Sex and the single word

The following letter, sent to the Listener two years ago but never printed, was written as a result of a decision to prosecute a well-known Wellington pamphleteer, Mr Brian Bell, under the Indecent Publications Act.

It has some direct relevance to Salient in view of a recent excision, but we reprint simply for general interest.

The writer is at present Burns Fellow at Otago University.

I Have sometimes heard writer, complain that rude words were removed from their radio scripts. I've complained about it myself. The mystery is that NZBC radio-drama end allied products, unquestionably among the best in the world and more than liberal and adventurous with both new and old ideas, should be so curiously old-maidish about tingle words.

Recently, For example, in a script for schools (8 to 10-year-olds), I found the phrase "damned sand" changed to "confounded sand". Now I don't think that a run-of-the-mill eight-year-old would be familiar with the demode "confounded"; not unless he knew all the verses of the National Anthem by heart. But this is minor. The four-letter excisions in serious radio-drama are major.

My personal belief, for what it it worth, is that four-letter words should be used as freely in print es they are in speech. Swearing is a delightful and sturdy art; all b.f.c words are about the only things that give New Zealand and to some extent Aussie speech its inlaid rhythmic emphasis. Many outdoor men pepper their nouns with the f. word not because of a limited vocabulary, as fallaciously believed, but because, I think, they instinctively seek a balance and rhythm of sentence structure that echoes the balance and rhythm of their physical work Watchmakers, for example, swear fastidiously and softly or not at all. A man working a pneumatic drill or the gears of a ten-ton truck imitates their sounds and rhythms in the same way that blacks — sorry, aborigines — imitate in their dancing the slept of various bids and in their speech the sounds of nature.

Indeed, I have lately become alarmed at the decline of swearing among higher income groups. They swear timorously, insipidly and unimaginatively. Women from the higher income group particularly, in regards to swearing, have become almost atrophied. They have a depressingly limited sense of vulgarity that is most offensive to those who use fourletter words copiously and with unwholesome drift toward verbal precisional elegance. There is an unwholesome drift towards verbal sanitation that must be checked.

In fact I believe that Broadcasts to Schools would render a great service to our community by devising a series of programmes to instruct children in the euphonious end forceful use of four-and-more-letter words. After the first shock, prurience would rapidly vanish; and if the broadcasts were — dare I say coupled?—with live courses on sex instruction and showed the distinction between such family words as f, c.p.l.te and love, etc., we would be halfway towards raising adults who would not be seduced by smut or who could mistake leery, slimy sen innuendoes for an expression, however blunt, of genuine physical tenderness.

Ribaldry, bawdiness end vulgarity are the lifeblood not necessarily of language, but most certainly of spoken expression. Four-letter words are part of our national heritage, a part which is being insidiously eroded. We are in serious danger of prudence making aunties of us all.

Should Broadcasts to Schools ¢hoose to initiate such a worthwhile programme I would be happy to undertake supervision of the scripts. I have already written a theme ballad which goes to the rousing tune of "The old gray mare she ain't what she used to be"; it begins: "I'm going to blackball myself from the white Halls of Purity, white Halls of Purity, white Halls of Purity, etc.

Finally, in support of all this (not expecting any from anywhere else) may I quote my friend Brian Bell (the bawdy journalist and balladeer, not the TV producer) who is now under legal opprobrium for the courage of roaring Out his convictions: "There is too much oppresive and stifling gentility in this country; why further it by promoting this schizoprenia between the currency of everyday speech and the currency of everyday literature?"

Hear, hear!

Warren Dibble.