File 11Culture
Fuck in culture
The word was kept out of print, off the air and off the stage for most of its life. The story of the last hundred years is the story of it getting back in, one medium at a time.
Film and TV
Ratings rules, the watershed, the films that use it most, The Wire, Deadwood, The Thick of It and the night the Sex Pistols met Bill Grundy.
Music
From the Fugs and Jefferson Airplane to NWA, Rage Against the Machine and Cee Lo Green. Parental advisory stickers, radio edits and Christmas number ones.
Literature
Rochester, Burns, Joyce, Lawrence, Salinger, Larkin, Kelman and Welsh. How the word fought its way onto the printed page.
Comedy
Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Derek and Clive, Billy Connolly, Malcolm Tucker. Why the word is funny and who used it best.
Politics
Expletive deleted, big fucking deal, go fuck yourself. Politicians and the word, on and off the record.
The press
How newspapers, broadcasters and style guides handle the word: asterisks, the F-word, expletive deleted and printing it in full.
The gesture
Fuck you without words. The middle finger from Diogenes to baseball, and the British two-finger salute, minus the Agincourt myth.
Places and brands
The village of Fucking, Fucking Hell beer, FCUK, FUCT and the trademark battles over four letters.
Online
The Scunthorpe problem, profanity filters, algospeak, WTF, FML, the middle-finger emoji and why this domain is not a porn site.
Sport
Rooney into the camera, Verstappen in the press room, stump mics, referee mics and the football crowd. The word where the microphones are always on.
Work
Kitchens, trading floors, building sites, tribunals and the boardroom. When swearing at work bonds a team and when it gets you sacked.
War
How two world wars, Vietnam and the barracks made the word universal: snafu, fubar, FNG, FTA and the Partridge rule.
Religion and oaths
Why medieval England swore by God and said fuck without blushing, how the Reformation turned that upside down, and where blasphemy law went.
The short version
- Print gave way first: Joyce in 1933 in America, Lawrence in 1960 in Britain.
- Records followed in the late 1960s, from the Fugs and MC5 to Jefferson Airplane on a major label.
- Television broke on 13 November 1965 with Kenneth Tynan, and again with the Sex Pistols in 1976.
- Cinema arrived in the late 1960s and 1970s, was rationed by the ratings systems, and has been escalating ever since.
- Politics has always used it in private and, since Nixon's tapes, has been caught doing so in public.
- The internet made it impossible to keep out of anything, and gave it a hundred abbreviations.