The violent monster movie’s protagonist was walking through a dungeon of decapitated torsos, shredded, half-eaten bodies and pools of gore. He shot a mutant in the face, and its head exploded.
“Holy *BLEEP*,” he said.
Holy bleep is right.
Curse words have been given a unique power in American culture.
They hold a meaning so strong and inherently negative that a TV station feels it is okay to show a movie studio’s attempt to accurately portray horrific images of violence but not air the word “s–t.”
I think that’s wrong. I think we should all be able to curse, and we should do it regularly.
Curse words should be integrated into the contemporary vernacular so they lose the power they now hold.
Words don’t really mean anything; they are only given meaning by the way they are used and from what context they are in.
If I say, “I love it” after eating chocolate cake, chances are I mean I really like the cake. If I say, “I loved it” after watching “Ice Princess” for the third time because my little cousin’s begging finally eroded my will, I’m being sarcastic, and I mean the opposite. Same words, different meaning.
I’m sure you can think of scenarios similar to this, where the way you say something or the situation you’re in when you say it changes the meaning entirely.
Words don’t truly mean anything, they’re opportunities to express what you’re thinking and if you put them together right, you can do just that.
Then there are curse words – the evil words that lurk in language’s dark corners.
The words that people aren’t supposed to use but most people want to. Words like f–k, s–t, bastard and b—h. See, I’m censored here too.
Like any other word, curse words don’t hold true meaning. They’re noises we make with our mouths.
This is especially true with the infamous “f” word, which serves mostly as an emotional intensifier and can be applied to any situation. These words are just words. They’re not bad or good; they just are.
Most people don’t look at them that way. That should change.
The only reason bad words are bad is because everyone has agreed to indoctrinate them with that meaning – being bad. We are taught as children not to say bad words. We are told they aren’t used by the educated and have no place amongst proper conversations.
This, in my opinion, is an elitist, cognitively limiting attitude.
Believing a word is bad just because it is bad is logically flawed. Saying they are bad just because they are bad is not presenting a reason, only repeating the claim – and ignores what shuns them in the first place.
If we all decided they are words just like any other word and treated them that way, they wouldn’t be bad, and there would be no issue.
Some words, like rape and murder, denote heinous acts. Those are bad words because of the actions they represent.
Curse words aren’t used for that reason and therefore shouldn’t take on such charged negative connotations.
No one wants to hear someone who swears four times in a sentence, just like no one wants to hear someone say “like” that often.
Bad words are just words, and we should treat them that way.
Daniel Serrano is a senior double major in English and journalism and an assistant city editor for the Daily 49er.
