What did they say?
POSTED BY: zzetta13
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 21:24
VIEWED: 7016
PAGE 3 of 4
Cussin' has its place.
If an environment is sweary, then people do swear all the time, and it becomes part of the rhythm and vocabulary. Imagine a bowdlerised "Pulp Fiction" or "Deadwood." See? Absolutely terrible.
As a showcase for the salty epithet, I give you "The Big Lebowski." It would be seriously diminished if broadcast in a cleaned up form.
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I've gotta say I really like that Firefly has it's own form of cussin'. While I can appreciate a swear in the 'right place' it's nice to have a show where they don't need to. Kind of like no matter how intense the action got in Empire Strikes Back, nobody swore. It's nice to have people express themselves differently.
This post instantly made me think of something from the Serenity novelization that made me cringe somethin' awful. Right after Mal has presented the plan to turn Serenity into a Reaver lookalike, and the crew begins to disagree. In the movie he says "I hear a word outta any of you that ain't helping me out, or takin' your leave, I will shoot you down."
In the novelization it reads: "So I hear a word out of any of you that ain't helping me out, or taking your leave, I will f*cking shoot you."
Now, I know pretty much all of us have our gripes with the novelization anyway - but not only does this change the impact for me, it's completely NOT Malcom Reynolds.
Anyone else feel the same way?
Keep on flyin'
"We've gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero."
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Originally posted by ACrazyIvan:
In the novelization it reads: "So I hear a word out of any of you that ain't helping me out, or taking your leave, I will f*cking shoot you."
Now, I know pretty much all of us have our gripes with the novelization anyway - but not only does this change the impact for me, it's completely NOT Malcom Reynolds.
That was actually the line in the shooting script the novelization was written from. I remember reading somewhere why they chose to take it out, but I don't remember what specifically it was. (I believe it still would have come in as PG-13 even if it were included.)
But that echoes back to the problem I had with the Chinese. These people were cursing all the time right in front of us, but it didn't really feel like they were. The line you cite wouldn't be out of character in Chinese, but seems so in English. So we either have a skewed view of the characters, or today's most common expletives just aren't used in the 'verse. Either way, I prefer the f***ing-free version. In fact, I think the profanity was the most jarring aspect of the outtakes. Funny, but jarring.
On another note, I think it was a cleaned up version of the Big Lebowski where they changed a series of lines about not "f***ing a friend in the a**," to a series of non-sequitorial lines about not "cooking for a friend in the Alps," or something equally bizzarre... May have been a different movie, though.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ain't. We. Just.
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The unadulterated truth is great, and I generally prefer it, but I think Joss's main concern was to skirt the censors, and do it in a creative way. Thus, the use of Chinese...
Actually, there were other reasons for the mixing of Chinese and English (though from the creative standpoint, it WAS useful for that, too :P).
Joss is a HUGE fan of Asian culture, and even took Chinese in college - heck, he even changed his name from Josh to Joss, the latter being Chinese for "luck", IIRC! From an aesthetic and personal preference standpoint, he just LIKES it, and immensely enjoyed incorperating it into his work... heck, anybody happen to recall that there was a Chinese-speaking Potential Slayer in Buffy season seven?
And aside from that... China has a HUGE population. While it's been evened out a bit as far as increases, due to the efforts of the goverment to limit population growth, it's still true that something like one in every seven people in this world speaks Chinese, IIRC. Additionally, the Chinese government and society are becoming increasingly powerful in this day and age - heck, China even has a program to "export the Chinese language", which includes providing materials and native speaking teachers to people in other countries, including the U.S. The idea that maybe someday in the future a whole lot of us will be using Chinese to curse in on occasion?
Not so weird, when you think about it.
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I get that.
What I don't get is the comfortable, warm-and-fuzzy feeling folks get, strictly by changing a vowel/consonant, while the underlying sentiment remains intact.
I don't get a WAFF (Warm And Fuzzy Feeling). I get a sense of pleasure at being silly.
One of my favorite phrases when I'm frustrated but still not anywhere near the state of crying, is "damn it all to heck!", for instance. Like I said - silly.
It IS silly, and an all-too-conscious effort to be oh-so-polite and/or oh-so-innocent...
...which can be a WONDERFUL tool for characterization. For instance, I had a character once in a story I was working on that WANTED to spew forth a string of curses, but found herself "correcting" herself to say their more "innocent" euphemisitic forms, because she was in front of her younger brother; this was to get across the fact that she had this tendency to want to be all prim and proper and "appropriate" to the point of trying to suppress her own emotions and just overall being too stiff for her own good.
And even better example, though, is in the second episode of "Wonderfalls" (which was entitled "Pink Flamingos"), during what I believe is the opening scene. In Wonderfalls, Jaye is twenty-something; yet in this scene, her father, in response to noticing that the trash pickup people have left the trash cans in the middle of the driveway, STILL says "those sons-of-biscuits!" (as opposed to "those sons of bitches!", of course). The point being that he actually still thinks of her as his little girl despite the fact that she's living on her own now and graduated college and everything... that, and it's just a funny line, precisely because it's so silly. :P His delivery is even funnier, because he makes it sound so delibrate and yet so unconscious - exactly how you'd talk around a small child (which is usually kinda how he speaks to Jaye, heh).
Or in Buffy, season 3,
Select to view spoiler:
the way the Mayor talks (with gee gollies and goshdarnits). It's to emphasize his weird personality; he's an invincible demon, yet he still talks like he walked right out of a fifties sitcom and insists on people always washing their hands and such, and is always talking about things like the Boy Scouts and Civic Duty, despite the fact that he literally plans to EAT the entire graduating senior class.
So yeah. It has its purposes. Also, while I don't think anyone gets a WAFF from it, I do think that innocent people think they'd rather nto "sully" themselves with "nasty" words - or at least, that's a good characterization tool in that way, sometimes. C
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Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:
On the other hand, I really like the use of 'humped' instead of 'screwed', etc. It's original and not just a weak smokescreen. "We're humped!" It's got a kind of poetry to it, don'tcha think?
LOL
Me too. It does have more feeling to it than "screwed" and in some ways, "fucked". Makes you think more imaginatively.
At last.
We can retire and give up
this life of crime.
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EmmaZule wrote, in pieces:
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Can you imagine, for instance, Kaylee "dropping the f-bomb"?
Damn straight I can. Just like I can imagine her jumping the bones of a slacker mechanic (not vice versa) because "Engines make her hot!". Just like I can imagine her complaining about needing new D-cell batteries on their next visit to a general store (if you catch my meaning). That girl's as salty as chicken soup, and every bit as therapeutic.
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I say if you're gonna cuss, grow a pair and cuss.
Sorry, I prefer not to use steroids. :P (Sorry, could not resist)
The great part about "grow a pair" is that it applies to either sex, and suggests maturing from a child to a reproductive age adult. Still, good to hear about your aversion to steroids, since they tend to shrink whatever pair you may be equipped with.
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...this occasionally means inventing slang ("shiny", anyone?) or curse words...
"Shiny, Happy People", REM, 1991 (featuring The B-52s' Kate Pierson). From http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1518 : "The title and chorus are based on a Chinese propaganda poster. The slogan "Shiny happy people holding hands" is used ironically - the song was released in 1991, 2 years after the Tiananmen Square uprising when the Chinese government clamped down on student demonstrators, killing hundreds of them. (thanks, Ali - Oxford, England)." So, there's your Chinese connection. I'm guessing that 'shiny' is a commonly used adjective in China, not invented for Firefly.
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I try to save the really strong stuff, especially the "f-bomb" and "s-bomb" and "asshole", for when I "really need" it. In other words, for when I REALLY am pissed off. See, if you use them too much, they lose their power, but if you use them only when you REALLY mean it, they have several times the impact - somebody mentioned Mal's careful usage of curse words, for instance.
I try very hard never to say a curse or to swear when I'm mad at somebody. Saying "Fuck you!", let alone "G-D you" to a person because you're too mad at them to think of anything else to say? The very thought makes me queasy. No, I'm more of a happy-go-lucky, string-of-expletives, all-the-livelong-day kind of guy. My kids know they're in trouble when I stop cussing and start using precise language. Means I'm getting serious.
And my most reviled 'dirty word'? Hate. Parse it any way you want, there is no more destructive and evil a word, yet people use it all the time, and it just makes me cringe every time I hear it.
Expletively,
zoid
P.S.
...And some people treat 'love' like a 4-letter word, too. Go figure.
_________________________________________________
"I aim to misbehave." -Capt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity, a.k.a. 'the BDBOF'
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Hiya folks,
This post has become just what I was hoping it would be. Interesting,informative and down right fun.
The dialog manipulation in FF/S is just complete crazy fun. Its one of the things that made the wife and I lol when we saw the movie. Very creative.
Does anyone here remember the movie "Caveman" with Ringo Starr? I think there were 2 actual engish words spoken in the whole movie,and by an asian guy at that
by movies end though we knew what they were saying. Glub-glub.
The Joss verse has something of the same going for it. SHINY= great/cool,RUTTIN=?, HUMPED= well we know what it equals and DUNGHEAD=DUNGHEAD....so on
I have to say that Mal dropping the F-bomb now and then could go with the character. But now after 14 shows and a movie, well I just think it wouldn't be the same if he did.
PS: would you guys call the slant thats uesd on FF/S a southern accent?
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I, for one, really appreciated Mal sayin' "monkeyshit" in Serenity. Made it just a little more like home, if ya take my meanin'.
Verbally childish Chrisisall
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One has to remember that not only is gorram English but, when pronounced correctly, it is beeped out of (or dubbed out of) American television.
I never did figure out why though, I mean in most religions with a god called God that god is the only one who can damn people anyway so, "Damn," means, "God Damn."
-
Personally I think any show where people exclaim, "A baboon’s ass crack," and call others, "dirty animal fuckers," has just the right amount of profanity.
I mean when you insult someone by saying, profanely no less, that they have sex with farm animals that's pretty bad.
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Quote:
Originally posted by zzetta13:
Does anyone here remember the movie "Caveman" with Ringo Starr? I think there were 2 actual engish words spoken in the whole movie,and by an asian guy at that
by movies end though we knew what they were saying. Glub-glub.
I was just thinking of that movie a couple of days ago.
There were more than two by the way, off the top of my head I can think of:
friend
That's fire
all right (when he gave up on trying to get them to speak English)
shit
and I know there were more.
None the less Caveman was proof that you can have a movie with an entirely fictional language and no subtitles and yet still have the viewers understand exactly what is going on.
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