Saturday, December 17, 2005

Censorship and Taboo Subjects


My mother's a patriot, I guess.

Not allowing children to swear is a tradition of the United States. It has been carried from generation. So my mom tells me not to curse. I think that's reasonable. But hypocritical? Certainly. I don't know how someone can tell you not to curse who curses. It seems to me that adults, in general, swear. That's just how it works.

But not allowing your kids to is hypocritical. That's not to say it isn't right. I mean I have no desire to swear. Most of us don't. And I don't think kids should.

But it's hypocritical, I think. I get punished if I swear. I can't use the computer.

I guess we've come a long way from washing your mouth out with soap and water.

Okay, so you get it's hypocritical. So I won't go over that anymore. I move now to a slightly more extreme version of this rule.

I have this funny story, in which I was listening to Rent on my cruddy CD player. In case you didn't know, there is quite a bit of swearing in this musical. So I was listening to a song with the "s-h" word in it. In case you're wondering, I typed that with a snigger. Anyway, the car I was in hit a bump. The music started skipping on the word, playing the first portion of this word over and over.

I grant you the story would have been funnier if I had used the actual word. Anyway, I was going to tell this story to my mom. Thinking of her rule, I asked her for permission to swear "in quotes", certain that she would say yes. If you didn't figure it our yet, she said no. I was incredulous. I could not believe what she had said. So then I came and wrote a blog post about it, complete with an ironic picture.

Anyway, I would also like to impart to you my ideas about taboos. Taboo subjects are subjects people feel uncomfortable talking about, because our society deems it "socially wrong". A famous comedian, named Lenny Bruce, was famous for using Taboos on stage. He talked about sex, race, and religion frankly, using swear words and derogatory terms.

Rather ironically, Bruce was arrested several times, for both possesion of narcotics and obscenity. He died at 41 of a morphine overdose.

Anyway, I encourage you all to challenge those boundaries that hold you back, or at least not to do morphine.

This has been Sam Austin, hoping you don't show this to your parents.

4 comments:

Leah said...

Nice lecture...anyway, I try not to swear in front of my parents and my parents don't talk me out to much if I swear a little. By the way, I got a blog!

Anonymous said...

you spelled out wrong...

Anonymous said...

It's Maddie

Hi Sam... It is really hypocritical. My mom says all of the worst things, but I will get in trouble because one of the songs we're singing in the spring concert has the word hell in it. But I digress. My 21/2 year old sister repeated my mom after she cursed. She said anunidentified curse word many times and she was not punished, but she started saying shut up, also from my mom, and was sent to time out. Hypocrisy is synonymous with parenting these days... oh well. By the way, my website is www.xanga.com/ilovesam33

Anonymous said...

Personally, the use of vulgarisms (technically not swearing/cursing if you are not condemning someone to hell or trying to place a curse on them) should be use sparringly to maintain their impact. Today the F-word, Yes I know you all know what it is, is over used. If you ever here me swear, and I am not acting, I mean it and you better take me seriously. Yes parents are hypocritical concerning vulgarisms, but then again, the did spend about a decade not saying them in front of us. They tried to limit their use, because it is important that these words retain their power. Otherwise the just become words.