David Jett Explains Curse Words
Read it, you fucker.
In 1972 legendary comedian George Carlin released his fourth album Class Clown. The stand-out stand-up cut, and what would go on to be his most well-known routine, was “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV.” Those words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. He was correct because I don’t think I ever heard Andy Griffith say any of those. (Aunt Bee, maybe. She was a dirty old bitch.) We’ll get back to that list of words later.
One of the first motion pictures to use profanity was 1939’s Gone With The Wind when Rhett tells Scarlett, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Quite salty language from a character who had raped Scarlett earlier in the film. The Motion Picture Code at the time forbade the words hell, damn, and S.O.B. And, unless used “reverently,” Hell, Jesus, Christ, Lord, God and/or Gawd. The film’s producers had to argue before the MPPDA board to get that line in.
By the 70’s, films had come to reflect the way we talk in real life. Every curse word you could think of and some you were eager to learn. The first R rated film I ever saw was when I was visiting my aunt and uncle and my uncle took me and my cousins to one of the lesser known Clint Eastwood movies, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. George Kennedy was playing a fellow criminal and at one point in the movie was working as an ice cream truck driver. He stopped for a kid who schooled him on how he was not doing the route correctly. George’s character replied, “look, kid, go fuck a duck.”
Television loosened up a bit on the language front in the 70’s. But you could only use damn or hell and only once an episode. And not in every episode. When I was a kid, my two favorite shows were The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Lou Grant, the gruff news director on TMTMS was usually the one saying the hell or the damn. I was shocked, SHOCKED, when sweet Mary Richards was the one who cursed on an episode. My parents didn’t curse in front of us kids so I guess I thought only news directors and sailors cursed.
Another one of my favorite TV shows growing up was MASH. There was not a ton of cursing in the show (as opposed to the movie it was based on) so when innocent Radar O’Reilly was dealing with a sick horse and said “Hell!” it was unexpected. (Radar is probably the biggest example of a tv character being retconned later in the show’s run. He started out, much like in the movie where he was also played by Gary Burghoff, as a sly and smart company clerk who smoke, drank and fooled around.) MASH also famously managed to work in the word “bastard” which was definitely not allowed on tv at the time. Hawkeye was trying to save an injured soldier and said “don’t let the bastard win,” the bastard being death. The producers fought hard to get this line in.
It’s always funny when you hear someone use curse words incorrectly. To this day I remember an episode of the tv show Alice (based on the 70’s movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which was about 1000% darker than the tv show.) A man from another country came in to Mel’s Diner and Mel greeted him with “How the hell ya doing?” and he replies “I am the hell fine!”
Just because you really couldn’t use any of Carlin’s words doesn’t mean tv producers didn’t get as close as they could. It’s the hypocrisy that drives me nuts. So you can’t say tits, but you can say boobs. Tits and boobs are the SAME EXACT THING. Why is one word considered tolerable and the other banned? This makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Or should I say no freaking sense?
The 70’s tv show that pushed the most boundaries wasn’t a gritty cop show or a tense medical drama. It was a game show that aired in daytime hours and it was called Match Game. Hosted by your favorite pervy uncle Gene Rayburn, Match Game had celebrities try to guess how contestants would answer fill in the blank questions. And those questions could always be answered dirty. They didn’t say the dirty words, they just let the audience in the studio and at home do the dirty work themselves. Sure, sometimes Richard Dawson or Brett Summers would answer a question with “make love” or “boobies,” but that was the limit of what they would say. Again, what is the difference between saying “make love” and “fucking.” They both mean the exact same thing. Ok, maybe there’s a slight difference. Trent Reznor wouldn’t have done as well if the line in Closer was “I want to make love to you like an animal.”
Here are some actual questions from Match Game: Mary never told anyone her *blanks* were fake. Mary likes to show off her *blank* Raquel prefers to *blank* in the dark. You can see these and a few more questions in this clip.
Before there was cable and streaming, all tv shows were on one of the three networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, and since they were broadcast over the airwaves, they were controlled by the FCC. If some language or nudity snuck in, you could be sure as shit it was a special set of circumstances. Otherwise, you got damn or hell. Until cable came along. HBO had tv shows chock full of cursing and nudity. How was broadcast television going to compete with that? By the FCC slowly expanding the words you could use. However, to this day, you still can’t say any of Carlin’s words on broadcast television.
Cable itself had a weird evolution when it came to curse words. FX had shows like The Shield which featured streetwise cops and criminals using all sorts of language you couldn’t hear on regular tv. But FX still had some banned words. (I think The Shield used about 4 of Carlin’s words.) FX eventually just gave up and as Kramer once said on Seinfeld, the “let the expletives fly!”
FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which has been on the air for 19 years, started out using more suggestive language than practically any show on tv. But some words were still banned. I don’t know specifically when this happened, but FX at some point just didn’t give a shit anymore. I was watching an episode of Sunny, and not only did they use the word fuck, but they used the word cunt, and you can’t get more of a banned word than that.
Most women don’t like the word cunt, at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe. But I’ve heard several women at places I’ve worked refer to other women as “a cunt.” There was even one woman who referred to someone she disliked as a “thunder cunt,” or TC for short. Every time she used that particular phrase, in my head I always heard AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. “you’ve been…Thundercunt!” (When you’re a kid, one of the funniest things ever is to take popular songs and insert curse words into the lyrics as you’re singing along. Never fails to get a laugh.)
Speaking of Thunderstruck and Thundercunt, here’s a story from my days working in wrestling. I was riding to a show with WWE wrestler (now behind the scenes producer/trainer) William Regal. We rode together to a lot of shows, and often spent the drives listening to comedy cd’s by Derek and Clive (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.) The English don’t have the same stigma attached to the word cunt. In England, it’s almost interchangeable with the word idiot. On this one day, Regal pulls up, I hop in his SUV, and he’s beaming. He had stopped at Best Buy and bought AC/DC’s first five CDs for the trip. As we’re on the interstate, rocking and about to head out of town, a woman cut him off and he screamed, “bloody fucking cow’s cunt!!” That was a new one for me.
Women also, supposedly, don’t like the word bitch. As with anything else, it’s probably who uses it and how they use it. I’ve used the word bitch at work on a couple of occasions just to get a laugh. Many years ago, I was a manager at a Tower Records. I was in the back office with another manager, my friend Richard. Our mutual friend (and a manager at the store) Charity called in to talk to Richard. He answered on speaker phone. They started talking and I guess Richard was doing that thing where you talk weird when you’re on speaker. Charity noticed this but then misspoke. She asked, “do you have me on call waiting?” And I screamed, “it’s called speaker phone, you dumb bitch!” She died laughing.
At another job, I worked for a while in cubicles with other account team members. One of them had forgotten her contacts and/or glasses and had her face pressed to her computer monitor to see. We were kidding her about that. She was also asking me some questions about some accounts she was working on. About the third time she asked me something, I responded with “what do you need now, you blind bitch!” Every one in our quad fell out laughing. (I’m not suggesting you use this word around women you work with. If you do, you better have impeccable timing and you better be really fucking funny.)
Another word that women may not particularly like is pussy. I’ve heard women refer to it as a hoo-ha, a va-jay-jay and simply kitty. (the funniest thing I’ve ever heard a penis called is when robot Bender on Futurama called it a “wang dang doodle.”) I don’t get offended at the word pussy, but there was this one time…
In my early 20’s I entered a stand-up comedian contest at a local comedy club. I was sitting at a table with several friends, one of whom was a woman I was interested in dating (spoiler alert: we eventually dated for around 5 years.) After I had done my set and returned to my seat, a drunk woman plopped herself down next to me and gushed over my performance. She was obviously interested in me, but I had to walk a fine line since I hadn’t yet told my friend how I felt about her. Anywho, as the kids say, this drunk gal was also a “comedian.” It was time for her set. She walked on stage with the confidence of a 20-year comedy veteran. Then she opened her mouth. She started her set with this: “Ladies, don’t you hate it when your pussy itches? I hate when my pussy itches. I have to get my hand all in there and…” That’s about all I heard. I may have blacked out. I just knew I didn’t want to be sitting there when she came off that stage and sat back down right next to me. I went to the restroom, and I may have been in there for 30 minutes.
Let’s get back to Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on tv. I’m going to give you a question for each word, and as you’re reading this, imagine what acceptable word you would use in place of the curse word, just as if it were 1973 and you were a contestant on Match Game.
John hated his boss, so he jumped on the hood of his car and ________.
Mary was in the swimming pool and was too lazy to get out so she just took a ________.
Peter wasn’t one for being subtle, so he just walked up to the pretty woman sitting by herself at the bar and said, “hey, wanna _______?”
Sam saw Rachel taking off her pants and said, “wow. you’ve got a really spectacular ___________!
John wondered if he sucked a cock, if he would then be known as a __________________.
Samuel L. Jackson was on a plane, saw a snake, and said _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
For an older lady, Aunt Bee sure had some nice, big ___________.