I Get All Philological

There's a thing about swearing that puzzles me, but I'm not going to get to that first.

First, I'm not a big fan of it. I lived next door once to a woman who had fights every single night with her boyfriend. Every single night. EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. He would come over, and something would happen, and she would run after him into the parking lot, and they would scream at each other, swearing up one side and down the other. And it was unbelievably tedious. I was also getting no sleep, but I don't think I would have minded so much if they had actually yelled interesting things at each other. But it was just "&%$#" and "!@*&" and "$%#! your car" when I was hoping for accusations of infidelity and the mention of his third child by another woman and her best friend's confession of what he said to her. But nah. No juicy gossip.

The second reason I'm not a big fan of swearing, fictionwise, is that 9 times out of 10 (the 10th being Stephen King or Heathers), it isn't used well. That is, it is used by lazy writers (or young ones) as a way of avoiding the (difficult) task of writing persuasive dialog. Instead of figuring out how to make a character express his anger, they opt for swear words because (1) it's realistic (oh, yawn) and (2) it's easy.

I'll bypasss the whole realism argument (and my annoyance with fiction writers who can't seem to figure out that they ARE writing fiction). When Stephen King argues that his fictional milltown workers talk like milltown workers because that's how milltown workers talk, and he thinks nothing of it because that's how he grew up, I actually buy that argument. He is reproducing a vernacular that is as common to him as saying "The rains of Spain fall mainly on the plains" is to Professor Higgins. And the excessive use of the f* word in Heathers (as noun, adverb, adjective) is an effective and satiric reproduction of high school talk (with all the accompanying self-consciousness).

But, as I've said, 9 times out of 10 it isn't satiric or matter-of-fact reproduction, it's an attempt to bypass real dialog, kind of like in Star Trek: Next Gen; every time the crew visited a new planet and encountered a new species, they would inform Picard, "There are these monster looking creatures, Captain. They're impossible to describe." As Phil Farrand points out in his Nitpicker's Guide, they aren't that hard to describe: tall, hairy, snout-nosed creatures of the humanoid variety wearing baggy pants. The real problem is lazy script writing.

So now that I've taken care of my overall reactions, here's my problem: the philology of swear words. What I mean by that is when people object to swear words based on their origins.

The exchange goes something like:

Person #1: *&%#
Person #2: You know that originated amongst drug lords in prison who used it during torture!

Huh? What on earth does that have to do with the price of oil at Cumberland Farms?

It isn't just swear words, of course. And it's not an approach to language that I particularly understand. It might be interesting to philologists, but in terms of meaning (how the word is used; what people hear/think/assume when you use it), it is hardly relevant. Every word we speak meant something else, something more or something less once upon a time. Every word originated sideways or tortorously from another word. But if you head straight for the birth, bypassing the word's current meaning, you end up with people who want to write "womyn" instead of "woman." Language itself becomes, in some weird 1984 way, dangerous not because of what people actually hear but because of what people, unconsciously, unintentionally, are actually saying. It's that strange right-brain/left-brain thing again where everything becomes literal but in a tangential, subconsious way. So if you write "woman" instead of "womyn", you are unconsciously but literally partaking in the patriarchal ethos of Western civilization. It does not matter if your meaning and the meaning that is heard arouse no feelings about the patriarchal system one way or the other. Language becomes a matter of semiotics, not communication.

Which I'm not a big fan of. Swear words, as bad dialog writers know, have meaning that is often completely unattached to what the words originally or even concurrently mean. An expletive is an expletive for a reason. Besides, it is entirely possible that if you went back far enough, you'd find the word didn't have a negative meaning at all. And if that is the case, is it still a swear word?

Models

Okay, I don't want this to sound catty. Because I don't mean it to be. I think beautiful people are enjoyable to look at. I think beauty is an asset. I also think beauty can make life difficult so I don't necessarily buy into the idea that beautiful people have easy lives. Nor do I buy into the idea--however tempting--that beautiful people are automatically shallow. Beauty has merit, as Michelangelo's David and Grace Kelly prove.

Okay, that being said, there's been a lot model stuff about lately, and I find it odd that, well, really, the models aren't what I would call drop-dead gorgeous or anything. I am talking about the women. The men on television right now all tend towards a specific type. It happens to be a type I have a yen for (Supernatural brothers, Wentworth Miller: more stocky, harsh-featured blokes--think Sean Bean and Ted Levine--than pretty boys although the younger Supernatural brother is borderline) and so I notice them (I preferred older Angel to younger Angel, for instance. I also really like Nick from CSI with mustache--I'm not a big mustache/beard gal, but it really works on him). And, too, there aren't, to my knowledge, any Victoria Secret male models. So I'm referring to the women, and they seem, well, very pretty--don't get me wrong--but mostly the kind of girls I went to High School with. Rather ordinary looking in a perfect-features kind of way. But not striking.

Now, to give you an idea of what I mean, I consider Jeri Ryan (7 of 9) to be a truly gorgeous woman. And also unique. A little unusual. I always recognize her. And if you've ever seen The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (which I watched recently), the woman who plays Sheila Fentiman is classically lovely--in a Kate Winslet kind of way--and noticeable. But the models turning up lately--I can't tell them apart: oval face, straight nose, long hair, wide smile, slightly pouty lips. Same same same. And I wonder, because I haven't the faintest idea, is this a current tread? Has the model industry always been like this? Or are models more in demand now so the pool is wider? Has the industry veered away from the admittedly startling Angelina Jolies? Is it a politic decision--choose a type that everyone thinks nice (because the biologists have shown that people do respond to a particular blending of features) rather than someone who shocks? Or, like the men I mentioned, do most unusually beautiful people just end up on T.V.?

Take Katherine from CSI: Las Vegas--she's getting older now, but you can tell from her bone structure that her looks aren't just makeup and glamour laid over rather ordinary prettiness. When Teri Hatcher pulls her hair back, you can see she's got the same underlying quality. "Willow" still has the most beautiful eyes of any woman on T.V. And I think that Kari Matchett is one of the most stunning (and unique) women on television (Nero Wolfe regular, now on that ABC show, forgot its name).

Of course, television has its own penchants. The women of House and Bones all share a similar look: small-boned, finely drawn features. (Rory from Gilmore Girls is starting to get the same look.) Gorgeous but you've got to think modernist school rather than Rubens. (They are also more the types who grow on you--you become aware of how stunningly beautiful they are over time.)

Maybe, with TV, it's that there's a difference between looks and presence, and if you've got presence, you go into show biz. But maybe that's not fair to the modeling world which is very high pressure. Maybe, with modeling, it comes down to whether you can wear the clothes (such as they are), in a back-atcha kind of way, rather than whether you can act or sing or whatever. But these models don't strike me as even having that Julie Andrews "here I am" quality. Julie Andrews is a lovely but certainly not drop-dead gorgeous woman. But good grief, whenever she shows up on anything, she effortlessly carries the scene. She's got that regal bearing and ageless features. But maybe that's a different kind of beauty. After all, of the Star Trek gang, Nimoy and Lenard aged the best in that craggy old guy way. And Brent Spiner has the sexiest back in all of television, shoot all of showbiz. Really--the guy's face is pleasant to look at it, but watch old Star Trek: Next Generations, and his physical build just blows you away. Someone figured it out, because, unlike Picard (who they started putting in jackets--which looked good) and Riker (who just kept doing that burly big guy thing), someone tailored Brent Spiner's uniform to show off his exceptionally fine physique.

Which is getting away from the topic. Except I really have nothing more to say. This is just a rambling series of queries. Which I shall place under "Fares and Festivals," partly because I have very few posts there and partly because, although my references are mostly from television, the issue is a broader, cultural one. What is beauty? Does it change? In what way? And so on and so forth . . .