Anyway.
To begin with, my parents were of the school of parenting that believed that innocence was bliss.
I think I didn't even know that there were expressions inadmissible in polite company until high school at the earliest. Even after that my profanity was not convincing until the U.S. Army taught me to swear and then some.
I now have some considerable experience with the subject and have become through experience a thorough believer in the notion that the more you know - and, in many cases, the sooner - the wiser and more judicious you will be in your selection and employment of the rougher forms of the English language.
Because swearing and cursing, like any other form of speech, have a form and a style and an elegance to them when done correctly. And it is well for a person to do things, any thing, with form, style, and elegance.
Even invective.
But.
There is also an element of discretion involved.
If you are ignorant of the language then oftimes you will be oblivious when it is used, or misused, by others. It has always seemed to me that having someone on staff with a reasonably filthy mind is essential to avoiding errors such as this one:
Wanna bet Cathy got a whole bunch of smartass remarks after that header appeared on her column? Especially with the little smirky-face picture above it? And all because nobody on the "Examiner"'s editorial staff looked at that and chuckled "Eat out Catherine Cleary, hunh? I'll bet..." Derp.
I'm not sayin' you have to be filthy.
But it doesn't hurt to know about filthy. All's I'm saying.
(h/t to Nancy Nall for this little gem)
This reminds me of the British reaction to "Austin Powers the Spy Who Shagged Me". Apparently in polite circles saying shag was tantamount to dropping the F-bomb. A nuance that failed to reach Hollywood who thought saying shag in stead of f--- was cute.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Myers and the production company pretty much knew that they'd get a shocked reaction in Britain and were fine with that - the audience they were looking for would laugh instead of gasp.
ReplyDeleteAnd I loved this, from the Wiki entry for the film:
In the UK, two sets of TV adverts for the film existed, for showing before and after the watershed. The former was designed to air during daytime hours and only gave part of the title, (Austin Powers: The Spy Who—), before cutting off with one of a range of slightly suggestive scenes from the film, such as Austin squeezing out the contents of a massage oil bottle. The post watershed adverts, aired later in the evening, gave the full title. There were also two variations of the posters; one of them asterisked out the middle of the offending word or had named the film as Austin Powers 2.
Singapore briefly forced a title change to The Spy Who Shioked Me (shioked means “treated nicely”).
In Finland the film was called Agentti joka tuuppasi minua (The spy who bumped me), in Croatia Špijun koji me hvatao (The spy who groped me),[4] in China The Spy Who Liked Me a Lot.
The Italian version was titled La spia che ci provava, which can be roughly translated as The spy who tried [to seduce], but in a slightly more provocative way.
In Brazil, it was named as Austin Powers - O Agente Bond Cama, roughly translated as The Spy Good in Bed (a gag with the pronunciation of James Bond's last name, which can be interpreted as "bom de", meaning "good at something").
Not all countries translated the title into something less raunchy.
The Norwegian title of the movie is Spionen som spermet meg, which is a slightly dirtier way of saying “The Spy Who Ejaculated on Me”. In Quebec, the title is "Austin Powers: Agent 00sexe" (Austin Powers: Agent 00sex).
The French title is L'Espion qui m'a tirée (the spy who took me), which is more less a translation of the original title.
The German title is "Spion in geheimer Missionarsstellung", roughly translatable to "Spy on a secret missionary position" - "In geheimer Mission" ("On a secret Mission") was the German title of the TV-series original of Mission: Impossible.
Like I said; wars and lechery...
"form, style, and elegance" -- I am a devotee of all.
ReplyDelete'Tis important to know what is NOT comme il faut in order to know what is.
A friend of mine in the news biz said upon seeing this that 1) part of the problem was probably cuts to the editorial staff (so this just slipped through by error) as well as pranking on the part of the line staff who, apparently, love this sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteEither way, hopefully Cathy was in on the joke.