Posted May 14, 2014
edit, to clarify: the ban on swearing in specifically art codifies the de facto censorsip that has always existed. Typical Soviet villains were either criminals or Nazis. Brutish criminals used thief cant, Nazis and classy criminal masterminds didn't swear. As Hollywood movies became accessible, professional dubbers made everyone speak like lit majors, because Russian thief cant would be too immersion-breaking and swearing was off limits. It still is. There are thousands of cop/gangster serials where characters commit brutal crimes and/or engage in just about every other type of behavior wingnuts disapprove of, and they still speak like lit majors.
Actually it's not even just the language, but also the tone. The aristocratic wording and delivery, in the french dubbing of old westerns, is fantastic. It's as if everyone was a james bond villain. Or every story told by a school teacher.
And then there were the slang based gangster stories, but what slang ! Authors like Simonin (books) or Audiard (scripts) made old french slang sound a hundred times more intellectual and literary than common language...
Anyway, it is all idiotic and awesome. I'm all for it, sapristi ! Strangely, what piss the fuck out of me, is the bleeping or the ***ing of words, especially in informational writings. Like, "we inform you that we are using the F word here but we hide half of it because while you know that we used it you shouldn't be subjected to actually hearing/reading it". And the list, on that (OPed) article, is the most pathetic caricature of this hypocrisy. I would have expected it from an US media (I was about to comment on the americanisation of russian's public morals), but it's a european one. You wouldn't see this in a french journal.
It makes me sooo mad.
