Did you hear him? Did you hear him?

Oh, the monster overbearing!

Don't go near him! Don't go near him!

He is swearing – he is swearing!

WS Gilbert, 'HMS Pinafore'

Thus, children, did WS Gilbert get away with using the swear 'damme' in a Victorian opera. In front of the Queen. Whether anybody got the real joke at the time is a real question. The joke was that people would put up with behaviour they regarded as antisocial, such as marriage across class lines, rather than put up with un-PC language.

Political Correctness is a moveable feast. Nobody today worries about working- and middle-class kids marrying each other, and hardly anybody worries about mild swearing. But there are plenty of other things they do worry about. So writers have to, too.

This morning, we got into a discussion at my house about 'All of Me', a Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie from 1984. It has Steve Martin acting like this very short clip, because he and Lily Tomlin are fighting over his body. Elektra and I have always found this film very funny, but Elektra has just pointed out that, 'They wouldn't be able to make that film today.' I agreed.

'It would be seen as insulting to other people's religious beliefs because of the silly swami and his body-swapping Tibetan singing bowl,' she said.

'Also, some people would be sure to take umbrage at the fact that Lily Tomlin is portrayed as being so unhappy with her disability that she goes to extraordinary links to change,' I decided. 'Whether PETA would object to the fact that the villainess gets to transmigrate into a horse is another question.'

Now, the purpose of this discussion is not to suggest that the 21st Century is wrong to object to these jokes. Or that the 19th Century was wrong to expect sailors not to swear, although we kind of doubt that they had much success with that. Or to criticise the idea of Political Correctness, which has existed since Noah was a pup. No. I bring this subject up in order to point out that what constitutes Political Correctness varies a lot from time to time, and from place to place.

Sensitive Shakespeare

You can tell a lot about people by what offends them. In the late 18th Century, Shakespeare offended refined, educated people. Why? They'd just discovered their feelings. They called it being 'sensitive', or having 'sensibility'. Shakespeare didn't have 'sensibility'. So they rewrote him. One fellow, Nahum Tate by name, gave King Lear a happy ending. That was Politically Correct.

About half a century later, Victorians decided they didn't like Shakespeare because he was vulgar. These people were terminally embarrassed by their old people for the same reason. Younger Victorians were refined, you see: they didn't like sex talk or swearing (see WS Gilbert above). A lady named Henrietta Bowdler helped out here by taking all the naughty bits out of Shakespeare. Of course, she pretended her brother Thomas did it. She didn't want to admit she'd even read the naughty bits, or knew that they were naughty. The Bowdler family gave us a useful verb: 'to bowdlerise' is to take all the offensive bits out of a text. People liked the Family Shakespeare but were less comfortable with the idea of a 'Family Bible', although Mark Twain often remarked that the Bible wasn't fit to be in a Victorian living room.

In 1952, a woman named Olive Pell did publish an expurgated version of the Bible. It was much shorter than the original with all the sex, swearing, and violence taken out.

The Hays Office

In the 1930s, a group called the Hays Office was allowed to supervise the US film industry. Pre-Hays Office films contained 'shocking' material: interracial love, LGBTQ subjects, frank discussions of social and economic problems, even some bad language and naughty dances. All that stopped with the Hays Office and its Code. Bowdlerisation took place: even married women couldn't get 'pregnant'. They had to expect a 'blessed event'. Nobody was gay, not even Billy DeWolfe. Nobody swore, even while fighting the Second World War. Which is why this was such an important film moment.

How Political Correctness Works

Have you ever heard a person tell a joke about some tragic event, and when the reaction was hostile, ask, 'Too soon?' Making fun of Napoleon? No problem, unless you're French. Making jokes about Hitler? Careful. It may be both too late and too soon. During the Hitler regime, lots of people made jokes as a sign of resistance. In the 1960s, US audiences liked Hogan's Heroes, but Germans didn't. Now, even Germans like it, and The Producers was a hit on Broadway. But many people, myself included, question the wisdom of the streaming series Hunters. I couldn't watch past the pilot, for a lot of reasons.

Political Correctness isn't a linear progression from ignorance to enlightenment. It's a zigzagging path through the maze of public opinions about life, the universe, and everything. In one society, you can't criticise the local religion. In another, you can't even mention the name of a man's wife, because her privacy is sacred. There have been cultures were public nudity is fine, but eating has to take place in private.

Writers of the 19th Century may shock your sensibilities with their casual indifference to appalling racism and sexism. You might think the only thing that would bother them about you would be your sloppy language and revealing clothes, but you'd be wrong. They would probably consider you horribly insensitive to other people's feelings. What you take for outspokenness would probably seem like cluelessness to them. Back then, bursting out with some Twitter-worthy quip was a sign of boorishness. To each age and place its own standards. What do you know of the day-to-day politeness of the ancient Romans, Greeks, or Hebrews? See what I mean?

There's battle lines being drawn,

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong…

'For What It's Worth'

What does it mean that Political Correctness changes with time and place? For one thing, it means we don't get to feel superior, which ticks us off, frankly, because in a very real sense, that's what Political Correctness is about. Political Correctness allows us to identify with the Right People.

There's a flip side to this: individuals who loudly proclaim how 'politically incorrect' they are, aren't saying what they think they're saying. They're saying, 'I have found an easy way to be offensive, and I'm going to take full advantage.' They're being transgressive for the attention. They're also advertising to find a like-minded audience: one that appreciates the kick you get out of saying 'Himmelherrgottssakrament' in a culture that considers that utterance blasphemous. To everybody else, that's just a long, silly German word. But it used to be a bonafide swear (ask Tavaron), and anybody saying it probably felt really naughty and cutting-edge.

The real function of Political Correctness is to define safe parameters for discourse to allow it to take place in relative intellectual comfort. We can't talk to each other if we're always poking each other's sore spots. The more a society is in flux, the more sore spots there are. And the more tricky Political Correctness becomes.

One last example: when I was a teenager in the 1960s, I once stood before a rack of books. The library was selling these discards at a dime apiece. With me was a pastor's wife, a very proper lady. She was visiting my parents, and wanted to take a book home to her daughter, who was about my age and, as I knew, rather outspoken. The pastor's wife asked me what I thought about Shannon's Way by AJ Cronin. I thought, 'That novel's about as harmless a thing as I've ever read. Plus, it's got Spiritual Lite all over it.' I gave her a brief synopsis, and she turned the book down flat.

'I don't think my daughter should be reading about Mixed Marriages,' was her conclusion. The 'mixed marriage' in question is between a Catholic and a Protestant.

Political Correctness: it's a moveable feast.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.04.20 Front Page

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