Today, my friend Neil brought up an interesting point. He was watching the movie Hot Fuzz on Comedy Central and there is a scene where the peak of a building smashes a guy's head. He sent a text to me commenting that Comedy Central has to censor the curse words but is aloud to show that shot of pretty horrific violence.
It's a pretty interesting observation! Neil's assessment was that violence is much more damaging to the youth of America than foul language and I agree with him 100%. What makes a word offensive? Let's say I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time with my friend from work Liz and we get to the scene where Jay asks Justice if he can call her "Boo Boo Kitty Fuck." I would laugh because I get Kevin Smith's humor and I think that line his hilarious. My friend Liz, however, might not get the joke and would think that Jay is degrading women - especially when he starts proclaiming himself as "the Master of the Clit!"
For me, what it boils down to is that those infamous words that George Carlin so brilliantly talked about as the words you can't say on TV are just words. The only way those words gain the power to be offensive is when people hearing them choose to find them offensive.
Violence transcends that, though. Later in Dogma, there is a shot of Ben Affleck's head exploding. Even people who can't stand Ben Affleck would have to agree that seeing that is pretty horrific. When someone's head gets chopped off in a movie, most everyone watching it would have the unified opinion that what they just saw was really awful.
As my friend Neil put it, "We make vulgar words vulgar, but we don't make violence violent."
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