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THE ARTS AND ‘BAD’ WORDS by B. A. Brittingham
The Arts and ‘Bad’ Words by B. A. Brittingham
During the 2018 Halloween season, NBC’s Megyn Kelly naively made some remarks on blackface as it pertained to costumes. Due to its racial insensitivity, it cost her a well-paying news job. It is now a moot point but should bring into question the concept of political correctness vs. reality.
As a nation we have all learned (or are learning as Megyn said in her apology) that ethnic slurs are no longer tolerable in the modern world. It is one of the good things that seems to be coming out (belatedly) from the Civil Rights Movement of sixty years ago, from the anti-bullying movement of today, the #MeToo movement (words, not just groping, can be a form of sexual harassment), the politically correct movement (which occasionally goes a bit overboard in its good intentions), and even the stated consciousness of another person’s physical differences (Internet trolls and body-shaming.)
We are stumbling, and occasionally falling flat on our faces, in the search for judicious ways not to be hurtful, first in our words and then, by extension, in our attitudes. And that is a positive path to an improved society.
But why is the road so rocky? Why is it taking so long? Because like most change, the negative aspects of our joint thinking must be undone before the positive seeds can take root. Less than a hundred years ago, one of America’s most remarkable presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the White House. Scion of an upper-crust family, recipient of a sterling education, a man of wealth and ideas, FDR was nonetheless known to exchange anti-Semitic jokes. As did others. (It should be noted that he was not averse to the appointing of Jews to important posts, witness Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who later, during the Truman administration, became the first Jewish individual to be first in line for presidential succession.)
It is unpleasant to contemplate this high-level anti-Semitism, particularly in view of subsequent world events with respect to Hitler’s treatment of the Jewish people. But we should always remember that, at the beginning of the 21st century, we cannot in conscience judge the past by today’s standards. Not only did the president and other politicians exchange Jewish jokes, but most people did likewise. Along with Irish drinking jokes, Polish stupidity jokes, German toilet jokes, and Scottish cheap jokes. It was the way of the then-world.
Humanity has moved forward since, but we still have ground to cover. Let us give ourselves and our society a brief pat on the back for our somewhat evolved thinking.
And then go on to making other needed adjustments in matters of semantics.
As a fiction creator, I consider the phrase “suspension of disbelief” as Nearly Canonical in its necessity; if an author does not make a scene so real that the reader is compelled to accept it, then the story will collapse. It holds a chief position in the writing process of most authors.
This is about fabricated lying and the role it plays in story construction. The writer is basically telling a tale that didn’t happen about people that have never lived—other than in his or her imagination—and he wants you to believe it so that he may get across his point or message. To do this, she/he must create a landscape that is so real, the reader buys into it even though, under it all, the reader knows that it is basically a falsehood. Reader and writer thus become cohorts in chicanery.
A significant part of this belief suspension is the manner in which characters are drawn. We can tell a great deal about the birthplace, education, social status, occupation, or trade, and even garner some insight into the ways these “persons” think when we listen to how they speak. Are they from New York and speaking with a Brooklyn accent or from East London and talking old fashioned Cockney? (Which is very much in decline I am told.)
This also fits the way a character gets emotional and the words he might use in its expression.
A scene set in a Southern state such as Virginia or Georgia in the 1920s or 30s and involving the racial disparity so viciously prevalent there, must contain the word “nigger.” Now before you pick up your phone or keyboard to crucify me for using a word with such a horrific history, stop and think: can the brutality of the attitude and the people involved be appropriately conveyed to persons living eighty years later?
Like the 1970s cigarette commercial said, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” We have. We’ve learned that words and unfair generalizations can bring pain, extreme dissent, and even innocent deaths. So, the use of expressions like N-word heralds an important change in our society—even if there are those who still enjoy using it. Thirty years ago, it was the F-Word that was taboo; for Brits it was bloody. Now such designations are largely passé.
What we need to remember is how to differentiate between the words themselves and their context and delivery.
Going back to the South of the above example, the need for that word is implicit in allowing the reader to begin understanding what African Americans felt upon hearing it fall—with snarling vehemence—from the lips of people who believed that white skin made them superior. I’m not certain that those of us who are Caucasian can even begin to experience the fear, denigration, or immediate panic that poured forth from the collective racial memory of a black man faced with an angry mob of whites. Somehow, “Get a rope and let’s hang that N-word bastard” does not carry quite the same horror as what was actually meant.
When writers are trying to recreate a time and place, it is imperative that they be allowed to use the verbiage that is part of it. It is not our intention to promote the continuation of bad words and the political incorrectness of them; but rather to demonstrate how hideous and vulgar they can be and what the consequences are.
Their true badness rests with those who should know better and still use them offensively anyway. All in the name of Free Speech.
