Visit the official Doctor Who website

Visit the official Doctor Who website
Look to the future

Asylum seekers...

Asylum seekers...
Refuge of the Daleks

Doctor Who picture resource

Doctor Who picture resource
Roam the space lanes!

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website
Step back in time

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood
Armed and extremely dangerous

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures
Fearless in the face of adversity

Call on Dani’s House

Call on Dani’s House
Harmer’s a charmer

Intercept the UFO fabsite

Intercept the UFO fabsite
Defending the Earth against alien invaders!

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse
Programmable agent Echo exposed!

Hell’s belles

Hell’s belles
Naughty but nice

Love Exposure

Love Exposure
Flash photography!

Primeval portal

Primeval portal
Dressed to kill or damsels in distress?

Charmed, to be sure!

Charmed, to be sure!
The witches of San Francisco

Take on t.A.T.u.

Take on t.A.T.u.
All the way from Moscow

Proceed to the Luther website

Proceed to the Luther website
John and Jenny discuss their next move

DCI Banks is on the case

DCI Banks is on the case
You can bet on it!

On The Grid with Spooks

On The Grid with Spooks
Secret agents of Section D

Bridge to Hustle

Bridge to Hustle
Shady characters

Life on Ashes To Ashes

Life on Ashes To Ashes
Coppers with a chequered past

Claire’s no Exile

Claire’s no Exile
Goose steps

Vexed is back on the beat!

Vexed is back on the beat!
Mismatched DI Armstrong and bright fast-tracker Georgina Dixon

Medium, both super and natural

Medium, both super and natural
Open the door to your dreams

Who’s that girl? (350-picture Slideshow)

Friday 28 October 2011

Cottage industry


The following post contains strong language, good grammar, perfect punctuation, and a superfluous sub-clause, I have to say! But when the BBC precede a programme with the announcement - or warning - that it includes strong language, the corporation invariably means swearing, what most people call bad language. Strong is used as a euphemism. Broadcasters do not wish to imply, before it has even begun, that the drama on which viewers are about to invest their time may be poorly written! Strong language, taken literally, is more likely to be found in the work of Dickens, Hardy and Shakespeare than it is in the latest BBC or Channel 4 offering set on a housing estate. Yet I consider Dennis Potter to be television’s all-time greatest writer, and he used ‘vulgar’ vocabulary, likely to upset the late Mrs Whitehouse and all like-minded folk, on a fairly frequent basis. Lipstick On Your Collar opens with a character proclaiming, out of sheer boredom with his mundane job at the war office, “Bum-holes! Bum-holes, say I, in the plural!!”. This, no doubt, seemed shocking at the time of its first transmission, although it certainly grabbed your attention, but, now, not many would bat an eyelid. The passage of time has eroded resistance to left-field literary ideas. In the third instalment of Fry’s Planet Word, entitled Uses And Abuses, originally shown on BBC2 on 9th October, Stephen Fry explored the benefits of so-called bad language, finding out from Brian Blessed how swearing can help relieve pain, and discussed, with Armando Iannucci and Omid Djalili, its power in comedy. I, myself, have found that ‘letting rip’ at key moments is certainly a great reliever of stress! And, if you want to read that the wrong way, be my guest!!

There is, perhaps, only one taboo swearword left in broadcasting and that is the word cunt. Fuck has become acceptable despite many still hating it. I can remember the first broadcast, on ITV, of Alien in which Ripley exclaims, “We’ll trap it in the airlock and blow it the fuck into space!”. “The fuck” was edited out as offensive and ultimately unnecessary whereas, these days, the film is shown complete. The original Terminator has Linda Hamilton sweatily cry out, “You’re terminated, motherfucker!”. This doesn’t seem to me to be out of place. The android has come back through time to kill the mother before she gives birth to the future saviour of mankind and is, as it’s about to be crushed into oblivion, as Linda describes and not in the least gratuitous. But, considering the amount of fuss when Jeremy Hunt’s surname was mispronounced recently, on two separate occasions, how will the powers that be treat the Andy Serkis comedy-horror The Cottage when the time arrives for its initial terrestrial transmission? It concerns the attempts of two estranged brothers, after a successful abduction, to ransom a gangster’s daughter, Tracey, played with an enormous amount of enthusiasm by Jennifer Ellison. The problem with the movie, for any potential broadcaster, is that the girl in question has the ultimate potty mouth. She is gagged for a reason! Once the gag is removed everyone under the sun is a fucking cunt. She’s bright but aggressive with it, breaking the nose of one of the brothers with a head-butt for staring at her breasts. Can’t say as I blame him! But Jen seems to relish the opportunity to give it all she’s got, in her best Liverpudlian accent, and some critics have claimed she steals the show. Maybe the movie would’ve been better titled The Curse Of The Cottage!

5 comments:

Rol said...

I remember watching Lethal Weapon on ITV a few years ago and it was virtually unwatchable because all the fucks had been badly edited out.

My favourite TV edit is on the US TV version of The Big Lebowski where they change the line...

"You see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?"

...to...

"You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?"

TimeWarden said...

I must go climbing more often!

Steve said...

There are worse things in life than bad language. I have lost count of how many times I use "fuck" and "cunt" in my recent novel. I always remember watching Robocop on TV and cringing at the moment they swapped "motherfucker" for "mothercrusher". Absolutely fucking appalling!

Gorilla Bananas said...

I remember "Motherfucker" being called "The Oedipal noun" by a TV censor asked which words were still forbidden. Has Snatch appeared on TV yet? Loads of cunts in that one!

TimeWarden said...

Steve: You'll have to keep an accurate tally when you start writing for the BBC as you're only allowed a certain number of swearwords per episode!

Gorilla Bananas: Had to smile when I read your last sentence 'cos I thought to myself, "and that's just the actors!". Don't recall ever seeing Guy Ritchie's film in the schedules, even though it was released a little over eleven years ago, which probably says it all!