Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Lena Dunham is supposed to be the voice of my generation, so when I saw that she had an essay in the latest edition of The New Yorker, I thought I'd better read it to see what my generation was thinking about these days. As I navigated through the magazine's website, not only did I discover that Dunham is also now a spokeswoman of sorts for The New Yorker, but that this new omnipresent voice, which apparently represents me and (separately) the cultural elite, was given free reign to drop a certain four-letter word in the magazine. I started reading her essay (subscription required), "First Love: Memories of an Elusive Boyfriend," but came to a screeching halt when I saw the F word on the page:
On August, 2010, I got an email from Facebook notifying me that I had received a message. It was from my ex-boyfriend's mother. Its subject heading was "Goodbye from Nancy and Bill." Nancy and Bill are my ex-boyfriend's parents, though I've changed their names...I opened the message with great curiosity and little terror...The message said: "Hi, Lena--Bill and I remember you with such pleasure and fondness! But it's time to sever the Facebook connection so I'm going to block you. We wish you all the BEST!"
I was dumbfounded . . . I wanted to write back "Why?" I wanted to write back "What the [expletive]?" I wanted to write back "Like I'd even notice if you just unfriended me, or even if you died, you crazy [expletive]ing hag."
In a way, I'm not surprised by Dunham's outburst. Dunham's critically-acclaimed HBO television series Girls is so crass and vulgar that it is, at times, hard to watch. But it's one thing for Dunham to be profane in Girls--it's HBO after all, the same network that gives Bill Maher a platform for his sleazy grunts--but it's another thing for Dunham to drop the F bomb in what's considered the most important and influential cultural magazine on the scene, which has a history of being rather prudish in its content and language standards. I suppose The New Yorker has come a long way since the days of the Algonquin Round Table (ca. 1919-1929) and, later, the editorship of the legendary William Shawn (editor from 1952 until 1987):
Harold Brodkey used to tell the tale of how legendary New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn handled his use of a four-letter word: It's up to you, Shawn said, but would you rather be remembered for your story or the first use of that word in this magazine? Brodkey spiked the offending expletive.
Dunham's article brings to mind another piece that appeared on The New Yorker's website earlier this summer, "Dropping the F-Bomb" by Mary Norris, one of the copy editors there. In this piece, we see just how far The New Yorker has come since in the last two decades (I've deleted the foul language, but you'll still get the point):
Pauline Kael never tired of trying to get the word “sh-t” past Mr. Shawn in the old days, and never succeeded. She was on leave in the late summer of 1979, when “Apocalypse Now” came out, and Mr. Shawn permitted Veronica Geng, who was filling in for her, to quote the opening lines: “Saigon. Sh-t.”
It no longer occurs to me to query the use of four-letter words, even when they are used gratuitously, as in “I missed the f--king bus.” I used to be a prude, but now I am a ruined woman. We had a discussion in the copy department a few weeks ago about how to style the euphemism: Shall it be “f”-word, f word, f-word, “F” word, F word, or F-word? I don’t like any of them. [expletive]ing euphemisms. Get on the goddam [expletive]ing bus.
This week, a reader who sent in a portfolio of mistakes she had found in the magazine (two out of six were blatant errors, for which we are truly sorry) cited the use of the term “star [expletive]er” in a piece by John Colapinto about the philanthropist Trevor Neilson. She had no objection to the term itself, but wrote in the margin, “Need ‘activating’ hyphen!"
What a mechanical approach to language. Is this the new normal--to write and say anything you want, as long as you use the "activating hypen" when the occasion calls for it? To Norris, "it is refreshing to see that readers have evolved along with the magazine." To me, it is depressing, and for reasons Norris herself brings up when she documents the experience of editing a profanity-heavy essay:
I was so disoriented that I stetted a big...mistake at the end. What was the point of making a fuss over a “than” for a “then” in a piece so full of profanity?
Exactly. When your standards of language deteriorate, what's the limit--what's the point--of trying to be proper at all, whether it is in matters of grammar or matters of taste and decorum? Lena Dunham belongs on HBO and on Twitter, where these matters are more lax. But in the pages of The New Yorker? I don't think so. But then again, maybe I'm just a language prude. Maybe it's time for me to "Get on the goddam [expletive]ing bus."
Not that I'm promoting this, but for pure historical interest, here is a "compendium of New Yorker firsts in vulgarity."
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Comments:
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Someone with my recovering-but-still-too-frequently-sounding-like-a-sailor mouth can't be called a language prude but I hate seeing the standards deteriorate.
That Lena -- whose work I greatly admire on Girls -- would be doing this is fitting. It's juvenile. Something we grow out of. Are there no adults at the magazine?
Dec '10
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Sadly, I sign of the times along with trampy styles, baggy clothes, hats backwards, etc.. And then they wonder why the rest of society does not take them seriously.
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Public prudery is a sign of a cramped, repressed personality, and offends the spirit of Abbie Hoffman. Decorum and restraint aren't natural. They're hypocritical, too - so you use a word in private, but not in public? Phony. Holden Caulfield is crying somewhere.
They'll keep pushing it - and by "they" I mean clever people like Dunham, apparently unmoored from any culture that preceded cable TV - until it's in children's books at the public library.
This will be mean we've been Liberated at last from . . . something. Whatever it was, it was probably bad.
Mar '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Evidently Lena isn't over her boyfriend's parents? That's [expletive] weird.
--
"sounding-like-a-sailor mouth" -- We sailors take a perverse sort of pride in this.....
Sep '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Isn't The New Yorker a print kind of thing?
Aren't we, as a culture, past this whole mow-down-forests, pollute-the-waterways, leave-small-furry-animals-homeless kind of old-school mechanical monstrosity--devised, literally, in the 15th century?
Does anybody care what The New Yorker has to say? Is there anybody who couldn't outline The New Yorker's take on any given issue?
For the sake of the environment--for the sake of the children!--it's time to set relics like The New Yorker aside, and focus on 21st century media.
May '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Just had to acknowledge "a platform for his sleazy grunts"--now that's fun, inventive, and apt. Perfect!
Mar '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
My coffee table holds one magazine: the September 28, 1992 issue of The New Yorker. It's a memorial of sorts - the last issue before Tina Brown became editor and forced me to cancel my subscription.
Sep '10
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Apparently the New Yorker's audience prefers platforms for sleazy grunts so they are attempting to supply what is demanded of them...probably without success.
Apr '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
I blame Rupert Murdoch.
May '12
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
Let's not miss the underlying theme, which is the loss of concern for "decency" in interpersonal conduct. On a grand scale the Presidential election shows this clearly. So what if Romney had nothing to do with Joe Soptic's wife's death. Let's imply he did so we can win. Anything goes now. On a more individual level, it is exemplified by the person in the next stall in the bathroom who insists on sharing his cell phone conversation with me, and also doesn't care what background sounds his caller hears. Can't you wait for that call? It seems "boundaries" between people, ideas, and propriety in language are all disappearing as I watch helplessly in horror. Individuals and groups increasingly thinking only of themselves and the moment. One of the dangers of facebook, getting back to the blog entry here, is that the entire universe of "friends" gets to participate in events that should remain private. The culture is becoming amoral, and all we seem to be able to do is watch it turn ugly.
Oct '10
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
The New Yorker has been a pretentious, provincial, and vulgar publication for decades. It didn't just begin with Brown.
Mar '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
It's been pretentious and provincial for years. Tina Brown made it vulgar in 1992.
Apr '12
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
There is a reason those parents told the voice of your generation that they were de- friending her.
They wanted her to know. Imagine a bossy witch with her values getting her claws into your son? Her ability to fly into full swearing mode shows weak self control and little respect for others.
It probably was a beautiful moment that those parents are gleefully sharing with all their friends.
After you wrote about her TV show, Emily, I watched it briefly but was so ashamed by the naive female character, I could not even watch a full show. It was mean and seedy.
Oct '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
The broader society is half-literate and crass. Against that backdrop this particular deterioration of The New Yorker's standards is too insignificant to deserve notice on its own. What matters is that each such event is a turn of the ratchet - it can't be undone.
Each click erodes a little more of what we have to value. There were already plenty of popularly vulgar magazines; now The New Yorker is a little more like them and a little less different. I won't personally feel the impact, but the world of the coastal elites is now just a tiny bit meaner.
Complex systems fail in spectacular and unpredictable ways, but only after long neglect and decay. Nobody can predict the cusp of our arc of decline.
Apr '11
Re: Dropping the F Bomb at The New Yorker: Or, What Is Our Culture Coming to?
I remember (sort of ) a quote from somewhere and wonder if anyone can place it, and I paraphrase; "When you start to use profanity it means you have run out of useful things to say." My thanks to anyone who can help place it.