Swearing: The Sopranos, Uncensored

the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo

Living in New York City, I tend to look at speech patterns a little differently than I assume most other people do. A bit more to the point, I take swearing a bit too lightly. Years ago, I was living in Boston while attending one of the many universities there. Many of the other students were from the New England area, and had the New England accent. Worried that it might rub off on me – and having a severe aversion to saying “wicked” to describe anything – I thought about how to hold on to my NYC tone and inflection. I came up with the word “fuck”.

Where I was from, the word is bandied about almost as though it’s not even that bad a word, just another regular word in everyone’s vocabulary. This, of course, was not entirely true, nor was it close as to how my family raised me – but from different social interactions, on different levels, I found that the word was prevalent enough, and had enough punch to it in order to drive home the NYC diction I cared so much for. And so, I began using the word a lot more in my day to day routine and I never once said “wicked”, or talked about “pahking the cah”.

Since then, I have never personally looked at swearing as too grievous an offense – I understand it’s not for mixed company, but they are, after all, just words, and in this country we have the luxury of free speech. So, I may not use swears in front of children or at work – but I truly feel that using swear words is a perfectly acceptable means of conveying message. Case in point:
Back in February, director Victor Solomon took the entire series of The Sopranos and recut it down to (essentially) just the swear words from the 7 years that it ran. Anyone who watched the show might think that a video of all the swearing from a show like this might be hours long – but it tops out at just over 27 minutes. I don’t know why exactly, but I find this extremely interesting to watch. It’s great to see the different inflections used in different situations, completely out of context.

Remember: this video is NOT safe for work, family time, or maybe watching in general.

- Goodchild

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