Missives From Troy

I’ve had a couple of Thursday Quotes get hits before, but the Steven Moffat one today seemed to strike a chord with folks, especially with the couple of people who took offense/got riled at the concept in the quote.

So, here’s the thing. My take on the quote was that just adding a bunch of swearing to dialog to make it “adult” is a cop out on trying to spin a good phrase. Not that swearing isn’t a natural part of conversation or that it’s always better to steer away from it (I swear all the fucking time and incorporate plenty of cussing in my writing, so clearly that’s not what I believe), but that just tossing in a couple of swear words to make a PG sentence an “adult” sentence is lame and phoning it in. It’s not trying to get anything extra across, it’s just shock value for the sake of upping some perceived rating or maturity level. 

Also, Moffat writes for TV. Admittedly, he writes for Brit TV where cursing is a little less risque than in the States, but he still probably has to deal with censors, producers, and the like who need whatever show he’s working on to stay in X or Y speech boundary. I mean, he’s not going to insert the same kind of dialog into Doctor Who as he did in Coupling, right?

So the other side of what he’s probably referring to is having to find ways to talk around censorship, so that characters can have the conversations they need to have in the contexts they need to have them. 

Feel free to continue to disagree with the sentiment. It’s no skin off my nose if people do disagree with the quote, but as for the sentiment that cursing in dialog should be telling you something about the character or the extremity of the situation as opposed to just being a “fuck,” “shit,” or “assballs” thrown into “Jack went to the store to get some milk,” then yeah, I agree that cursing just for the sake of making something seem “adult” is a cop out. 

And now, have a funny: History of the Word “Fuck”