August 12, 2007 by Susan Hansell.

Anybody watch the 2007 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, a little feature called “The Departed” which I among many others found rather entertaining? Anyone hear or read even one critical attack on “the language” of that film, language which, in just the first five minutes, contained mucho many uses of cunt, fucking cunt, mother fucking cunt, what r u anyway a cunt, etc. etc., all of which words were used “literally,” as insults, insults spoken towards characters by other characters, all of whom the film encourages the audience to identify with as “real” people who “really” talk that way, and perhaps, therefore, “such language” is “understandable” thus “okay”? The words of the film go by, and the audience laughs or whatever, but does anyone think about being insulted by this so-called artistic use of the way so-called “real” people talk to each other, this supposedly real use of the supposedly beyond-the-pale “c-word” now used as the so-called new (yawn!) banal-insult-supreme of these “real” blue-collar “types”? As in, if the Scorsese cops say it, it’s okay, it’s PG-something-or-other, but if an/other writer lifts this word, or any word, up, out of it’s place, out of it’s context, and plops it into sudden, vast relief, then, THEN it’s obscene? Because we suddenly hear it? Because suddenly The Word is not iterated by a canonized “authority” but instead by One who might be questioning said authority, that very authority which may have assigned some of us the moniker cunt in the first place, allowing some Others of us to be/come the users-of-the-word-cunt-as-”literal”-insult, which “means” it’s only “obscene” when we DON’T know exactly who we are, who we’re NOT, and what it’s all supposed to MEAN? If you’re following me, Dear Reader, I think you’ll agree, (and thank you, by the way), that I’ve made a “pretty” “good” sort-of-an-oil-free-point, for now! To Be Continued…

Posted in Oily "Art" | Print | No Comments »

August 1, 2007 by Susan Hansell.

If I had a penny, or more like a hundred million bucks, for every time I’ve been beaten with The Language Stick, well, Christ, perhaps I’d be the richest woman in our solar system, quien sabe? (Or the sorest!) But since no one person’s ever paid me while he or she was busy being judgmentally or (worse) violently outraged by my literary uses of the American vernacular, I’m as poor as I ever have been. Rats!

I finally have some time, however; and in that department I am gaining stock! (Yay me!) So in the next few months on this post, I plan to address an assortment of bouts, both recent and past, with people who have either been “shocked” by MY “language” or shocked by the people who have been shocked by my language! (I love the latter!) And I plan to name names (some famous!), and give dates, (only literally; I reserve the figurative Ones for my husband!); but do come back throughout the weeks, my Readers, if you, you wonderful YOU, are out there, to share in the pain (I mean, the joy!) of the 4 letter Word!

What’s all this about Oil?

Posted in Oily "Art" | Print | No Comments »