What the Frak?

Sometime in 1978 my roommates and I started watching a highly anticipated new TV show: Battlestar Galactica (BSG). This was just post Star Wars and it was the first science fiction television show to use digital effects. Everybody I knew was watching this show. The effects were amazing. They had a good solid cast: Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Ray Miland, Lew Ayers. Unfortunately, the stories were aimed at a younger audience, and compared with Star Wars, the villains were somewhat cartoon caricatures.  The plots did not lend themselves to getting me emotionally involved. Then there was the problem of them zooming around the galaxy from planet to planet like they were just popping by the local grocery store. There was no mention that I recall of faster-than-light technology or how they were accomplishing these jaunts between the stars. This is a problem for me. I like my science fiction to be plausible, or at least with a plausible explanation. They were not the first or last television science fiction program to have this problem. I remember a show in the 1990’s called Space: Above and Beyond, which I liked very much except for that problem of flying around the universe like it is a trip about town. But I digress . . .

One of the things that caught the notice of my roommates and I about BSG was that they had swearing. Of course it was not real swearing, network censors would not allow that, but in the universe of BSG there were at least two swear words in use. They were “Frak” and “Feldercarb”. It was immediately obvious what the word “frak” was a substitute for. One of my roommates said, “I bet you start seeing ‘Frak you’ T-shirts soon.” Alas, I don’t remember seeing any. I think the substitution was a little too obvious for network censors, as we stopped hearing ‘frak’ after the first few episodes. That left them with ‘feldercarb’, a word that seemed to be a substitute for ‘bullshit’.  It was better masked and the censors seemed to not have a problem with it. But ‘feldercarb’ was less satisfying, unwieldy, and frankly sounded a little silly. Even though frak was mostly cut out of the series, it did make an impact on me. I even found myself using the word when it felt appropriate.

I remember when Star Trek came onto the scene in the 1960’s. It was a show ahead of its time in many ways. One of the ways was their use of swearing (real swearing). Though it may sound tame today, if you were watching TV in the 1960’s you never heard the words “damn” and/or “hell”. I am not quite sure how they managed it but the words “damn” and “dammit” are sprinkled a through the series. One of the most famous episodes of the original series is “City on the Edge of Forever” written by Harlan Ellison (who just passed away unfortunately). The last line of the episode is delivered by Captain Kirk: “let’s get the hell out of here.” The first time I heard that, I was shocked. You just didn’t hear that on television. But it pounded home the bitterness that Kirk was feeling. Nobody would be shocked by that today, but it was just so appropriate for the character and episode that maybe the censors let it slide.

In 2005 there was a new Battlestar Galactica, and it was a very different animal from the first. It was a much more adult oriented show. The characters were well drawn and the plots were engaging. The heroes and villains were both complex three dimensional characters that drew you into the story. They had faster-than-light travel that, even though it was not technically explained, was at least talked about and had rules and limitations. The word “feldercarb” did not make it into the new series (thank the lords of Kobol!) But “frak” was back. Frak was given its full weight and allowed to flourish in the new BSG. By 2005 the censors didn’t care. But that means it was also less impactful.

So where am I going with all this? Swear words (real or made up) can be effective motivators of the audience’s emotion, if they are unexpected (being controversial makes them unexpected), and if they clearly show what the character is feeling. They can be a punch to the audience’s gut. But it has diminishing returns. The more you use it, the less effective it is. So if you are going to use expletives in your writing or any other art form, try to be creative. Shakespeare was very creative. Check out this, the longest insult in Shakespeare:

“A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service; and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.”

So there. 

(My novel Starliner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or Amazon.com. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October).

Star Liner