11 July 2011

Fornication (The King's Speech)


Chalk it up to infantile, private schoolboy humour, but this scene never fails to crack me up. It's from one of my new favourite films, The King's Speech. In it The Duke of York's speech therapist attempts to loosen him up by encouraging him to impart some repressed, pent-up curse words. In response The Duke ejaculates impassionedly all over the place. I find it utterly hilarious. Are you offended by swearing? I'm not. Not in the least. It is only the insecure middle class, I find, given to outdated bourgeois Judeo-Christian mores, that is opposed to cursing. In my experience both the upper and working classes in Britain curse as if there is no tomorrow. And think nothing of it. Of course it is a direct violation of conventional middle class values. And that's what I love about it. Liberation--"...and tits." Indeed.
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11 comments:

  1. A.E.F.11 July, 2011 07:36

    Admiral,
    I rarely find cause to swear.
    And I've found that when I do a combination of my English accent and overall appearence and demeanour results in highly amused surprise, much laughter and cries of 'say it again, say it again!' Not usually the desired effect....

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  2. Anonymous11 July, 2011 07:40

    Yes. In Russian - far richer vocabulary of profanities. I can be more eloquent and poetic that way.

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  3. Anonymous11 July, 2011 11:31

    I think you've just presented me with the perfect ringtone.

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  4. Cyprian Korzeniowski11 July, 2011 11:44

    Your post calls to mind General Patton's thoughts on the matter:

    "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."

    A relation of my mind often substitutes with the exclamation "Goodness!" when he could have sworn, making him sound like one of the aforementioned little old ladies.

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  5. Stu11 July, 2011 14:04

    One of the best scenes in the film...

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  6. Anonymous11 July, 2011 14:25

    I never did understand why people get so nucking futts over language.

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  7. Derek Warren11 July, 2011 16:53

    Phucking brilliant... oh, sorry, FUCKING brilliant. (I'm so used to my company firewall. Now that's middle class.)

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  8. Hilton11 July, 2011 18:45

    " Hatred of the middle class is the beginning of all virtue."
    Flaubert

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  9. Anonymous11 July, 2011 18:54

    "Liberation and Tits!"

    Sounds like the slogan for the Revolutionary Fogey Tweed Party.

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  10. Anonymous12 July, 2011 11:11

    More links between the top and the bottom classes: their views of illegitimacy? Of divorce? Dressing up? Dressing down?
    Those who don't need to worry linked to those for whom worry is not going to do very much?
    Of course, if the whole country got this polarized, without a stable and sizable middle class, you'd pretty much have everywhere in the world except for northern Europe, Australia/NZ and most of North America but why let that worry you when you're "liberated" and can swear like the squire and the chavs?

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  11. Vesuvian Woman14 July, 2011 10:04

    God gave us profanity to abstain from violence ; ) Except, of course, for when(expletive)really (expletive)deserve it!

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