Verbal Taboos
After years and years of browsing and, to a certain extent, studying comedy, particularly British and Irish comedy, I've been exposed to quite an amount of these so-called 'verbal taboos'. I'm going to split them into three main categories: blasphemy, obscenity, and double entendre.
Blasphemy by definition is either "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God" or "the act of claiming the attributes of deity". Considering the increasing godlessness of the world, however, this is becoming less of a problem. Of course, the extremist Muslim population and the extreme Christian populations in Republican America still punish it very drastically; sometimes even with fatal results. I feel justified in mentioning these two exclusive groups of religious fanatics because of events which, despite all the claimed progress of our world, amazingly, show that these breeches of freedom of speech are a regular occurrence. It is impossible to broadcast any image of Muhammed without some sort of global controversy, the worst of all ending in mass murder. Anything from a mention of a joke on a satirical American cartoon to an innocent drawing on a Danish newspaper. Jihad is the buzzword of the times and prejudice against anyone who looks remotely Muslim is now taken for granted. On the other side of the spectrum, can anyone watch the atrocity that is 'Jesus Camp' and not feel like your own personal Jihad? My point is that blasphemy is only a real taboo to very religious people and, luckily, only punished in the aforementioned communities. In Malta, we relish blasphemy. It is everyone's favourite pastime, so much so that this generation doesn't take it seriously any more. The older ones who might consider themselves religious might frown upon us, but they're the ones who passed it down to us anyway. What our generation does swear by, however, is obscenity.
My God do we enjoy it! I can't imagine any part of the anatomy which hasn't turned into a perverse expression of frustration. Anything from mentioning appendages and orifices and what they're explicitly used for. In English, Scottish and Irish comedy, obscenity in itself is only limited to a handful of particular words. When coupled with a few real social taboos though, they effectively delve into the dark confines of the obscene. Topics like death, necrophilia, bestiality, abortion, pedophilia; nothing is safe from the obscene. A joke which got one of my favourite comedians into serious trouble was about disability and national heroes. Jimmy Carr said, "The number of soldiers coming back from Iraq with missing limbs is just appalling ... At least we're going to have a bloody brilliant Paralympic team in 2012." He said this during his comedy tour and was a subject of national controversy to the point of being kicked off his BBC contract. My problem with this is that he said it during his show which is known to be very dark, why would anyone pay to go and then complain? He has also spent months volunteering at military hospitals and the soldiers themselves laughed heartily at his jokes at their expense. Another memorable joke that bridges the gap between patriotism, obscenity and double entendre is by Frankie Boyle. He made fun of an Olympic gold medal winning swimmer by saying that she is "so ugly she looks like someone's reflection in the back of a spoon. At least she can hold her breath for a long time."
Which brings me to my last topic: 'double entendre'. What Boyle did at the end of the joke is point out something that would be literally obvious. She's an Olympic swimmer, therefore she is able to hold her breath. This way, seemingly innocent words and phrases can have double connotations, usually perverted ones. He was making the implication that she makes up for being less than physically attractive by performing brilliantly when it comes to oral sex. Of course, not all double entendre is so complex. It can be as simple as referring to your testicles as balls, nuts, plums, man-muffin, potato bag, sperm bank, Shetland ponies, hot wheels, grapefruits, boys, and many others. Some can even refer to their genitals affectionately by name, common male names including 'Peter' and 'John'. the penis name 'John' is responsible for condoms also being called 'Johnnies'. Generally, double entendre can be seen as a taboo version of euphemism. While euphemism can be innocent and even used to cover up a harsher truth, such as saying someone's 'passed on' instead of 'died'; double entendre has no greater purpose. It is there to be perverse and to make perverts laugh. It has no saving grace. It is the scum of all word play.
From now on, while speaking, we should all take into consideration that anyone with a dirty mind might confuse you for a fellow pervert. Be careful when mentioning potato sacks and mayonnaise; do not make any Jesus or Muhammed jokes anywhere, just to be safe; and definitely stay away from anyone's genitals.
[I wonder how penalised I'm going to be for this one.]
