| abstract
| - On his seminal comedy album Class Clown, the late great George Carlin observed that there were exactly seven (later upgraded to ten, later upgraded to over 200) words you could never say on (American) television. Over 35 years later, his Seven Dirty Words are still the best and most famous encapsulation of the bizarre censorship standards that exist in American television. Modern American network television is notoriously rife with violence, sexual situations, and other unpleasantness that would not be seen in most countries. But American TV is also notoriously priggish when it comes to language and social mores. American broadcasters avoided broadcasting mundanities like toilets, pregnancy, and two-person beds until the 1960s, or even later. It is against this backdrop -- priggishness way beyond cultural norms, at a time where American society was openly questioning authority -- that Carlin's little list caused such a furor. In 1972, Carlin was arrested merely for performing his Seven Dirty Words routine in public. At the time, many places had laws against public obscenity and indecency, which local Moral Guardians gladly enforced. But in the climate of the times, such arguments found their way to higher courts, who found the concept of obscenity notoriously difficult to define. A year later, a New York City radio station (WBAI-FM) played a different iteration of the Seven Dirty Words bit, uncensored. A man driving in the car with his young son complained to the Federal Communications Commission that his son had to be exposed to such filth. When the legal dust settled, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Seven Dirty Words might be acceptable for broadcast under circumstances, but that the FCC had the right to restrict broadcast content at times when children might be exposed to it. But they weren't exactly specific about any of it. With no real definition of what is or isn't obscene, pushing the envelope in American network television has mostly been a game of "try it and see if you get away with it." The FCC has the right to grant and revoke broadcast licenses, so they wield considerable power. For this reason, American broadcasters err very heavily on the side of not pissing off the FCC. Especially after that whole Janet Jackson boob thing, which saw unprecedented complaints, litigation, fines, and stricter new rules. So how do the Seven Dirty Words hold up against modern standards? (Especially since you can say shit and fuck in a British eulogy!) The FCC has established a "safe harbor" of midnight to 6am. A broadcast station, if it could get the rights to do so, could run the unedited version of Scarface at 3 in the morning, up to and including Elvira's complaint, "Can't you stop saying 'fuck' all the time?" without being subject to penalties. During the rest of the time, whether they can run a particular vulgar word depends on why it is is happening, the context and the time of day that it is shown. A judge on a three-judge panel overhearing the Fox Network's appeal of an FCC ruling, sardonically questioned the government's lawyer, by saying, "So while a television station normally wouldn't be able to use this sort of word during the day time, it would be legal if one of them ran an unedited news report at 8 AM where a federal judge said 'fuck' from the bench to a lawyer?" and the government's lawyer more-or-less reluctantly agreed.
* Shit - NYPD Blue, a show long known for pushing boundaries, announced that it would air the first uncensored instance of the word "shit" on network television. The furor was fairly small, but the idea was viciously mocked in an episode of South Park. In "It Hits The Fan", the word "shit" was said 165 times, and an on-screen counter was featured. (It should be noted that Comedy Central is a cable channel, and isn't under the thumb of the FCC. They now say "shit" pretty regularly on that channel.)
* This is not exactly accurate, as CBS, more than a decade earlier, announced it would leave two uses of the word "bullshit" intact when it ran the movie Network.
* Piss - It's hard to tell when exactly it started, but this word is perfectly acceptable on TV now and has dropped all the way down to the PG tier, at least in a figure of speech ("piss[ed] off", meaning annoy[ed]).
* According to the other wiki, the 1980 miniseries Shogun was the first to allow the word (to mean "urinate").
* Oddly enough, it's in the King Jimmy Bible, multiple times. E.g., "him that pisseth against the wall" and "Are they not doomed with you to eat their own filth and drink their own piss?" Mark Twain had fun with this one.
* Yeah, but -- FUN FACT! In the era in which the bible was translated, "piss" was the common way to say it. The rudeness comes apparently just from the dislike of the class of the person who would use it. So...if you look at it another way, it should be very odd that this word is disliked in today's society.
* This one might on the verge of jumping the barrier between "swear" and "non-swear" altogether. It was also the only PG word used in Napoleon Dynamite, a movie known for being squeaky-clean (having been written by Mormons and all).
* Heck, shows on Cartoon Network have started using it (most notably, Regular Show).
* On American TV it's borderline banal when expressing anger (i.e. "That really pisses me off") and almost unheard otherwise.
* George Carlin himself, in later life, pointed out in at least one interview that the acceptability of "piss" is generally a question of whether or not it is an actual reference to urine -- "I got pissed off" is far less likely to get bleeped than "I got pissed on".
* In the UK "pissed" means drunk, so while it's unlikely to be heard on children's TV it wouldn't raise an eyebrow at other times.
* Fuck - Still strictly verboten in American television. Bono said it at the 2003 Golden Globe awards. The FCC originally found it not to be indecent in this context. Then they changed their minds. We await further clarification. We are not holding our breath.
* It came. The Supreme Court said in 2009 that "fleeting expletives" like Bono's could be fined.
* No fucking fleeting expletives, Bono, you fucker!
* Hence the existence of both Frak and Rut.
* And Frell.
* However, on September 11, 2001, some of the networks aired amateur footage of the World Trade Center attacks with the F-bombs intact (Dan Rather even apologized for a few of them), and the FCC didn't do anything. Later on, when CBS aired the Naudet Brothers' 9/11 documentary, they were (somewhat controversially) allowed to leave the F-bombs intact.
* Cunt - Not only forbidden in American television, but in almost all conversation. Considered extremely vulgar, but used more as a unisex term of offense outside of the USA and Canada.
* Cocksucker - While "suck" and other forms are widely used even in G-rated media, and "cock" is acceptable if you're talking about chickens, "cocksucker" is still largely banned. If you want to know for certain, watch a non-HBO rebroadcast of the movie Bull Durham; there is a scene that depends upon the word.
* Motherfucker - See "fuck." A fan pointed out to Carlin that the word was redundant, but Carlin kept it in because removing it disrupted the rhythm of the piece.
* Also, probably it was included due to its implication with mother and son incest.
* Tits - Like "piss", it probably crept in at some point, but there are still places that will censor it. It was deleted, for example, from Grease in the scene where the T-Birds are mocking the cheerleaders. Later in the 1970s, Carlin added three auxiliary words to the list:
* Fart - This one has changed significantly. At the time, Carlin observed that not only was the word "fart" forbidden, but you weren't allowed to reference the act. Nowadays, fart humor is a staple of comedy shows of all types.
* Turd - Carlin said it best: "You can't say 'turd' on television, but who wants to?" It's used for toilet humor, which is currently accepted and common in PG-rated works that cannot use "shit" freely.
* Twat - Like "cunt", but a little milder. In Britain, it can also mean to hit or strike something, as in "Twat him in the face, Steve!" or a person who is generally extremely stupid, as in "You are such a twat, Steve!" Are there any words not on Carlin's 1972 list that can't be said on American television in 2008? Lots of them. So if you think about it for a moment, these aren't seven dirty words at all. "Goddamn", "dick" (at least when used to refer to a penis), and "asshole" are usually out and always have been (although "dick" has seen increased use on network comedies and dramas to refer to unpleasant persons, and "asshole" is also allowed, to an extremely limited extent, on a few network dramas). A rather humorous incident occurred when a live program allowed a person to refer to the former Vice President as Dick Cheney, but then bleeped the speaker when they referred to someone else as a dick. "Cock" might be also; at any rate it certainly isn't used much. It's interesting to note that "goddamn" and "asshole" are usually censored as "---damn" and "ass---- ". Yes, "God" and "hole" are bleeped out "Blowjob" and "handjob" are also reduced to "**** job." "Douchebag" was, until recently, fairly unheard of on broadcast stations (although "douche" and "d-bag" were allowed). Shows such as Thirty Rock and Glee have recently begun to use the word to a limited extent, although it is still far from commonplace.
* Something that makes it kind of hard to discern between them, "**** " and "**** " both being four letter words and all. Racial and ethnic humor, a staple of 1970s television, is now avoided. It would be impossible to air fully half of this sketch from the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975. You could probably make a new list from all the ethnic slurs that were once permitted in American television, but aren't any more. In fact, if you were a visionary comedian, you could probably make a very funny bit out of it. Live events, to avoid these and other dirty words, often refer to a seven second delay; an athlete, say, will say something, and seven seconds later it actually hits the air, giving the networks time to modify the transmission. Note that live events are NOT immune to the dirty words; ask Dale Earnhardt Jr, who walked away from a race with a few less points and a few less thousand dollars after commenting that his win didn't 'mean shit'. The penalties were obviously levied by NASCAR, not the FCC, but would NASCAR have done it without someone else's suggestion on what's dirty?
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