To swear or not to swear, that is the question

By Shari Randall

 

Long story short, the other night I tuned into an episode of The Rockford Files titled  “White on White and Nearly Perfect.” It starred James Garner as Jim Rockford, a handsome and charming PI who works out of a trailer, with guest star Tom Selleck, who plays Lance White, an even more handsome and charming PI. Lance is so handsome and charming that no one can resist him - except for Rockford, of course. 

 

One thing that struck me, aside from the fact that Tom Selleck really was very handsome and that the clothes people wore in the '70s were distractingly awful, was the lack of swearing. Throughout heated arguments, vigorous beatings, and tackling lowlife criminals, nobody swore.

 

This struck me because the night before I had watched the highly acclaimed Leonardo DiCaprio film, One Battle After Another. I should’ve counted the number of times the F word was used, but I think it would’ve been over 100 and that was just in the first 15 minutes.

 

I even noticed the F word popping up several times in Louise Penny’s latest, The Black Wolf. 

 

I’m sure the fact that The Rockford Files was filmed in the ‘70s accounts for the lack of swearing. There were FCC rules, community standards, and advertisers to appease, I’m sure.

 

I was around in the 1970s. I don’t remember much swearing, and I went to a public high school. There were certain words that were not nice to use, according to the aforementioned community standards. Remember standards?

 

Frankly, swearing doesn’t shock me that much anymore. It’s so pervasive I think we’re all numbed to it. That means that a well-timed expletive from someone who doesn’t normally swear can drive home a point with delicious force. It’s the constant drip of the F word that’s annoying. A friend who is a kindergarten teacher told me she knew it was time to retire when a five-year-old called her a m*#%&$r.

 

Yes, the F bomb is a very versatile word. It can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, you name it, but for me hearing it everywhere is tiresome. I know that language evolves and standards change, but I think people have just become lazy.

 

One show I’ve enjoyed lately is Slow Horses. Yes, there is plenty of swearing, but there are also some truly entertaining insults from the main character, Jackson Lamb. At one point, he refers to useless character as a “refrigerator magnet.” Ouch. 

 

As a writer, I strive for realism, especially in dialogue. But because I write on the cozier end of the spectrum, I have to have very good reasons for using a word that many readers might not appreciate. I’ve gotten around that by writing “Character X swears.” But I’m keeping “refrigerator magnet” in my word hoard for when I want a put down that will really sting. 

 

Writers, how do you handle characters in the heat of a moment that calls for spicier language?

Shari Randall is the author of the Agatha Award-winning Lobster Shack Mystery series, and, as Meri Allen, writes the Ice Cream Shop mystery series.