During lunch today I heard a radio commercial that has been playing an awful lot lately. It utilizes a series of bleeps, buzzes and other audio dingbats to replace words that cannot otherwise air on broadcast television or radio. I am pretty certain the advertisers and the executives that developed this ad were pretty proud of themselves. At the risk of sounding a little prude, I found the bleeps to be more offensive than had they actually utilized the real words. Seriously, what is so cute about substitute words or sounds?
I am not someone who can actually judge others for their choice of words. I have tried in recent years to clean up my language but I have not always been as particular about the words I choose to speak. A few years ago, when I decided to clean things up, I remembered something my grandfather once told me, which at the time went in one ear and out the other.
Speaking on profanity, Grandpa said, “you communicate nothing more clearly than your own ignorance.”
I have to say, I cannot agree more heartily with his statement. Why is profanity becoming more acceptable today? As it is, you cannot hardly go a hour without hearing the Lord's name taken in vain. Exclamations that express absolutely nothing more than frustration or strong dissent are offensive and add absolutely nothing of worth to a conversation.
The commercial. A young man enters a store and after the clerk responds that the item he seeks is out of stock, replies with a series of bleeps that allow the first letter of each obscenity to be heard. It certainly doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand what words are being covered up. It is no less offensive either. In fact, I think it more offensive. Do they really think they are pulling the wool over someone's eyes?
Profanity and the replacement sounds and words all communicate the same thing. My grandfather, he was right.
2 comments:
I love that you used the photo of the "TVGuardian". We actually OWN one, and with 5 kids, have put lots and lots of movies and shows to the test. It either leaves silence or the silence is filled in with closed captioning of alternate phrases...some of which have helped our entire family laugh our butts off and find other "alternatives" that honestly make NO sense whatsoever.
We HATE bleeping, and which they'd just get back to the standard of not LETTING people swear...when did this become SOOOoo funny??
TV Guardian, try one today (ensure your movies are CC'd or it doesn't work.)
I have never put enough thought into putting such a utility to use as the TV Guardian.
I guess I do not want to get into a place where we live in a nanny-state. When you have censorship, there is always someone who has to decide for others what is good and what is bad. I've resisted such movements even when I have agreed on principle. When you allow the government or ruling body the power to interfere with something you find offensive, where will the intervention end? Will that intervention end before the government has reached into other aspects of your life that you hold dear? No, I am not suggesting there has to be a slippery slope. Until resistance from the governed is strong enough to counter the natural tendency of the government to extend its powers, it will continue to move into more and more aspects of the citizens' personal lives.
A market economy will tend to push the limits of the market, moving toward what sells the most. This will have a tendency to make the less popular products harder to find since they do not appeal to the mass market and the more popular products more readily available. This basic economic law works for entertainment as much as it does for other market segments. I understand that.
Since the movies with vulgar elements seem to sell better, there are more of them. Why? I don’t understand the broad appeal, honestly. I am pretty certain that movies with graphic violence and language could be presented without relying so heavily on these tricks and still be an enjoyable experience. Little by little, the entertainment industry has added these elements to the show. Little by little, the audience has become calloused and needs more of these elements to retain the same thrill. This pattern has been spiraling in a terrible downward trend for years. Now, it is quite difficult to find a quality, well-written and acted movie without some sort of vulgarity thrown in. Sad, really.
I find the degradation of our language, as well as the affect this degradation has on other aspects of our persons, to be something of a mystery. The words we choose to express ourselves have a greater affect than what most people seem to believe.
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