Despite the troubled economy, despite my wallet being a bit leaner and looser than I would like, I managed to make a pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble this weekend and pick up a couple of books. It appears that I am not alone in this.
With the recent spate of tragic news regarding the publishing industry at large, the New York Times is running a story this morning that should be a welcomed ray of light. For the first time since the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) started keeping track in 1982, the number of adults reading for pleasure has increased.
The jump was rather significant – 3.5% – and one that means that the majority of Americans over 18 now read at least one novel, short story, poem, or plays in either print or online, a year. While phrasing the statistic like this makes it seem like the NEA is casting a particularly broad net, it is significant for one very important reason.
Reading is addictive. Not addictive in the sense that you’re going to cart your television down to the pawn shop so you can score some Russian Lit, rather addictive in that once you start doing it, it can quickly become a part of your life.
With the economy in it’s current sad state, and people shifting into Depression-Era mentality, does this bode well for books? With a paperback novel ranging around $8, and lasting the better part of 10 or 12 hours to read – there’s certainly a far better bang for your buck the the other entertainment mediums which are competing for the few dollars allocated to them in the average budget.
As far as my weekend purchases? I am ramping up from the release of Watchmen and picked up the graphic novel – which I devoured in the weekend. I also snagged a fantasy novel by an author I’d never heard of before – Raymond E. Feist. After doing a little research on him, his writing history has a lot of similarity to my own.
More on that to come.
And by the by, my Sunday morning copy of the Washington Post never showed. Or it was lifted. Either way, I’m still iritated about that.
Perhaps the most widely cited reason for the inclusion or usage of profanity in any artistic medium is the desire for realism. The logic itself makes sense because people do, in fact, swear. Some of us frequently. And some, like the Coen brothers, David Mamet (video with strong language), and even William Shakespeare, have become legends for their use of profanity. Numerous others have raged against the use, labeling it as crude, grotesque, and a mark of artistic laziness. How, then, is a modern writer supposed to handle the situation? To swear or not to swear is an important artistic question.
The Power of Profanity
In an article lambasting the use of profanity in literature, Charles Benton ironically provided an argument for its use that is as true today as it was when he wrote it over a century ago. Benton noted that “the essence of profanity is a Vandalic desecration of those inner temples, without excuse save the depraved desire to show contempt for that which is dear to another.”
Or, to paraphrase, profanity in its many forms is an assault on the reader and what they hold as dear, a form of mental shock that when used correctly, can jolt the reader.
Understanding Profanity
After all, art is simply a means to communicate without being present. A method to convey thoughts and emotions to an audience. Profane words are taboo because they are powerful, they question or challenge the various parts of our humanity that we are the most self-conscious about: our religion, our sexuality, our race, our base bodily functions.
The use of these words has the same effect as the Vandals, dirty barbarians, riding into the white marbled Rome. They desecrate. They destroy. They tear down what we hold dear, they become what we fear.
The Desecration Principle
As these words are the metaphors that sack Rome, one should consider the Romans. For, just as profanity is a part of the reality of many, it is also abhorred by a vocal group. And understandably so. Just as Charles Benton described the power of profanity in his missive rallying against it’s use, so does the modern audience. For many people, profanity simply has no place in art of any medium.
The Corruption Cliché
The common cliché regarding power and corruption holds true when extended to profanity. The overuse of profanity creates an awkward, contradictory situation.
In the first part, when profanity becomes common place, the words themselves lose specific power as the audience becomes first accustomed, and then desensitized to said power.
The contradiction arises when, despite these words losing their individual power, the whole of them taps into the strength of their original intent. That is, despite the individual use of profane words losing value, the whole gains a greater value. When collected in an individual work, the work itself becomes profane. When stretched amongst a series of works, in which the unifying, notable feature is the profanity itself, the works are reduced to little more than a gimmick reaching for shock value. And shock is a momentary experience which stands opposite the immortality of art.
The Question Begets Questions
The most difficult task with regards to profanity and art might not be the binary question or do or do not, but rather the more cumbersome questions of when, where, and how. Unfortunately, these questions are ones that each artist must individually grapple with, and the only guide is that of tone and questions.
To Each Their Own
Each artist walks their own path, even today in our age of digital mashups and artistic appropriation, and so there are no hard and true rules for the use of profanity. The pure fact is that sometimes a piece of art has a critical moment when it is necessary to sack the white marble temples of Rome. In others, there are ways to show desecration sans exacting details.
In literature, the artistic area with which I am most accustomed, the decision can often come down to the specific medium. As a writer, I would be hard pressed to use profanity in print journalism. When traipsing into fiction, I do have stories in which the characters swear, and have used profanity in the narrative when it fits the voice of the narrator. Here, on my personal website, there is the occasional use of profanity, but then this is written in my voice. And I do swear. A lot.
Useful Questions
Perhaps the best guidance for the use of profanity in any artistic medium can be summed up in a set of questions:
Is this usage appropriate for the setting?
Does this usage achieve the message I wish to purvey?
Am I using this profane term because no other will suffice?
And finally am I willing to risk isolating my audience?
When measured against these questions, profanity does still carry a risk, but if the artist is honest in answering them, profanity can be a powerful tool. The end result, the line between a profound piece of art and a profane piece of garbage, might actually be best determined by borrowing from the Supreme Court’s ruling on pornography. In the words of Justice Stewart “I know it when I see it.”
In preparation for this piece, I contacted numerous peers including Justin Koeppen, fellow writers at Lyran Tal Press, and Debbie Stier at HarperStudio. All of whom put up with my pestering without resorting to using profanity.
Ah, the internet. Thanks to a general leveling of the playing field, genres can split to their illogical extremes, allowing those with a very specific interest to connect with others that inexplicably share the same interest. In a lot of ways, it’s a product of the law of large numbers.
The end results are that what were once pure genres are hyphenated, cross pollinated, reborn, rebranded, and eventually you’re left with a great deal of bizarre and original things. Take for instance hiphop, and it’s largely internet-enabled offshoot nerdcore. Nerdcore takes the basic tenants of hiphop but replaces the subject with things that your average D&D fan identifies with. Bling and booty is replaced with anime rhymes and computer jokes (video). Iced out whips are supplanted by an homage to Star Wars’ Boba Fett and his ship Slave One (video). And that’s just the tip. In typical nerd fashion, the devil is truly in the details.
Of course, the internet allows for an almost infinite division of genres, quite literally defying any genre to reach its atomic, indivisible source. The ride to that source can be very interesting. And for your benefit we have Lit-Nerdcore. The genre is still small, a bit too specific, a bit too young. Bu there is Famous Last Nerds.
Famous Last Nerds straddle the line between comedy troupe and nerdcore, further blending the genres. But, they’ve been breaking into the literary field with their One Minute Hamlet (video, right click to download). Pushing further, we’ve got Wassup Holmes, a nerdcore take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s coke head, violin playin’, private detective extraordinaire.
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.