ABSTRACT
The proliferation of profanity in the public prints, as well as on television and in the cinema, is in part method and in part mindless imitation in accordance with the compulsions of fashion and keeping up with the noisy neighbors. What is said in the movies gets reproduced, mostly without benefit of bleeps, on TV screens. Documentaries–which might in the past have cut the rougher frames in the reels-and-reels of street-talk they filmed before editing the montage of the final version–now bask in the reputation of the verismo of the hand-held camera and the all-attentive microphone. Even the book-reviewers on otherwise staid and highbrow literary pages go out of their way to spot the good bits in long and rambling novels. As the faecal imagery bobs up and down in the pages of the Times, the question of who is more obsessed with the unsavories is a close-run thing. Or it could be that scatology is infectious.
