Oddbean

Watched Band of Thieves this weekend (which was pretty good), and was struck by a just slightly more concentrated dose of profanity than usual. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of the dorky main character and the amount of fucks coming out of his mouth, or maybe it was quantifiably more than usual, but in either case it got me thinking. Why is our culture increasingly profane? Why must we punctuate all our communication with meaningless allusions to aggressive sex acts or scatology? My wife an I have been watching "classic" movies more often in the last year or two, including On The Waterfront with Marlon Brando, the Bicycle Thief, and Casablanca. In every case, the pace of the dialog is quite slow, and the gravity much greater — despite an almost complete absence of emphatic profanity. This can be seen in modern movies as well. Slow movies in general (think Dune or Interstellar) feel more meaningful. Marvel movies feel like cotton candy in contrast. In modern movies though, the gravity comes from the subject matter rather than the inherent drama of human life — vast stretches of space, time, or war. More mundane subjects having to do with normal people almost always seem to be approached with a certain level of irony or flippancy. Marshall McLuhan says that "At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential." We live in a frantically fast age, that has outpaced the gravity of the human. The natural recourse is to attempt to keep up, but in doing so we lose the dignity slowness confers and are forced to resort to frantic insistence on our right to be heard. We scream, swear, panic, and twerk. But of course, no one hears. The natural response to noise is to tune it out. The more we stimulate the senses, the number the senses become. The most memorable people I have met are people who have not succumbed to this cultural panic. They are not people who project their emotions, but who carefully choose their words, and if in doubt prefer not to speak. They are people who have filled themselves not with their own thoughts, but with the thoughts of others, through study and memory. They are people whose silence speaks volumes. I'm not like that. I'm uncomfortable with silence, and think best while talking. But it is something worth aspiring to. To be the kind of person whose dignity and gravity slowly expand. Who have a deep well of wisdom to draw from, which they dispense sparingly yet abundantly on the people they come into contact with. Whose eyes say more than their mouths. There is one man in particular, whom I love. He always carried a pipe in his pocket or his mouth, vinted wine from his own grapes, did a little woodworking, and always said very little. Every Sunday, eyes closed, he would recite Psalm 103 to his small congregation. When he read the Bible, he would entirely leave off his own commentary (even though he was a pastor), simply reading the passage and closing the book afterward. At his funeral, and dozens of people shared stories of how this man had changed, or even saved their lives. All of this came from a deep humility that came from spending many of his younger years without any idea what his purpose in life was, and from many personal failures and disappointments subsequent even to his calling. A "long obedience in the same direction" brought this man to the end of a life full of ups and downs, in which he was able to say that as he looked back, all he saw were the peaks, rather than the valleys. Lately I've been challenged by Christ's words in Matthew, not to "worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." No amount of thrashing productivity, frantic overwork, or boiling frustration can improve things, because our times are not in our own hand. All we can do is wait on God — and he will renew our strength. Profanity is often a panicked bid to be heard by piling on emphasis. But panic is a form of fear, and perfect love casts out fear. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows."

i almost remember vividly the day and the moment that i decided to start using profanities, i was 9 years old, and it was a conspiracy between me and my half tongan best buddy in year 5 of primary school i don't use the swears except with specific reason, and usually they refer to the outlandishness of the thing i am using them against so i think another part of the swear culture of these days has to do with how epically delusional culture has become, it's really hand to not say out loud how completely off the map what you you see is getting i also think that a more low time preference culture won't include a lot of swears, it really is like you say, excessive emphasis of something, not anything more than trying to be heard above the noise of the "normal" of your millieu

This reminds me of how I actually liked the TV version of Shawshank Redemption more than the unedited version. I understand the environment leads to more swearing but the movie itself was so good on it's own that the cursing becomes distracting. Also, I go back and watch the old comedies and the level of wit/humor just seems so much more elevated. See: "Walk, Don't Run" Great post sir

I take it you mean Army of Thieves? Because if you're telling me there is a 1962 jazz drama with swearing in it I might change my stance of "No Musicals". But yeah, it reminded me of how great the heist scene in Rififi is, and how modern (commercial) movies just won't shut up, either through complex sound editing and mixing or with loud music often telling you how to feel (or to your topic, using expletives so you know it's supposed to be funny). Silence is gold, but mining it is becoming a lost art.

Merci tout simplement...se recentrer sur l'essentiel tout en sachant tout est éphémère l'essentiel est d'avoir cette capacité à pouvoir être un *passeur* entre pairs .. j'adore vos biais et critiques en rapport avec l'évolution du monde du cinéma ..🙏🫂

It drives me nuts. I think profanity is increasingly used in substitute for good screenwriting and a cover for wooden acting. If they cuss enough, then the audience will understand their emotion without actors having to put facial expression and feeling into it. The juxtaposition of a nerdy character that sounds like a sailor is jarring. That’s probably why you noticed it. Conversely, The Expanse (both the book and the show) are completely filled with all manner of foul language. However!! there are characters that don’t cuss at all, there are characters that have pet words that they sprinkle into casual communication, there are characters that cuss in foreign languages, there are characters that use made up cuss words, and there are characters that snap and cuss. This creates many diverse voices, and is good writing/screenplay. What’s the iconic quote from Gone with the Wind “I don’t give a damn” that’s not exactly Shakespearean level prose. It’s uninspiring and cheap. The thing that annoys me the most though is cussing that doesn’t exist in a movie or book’s canon. In Star Wars, Solo is saying things like hell, but the subject of an afterlife for bad people isn’t tackled in the Star Wars universe. There’s no spirit of palpatine floating around, and there’s no bad place for the Sith to go when they die. Lucas criticized Harrison Ford for out of place cussing, but he couldn’t get him to stop and some scenes never did get a non-cussing take, so it’s in the movie. Just shows that Ford is pretty low intelligence and doesn’t understand his roles.

I just watched this last night, which you've probably seen. nostr:nevent1qqs8mnqkzuxy7zdzhauhqg43t9z38psc0zz3j5c58xd6yw4648qyxuspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7q3qnmq83muu5v0phkaew96amcwtqzle7u39ummz9nxg6dnnqt3zqjtsxpqqqqqqzgh7njw

I'm not personally seeing The Marxist Jesus that people saw in the film. (Pasolini was a Marxist, I believe he saw himself as an atheist too, perhaps as a cultural Christian, not sure). Obviously these things are a lot more confused and not cut and dry. Well worth a watch tho. A curious Reddit discussion on it, which may or may not be worth reading. I'd be curious to read your thoughts on it. https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/yavyc7/question_about_the_gospel_according_to_matthew_by/?rdt=58952

this is technically Part 3 of the series but it is answering critiques of the first part and goes over a lot of what I remember being the main points of the arguments: https://vimeo.com/40881319 worth a watch imo, even tho you sadly have to log in (with fb or google acc) to vimeo to view