The Mirror are apparently running a campaign to, er. Well, it’s not clear. The opening line says it’s a campaign to “stop the swearing on the telly” and claims politicians and commentators of all stripes agree with it.
But all the quotes it provides indicate a milder ambition. Even the Tories culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt only talks about need to avoid “excessive” swearing, and a mini-essay by Lord Duss, former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, concedes that “swearing…has its place for dramatic effect”. Our own culture spokesman Don Foster is quoted as saying:
Broadcasters are too lax. They need to tone down language at all times. Not just after the watershed.
I am surprised that Foster’s intervention echoes the others, milder than the headline campaign though it is. Two reasons, one of which is personal and subjective and the other I think rather weightier. The personal first, I was brought up to swear quite casually in conversation – especially for humourous purposes – but never to use extreme swear words at people in genuine anger. (Well, I say never. It depends how angry, I am. It’s not usual, is my point). This seems to me to reflect the right scale of priorities, but then it would, because that’s how I was brought up.
Rightly or wrongly, this acquired view of mine suggests to me that people who oppose swearing on principle are merely treating a symptom of unpleasant behaviour, rather than a cause. They associate swearing with violence, rudeness, whatever it might be, and they think that by reducing swearing they will improve behavioural standards. Well, surely much easier just to improve behavioural standards, tackle the violent or rude attitude, and not worry too much about the letter formations that happen to be in vogue for expressing it. It’s well-rehearsed that swearwords go in and out of fashion. A century and a half ago, “damn” would have been incredibly close to the wind, as were “deuce”, “cad” and (I am reliably informed) “puppy”.
All of which leads me on to my second point, which is that some areas are so subjective that setting one rule for all is bound to be inadequate, and therefore illiberal. One person’s “damn” is another person’s… well, you get my drift. One would expect a Liberal Democrat to be particularly alive to the danger of one-size-fits-all. Lord Duss’ piece inadvertantly hits the nail on the head (my italics):
But we do not want bad language used casually to no effect. To many, the F-word is now nothing more than just another adjective. We have to strike a balance and it is up to the BBC and other channels to reflect the mood of the country.
Exactly! So why should the views of those who don’t see it as just another adjective prevail? It’s illiberal, to my mind, to impose a single code of behaviour on all, in swearing as in everything else. It cuts both ways, of course. There’s no reason why my particular take on swearing is good enough for everyone either.
But surely Lord Duss’ own prescribed solution is the correct one – it is up to the channels to reflect the mood of the country. That is, respond to the majority of their viewers – who are already able to make their opinions felt via the complaints system – and not to a political or media campaign which artificially amplifies the voices of a few (the most recent example of which, BrandRossGate, Foster rightly condemned as a feeding frenzy).
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24 Comments
It is wrong to swear or blaspheme at any time. Apart from anything else it indicates a poor education. It should not be tolerated on television, the radio, in the theatre or on the street.
TimberWolf – I’d love to see some evidence of a correlation between swearing and blaspheming and a poor education. Go for it!
…or in church, Timberwolf? Pity every church blasphemes against all the others.
Tom Paine considered the depiction of a petty, evil, vengeful God in the Old Testament to be blasphemy, and I can see his point.
Swear words can be very useful in certain situations, but they are used far too liberally in TV programmes. I’m thinking particularly of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. I cannot see why Oliver has to swear throughout his latest programme. I contacted Channel 4 about it and received a lame response to the effect that Oliver was frustrated by things which happened and therefore swore about it.
And all this nonsense about the watershed needs to be dealt with. So it;s not OK at 8.59 but at 9.01 it is. Rubbish.
What is acceptable material to broadcast has changed. There may be more swearing or direct use of sexual terms. But there’s material which once would have been broadcast but now would never be because we now see it as racist, sexist or homophobic.
So your “anything goes” or “it’s not up to me to judge” line has to go a bit further to say why racism etc is unacceptable but offensive swearing etc is ok. I think a line can be drawn, but let’s see you try.
To me, as I said in the comments on it, the unacceptable thing about the Brand/Ross thing was that it was humour which glorified bullying. The use of the swear word was part if this, but it wasn’t just because it was a swear word but rather that the use of that word in that context made the comments made aggressive. Also, obviously, that these comments seemed (was this really the case?) actually to have been left unsolicited, it wasn’t just an act.
You will personally be aware that I like a good bit of swearing 🙂
Some people are offended at four-letters words & women’s breasts. I choose to be offended at government policies & business & societal practices that destroy & ruin people’s lives.
Who’s moral there?
I can only say one thing.
Feck 🙂
Listen up everyone who is offended by swearing:
You’re a bunch of pathetic, small-minded idiots.
Now, was that offensive? Should I have said it? Did I swear? Not so much correlation there now, is there?
Ultimately, swear-words are just words and just like all other words can be deployed to be offensive or aggressive or unpleasant towards people, or they can not be. Getting hung up on the use of specific words distracts from the real question of what acceptable behaviour is on TV, not what specific language people on TV use.
@ sanbikinoraion
Here, here. Here, here.
Don Foster is one of my favourite MPs, namely because he holds the Culture, Media and Sports brief and he did well not to get drawn in to the petty debate over Brand-Ross, but FFS what is he thinking with this?
We’re a liberal party that is about free speech and that includes the right to use what words they want, including swear words if they so want.
If anything we should be focusing on getting rid of the puritanical watershed, a relic of the 20th Century and Whitehouse-esque god-bothering protest groups, not trying to give it credence.
The party has missed an open goal on the Brand/Ross lynch mob. Its what I call a 70/30 situation. perhaps only 30% of the poplation would have agreed with what I’m about to ppose but those 30% will be small l liberals and the other 70% will never vote for us anyway. And 30% is nearly twice the 16% we are currently polling.
Clegg should have put on a smart causual jacket, an open neck shirt and hit the studios with a selection from the following menu
– That there was clearly an age gap in perceptions eg the radio 1 listeners response. Some one should speak for them
– that the thing was now out of all proportion.
– That we have independent regulators who will do there job and that cameron and Brown are band waggon jumpers.
– that the hate filled daily mail was leading a lynch mob and perhaps we could pause to consider some of the things it had printed recently.
– that while the national media had spent 4 full days on a self refferenial feeding frenzy another 2000 people had been repossessed and were there perhaps some people in britain that were rather glad no one was talking about ?
If he wants air time and some profile he has got to start taking these risks.
CAA, Clegg has said on this that politicians should not be using this issue to criticise the BBC – that the BBC should be freer than that from political influence.
You seem to be going a little further and suggesting some defence of Ross/Brand. Nope. They made their bed, it is their funeral, why should we give two hoots?
There was an article in the Guardian this week about sexual bullying. One case quoted was where an 11 year old girl was gang-raped by a bunch of 14 year olds, who filmed it on their mobile phones and sent it round their class for everyone to laugh at.
Should we just say “Well, we might think that’s wrong, but we’re just fuddy-duddies who don’t understand what 14 years olds think is funny”?
Is there perhaps not some connection between sexual bullying in schools and the fact that ringing someone up and saying “huh, huh, I fucked your granddaughter” is put across by some as cutting-edge humour?
I have made a point about racist and homophobic humour. Some people may find it funny. No doubt racist and homophobic jokes circulate in schools. Should we allow them to be broadcast on the grounds that it’s old-fashioned and puritanical to worry about such things, and the kids love it so it must be ok? If, not why not? If the answer is because it may give people the idea that racism and homophobia are acceptable attitudes, then why is humour based on sexual bullying considered fine and acceptable and only nasty Daily Mail people could object to it?
Could I perhaps have an answer to this point from people who have posted here after I posted but have made no acknowledgment of what I wrote?
MH
I agree with you. One of the traditional strengths of the Liberal Party (and its successor) is that – by and large – it is full of people who are generous, civic-minded, public-spirited and just plain …… nice !
And that sits uncomfortably with so much of modern culture which is oafish, crude, ofensive to many and just plain ….. nasty !
James Shaddock: you mean “hear, hear!”
Timberwolf: sod off
yrs sincerely, J Rigg, LLB (hons).
Matthew: a word is just a word. It’s all about delivery. Ross and Brand’s antics weren’t funny because they weren’t funny, not because they involved (or didn’t involve) the use of any word in particular. Are you saying that their actions would have been more acceptable if Brand had said to Andrew Sachs “I have thrust my winkle into your granddaughter’s frou-frou”? Of course not.
Words are tools, that is all. It is the way in which they are used which causes the problems, not the words themselves. Just look at the word “bastard”, which can be anything from a deadly insult to a term of endearment.
@Jennie: My bad
I’m not advocating efending Brand and Ross. I thought the stuff was unfunny and unpleasent. I’m sugesting that the media is taking us less seriously than it once was and we are going to have to roll the dice a few times if we are to get defination back ?
“TO many the F-word is just another adjective”
True, but when it is the ONLY adjective used, and it is used ROUTINELY and REPEATEDLY before almost every noun I find I have to switch off because it puts me off the character. I think he must be a bit of a moron.
And it is almost always a “he”, which underlines the chauvinist sexually abusive nature of the word. Do men need to use it to bolster their macho maleness? If it is just another adjective it should not be gender related in its use.
I found I couldn’t watch what was otherwise a very clever political satire series because of this extensive repetition.
It is said that Blair was surprised by the frequency of the F-word in Alistair Campbell’s book, and asked him to edit it out. This suggests that the use is a quite unconscious habit but something he would not do in public.
You would think that clever people like politicians would make more use of the wide range of colourful language available with which to insult people or ideas.
It is another sympton of the dumbing-down of language to the level of the text message.
It’s all about striking a sufficiently reasonable balance.
I don’t want to wade through a mine field of needless profanity when I’m watching Saturday night ‘entertainment’, if such a thing exists anymore, by the talent deprived simply for crude shock value. Nor do I want to see television and specifically television dramas reduced to some ersatz reality. People swear. Imagine a drug dealer on the mean streets of Baltimore in The Wire getting shot and going ‘oh darn I’ve copped a blighty one’, simply to keep the overly sensitive happy.
Madness…
Swearing has been taken up by weak ( both physically and with regard to character) middle class men who are desperate to appear tough. Often tough men do not swear.Modern life which increasingly respects the crude, cruel, devious and just plain cowardly. If one looks at the many genuinely tough men who served in WW1 and WW2, boxed, played rugby and worked in heavy industry undertaking arduous and dangerous work, they were inavriably gentlmanly in their conduct. Jill Craigie, the wife of M Foot was against her daughter dating Sean Connery because of the way he treated her but was quite happy if she saw a Welsh collier because they would be a gentleman. One only has to see the Welsh rugby teams of the 60s to realise how tough were the colliers. Even in the toughest bars in the docks there was often a no swearing policy in front of the barmaids.Ross and Brand are typical of the vicious cowardly bullies which infect much of modern British life. The British used to have the reputaion of being polite, brave and strong.
Jennie, my concern was not with the word “fuck”, but rather with what came across clearly as sexual bullying being broadcast as humour. The word “fuck” was perhaps part of this coming across as bullying, because it is a strong and aggressive word, but it wasn’t the key to why I found this incident not just unfunny, but a matter of concern.
My question has not been answered. If we believe that ALL humour should be broadcastable, so long as there are some people who find it funny, and that indeed it is progressive and “cutting edge” if some people find it funny while others are offended by it, then shouldn’t we allow racist and homophobic humour to be broadcast?
If we accept that racist and homophobic humour should not be broadcast, and it would be the end of a comedian’s career if he tried it, why is that? Because we feel that putting it across as something to laugh about, even in a controlled form and to an audience we think is sophisticated to see it in context, would lead to racism and homophobia becoming more acceptable in society, and vulnerable people being attacked by those who took the humour they heard broadcast and wanted to try it out for themselves?
Treating fucking someone as a joke which you brag about to people you hope will be upset to hear it phrased in that way is sexual bullying, which is a big problem amongst young people, and leads to much upset, and even suicides. Of course there is humour in sex, but the aggressive and unsubtle way in which Brand and Ross went about it, I would say went way beyond what was acceptable and way towards the sort of thing which ends up with 14 year olds gang-raping an 11 year old and sending pictures of it to their mates because it’s “funny”.
Matthew: I am unclear as to where you think we are disagreeing? My position is that Brand and Ross’s behaviour was unacceptable because of what they did, not the words they used to do it.
I think that all humour should be broadcastable, but I don’t think bullying people counts as humour.
a lot of you people are idiots.
what’s real life?
you say people shouldn’t swear. the thing is people will always swear and it should be shown on tv at an appropriate time say 9.00 watershed.
do you really think cutting swearing down on tv altogether with sort this out?
you don’t even need to sort this out because its not a problem.
if someone comes up to me and says f*** you. your a b*******. your a t***. your a c***. if its not a joking term then i am offended. however when its used like this. f*** the police. that lot are d***heads. f***ing hell. that does not offend me because its not used or aimed at me. swearing on tv is like swearing in life and it brings reality to a situation. as for people saying people who swear are thick.
im 17 have GCSE in english, science(2), ict(2), geography. BTEC science(4) im still trying to get my maths. and im doing a levels in pshychology, geography and ict. yeah im your average thick person alright.
people with poor education need have poor education because they haven’t learned properly or because of teachers. tv helps people learn.
and why im at it what jonathan ross and russell brand did has been blown out of proportion. what they did was partially funny i found. as for what they did was it offensive? its as offensive as what a lot of stand up comedians do or even andrew sachs manuel. sachs is a great actor and a great person but so are ross and brand. they should be given their jobs back because they are 2 of the finest people on radio and tv and everyone makes mistakes.
it was also pre recorded. they were told to do it from the radio producer. the radio producer should of deleted it and not broadcasted it.
once again people prove stupidity by over reacting to certain stuff. oh and why are ALL politicians idiots? seriously it doesn’t matter who is PM the country will keep in its same worse state no matter what.
“… im doing a levels in pshychology …”
Marvellous stuff.