In 1965 the critic Kenneth Tynan ushered in a new era by saying the ‘f’ word on television. “I doubt,” he pronounced in an interview, “if there are any rational people to whom the word ‘f***’ would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.”
Tynan gets bottom marks for social commentary, for public opinion still frowned on public obscenity at the time. But what is a true pioneering effort if not blazing new trails?
Tynan thus gets the highest marks for self-fulfilling prophecy. As a true seer he clearly envisioned that time would arrive when various cognates of the ‘f’ word, sturdily reinforced by its cultural equivalents, would become common currency in public discourse. That time is now.
We are generously treated to prime ministers’ bonhomie of calling their cabinet colleagues ‘f***ing idlers’ – all in the best possible taste of course. And in this realm, if not always in economics, one can always rely on the trickle-down effect.
No one these days bats an eyelid when hearing 3-year-olds use the kind of language that could have got their great-grandfathers arrested. We see nothing wrong when the tots’ mothers scream at them in the same idiom on public transport. And we giggle when walking past a Chelsea Thai restaurant called ‘Phat Phuc’.
In fact, speech profusely adorned with foul language is seen as a sort of password separating friend from foe. Now largely devoid of any semantic meaning, four-letter words send a semiotic signal of kinship, an implicit Mowgli-style assurance “We be of one blood, ye and I.”
What Tynan didn’t anticipate, and we must mark him down for this lapse of prescience, is that in another generation or two lexical rectitude would be stood on its head. While obscene references to complex sexual variants elicit avuncular, indulgent smiles, perfectly common words now draw opprobrium and variously severe punishment.
Last season the footballer John Terry was banned for four games and fined £220,000 (a fortnight’s salary) for publicly calling a colleague a ‘f***ing black c***’. Of the three components of the triad, only the middle one can be used non-elliptically in a respectable publication – and yet it was this seemingly inoffensive word that got Terry into all sorts of trouble.
For he transgressed against the Eleventh Commandment that has more or less superseded at least half of the other 10: “Thou shalt not offend any member of any minority that thou art told qualifies as such.”
Had Terry simply called the other chap a ‘f***ing c***’, no one would have noticed. But sneaking the word ‘black’ into the middle bespoke racism, so off with his head.
Fair enough: we all know that any sin ending in an -ism or -phobia is of the mortal (and probably illegal) variety. Or rather we’d think we all know that – until we’re shaken out of our complacency by yet another incident. Suddenly we realise that our understanding of written and unwritten codes is lamentably incomplete.
The skies open yet again and a booming voice thunders from high above: “What you thought was unacceptable is actually fine – and (are you listening, you callous reactionary?) vice versa!”
The Newcastle manager Alan Pardew had this Damascene experience yesterday when, arguing about a disallowed goal, he called the Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini a ‘f***ing old c***’.
As in the Terry incident, directional microphones at the pitch obligingly put the tirade into public domain, much to an outburst of public indignation. How dare he use such language! He has no respect for decency! Throw him to the wolves!
By now you realise that what upset the public so wasn’t either of the words Pardew put on the wings. It was the one he played through the middle: ‘old’.
By using this imprudent diction Pardew forever branded himself as an inveterate sinner against new morality. His sin is another one of -ism variety: agism.
Actually, the public ought to have been more lenient, considering that Mr Pardew is only four years Mr Pellegrini’s junior. I mean, if an overweight gentleman like me calls a similarly proportioned chap a ‘big, fat c***’, then surely he’d be guilty only of boorishness, rudeness and bad taste, not the mortal sin of weightism or some such.
A penny would drop, one hopes, that every word used in such situations is desemanticised, not just those Kenneth Tynan pioneered in mass media. By all means, denounce such people as ill-mannered brutes (at times I myself qualify – mea culpa), but don’t accuse them of mythical offences against bogus morality.
The danger is very real: by exchanging old certitudes for new ones we risk abandoning the time-honoured notions of virtue and sin, and replacing them with awful caricatures. As the caricatures grow bigger and more ferocious, the may well devour our society.
Risk? Wrong word. This situation is upon us already, and isn’t it a f***ing shame?
My new book How the Future Worked is available on www.roperpenberthy.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk and at the more discerning bookshops.