Irony

Off-topic
1

1977, the year of the Queen’s silver jubilee. It seems so long ago. Street parties, bunting, Watneys Party 7 jumbo cans of alleged beer… and punk rock first making the headlines.

Many of you will have seen the film of the Bill Grundy interview (It’s easy to find on YouTube) in which a middle class middle aged presenter openly admitted to being drunk, flirted very inappropriately with a very young Siouxsie,a nd encouraged the Sex Pistols to say something outrageous. And when one of the young lads in the band swore, the headline the next day was “The Filth and the Fury”. (To be fair, Grundy lost his job shortly after.)

In 1977, the Sex Pistols’ album, “Never Mind the Bollocks” was on display in a record shop window in Nottingham. It caused an uproar. It was debated in the City Council chamber. The local (right wing) newspaper, The Nottingham Evening Post, had front page stories. It filled the airwaves for BBC Radio Nottingham (“no mind too small”).

It was pronounced “disgusting” and “offensive” to have the word “bollocks” on display in a shop window.

The manager of the shop responded with spirit. The word meant any sort of small ball, and not just “testicles”. It was also a 16th century slang word for “parson”. The fuss just showed that the “good citizens” had dirty minds. No one believed him, but it livened up the local radio station phone ins for a bit.

The shop manager offered a compromise: he would cover the offending word with a price sticker.

Fast foward a few years. 30 and a bit, to be precise. The very same shop now has the 30th anniversary reissue of the same album, on vinyl, in the same cover, on display in the same window, and no one bats an eyelid. And the price sticker is over the word “Mind”!:smiley:

And of course punk was a reaction to the “inaccessible” rock of the “dinosaurs”… which makes it amusing that thirty years after the event, the Sex Pistols and Led Zeppelin both did their reunion gigs in the same year!

2

This kind of thing always makes me think two contradictory thoughts.

The first one is: Where will it end. If our capacity for offence has changed so much over the last 30 years, what outrages must the next generation have to think up in order to shock the generation before (as is thier duty).

The second one is: I’m sure I read some quote somewhere about Plato (or somebody) making some comment about how outrageous the younger generation was. If the younger generation really was that outrageous back then then we all should have imploded by now as the younger generations became increasingly more outrageous/lacking in moral fibre and so on.

I don’t really think that this has happened. So it’s a good job that these things are socially constructed so that we can continually negotiate and renegotiate what is going to be offensive for the older generation so that they younger generation can feel rebellious and outrageous.

3

Yes. People have been making essentially the same complaints about language change for millenia, but we have not been reduced to grunting as they feared.

Ogden Nash has it this way:

Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;
We’re in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age,
A slovenliness provides its own excuse age,
Where usage overnight condones misusage.
Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.

4

Luckily smoking is getting banned all over the place now.

5

Yes, and there are undoubtedly cycles of what are considered offensive / outrageous. It has not been a continuous downward path in the last century: the Victorian age was possibly a high-point of prudishness (at least in some aspects, although many a blind eye was turned to things which we would find unacceptable).

My kids seem very prudish about many things - they are telling me “no sex before marriage” (due to religion and disease, although they’re growing out of religion and their urges haven’t quite kicked in yet!), and I often get shouted at (“DAD! Put some trousers on before your draw the curtains”).

On the topic of balls, one of my favourite expressions is “balls out”, used in the sense of trying very hard / going fast - e.g. “He was going balls-out when he UPDed on an ant”. The prudes alwys reprimand me, but it’s a quite inoffensive expression.

A little kudos to the first to post the derivation of “balls out”.

Wassail!

6

I haven’t looked this up, so an honest guess: is it to do with the pair of balls that spin round on a steam engine? They are some sort of regulator, and operate centrifugally. As the engine spins faster, so does the shaft that the balls are on. They are thrown outwards and this affects the rate of rotation in some way. Thus a steam engine that is running fast will have its “balls out”.

Do I win £5?

P.S. Wassail? Wassail? I’ll tell you wassail: it comes in bottles, brown and pale. (Kipper Family)

7

No, just kudos :smiley: Centrifugal governors.

P.P.S. Wassail, wassail all over the town, our toast it is white and our ale it is brown. (Stroud Mummers)

8

Abseil, abseil, it’s such a let down
Our rope it is white and our trousers are brown

9

PS

Income’s high for doctors?

Yes, but the hours are bad.

10

Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yes, it’s like goldy and bronzy only it’s made out of iron.