Donald Clarkeswears that movies need profanity
Just the other day, a reader mailed me to complain that, when writing about In Bruges, I appeared to show approval for the amount of swearing in the film. What a load of b****cks! What the f**k does he know about it?
Actually, the e-mail was very reasonably worded and made some good points about certain film-makers' lazy reliance on blue language. Still, I would maintain that, on balance, cinema would be a poorer medium if permission were withdrawn to explore the smuttier corners of Anglo-Saxon.
Swearing, like incidental music, CGI and sound design, is just one of the many tools a film-maker has at his or her disposal. Used badly, it can seem cheap and clumsy. Used well, it can add colour and energy.
Do I hear the nation's prudes puffing as they climb upon the highest horses available? "We can do very well without all this effing and blinding," the towering equestrians bellow. "There is just no need for that sort of language."
It's interesting that when fulminators speak out about cussing in the media they invariably argue that the offending language is "unnecessary". The implication is that, far from acting out of prudery, they are simply trying to excise certain extraneous elements in the relevant artists' work. The films of Tarantino and Scorsese would, they argue, be so much less cluttered if all those profane monosyllables were trimmed away.
Well, it goes without saying that no writer has to use bad language when writing a script. Nobody is forcing the director to utilise colour or to hire an editor or to include end titles, either. Indeed, come to think of it, there is no real need to make a film at all. Movies are just so unnecessary.
The important question, of course, is not whether you absolutely need to include f**ks and s**ts. It's whether the addition of those words adds something worth having to the characters' conversation. Martin McDonagh's scabrous dialogue for In Bruges would never achieve the same angry energy without a liberal smattering of profanity. Similarly, naturalistic pieces by Ken Loach and Shane Meadows would lose a degree of verisimilitude if significantly bowdlerised.
This argument is of particular relevance to Irish film-makers. There are certain things we do better than anybody else: stout, Eurovision, dry-stone walls and, yes, first-division swearing.
Recently a list was compiled of those films featuring the most uses of the word f**k and it made interesting reading. If we disqualify a documentary on the F-word itself, the winning movie is Gary Oldman's brilliant, searing Nil By Mouth. Elsewhere, the Irish feature conspicuously in the rude list. The Commitments, I Went Down and In the Name of the Father all included at least 100 uses and, noting the contribution of Irish-Americans in other entries such as The Boondock Saints and State of Grace, it becomes clear that we lead the world in cinematic cussing.
No wonder the asterisk key on my laptop is worn to a f**king wafer.
