« Abu Zubaydah | Main | Your Racist Friend » BBC Versus the Pogues19 Dec 2007 08:21 am It seems someone at BBC Radio 1 got the bright idea of bowdlerizing the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" so as to remove the "cheap lousy faggot" line. Fortunately, good sense eventually prevailed and the original version will go forward. I'm always puzzled by this sort of thing. The word clearly appears in the text because the character who says it is trying to direct an offensive insult at the other character. What's the basis for the objection? Comments (26)
Well, just because the word can be presented in a non-pejorative manner doesn't mean that the word isn't itself offensive. It's somewhat related to the news media trying to report on George Bush calling a reporter a "major league asshole," or Dick Cheney telling a senator, "go fuck yourself." Just the word in print is enough to offend some people. Not that I agree with the decision to censor it, but it's not completely indefensible. "You're an old slut on junk" seems to me to be a more weighty insult than "you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot," though, on substantive grounds. 
Well, if he said n*****, it would be, at least, a lot more complicated. I don't know why some words can be rehabilitated, some words can be used at least for character-setting, and some words retain too much of their history of violence. But they do. The casual use of "fag(got)" in popular art is already starting to be jarring. I assume that will only continue.
More liberal fascism at work. Next they'll be promoting organic honey from Dachau.
Here's another great version of 'Fairytale of New York' by Christy Moore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-rGdQTVgrU
Because the reason faggot is used as an insult is the same reason calling someone gay is used an insult. By allowing it as a pejorative the stereotype of being gay being something shameful is perpetuated. That being said if they wouldn't have made a stink about it few would have noticed. Now people can't miss it and homophobes can use the term and claim to be fighting PC culture.
crack is right.
There's been disagreement within just about every community about what language is and isn't acceptable. Queer was every bit the slur that faggot was in the early 90s until Queer Nation. From Wikipedia: "Queer Nation is credited with starting the process of reclaiming the word queer, which, previously, was only used in a pejorative sense and Queer Nation's use of it in their name and slogan was at first considered shocking. Ten years later, queer is almost an ordinary word, used casually in the name of gay-supportive and relatively mainstream television programs such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk." You see it with the N-word too. Some factions in the black community call for an outright ban and others saying the word only has the power that you grant it and using it in other contexts is a way to cleanse the historical stigma. You're always going to have devilish misuses by the Imuses of the world. Why give them the satisfaction of some useless indignation? I'm for more free speech and more tolerance, not unenforcable codes and cheap posturing. The problem with communication today isn't that it's too coarse, it's that it's too indirect and fake. And if you eliminate the bad words in common usage history has shown people just make new ones. Slang insults are a renewable resource.
The two times they play the song on radio in Atlanta (during the Christmas season) they always play the bowdlerized version. It's quite sad, really.
The word clearly appears in the text because the character who says it is trying to direct an offensive insult at the other character. What's the basis for the objection? The basis for the objection is that some people, for whatever reason, don't really like that a synonym for being gay is used as an offensive insult in the first place. Obviously, you would not object to: "You scumbag, you screw, you cheap lousy Jew . . ." or "You're an old rag-head on junk . . . " or "Merry Christmas, you darkie . . . " etc. etc. Get it?
When I lived in Boston, the radio station I listened to used to bowlderize Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" (lyrics: "That little faggot's got his own jet airplane/That little faggot he's a millionaire"), but in New Jersey my station plays the original. Both ClearChannel stations. Weird.
Matt, I think you just don't understand the instinct for bowlderization at all. The idea isn't that the author is saying things through the characters that are offensive, that's just the pretext. The real motive energy behind this kind of censorship is to sweep disagreements and ugliness under the rug so that they don't come out in the open, or ruin our beautiful minds.
Michael M. is right. Who can forget the edition of Huckleberry Finn which came out a couple decades ago in which every use of "nigger" had been removed?
Okay, isn't Matt's point this? You don't edit out the use of the word precisely because it is offensive. The song is not advocating the position or attitude of the person who uses the slur; the slur is meant to indicate those attitudes and let them reflect negatively on the person who uses them. If I wanted to make a character look really bad in one minute of dialog, I'd just let racial epithets fly freely from his mouth. That's not a way to promote racism, it's a way to key my readers in on the fact that the character is a bigot. Censoring that is like trying to depict a Klan meeting with no racist iconography or language. It diminishes the threat of their ideology by sugar-coating it to make it more palatable. The Klan should be offensive, just as homophobes should.
The album that appears on, by the way, is one of the pop masterpieces of the last 20 years.
Speaking as a cheap lousy faggot myself, I am deeply offended by the lyric. I prefer "thrifty."
"You see it with the N-word too. Some factions in the black community call for an outright ban and others saying the word only has the power that you grant it and using it in other contexts is a way to cleanse the historical stigma." That will be the day that word is banned by blacks. That word is used 24x7x365 by blacks to refer to other blacks - at least lower class blacks. You can't listen to a conversation between lower class blacks without hearing that word at some point. So I'd say part 2 of that statement has already occurred. OTOH, if you're white and you use the term in the exact same manner that blacks use it - a pejorative term against someone you don't like because they're an asshole - you're a racist. There ARE NO "offensive words" - just people being offended. Owen has it correct. But even if the song was intended to offend gays, that still wouldn't justify censoring it or even considering it significant. The idea of "perpetuating a stereotype" as if it were a capital crime is ruminant evacuation. You either hold such attitudes or you don't. You're either rational or you aren't. The fact that somebody else holds - or promotes- a view does not absolve you from responsibility of holding the view yourself. So the mere holding or promotion of a view cannot be rationally considered a criminal or censorable act. How many right wing racists give a damn that people censor the word "nigger"? Whose did you change when you censor it? The people who never held that opinion? The people who did? I don't think so. And anybody who decides to hold that opinion based on someone else's use of the word - well, clearly that person is a moron and you need more remedial work then censoring the word to change that situation. Obviously the Nazis were a bad lot. But I disagree with the German banning of Nazi symbols and the like. It's stupid and counter-productive. It merely invests said symbols with even more psychological influence as "taboos". And anybody with even a modicum of knowledge of the functions of "taboo" and "transgression" in human society should know that banning such things isn't going to help. The same applies to "political correctness" and words. There was a politically incorrect comic once who said something to the effect, "People are offended by my comedy. I'm offended by war, corporate theft, bigotry, etc. Where do I go to register my offense?"
Okay, white people, look. Everyone knows you mean well, but you really need to stop using the euphemism "the n-word." It makes you sound like complete dipsticks who don't realize that even beleaguered minorities are capable of recognizing context. If you're discussing racist language, just say "nigger." If you aren't confident of your ability to use the word in such a way that makes it abundantly clear that you aren't actually calling someone a racial epithet, you should probably lay off the meta-discussions of offensive slurs in general. Also, stop wearing your Dockers so high on your waist. It makes your ass look huge.
I know that this pretty much annihilates any claim to having cool cred I could make, but I just don't really think "Fairytale of New York" is all that great a song.
Something less boring on the topic of "Fairy Tale of New York" is that the recording's female lead singer Kirsty MacColl died at the hands of a Mexican billionaire, and the Mexican government has been resisting doing justice in this case ever since: http://www.vdare.com/horowitz/061101_maccoll.htm
"I'm always puzzled by this sort of thing. The word clearly appears in the text because the character who says it is trying to direct an offensive insult at the other character. What's the basis for the objection?" I couldn't tell you what the "liberal" rationale for it is, but I can tell you the conservative one: it's to make gay-baiting seem rarer than it is. I've had people argue in perfect seriousness that homosexuals have never, ever been discriminated against and pointed to the fact that historically, gays have seldom been depicted badly in popular literature. Every instance of someone using "gay", "fag", "queer" or the like is an argument against that, so historical revisionists attempt to purge them all. What is objectionable about "Fairytale" is not that the word "faggot" was used, it was that it was used as a pejorative and depicted as a common insult, along with "cheap", "lousy" and other generic insults. If you are trying to argue that we do not, and have never treated gays like that, this sort of thing cannot be allowed.
Incidentally, the Pogues put on a pretty good show here in San Diego last month. They don't sing "Fairytale" in concert, for obvious reasons. And, what other words rhyme with maggot?
They don't sing "Fairytale" in concert, for obvious reasons. They most certainly do, actually. Saw them in DC and Boston last year. They definitely played it at the DC show, but I can't remember the Boston show on account of the whisky.
Big Jim, I should have said they didn't sing it either time I saw them. Do they bring on a woman to sing the female parts?
Yeah; no idea who it was though. They danced awkwardly. And there was confetti.
Me vs. the Pogues. They are coming to Chicago on my birthday and I thought it sounded great. Tickets are $125. When the hell did the Pogues turn into the Rolling Stones?
Comments closed January 02, 2008. |
Search
Subscribe to this blog by Email Books by Matthew Yglesias
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Weekly Archives
Categories
|
Copyright © 2008 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
| 
Heads in the Sand
I agree. If someone wrote a song hurling the invective "George Bush is a goddamned genocidal maniac and should die for his crimes!" there'd be knuckleheads protesting that also. How do you ask for truthful yet somewhat profane lyrics to be removed from a song?
Posted by steve duncan | December 19, 2007 8:32 AM