More often than not, commentary on the recent death of comedian George Carlin centers on his famous "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" routine and his confrontation with the FCC. If you haven't heard it yet, gather your children to your side and check it out on YouTube.
Carlin's "seven words," which he correctly identified as taboo in the 1970s, have become less so in the 21st century. Cable denizens, including South Park cartoon children, Sopranos Mafiosi, and Comedy Central fake newsmen use any and all of Carlin's words with impunity, while their broadcast counterparts must still watch their mouths. Even so, some proprieties are preserved on cable. Cartman on South Park can say “shit” and Tony Soprano can say “fuck”, but Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert still get bleeped. Meanwhile, if Oprah or Barbara Walters drop the F-bomb, network executives tremble. One gets the impression that the FCC cracks down on broadcaster language slips just to show they can.
All societies have their taboos. More often than not, forbidden words or places or things define acceptable and non-acceptable public behaviors and tend to support and reinforce the status quo and the existing power structure. Sexual taboos, which are included in Carlin’s "seven words", try to define both adult and child boundaries as well as a society’s sexual preoccupations.
As Joshua Meyrowitz documented in his ground-breaking book No Sense of Self, modern media have blurred the boundaries that existed in the print era between public and private and between adult and child. Meyrowitz discusses how literacy requirements created learning hurdles that allowed adults to limit the spread of some types of information to prying young minds. With no necessary education required to watch TV, view a movie, or access the World Wide Web, the former taboos are now brought under scrutiny.
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