Seven Dirty Words: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd and twat."'' |'''George Carlin,''' a little bit later.}}
On his seminal comedy album ''Class Clown'', the late great [[George Carlin]] observed that there were exactly seven (later upgraded to ten, later upgraded to over 200) words you could never say on (American) television. Over 35 years later, his
Modern American network television is notoriously rife with violence, sexual situations, and other unpleasantness that would not be seen in most countries. But American TV is also notoriously priggish when it comes to language and social mores. American broadcasters avoided broadcasting mundanities like toilets, pregnancy, and two-person beds until the 1960s, or even later.
It is against this
In 1972, Carlin was arrested merely for performing his
A year later, a New York City radio station (WBAI-FM) played a different iteration of the
With no real definition of what is or isn't obscene, pushing the envelope in American network television has mostly been a game of "[[Getting Crap Past the Radar|try it and see if you get away with it]]." The FCC has the right to grant and revoke broadcast licenses, so they wield considerable power. For this reason, American broadcasters err very heavily on the side of not pissing off the FCC. Especially after that whole Janet Jackson boob thing, which saw unprecedented complaints, litigation, fines, and stricter new rules.
So how do the
The FCC has established a "safe harbor" of midnight to 6am. A broadcast station, if it could get the rights to do so, could run the unedited version of [[Scarface]] at 3 in the morning, up to and including Elvira's complaint, "Can't you stop saying 'fuck' all the time?" without being subject to penalties. During the rest of the time, whether they can run a particular vulgar word depends on why it is is happening, the context and the time of day that it is shown. A judge on a three-judge panel overhearing the Fox Network's appeal of an FCC ruling, sardonically questioned the government's lawyer, by saying, "So while a television station normally wouldn't be able to use this sort of word during the day time, it would be legal if one of them ran an unedited news report at 8 AM where a federal judge said 'fuck' from the bench to a lawyer?" and the government's lawyer more-or-less reluctantly agreed.
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** According to [[wikipedia:Shogun (TV miniseries)|the other wiki]], the 1980 miniseries Shogun was the first to allow the word (to mean "urinate").
** Oddly enough, it's in the King Jimmy Bible, multiple times. E.g., "him that pisseth against the wall" and "Are they not doomed with you to eat their own filth and drink their own piss?" Mark Twain had fun with this one.
*** Yeah,
** This one might on the verge of jumping the barrier between "swear" and "non-swear" altogether. It was also the only PG word used in ''[[Napoleon Dynamite]]'', a movie known for being squeaky-clean (having been written by Mormons and all).
** Heck, shows on '''[[Cartoon Network]]''' have started using it (most notably, ''[[Regular Show]]'').
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Live events, to avoid these and other dirty words, often refer to a seven second delay; an athlete, say, will say something, and seven seconds later it actually hits the air, giving the networks time to modify the transmission. Note that live events are NOT immune to the dirty words; ask Dale Earnhardt Jr, who walked away from a race with a few less points and a few less thousand dollars after commenting that his win didn't 'mean shit'. The penalties were obviously levied by NASCAR, not the FCC, but would NASCAR have done it without someone else's suggestion on what's dirty?
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=== Media That Have Referenced The Seven Dirty Words
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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== [[Music]] ==
* [[Blink 182]] has a number of yawn-and-you-won't-hear-it short songs that are largely [[Refuge in Audacity|excuses to]] [[Refuge in Vulgarity|use profanity]]. One of
** And then an "outtake" by Tom in a wobbly tenor:
{{quote|"''I wanna suck my daaaad, and my momma too--'' Oh, is this thing on?"}}
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*** Actually, the car horn was not a [[Sound Effects Bleep]] for one of the 13 dirty words. The gag was about the episodes use of weird sounds used in place of actual expletives.
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]''
** After Kent Brockman was fired for saying "a word so vile it should only be uttered by Satan himself while sitting on the toilet", Grandpa remarks that in his day TV celebrities weren't allowed to say "booby", "tushy", "burp", "fanny-burp",<ref>In the UK, the term "fanny" refers to an entirely different part of the body (one that only females have).</ref>
** In the episode where Bart and Nelson go to war, Grampa is seen writing a letter about "words that shouldn't be used on TV", one of them (Family Jewels) turns out to be an example of [[Strange Minds Think Alike]], as it was used a scene earlier.
** From the episode "Mr. Spritz Goes To Washington":
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