Bad Talk

For the last few weeks I’ve been studying the late, great Lenny Bruce. Reading his autobiography “How to talk dirty and influence people” (Published by Play Boy by the way) has been just as funny and entertaining, if not more so, than watching the man himself. Now, Lenny Bruce was a stand-up comedian who made a name for himself by being witty and controversial. He’s even been called a “potty mouth social prophet.” The man was arrested in the early 60’s after one of his shows simply because he used the word “Cocksucker.” At the time, it was illegal to use such a word in public, and as we saw in George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words,” in 1972 you couldn’t say it on television. Nowadays, comedians say whatever the fuck they want and get away with it scot-free, but as early as 40 years ago you’d go to jail for it. Lenny was tried, and aquitted; however, after the initial arrest, his show’s were monitored, resulting in at least 7 other arrests. Eventually this made it impossible for him to work, the bars he used to work were threatened and so they refused to book him. He was banned from Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the U.K. When he did work his material was focused on his trials, which made it boring and depressing. This and his drug addiction ran him into the ground. His daughter describbed him in his last years as being sad, emptied. At the age of 40 he was found naked on his bathroom floor with a syringe in his arm. Some say he was crucified.

Since 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court has decided whether or not speech or expression is deemed “obscene” based on “The Miller Test.” According to this test, a speech is labeled “obscene” based on :

• Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Especially in the case of Lenny Bruce, I beg to differ. What I appreciate about this man is the fact that not only was he funny, he was smart and creative about it, and nothing was off limits. He didn’t use a curse word for lack of a better one, nor to simply be crude. He used it to make a point, and used it to drive his stories. As I’ve said before, swearing is useful - I’ve mentioned how it can reduce stress and reduce pain, but let’s be honest, a swear word can make a sentence funnier, and more passionate. You all know my point-of-view, a swear word is no different from any other word, it’s just been misused and abused, and most of the time, completely misunderstood. This was also Lenny Bruce’s point - words aren’t bad, hurting people is bad.

In “How to talk dirty and influence people” Bruce shares many of his own insights on the act of swearing :

“If I talk about a chick on stage and say, “She was a hooker,” an uncontemporary person would say, “Lenny Bruce, you are coarse and crude,”

“What should I have said?”

“If you must be specific, you should have said ‘prostitute.’”

“But wait a minute; shouldn’t the purpose of a word be to get close to the object the user is describing?”

“Yes, and correct English can do this; ‘hooker’ is incorrect.”

The word has become too general. He prostituted his art. He prostituted the very thing he loved. Can he write anymore? Not like he used to - he has prostituted his work.

So the word “prostitute” doesn’t mean anymore what the word “hooker” does. If a man were to send out for $100 prostitute, a writer with a beard might show up.”

It’s a real hang-up being divorced when you’re on the road. Suppose it’s three o’clock in the morning, I’ve just done the last show, I meet a girl, and I liked her, and supposed I have a recod I’d like her to hear, or I just want to talk to her - there’s no lust, no carnal image there - but because where I live is a dirty word, I can’t say to her, “Would you come to my hotel?”

And everey healthy comedian has given “motel” such a dirty connotation that I couldn’t ask my grandmother to go to a motel, say I want to give her a Gutenberg Bible at three in the morning.

The next day at two in the afternoon, when the Kiwanis Club meets there, then “hotel” is clean. But at three o’clock in the morning, Jim….where the hell can you live that’s clean? You can’t say hotel to a chick, so you try to think, what won’t offend? What is a clean word to society? What is a clean word that won’t offend any chick?…

Trailer. That’s it, trailer.

“Will you come to my trailer?”

“All right, there’s nothing dirty about trailers. Trailers are hunting and fishing and Salem cigarettes. Yes, of course, I’ll come to your trailer. Where is it?”

“Inside my hotel room.”

Why can’t you just say, “I want to be with you, and hug and kiss you.”

No, it’s “Come up while I change my shirt.” Or coffee. “Let’s have a cup of coffee.”

In 50 years, coffee will be another dirty word.

Words evolve. Years ago, a cock was just a bird, but somehow, and don’t ask me how, it’s become a great big penis. Now, whether I’m talking about farm animals, or if I’m cocking my head, or better yet, cocking my gun, those around me will do a double take.The truth of the matter is, any word can be dirty, it’s all about the way you use it.

I want to end this post with a quote by Kenneth Tynan who wrote the forward, because I fear that this post will not do Lenny justice. This quote, on the other hand, does.

Bruce is the sharpest denter of taboos at present active in show business. Alone among those who work the clubs, he is a true iconoclast. Others josh, snipe and rib; only Bruce demolishes. He breaks through the barrier of laughter to the horizon beyond, where the truth has its sanctuary. People say he is shocking and they are correct. Part of his purpose is to force us to redefine what we mean by “being shocked.” We all feel impersonally outrage by racialism; but when Bruce mimics a white liberal who meets a Negro at a party and instantly assumes that he must know a lot of people in show business, we feel a twinge of recognition and personal implication. Poverty and starvation, which afflict more than half of the human rage, enrage us - if at all - only in a distant, generalized way; yet we are roused to a state of vengeful fury when Bruce makes use of harmless fruitful syllables like “come” (in a sense of orgasm) and “fuck.” Where righteous indignation is concerned, we have clearly got out priorities mixed up. The point about Bruce is that he wants us to be shocked, but by the right things;  not by four-letter words, which violate only conviction but by want and deprivation, which violate human dignity. This is not to deny that he has a disenchanted view of mankind as a whole.[…] But the cynicism is just a façade. Bruce has the heart of an unfrocked evangelist.