ATOMIC DOG
What the %!#*&#?
by TC

The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in that, just as no man is completely one-dimensional and only interested in one subject, neither are we. If it makes you think or laugh — or even get angry — it's served its purpose.

By most accounts, The Big Lebowski is one of the most profane movies ever made, with 260 uses of the word fuck.

Obviously, the movie presented a monumental challenge to network censors when it was first aired.

Here's an original line from the film:

This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

Here's the TV version of the same line:

This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps and feed him scrambled eggs!

It may just be my heightened literary sensibilities at work here, but I think the TV networks failed to capture the nuance of the original line.

The Dude and Walter.

The censors have had similar problems with other movies. For instance, when Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing aired, motherfucker was changed to mikifiki.

What the fik were they thinking?

Some writers anticipate the problem and plan ahead. A relatively early example of this occurred in 1948 when Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead. His solution to the delicate sensibilities of the day was to have soldiers in the book say the manufactured word, fug.

(Later, when Mailer was introduced to writer, poet, and social critic Dorothy Parker, she said, "So you're the man who doesn't know how to spell fuck.")

More recently, Battlestar Galactica writers made up the pseudo epithet frack to tiptoe around the censors while attempting to give the humans something reasonable to say whenever they stumble on Cylon Number Six taking a shower, as in "Holy frack!"

Cylon Number Six.

The author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy circumvented the issue entirely by declaring — much to the consternation of waffle lovers everywhere — the word Belgium to be the most offensive word in the universe.

Bono really fudged things up though, when he let slip the fuck word during the live 2003 broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards. While accepting the award on behalf of the band U2, Bono excitedly exclaimed, "This is really, really, fucking brilliant."

Amazingly, after much deliberation, the FCC decided not to sanction the network for failing to bleep the word. They correctly explained that Bono had used the word as an adjective to emphasize an exclamation, and not to describe "sexual or excretory organs or activities."

Besides, they probably knew that Irish guys can't even help their mother cross the street without using the F-word, as in, "May I help you cross the fucking street, mum?"

Cultural conservatives soiled their lacy under things. In an effort to close this profanity loophole, California Representative Doug Ose wrote the Clean Airwaves Act. Had it passed, broadcasters would have been restricted from airing the following:

The words "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "asshole", and the phrases "cock sucker", "mother fucker", and "ass hole", compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).

Pardon, but I don't remember that from my Elements of Style, unless it was taken from the X-rated version written by William "Motherfucker" Strunk and E.B. "Shitkicker" White.

Of course, as Harvard Professor Steven Pinker pointed out in his book on language (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature), Representative Ose could well have used a profane Strunk and White to guide him in writing his legislation. Ose clearly misspelled cocksucker, motherfucker, and asshole, in addition to having left out the very grammatical category that Bono employed — fuck as an adverb!

What a fracking dope.

Pinker writes that the FCC decision raises another mystery about swearing: the strange number of ways in which, and for which, we swear. Obviously, there are the curse words that disrupt the night when you stub your toe on the dresser on the way to the toilet, a category known as cathartic swearing. Similarly, there's the swear word used for the smug suit who won't hold the elevator for you.

There are those who swear merely to fit into a group where swearing is a sign of "regular guyness," as portrayed in the following conversation between Spock and Kirk in Star Trek IV:

SPOCK: Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with — shall I say — more colorful metaphors: "Double dumb ass on you" — and so forth...

KIRK: You mean profanity. That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you if you don't swear every other word.

Swearing is also used to exhibit genuine enthusiasm, as was the case with Bono's award speech, or to exhibit extreme interest or sincerity in the subject matter, as in "I am so not fucking kidding."

Likewise, Pinker describes other specific uses, "such as the barnyard epithet for insincerity, the army acronym snafu, and the gynecological-flagellative term for uxorial dominance [i.e., pussywhipped]."

Profanity also plays a big part in humor; just ask Chris Rock.

And then, of course, there's the most controversial use for profanity, which is as an instrument meant to elicit shock or disgust or anger.

But why-o-why do we give a damn? Why do these words elicit such strong emotions and opinions? Synonyms for words such as fuckand shit like copulate and excrement spur no moral outrage. Wouldn't a real moralist rage against violence and injustice instead of sex and poop?

Likewise, parents and various moralists fret mightily over the prospect that the children might hear these words. We all know that children are familiar with these words, but as Pinker points out, no one has ever explained exactly how just hearing a word can corrupt a child's morals.

I don't know if there is an answer to that, but to better understand profanity, you have to go back a bit in history. The root of it lies mostly in religion where words like damn and hell were used as expletives. These swear words are classified as deistic, as opposed to the visceral words discussed earlier. The deistic swear words were once hugely offensive to the majority of society.

Consider the impact of Clark Gable's famous Gone With the Wind line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," elicited in 1939. Never has the single use of a swear word so scorched the eardrums of moviegoers.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

However, U.S. culture is largely tolerant of these words today, as Pinker suggests, because of the secularization of Western culture.

Religious swear words remain potent in other cultures, though. Consider the French Canadians of Quebec. The worst thing you can call someone is a goddam chalice. A chalice is just what you think it is, a goblet, or more specifically, the Eucharistic cup.

Oddly enough, the word ("properly" pronounced as the bastardized cow-liss) is pretty versatile, used in place of wherever or whenever American English speakers might use shit or fuck. (To see French Canadian swearing explained, check out a scene from the movie, Bon Cop Bad Cop here.)

As the impact of these religious swear words lessened in America, they were replaced by words that retained their clout, such as the afore- and oft-mentioned shit and fuck. Add to these the less but still mildly offensive piss, pecker, pussy, and fart. Why all these words have such impact is kind of a mystery. After all, they refer to bodily functions, which are intrinsic to biological beings.

Similarly, the most offensive thing you can call a female in America is a cunt. Pinker thinks this particularly odd as, given the reverence we have for female body parts, you'd think that vaginas would be revered and not reviled.

Why the piggy attitude towards that which we revere?

Regardless, how we react to these words lies within our brain and how these words are processed. Pinker explains that curses provoke a different response than their synonyms because their connotations and denotations are stored in different parts of the brain.

The limbic portion of the mammalian brain regulates motivation and emotion, whereas the neocortex is the base of operations for perception, knowledge, reason, and planning.

The systems of course work together, but the denotations, or specific meanings, of words are stored in the neocortex, whereas their connotations, or implied meanings, are spread across connections between the two regions. Obviously, swear words have a lot of implied meaning.

As evidence, when scientists expose a wired-up human to angry faces or unpleasant words, the amygdala, located in the limbic system, lights up as often as the scoreboard at a typical Patriots' game.

These responses are emotional, but they're also involuntary. Pinker explains that "Once a word is seen or heard, we are incapable of treating it as a squiggle or noise; we reflexively look it up in memory and respond to its meaning, including its connotation."

This explains in part how some people who've suffered brain damage and who can't speak complete sentences can still swear; the part of the brain where swearing is processed is still functional. Similarly, it helps explain the small percentage of people with Tourette Syndrome who shout uncontrollable strings of expletives; they're merely expressing a tic or mental hiccup in the limbic system.

This effect is classically demonstrated by what's known as the Stroop effect, where subjects are asked to look through a list of words and say aloud the color of the ink in which each word is printed.

Give it a go with the following list, saying aloud blue, red, or green, to describe the color of the word:

That was, of course, easy. But try it with the following list:

Pinker explains that reading is such an "over-learned" skill that you can't will the process off, even when you don't want to read the words and only want to pay attention to the color. That's why the second list should have slowed you down a bit.

The same thing happens with spoken words as well. Now try naming aloud the color of the words below:

Because of our automatic response to speech, a profanity or expletive forces us to consider its taboo connotations. Pinker points out that this is what makes all of us vulnerable to a "mental assault" when we're in earshot of other speakers, "as if we were strapped in a chair and could be given a punch or a shock at any time."

We've been taught, as a culture, that profanities are "bad" for our entire lives. As such, this perception is stored in the limbic portion of our brain. We can't help but perceive these words in an emotional way rather than a logical way. Hence the strong reaction to swearing, pretty much regardless of an individual's moral code.

I believe we need swear words for the reasons mentioned earlier: to express anger or frustration, for humor, to instill fear or intimidation, and to light up our amygdala when it's fallen prey to the torpor of everyday life.

What other parts of speech use both hemispheres of the brain? What other form of speech, asks Steven Pinker, "recruits our expressive faculties to the fullest?"

As a writer, I value the sheer lyricism of profanity, but like all powerful spices, they're best used in moderation.

The only thing is, these words — all of them — are in such common usage that they're being neutered. Little by little, their shock value is eroding. For some of us, our amygdala barely registers a flicker of reaction when we hear these words.

Ed Conway, a London newspaper reporter and fan of cussing, recently launched a "Campaign to Devise a New Swear Word for the 21^st Century" using Facebook.

The list of submissions includes "spaff," "pok," "shagshack," and "melted welly."

Pathetic.

Can any of those compare with the time-honored fuck? I think not. Still, I remain hopeful.

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