- and it disregards the fact that most Americans do not talk like a Quentin Tarantino character nor do they want to spend time with someone who does.

I can't help noting this: When was the last time someone complained about the LACK of cursing in a film or television program?  No one has finished watching Raiders of the Lost Ark or Sherlock and said, "You know, it would have been better if there had been more cursing."

Next on "Inside The Actors Studio" -- Kim Kardashian

Part Three of my musings about Kim Kardashian.

As I watched Kim and Kourtney Kardashian sunning their augmented breasts in Miami on a friend's yacht, I thought to myself, "How do we watch this stuff?"

I didn't mean "Why do we watch this stuff?"  I meant literally "How?"

I was watching a clip of Kourtney and Kim Take New York on Hulu, and Kim was on this yacht with her sister and a friend.  She was fidgeting with her ever-present Blackberry, and she let out a big sigh that drew their attention.  They asked what was wrong, and Kim said, "I'm just trying to deal with this kind of like privately, but Reggie and I broke up."

I was struck by the irony of her statement.  She was trying to deal with her Bush break-up privately -- while being filmed talking about it.

What we call "reality TV" is filled with such moments, moments when the folks on screen seem to have a private experience for the benefit of the camera crew that is present when they speak and the millions they hope will watch later.  This should make us ask, "Just how real is reality television?"

I know this is not an original question.  I imagine most of us would answer it quickly: "Not very."

Since we know their reality is limited, I asked myself whether we watch such shows in a manner different from the way we watch "regular" drama.  When we watch a regular drama, we know what we see is not real.  It may imitate the real, and it may do this quite faithfully.  But those of us in the audience know what we watch is, in a sense, a lie.  This does not stop us from getting emotionally involved in the events.  This does not stop us from experiencing emotional reactions to what we see on the screen.

At the heart of the audience's experience is identification.  People in the audience identify with the people they see in the production.  They may think, "She is like me.  I have felt her pain before."  Or they might think, "I have never known that fear, but I imagine it is powerful!  Look at me, my heart is racing, yet I am sitting safely in my home, wrapped in a Snuggie and eating S'mores."  That is to say, even if we cannot relate our own lives to the lives we see on the screen (or read on the page or witness on the stage), we imagine ourselves in those lives.  We experience, vicariously, the actions and emotions being imitated for us.  And the fact that they are not really happening does not diminish our pleasure nor our participation.

Aristotle

Aristotle recognized this long ago and wrote about it in Poetics.  While many plays in his time were based upon historical events or on characters well known to the audience through myths, he noted there were some plays "where incidents and names alike are fictitious, and yet they give none the less pleasure."

Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" to argue for implausible or fantastic events in stories, the idea extends to many forms of storytelling.  For instance, while watching 3:10 to Yuma, I am supposed to suspend my disbelief that a man with a prosthetic foot -- one made in the 1870s no less -- could jump from roof to roof in hot pursuit of a bad guy.  (I'm sorry.  I snorted in the theater at those scenes.)  But at a more fundamental level, I suspend my disbelief enough to watch any of the film and allow it to influence my thoughts and emotions.

And so, while watching a show such as Kourtney and Kim Take New York, the viewer allows himself to forget that everything the sisters say is being recorded and they know it is being recorded -- and surely the sisters shape what they say or do because of that camera.  At some level they must be aware of how what they are saying is fitting into some storyline that has evolved through the creation of that episode or that is likely to evolve.  (They also must know their show is a collaborative effort.  What they say and do will be further shaped by editors, especially after the sisters tape the various cutaway commentaries on the episode's events.)

In this sense, a show such as theirs is not so much "reality TV" as it is "improvisational drama."  Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he plays a character named "Larry David," is famous for its improvisational creation.  David gives his actors the bare minimum for a scene, and the actors create the rest as they go along.  As they stay in character, they are aware of the plot they need to follow, but they also are aware of the need to make each scene funny.

Similarly, Kim Kardashian plays a character named "Kim Kardashian" in scenes that are meant to resemble her life, knowing that as she goes through each scene she must do and say memorable things -- look glamorous, be happy, be heartbroken, be sentimental, be rich, etc.

After I started thinking about this aspect of shows such as hers, I came across another name for them: docusoap.  Part documentary, part soap opera.  It sounds fitting.  But that name seems reserved for the types of shows that document people (most likely not celebrities) doing things in the "real world," such as Deadliest Catch.  The people in those shows may play to the camera, may manufacture drama in order to get more air time, but they also must be aware of the competition they are a part of or the dangers that surround them.

The kind of crabs that might threaten Kim and Kourtney are not the kind you pull from the Bering Sea.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

I am not saying that the Kardashians create television as compelling as Six Feet Under, The Wire, or even Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  While I suspend my disbelief in watching those shows -- "Come on!  A giant milkshake would never say that!" -- I also admire their invention and the craft of their construction.  I admire their understanding of human nature and the commentary they make on it.  But I do wonder whether the process of watching those shows is much different from watching the tawdry televised pathos of America's rich and famous.

I realize that not everyone watches these shows in the way I have described.  Not everyone watches something like Jersey Shore in the same way Aristotle would have enjoyed Antigone.  Some watch more like Romans enjoying their gladiators -- if the warriors sported Bumpits and fake tans.

I know many people tune in to see the human train wrecks that some reality TV shows present to us.  But not all watch for that, and some folks even watch as if the shows presented unmediated glimpses into the lives of other people.  But even those who watch like Romans at the Coliseum are to some degree reacting to events on screen as if they were accurate imitations of life, not people impersonating themselves in storylines intended to attract attention; the Roman-style viewers react as if they are watching real people doing real things -- evoking from the viewers genuine outrage, pity, scorn, or laughter, evoking that catharsis and purgation of human emotions for which Aristotle said drama was intended.