Profanity in food writing

[docsconz]

Is the profanity gratuitous or is it an essential component of the expression? If the latter, keep it and if excessive then add a warning to anyone who might feel offended. If the former edit it out.

[Andrew Fenton]

In my opinion, profanity is used now, among adults, for the exact same reasons it was used way back when you first heard it...on the schoolyard playground. 

By people whose methods of communication haven't grown much since then, either.

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Actually, school kids use profanity to sound like adults. Adults who use kiddie terms all the time haven't grown up.

Yeah, Aristophanes, Chaucer, Joyce... a bunch of children, no doubt about it...

[Jaymes]

In my opinion, profanity is used now, among adults, for the exact same reasons it was used way back when you first heard it...on the schoolyard playground. 

By people whose methods of communication haven't grown much since then, either.

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Actually, school kids use profanity to sound like adults. Adults who use kiddie terms all the time haven't grown up.

School kids, in my experience, used profanity to shock the rest of us. The rest of us whose hands, they hoped, would immediately fly to open shocked mouths.

And to demonstrate how brave and unafraid of the established authority they were. What wild rebels! What unconstricted, unrestrained, unafraid explorers into this vast, old-fashioned prudish landscape!

Get into trouble? Ha ha! Not me! Look, I'll say it again! I'm not afraid! Fuck!

Fuck fuck fuck!

And like I said, I don't think the reasons change that much. Okay, not at all.

[BigboyDan]

As mentioned above, cursing IS part of the professional kitchen vocabulary. Most food writers are far more sophisticated and learned than most chefs... but, the food... matter of fact, the food would probably be less than it is if kitchen profanity were outlawed, especially in a French place.

[johnsmith45678]

In my opinion, profanity is used now, among adults, for the exact same reasons it was used way back when you first heard it...on the schoolyard playground. 

By people whose methods of communication haven't grown much since then, either.

←

Actually, school kids use profanity to sound like adults. Adults who use kiddie terms all the time haven't grown up.

School kids, in my experience, used profanity to shock the rest of us. The rest of us whose hands, they hoped, would immediately fly to open shocked mouths.

And to demonstrate how brave and unafraid of the established authority they were. What wild rebels! What unconstricted, unrestrained, unafraid explorers into this vast, old-fashioned prudish landscape!

Get into trouble? Ha ha! Not me! Look, I'll say it again! I'm not afraid! Fuck!

Fuck fuck fuck!

And like I said, I don't think the reasons change that much. Okay, not at all.

←

And the kids who never swore (all two of them) were the ideal little teachers' pets, doing exactly as they were told. And when they became adults, they continued to live in their happy little insulated worlds (if reality never intervened).

Edited August 10, 2006 by johnsmith45678 (log)

[Jaymes]

In my opinion, profanity is used now, among adults, for the exact same reasons it was used way back when you first heard it...on the schoolyard playground. 

By people whose methods of communication haven't grown much since then, either.

←

Actually, school kids use profanity to sound like adults. Adults who use kiddie terms all the time haven't grown up.

School kids, in my experience, used profanity to shock the rest of us. The rest of us whose hands, they hoped, would immediately fly to open shocked mouths.

And to demonstrate how brave and unafraid of the established authority they were. What wild rebels! What unconstricted, unrestrained, unafraid explorers into this vast, old-fashioned prudish landscape!

Get into trouble? Ha ha! Not me! Look, I'll say it again! I'm not afraid! Fuck!

Fuck fuck fuck!

And like I said, I don't think the reasons change that much. Okay, not at all.

←

And the kids who never swore (all two of them) were the ideal little teachers' pets, doing exactly as they were told. And when they became adults, they continued to live in their happy little insulated worlds (if reality never intervened).

←

Nanny nanny boo boo, stick your head in poo poo.

[russ parsons]

i have a hard time believing people really think eliminating potty language is censorship. let's get real. censorship is the restricting of information or point of view. profanity does not fit either of those definitions.

[johnsmith45678]

i have a hard time believing people really think eliminating potty language is censorship. let's get real. censorship is the restricting of information or point of view. profanity does not fit either of those definitions.

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Sure it's censorship, and a federal judged ruled that eliminating potty language is illegal, for re-selling movies anyway.

[Jaymes]

I think most writers will tell you that using profanity is usually the lazy way out.

Say you're writing a piece for publication. You have a character that's a chef. In his hot, sweaty, miserably-vented and poorly-equipped kitchen, he is forced, every day, to make the same broccoli-cheese soup from a powdered mix that he despises, but that is the top seller in the restaurant. He's got one big soup pot that is so old that the handles have come off and it's awkward and unwieldy and even dangerous to use. He hates the job, hates the kitchen, hates the pot, hates the boss, hates the soup and hates the customers that insist upon it.

You're writing for a publication that adores the use of profanity because it's so "raw and real and gritty and urban and blah blah blah."

So you say that your chef hates that fucking kitchen and the fucking soup and the fucking pot and the fucking job and the fucking town and his fucking boss and all those fucking customers and the fucking horses they fucking rode in on.

That works to get across the point that he's a little, um, upset and that his working conditions are less than ideal.

But frankly, if I hadn't already described to you what was wrong with them all, that paragraph wouldn't give you a clue.

But now, say, you are writing for a publication that only wants you to use fucking if people actually are. And expects a more descriptive set of adjectives if they are not.

So the paragraph has to be rewritten. And this time, with clever, descriptive, evocative, compelling, interesting and non-repetitive adjectives that describe what's wrong with the kitchen, the pot, the soup, the boss, the town, the customers. Adjectives that enable you to actually see the scene and help you to understand his anger. Adjectives that tell you whether or not he's justified, or just a nutcase. Adjectives that drive the story, and pull in the reader.

You try it.

Not so fucking easy, is it.

Edited August 11, 2006 by Jaymes (log)

[Jensen]

You try it.

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Sounds like a smackdown challenge to me!

[Andrew Fenton]

i have a hard time believing people really think eliminating potty language is censorship. let's get real. censorship is the restricting of information or point of view. profanity does not fit either of those definitions.

←

Sure it's censorship, and a federal judged ruled that eliminating potty language is illegal, for re-selling movies anyway.

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That case is about copyright violation, not censorship.

[Daniel Rogov]

I cannot help but think that even vulgarity has its place for when used well and discretely it can be useful in catching the eye or ear of one's reader or listener. The key, of course is discretion, and that is what sets the intelligent adult apart from even the most intelligent of children.

As to quotes.....sorry good people, but changing a person's quotation has something distinctly akin to mis-spelling their name. Once you use quotation marks you'd best be sure that the quotation is precise. If one cannot use a quotation, simply scrap it and paraphrase. Or even mention, if you like, that "every other word from his/her mouth was of four-letter duration".

As to your own use of what many consider "dirty words", well, that's up to each of us. If we use them badly we make fools of ourselves. But if we use them in the sake of, for example, nouveau journalism, that becomes a different matter altogether.

Two points of view. The first of Cyril Connolly who said that "vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life" and the second of Mel Brooks who observed "I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit". Both make their point and make it well. Which one prefers is a question of choice.

[Kent D]

As a once-trained but non-practicing journalist, we were taught (and I have observed) that most publications have a well-established method of dealing with profanity in print. Some run a disclaimer that "the following story contains strong language or graphic content", some just put (expletive) in place of the offending word, some use *s or dashes.

I moderate a message board for a radio show, and we pretty much let people go their own way, since we warn them when they join that the board is for adults and contains adult content. Members range between using a vocabulary that would curdle Koolaid to those who type "fsck" and "sh1t" because they're either at work or think they need to fool a profanity filter. We HAVE a filter, but we don't use it, except occasionally for comedic effect, replacing the word "f*ck" with "fluffypuppies".

Language doesn't bother me, personally, as I have a vocabulary that would be welcome in Bourdain's kitchen (even learned some new ones from "Kitchen Confidential"), but I try to police my tongue depending on my perceived audience.

I could have filled this post with profanity, and most of us wouldn't give a second thought to it, but I didn't feel the need to do so. And if I was being interviewed, I wouldn't scream "Censorship" because of an established editorial policy. I'm a champion of free speech, but there's a difference in my mind between telling someone to "F*ck Off!" and reading "The culinary artist, Kent D, told me to 'Fuck Off!'"

[srhcb]

Should food writing include words that purposely offend the readers' sensibilities?

No more than food should be served seasoned so that it purposely offends the diners' tastes?

I use the, "what would my Mother say if she read my writing?" test.

SB (Your mother might vary)

[russ parsons]

As to quotes.....sorry good people, but changing a person's quotation has something distinctly akin to mis-spelling their name.  Once you use quotation marks you'd best be sure that the quotation is precise. 

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um, Daniel, when was the last time you used "um" in a direct quote? and do you mean to tell me you never tweaked someone's grammar? i'm not talking about changing meaning or intent, but i can almost guarantee you that nearly every quote in the newspaper that didn't come straight from a press release has been tweaked. people just don't talk like they should (or as they would if they had the luxury of looking at their words in print beforehand).

[Jaymes]

I cannot help but think that even vulgarity has its place for when used well and discretely it can be useful in catching the eye or ear of one's reader or listener.

Yes, and it certainly did that when Rhett said to Scarlett that frankly, he didn't give a damn.

But sadly (to me anyway) it has become so ubiquitous that it no longer catches "the eye or ear."

And in my view, the unbridled use has coarsened, cheapened and vulgarized our society and has certainly "dumbed-down" our language. I long for the days of true wit, in entertainment, literature and discourse.

And perhaps especially, insult.

We've come a long way from Lady Astor and Winston Churchill: "If you were my husband, Winston, I should flavour your coffee with poison."; "If I were your husband, madam, I should drink it."

To: "Fuck you." "Yeah? Well, fuck you, too."

Although I do know that each generation has its list of words that once shocked but then, having become familiar, no longer do.

And so...on to the next thing.

Nothing to be done, really.

Edited August 10, 2006 by Jaymes (log)

[johnsmith45678]

i have a hard time believing people really think eliminating potty language is censorship. let's get real. censorship is the restricting of information or point of view. profanity does not fit either of those definitions.

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Sure it's censorship, and a federal judged ruled that eliminating potty language is illegal, for re-selling movies anyway.

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That case is about copyright violation, not censorship.

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Yup -- notice my use of the word "and." And I stand by my assertion that removing "potty language" is also censorship.

[MarketStEl]

um, Daniel, when was the last time you used "um" in a direct quote? and do you mean to tell me you never tweaked someone's grammar? i'm not talking about changing meaning or intent, but i can almost guarantee you that nearly every quote in the newspaper that didn't come straight from a press release has been tweaked. people just don't talk like they should (or as they would if they had the luxury of looking at their words in print beforehand).

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A number of people who have both heard me speak and read my writing say that I speak like I write.

But I realize that I'm a statistical outlier.

As with a subject closely related to the use of profanity--in fact, many of the expletives in question describe aspects of it--it's often more exciting when you allude to it rather than expose it all. So count me in with Jaymes and Andrew (and a few others who have argued that expletives should be used only with care, judgement, and understanding of the context), and let's eat already.

[Joisey]

To me it's like the difference between Andrew Dice Clay and the recent movie "The Aristocrats". Some profanity is gratuitous (the former) and some of it borders on poetry (the latter). Of course the profanity is shocking, isn't that the allure of people like Bourdain and Ramsay to the average joe? They're like the GG Allin of cooking; flinging feces and chasing you around, holding your feet to the fire to make you feel something. I could NEVER work in a kitchen without the profanity, the endless dick jokes (like Tony says, in the kitchen it's ALL about the pinga), ad nauseum. The discourse is what separates us from the suits who have to act civilized towards each other. If a little F-bomb or penis reference slips into the mainstream, then so be it. If it offends you, then I don't want you to know about what I do. It's all part of the package.

[H. du Bois]

I'm tired of the notion that certain segments of the populace need to be protected from the possibility of offense. If a reader is too delicate of sensibility to withstand the reaches of the language in all its twisted glory, they can go live on an island and bring their marketed-for-mass-consumption texts with them. And leave all the good books for me, thank you very much.

[Pan]

In my opinion, profanity is used now, among adults, for the exact same reasons it was used way back when you first heard it...on the schoolyard playground. 

By people whose methods of communication haven't grown much since then, either.

←

Actually, school kids use profanity to sound like adults. Adults who use kiddie terms all the time haven't grown up.

Yeah, Aristophanes, Chaucer, Joyce... a bunch of children, no doubt about it...

←

Shakespeare, too, in spades. 'Sblood, zounds, whoreson, and a whole bunch of other expressions that were bloody offensive at the time.

Rich, if I told you I don't really give a fuck about whether obscene expressions are quoted in food writing or not, would you think that shows a lack of self-esteem on my part, or merely a fair degree of apathy?

Jaymes, I don't completely disagree that use of obscene expressions in writing and movies is sometimes associated with a lack of imagination, but some of the funniest comedians (e.g., Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin) couldn't have been so funny without cursing, and man, were they fucking funny! Besides, this seems to be about quoting chefs, and it seems that they curse a whole fuck of a lot. Just remember, the refined food you're having was probably conceived, cooked, and plated by coarse people with a lack of imagination in language. Though I have to say, when Anthony Bourdain wrote after a night in which he shared an orgy of food and wine with Michael Ruhlman that he felt like he had been "skull-fucked by a walrus," it was one of the funniest and at the same time most vivid and imaginative quips I've ever read. Now, what would an editor do with that?

Edited August 11, 2006 by Pan (log)

[johnsmith45678]

To me it's like the difference between Andrew Dice Clay and the recent movie "The Aristocrats".  Some profanity is gratuitous (the former) and some of it borders on poetry (the latter).

Aren't Andrew Dice Clay's nursery rhymes considered both?

I know a lot of people got a kick out of The Aristocrats when otherwise squeaky-clean, wholesome, family-friendly Bob Saget told the joke!

And for additional humor and mockery of the swearing-averse, there's Ned Flanders!

Edited August 11, 2006 by johnsmith45678 (log)

[Daniel Rogov]

...um, Daniel, when was the last time you used "um" in a direct quote? and do you mean to tell me you never tweaked someone's grammar? i'm not talking about changing meaning or intent, but i can almost guarantee you that nearly every quote in the newspaper that didn't come straight from a press release has been tweaked. people just don't talk like they should (or as they would if they had the luxury of looking at their words in print beforehand).

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Russ, Hi.... As to the "um''s, I have no problem deleting those as those are the same as pauses between thoughts and not words or thoughts in themselves. As to tweaking grammar, that's tempting but imagine the problem of six different publications quoting the same person in different ways...... I cannot think that a better way might be paraphrasing within quotes....

From your own quote above, for example:

Parson's asked: "...Daniel, when was the last time you used 'um" in a direct quote?" He went on to comment that "...people don't just talk like they should..."

Edited August 11, 2006 by Daniel Rogov (log)

[danlepard]

Sometimes profanities soften through time and usage - this is one I read last week and it makes clear that the taste of the food was lost in butter:

Thank you! But I had rather eat a bit of their cold chicken, or turn over a leaf of ox-buttock, with a truss of parsley - with all my heart - for I made but an indifferent dinner today. [if] you must know, I kept myself for the fillet of veal, and when it came I could neither see, nor touch it for the butter sauce, D---------- your butter-sauce!  Nothing but butter! Merciful Heaven! [The Muzzlers and Guzzlers Diary, 1749]

If you were to cut the quotation at "...nor touch it for the butter sauce." would it still be so clear? I would guess that the author is using profanity to capture the voice of the fictional character the diary satirizes.

[rich]

Rich, if I told you I don't really give a fuck about whether obscene expressions are quoted in food writing or not, would you think that shows a lack of self-esteem on my part, or merely a fair degree of apathy?

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I don't know Pan, only you could judge your motivation.

This topic seems to have taken a life beyond the original concept. I think everyone agrees the use of profanity has its place at times, but I do believe the less frequently it's used the more affect it will have. For instance, I rarely use it, but when I do, people who know me tend to listen.

It appears that those who use it as part of their everyday language or writing become boorish in time. Maybe they're just lazy or can't think of other adjectives. Or possibly it's the self-esteem issue and it's the only way they feel they can get attention.

As far as censorship is concerned, people have been debating this issue for hundreds of years and I suspect the debate will continue for hundreds more.

I should add, I don't enjoy when my post gets censored by the eGullet police, but accept it as part of the rules of the game.

Edited August 11, 2006 by rich (log)