CAIRO - There are so many great movie quotations, which echo in the minds of many cinema lovers. Like nearly everyone in America, Rhett Butler's (Clark Gable) famous pronouncemented: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" as he left Tara in "Gone with the Wind"(1939) seemed the very essence of manly disdain. His complete contempt for the manipulative Scarlett O'Hara's (Vivien Leigh) cries of "What shall I do? Where shall I go?" showed that he had reached the limits of human endurance with O'Hara's perpetual scheming. Men everywhere applauded his sheer bravado in telling O'Hara off. The word "damn" itself in the aforementioned quotation was in itself a shocker, since it was quite profane for films of the time, but it expressed perfectly the hatred that Butler felt towards O'Hara. As the years went by, the word "damn" became rather tame, and some films even faced a lot of backlash for excessive use of profanity, but this usually was not their biggest problem anymore. High-quality cinema is about pursuing honest depictions of life; you won't find swear words (along with the number of cigarettes, domestic violence and urban poverty) in any media quite like you will in movies. The wonderful language of films, which we have become accustomed to only rings true in the realm of the cinema. Rarely, if ever, does this language , whether verbal or non-verbal, actually sound like anything like what people say in reality, but we just go with it. Real-life dialogue is a lot less polished. Or rehearsed, for that matter. Real people tend to trail off, say "umm" and "uhh," as well as use a lot of filler phrases to close space between their thoughts – because most people are still thinking of what they're saying as they're saying it. In fact, it is quite likely that if a film was actually able to reproduce "real speech," the dialogue would be so filled with tag words and pauses as to be completely boring. Not even to mention the much more judicious use of profanity that real people use that would dwarf any film. Still, there are many movies nowadays that have endured a lot of backlash for their too-close portrayal of reality, but after all the horrible scenes during the Egyptian revolution, all those so-called "reality" films don't come close to it. Regardless, the language never seems to ring true in feeling and never really will with a censorship. Egyptian films like "Hena Maysara" ("When Things Get Better," 2007), "Cabaret" (2007), "Al-Ghaba" ("The Jungle," 2006), and many others have attempted to give a picture of "gritty reality," especially that of the streets, but how "true" can these be without the actual "real language" of the streets? Language, like the rest of the dialogue, the performances and the production design, contributes to the story. Martin Scorsese's "Casino" (1995), a flashier younger brother to Scorsese's piece de resistance ("Goodfellas," 1990), tells the story of the rise and fall of a mobster casino owner in Vegas and edges out the antics of Henry Hill and friends because it upped the ante of enfolding profanity into common everyday language. Swearing was a way of life for these men (it was seldom a story about women), and not just an expression of anger or contempt. Since their entire lives and reason for being was based on force and violence, forceful and violent language was absorbed into their general communication like to encode a specific kind of pragmatic linguistic discourse into the characters. Hence, psychotic hit man Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci), during one of the many voice-over monologues, calls our attention not to "just another fat guy leaving with a suitcase," but "just another fat four-letter word." Then, in Egypt, there was a film like "Awqat Feragh" ("Spare Time," 2006), was praised for its portrayal of Egyptian youth, even though its language lacked that street authenticity. Take a film like "Superbad" (2007). That's schoolkids, huh? Get them away from their parents and there's no telling what they'll be up to. Fake ridiculous IDs, joy-rides with understanding cops, spending the whole night trying to get booze for a party, and then missing most of it as a consequence. But mostly, they'll be flexing their newly adult muscles by doing one of the easiest things you can do, but were never allowed to growing up - swear. You might not remember the Apatow, produced 2007, coming-of-age comedy being so full of swearing, but unlike "Goodfellas" or "Raging Bull," the language was rarely a stand-in for anger, it was just kids discovering their grown up voices. But exposure to profanity continues to be a concern for parents, media researchers, and policy -makers alike. A review of the relevant literature explores the nature, use, and psychology of profanity, its potential social effects, and its prevalence in the media. A content analysis was conducted of the ninety top-grossing domestic teen films in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (30 from each decade) in the US, based on domestic gross box-office amounts. Results indicate no change in preferences in types of profanity used over the decades. Teen and adult characters use similar profanity types; however, teens are more likely to use dirty words than adults, whereas adult characters use milder words. Male characters use more profanity than female characters, and although both sexes frequently use mild profanity, females show a higher percentage of this type and males have a higher percentage for using the seven dirty words. In order for a film to effectively portray the world, or "slice of life" it sets out to, there are certain prerequisites. A film ostensibly set in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower couldn't get away with having its skyline showing New York City or Tokyo. It would violate the believability of the film, and in doing so undermines the suspension of belief that all fiction runs on. Without the suspension of belief, you no longer have fiction, but a poorly put-together series of entertaining or not-so entertaining lies. No one would be able to suspend belief in stories like that of Goha/Nasruddin Hoja if he rode a Chinese dragon instead of a donkey, because it violates the internal logic of the character. In the same way, the language of a film – including its necessary profanity – is part of its background, like its cinematography. An uneducated street child speaking in perfect Classical Arabic is nonsense; his background would call for a courser kind of speech. So, in these times when people are ever-the-more critical of cinema, there is a definite need for an injection of greater realism. This is not saying that all characters should be swearing up a storm, but if their background calls for it, this must be fulfilled.
