Profanity and such

Profanity, this day in age, is a fascinating topic to consider. On one hand, I think a lot of us like to believe we’ve evolved from the prude-ness of earlier generations. In some respects I think that can be proven true—MTV anyone? We certainly appear to not only accept it more, but to actually generate it, encourage it. Profanity sells, so why not capitalize? Of course, profanity has always existed in our society, and in all societies before us, so it really isn’t anything new. Yet it somehow retains its ability to shock and entertain us all the same.

When beginning my reading of Lysistrata, I was prepared for something, mmm colorful (we’ll put it that way). What I got was a total shock that I wasn’t at all expecting. Not to say that I was offended, just a taken by surprise a little. It was simply the blunt, matter-of-fact the play is written way that left me in awe. Like for some reason, because it was ancient, it is supposed to be all proper and discreet. Ha! What a crock. It is like those kids that walk around the playground when you’re in elementary school and tell you they know a dirty word, and then try and convince you, proudly, that their older brother or sister, or perhaps some drunk uncle of theirs coined it. We have this notion that profanity is a recent thing we bad-ass Americans brought into the world along with our democracy and chicken-fries. Oh how wrong we are. Those people obviously hadn’t read this play.

What really got me thinking were all the different translations we read in class. How some were blatantly more vulgar than others. Translations differ, as is their nature, but I have to wonder how much is the difference is due to linguistic interpretation, and how much has to do with the translator being scared witless to write the word ‘dick’ in their book. The Sarah Ruden translation seemed to me the most contemporary, conversationally. I don’t know maybe someone in the sub is having such a conversation right now. Some were more, not necessarily discreet, but maybe more eloquent than others i.e. “point my slippers at the roof” “Put my legs in the air”. Either way, they all got the point across.

I like to imagine, what if I were the sort of person who would actually be offended by reading this? A. What in particular would offend me B. Would it offend me so much that I would have the courage to walk out of class and humiliate myself and C. I would wonder why this surprised me after having learned all I have about the Greeks in the first place? Of course, this is difficult to imagine because I find it so utterly amusing. But would anyone have the bones to attempt a translation that cut out all profanity? I don’t know maybe someone has tried, maybe we heard that attempt in class. But it brings up the question of censorship.

Like we well know, there is a lot of profanity floating around in our society. And naturally we have developed censorship methods. Music has clean versions for sale, for example. This gets a lot of people because they believe that a song should be heard as it was originally intended, instrumentally and lyrically. They feel that something of the piece is lost in the alteration of the “unsuitable parts”. And I totally think that is true in a lot of cases. After all, profanity is a means of expression, and who’s to draw the line between what is appropriate and what isn’t? It is excruciating to think what would happen to such a classic work of literature like Lysistrata, if it were to be censored. All the meaning would be lost, along with most of the entertainment. Plus reading it is a great indication of our past, and that saying how you’re no more vulgar than the ancient greeks holds so true.