Warning: this blog post contains adult themes and coarse language. Viewer and reader discretion is advised.
Would you use an e-reader to remove profanity from the latest book you’re reading?
Nearly every reader has, at one time or another, come across words, sentences, paragraphs, or even complete works of fiction that cause extreme discomfort. Now, tech-savvy readers now have the ability to exempt themselves from these particular kinds of uncomfortable interactions thanks to the technical wizardry of the free Clean Reader App, which rids e-books of profanity and in favor of a replacement word or phrase that offers the same general meaning.
By choosing either clean, cleaner, or squeaky clean, readers can scrub any of the 1 million-plus titles available for download via the app of any and all offensive material. According to the man behind the app, Jared Maughan, “The idea for Clean Reader started at our dinner table after our daughter’s first exposure to books with swear words. It’s taken significant time and effort to take it from an interesting idea to a really fantastic mobile app that we’re excited to offer to the world,” and if you’re ready to take the anonymous tweets provided to the public at face value, this exact service is exactly what a certain subset of readers have been waiting for.
The libertarian in me says no to this.
By all means protect your children from what you consider age-inappropriate material. And as an adult you have a world of choice when it comes to your tastes in literature.
The best profanity, micro-aggression and offense filter is the one that came pre-installed between your ears at birth.
What *would* be an interesting discussion is the use of profanity in literature.
My own personal view is that all words have meaning and power and they should be used deliberately and consciously because their misuse or over use can detract from the story.
Using a couple of examples from the movies:
Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop is to me nearly unwatchable these days because of the frequency of the ‘F’ word.
And that’s not even the film with the highest levels of profanity. That ‘honour’ goes to Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street which uses it 506 times in 180 minutes – nearly once every 20 seconds.
And frankly that’s just wearying and, if I might say just a little bit lazy on the filmmaker’s part. Not even the justification of is being ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ cuts it. Defecating is also ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ but no one really wants to watch another person take a dump, do they?
That’s not to say that swearing can’t be used creatively. The best use of swearing comes when it is a punctuation point in an emotional or dramatic scene
The classic is of course Gone With The Wind, where David O Selznick took a hit to the hip pocket to the tune of $5000 (that’s more than $83,000 in today’s money) keep in the classic line which contains the profanity damn – very mild by our terms today.
But it works. It has drama and gravitas, underscoring Rhett Butler’s weariness and contempt for the woman he once loved.
(As an aside, if Scorsese was were fined for each incident of the ‘f’-bomb alone in Wolf of Wall Street at the same rate at Selznick, he would be up for a fine of $42,998,000 for a film which grossed about $305,000,000…)
Even to our aurally-assaulted, jaded ears the use of the ‘c’ word holds as the last bastion of unacceptable words, despite efforts of some feminists to reclaim it.
And yet, for its use by Richard Geer’s Mayo in an Officer And A Gentleman is devastating and appropriate:
So what about books? I believe exactly the same thing applies – perhaps even more so.
Why?
Because reading a line of dialogue takes longer than just saying it.
The Americans refer to a particular word as the ‘f’-bomb and it’s quite appropriate – it’s percussive, violent and frequently used express anger and frustration.
The use of a number of ‘f’s here and there may slip past unnoticed and unremarked upon in an actual conversation – such as this scene from The Wolf of Wall Street , but in written form it’s quite jarring to have an entire passage dialogue littered with it, no matter how angry, lazy or inarticulate the speaker is.
To get to the actual facts from the conversation you have to wade through a minefield of ‘f’-bombs. It’s easier to do when listening as opposed to reading. Below is the transcript from the scene I linked to above:
Jordan Belfort: People say shit… I mean like, you married your cousin or some stupid shit.
Donnie Azoff: Yeah, my wife is my cousin or whatever, but it’s not like what you think.
Jordan Belfort: Is she like, a first cousin?
Donnie Azoff: Her father is the brother of my mom. Like, we grew up together, and she grew up hot, you know, she fucking grew up hot. And all my friends are trying to fuck her, you know, and I’m not gonna let one of these assholes fuck my cousin. So I used the cousin thing, as like, an in with her. I’m not like, gonna let someone else fuck my cousin, you know? If anyone’s gonna fuck my cousin, it’s gonna be me. Out of respect.
As written dialogue it’s lazy and the ultimate ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ – the opposite of the ‘show, don’t tell’ which marks good writing.
UPDATE: As much as I personally would not buy the app, I have to own to being stunned by the grossly intolerant, inflammatory and grossly hypocritical response by some authors and others about this app.
Some observations:
- If the authors are being paid of the download of their work, do they really care which app is used to read it?
- If the original work is freely available in its unadulterated form, does it really matter which app is used to read it?
- These authors know that the app is a voluntary decision by an empowered user who has made a free-will, free market decision, don’t they?
- If someone bought a book and decided to use it as a doorstop or a kitty litter liner after purchase, should the author have the right to prevent the legal owner of the book from doing just that?