The First Dirty Word

I recently met the father of a good friend and during our discussion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the topic eventually turned to movies. He, as I, love entertainment.

I think it is a common occurrence to talk about movies and entertainment whenever you meet with friends. For better or for worse, media is our common experience and sharing reactions about this show or that guides most casual conversation.

I love to think what would happen if you said to a gathering of friends, "I was reading in the conversations of Plato recently and came across an interesting concept. . . "

You'd be met with blank stares.

But if you said, "Hey, what were they thinking when they chose Felicia as the American Idol?"

You would immediately be accepted as one of the herd.

Popular entertainment does not train us or our children to be deep thinkers. As a result our conversations center around what we viewed last rather than what we thought or wrote or discovered through our personal contemplations. Watching a movie or television is easier than reading or writing.

Of course, while talking about movies my new friend and I eventually got around to what we'd seen recently and I was surprised to recount how rarely I actually go to a movie at a theatre. Studies show that if you are over 40 years of age you go to about three movies a year. If you are 18 to 25 you go to more than 50!

We spoke of our difficulty in finding a good movie, one that doesn't center on sex or gratuitous violence. I mentioned my appreciation for Frank Capra, the Hollywood director of It's a Wonderful Life, who said that movies should remind us that we "are born divine, free, strong, a child of God and that goodness is riches and wisdom is glory." I like that.

Yet, finding a film that reaffirms my life or speaks to my soul at the local cineplex is nearly impossible. While examples where violence is used to solve problems, casual sex is an audition for the prom and the name of God is reduced to vulgar adjectives are plentiful.

Even movies that are "family oriented" as the Hollywood promoters indicate often contain what I call "except fors". "Except for" that one scene it would have been a good movie. I wonder. If those offensive elements were gone from a movie would the movie itself be any less entertaining?

Have you ever gone to a movie and afterword said to yourself. "You know if that gal would have cussed just a few more times. WOW, that would have been a great movie?"

As we lamented the scarcity of family entertainment he told me an interesting story.

In 1939, when Gone With the Wind was in the theater, (the only place your could see a movie in 1939), he was a teen-age usher.

Of course, everyone knows that Clark Gable was the first actor to exercise every director's free speech right to offend the sensitivities of the audience when he said to Scarlett O'Hara, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a _amn!"

I'd heard the story before but his next comment was very revealing in just how far we have come as a culture.

In that theater, in 1939, when Gable said the line, the entire audience visibly gasped. He stood in the back of the theater and watched.

Why? Because they had never heard that word through the powerful medium of film. It was a word for private conversation. Vulgarity and profanity was unwelcome in formal society. Ugly speech offended the community standard, was condemned as unacceptable and relegated to backrooms and barnyards.

My next thought was, "What would Gable say to her today?"