Culture: On A Four-Letter Word

Those that cannot handle unimaginative crude language should just not read this post.

TORONTO, ONTARIO - A German colleague once told me, "The English language has this wonderful word, 'shitty.' You can use it in so many ways and convey implied meaning. The German language has nothing like 'shitty.'" Perhaps obviously, he was being ironic, trying to insult English speakers for being lazy with imprecise language and pointing out that his native German had more precise demeaning adjectives for different situations.

However, by using the word in a joke, he was demonstrating perhaps the most noble use of that word and the four-letter noun from which it derives--in humor. Take this piece from the Onion News Network. Would it be nearly as funny if they had used, say, the word "stuff" instead of the bovine version of the four-letter word? I think not.

My all-time favorite use of the four-letter word was on a summary of comparative religions. The GNU humor archive has an on-line version of the piece. Would it really be as funny if it listed Confucianism as "Confucius say 'Garbage happens'" or Catholicism as "If garbage happens, it is your fault"? No way.

As a clearly colloquial word, the four-letter s-word conveys a casual, less than profound mood. The very vagueness of the word gives it a joint flexibility and universal inappropriateness, above and beyond its appearance on the list of seven dirty words.

Other "swear" words have little more than shock value (and less of that every year). For all the supposed part-of-speech flexibility of the "f-word," it isn't very funny. Richard Pryor, amongst others, made a career of using a variety of foul words, and for the most part, wasn't actually that funny.

It takes skill to use a swear word in a truly humorous fashion where it actually adds to the humor. The "s-word" seems to be the most useful in that regard, and my German friend and the Onion understood how to use it properly. Why haven't I used it, except in a quote? I know this piece isn't funny, and using it wouldn't help. If laughter is needed, go back and view the links again.

Heritage: Neil Ross on Canadian Humour

Neil Ross presented the history of Canadian Humour to the West Toronto Junction Historical Society on 5-February-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Few things are held more dearly in the Canadian psyche than the distinct Canadian sense of humour. Yet, few people seem to know how it developed. Neil Ross tried to rectify this with his presentation "Nation of Irony Mongers: Roots of the Canadian Sense of Humour", made in front of the West Toronto Junction Historical Society last Thursday as a preview of a series of two-minute radio features that will be airing on the CBC in the coming weeks.

I was pleased to find Ross start with native humour. He pointed out that most First Nations and other native peoples in Canada had much of their humour based on the trickster, often the coyote, but sometimes embodied in other animals, most notably the raven on the west coast. The notion of the trickster made its way into European-Canadian humor straight-away, and still lives on to this day even on the Rick Mercer Report.

Many comic devices that have made their way to the rest of the world through the United States actually originated in Canada. Most notably, the "pie in the face" gag originated in Newfoundland; Ross recounted how Doc Kelley originally improvised food dripping off someone's face, and seeing what laughter it brought, followed it up in a subsequent act with the first true pie-in-the-face routine to a riotous response.

This being a local historical society meeting, Ross emphasized local comedians Greg Clark and Jimmy Frise, both of whom lived in the Bâby Point neighbourhood just to the west. An audience member actually knew the exact houses that they lived in, and Clark had apparently moved during his time there. The columnist (Clark) and cartoonist (Frise) duo made the Toronto Star incredibly popular between 1920 and 1947 through a strip named Birdseye Center.

My favorite story about Clark and Frise told by Ross, though, was that they once decided to invoke the trickster heritage and purchased a bench exactly like the park benches in High Park in Toronto. They brought their bench to the park, sat on it, and waited for a police officer that they had an issue with to walk by. They then proceeded to walk off with the bench, prompting the officer to confront them. Only when they were about to be arrested did they pull out their sales receipt from the purchase of the bench.

The first three episodes of the "Nation of Irony Mongers" have been posted to the West Toronto Junction Historical Society web site. They will air during the local morning programs on CBC Radio One; the time locally here in Toronto on 99.1 FM is not yet known, but should start next week during Metro Morning.