Blog Post # 4
By Joe Bassi
HUM101
For blog-post number I will attempt to address this question raised by our instructor. It states. Montag says,”We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.” How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” When was the last time you were really bothered about something important and real? What was it and what did you do about it?
Montag is the hero in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I haven’t read far enough to know the context of this quotation but I do get really bothered once in a while. Like two days ago, I took my three year old daughter to the neighborhood park. At the playground there are swings, slides and jungle gym equipment for little kids. Oftentimes there are teenage kids lying about and hanging around on one of the larger jungle gyms, usually girls. They are there because of the teenage boys who use the adjacent skate park. The thing that bothers me frequently is the use of the “F” word by the young people there.
I listened to the banter between the teen girls and boys and cringed, my little kid was oblivious to the meaning of these words, but kids repeat what they here. I have slipped and used bad words in front of her only to hear them immediately spoken by her. So I have to be careful. I guess at the playground she is so into playing that she tunes out what the teens are saying, but I don’t. I am also aware of the fact that I was a loud foul-mouthed teen myself and I probably embarrassed myself a lot but I didn’t care.
I work in a large-scale, heavy industrial garage repairing diesel equipment. I know I use the “F” word perhaps a dozen times on any given day. I am not defending my right to cuss but at least that is the proper time and place for George Carlin’s seven dirty words. A playground for children is not, but try and get teenagers to see that. I have made comments to teens at the park before and I darn near lost my temper once. Now I have just surrendered to the fact that if I take my kid to the playground there is a about a 10% to 30% chance I won’t like what I hear from the older kids.
The real problem is that I don’t want to hear my daughter use colorful words for a very long time (30 + years!). I want her childhood to be as rewarding as possible, and as wholesome as possible in a world that is not Godly.
Where does the media fit into all this? This is after all a class about society and technology. We all know that the language in modern era movies has shifted to the obscene. Maybe even the absurd, the aforementioned hyperlink is a Dailymail.co.uk article; the following are quotes from it “The T.V. watchdog said bad language was so common in modern Hollywood films that many viewers considered it normal in everyday conversation”. The article continues “Its study found nearly every use of a swear word was gratuitous.” You never heard Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall use bad language and the movies were better.
I remember about a month ago at work I was waiting for a morning line-out meeting with a crew of mechanics in the lobby of the main office complex. One of the office staff was overheard using the “MF” word. There were a few uneasy laughs, and then one of the senior technicians said “I guess that’s not a bad word anymore.”
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
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