Naughty boys in nasty schools
Sep. 17th, 2010 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaLast night I finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Or, as I consistently think of him, "no, not that David Mitchell". Black Swan Green was actually a birthday present from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spindlemere last year, but a housemove got in the way and caused it to hide for a while.
The book is written from the point of view of a thirteen year old boy, in the early 80s. It's also written in the language of a kid of the early 80s which, despite my having been only six in the year the book was set, was still the language of the playground when I went to school.
Starting to read it is a bit of a culture shock. You can't, he writes, do this because it'll make you look gay. You shouldn't do that because it'll make you look a total spaz. For all I know, kids may still think that doing your homework is gay, but the world I live in mostly regards "gay" and "spaz" as words which aren't acceptable to fling about as generic insults. Reading it causes a series of minor mental flinches.
Remarkably soon, though, I found myself settling down into the world of thickos and duh-brains, and didn't bat an eyelid at the use of "skill" as an adjective. Being permitted to slither back to adolescent language is something of a guilty pleasure, actually. It's language appropriate to the era, which means it's somehow ok to laugh at the fact that wearing a woolly hat is gay.
Very occasionally - usually when I'm concentrating on something else - obsolete junior school phrases work their way into my sentences. The ones I regard as obsolete are usually either offensive or (as you might say) would make me look like a spacker in this day and age. Relaxing into that environment was surprisingly enjoyable; I have yet to decide whether I should regard this as a bad thing. If I unexpectedly start calling people gaylords or bumboys, you will let me know, won't you?
I'm curious, though, as to whether the author deliberately made the proprietor of the corner shop Welsh (well, his name is Rhydd, nationality unspecified) to avoid tackling what a bunch of teenagers in the 80s would have called an Asian. Possibly he just didn't want to pander to the cliché - fallen into by most things set in the 80s - that all corner shops are run by Asians.
One of the bits of blurb on the cover of the book says that the Times thought the book was "luminously beautiful". Which strikes me as total nonsense. The writing is fantastic, and the narrator does have flashes of really beautiful language. The book, on the whole, though, is grubby. Grubby and angry and awkward in the way that being a teenager is - Mr Mitchell is brilliantly convincing writing as a thirteen year old. He's caught the way social complexities in school life are way more involved, and important, and even life-threatening than an adult can possibly understand. The narrator's use of language changes subtly in different situations; it's very cleverly done. I'd defend the writing against all comers, but "luminously beautiful" it ain't.
Anyway, it's a book well worth reading. I commend it to you.
spindlemere last year, but a housemove got in the way and caused it to hide for a while.The book is written from the point of view of a thirteen year old boy, in the early 80s. It's also written in the language of a kid of the early 80s which, despite my having been only six in the year the book was set, was still the language of the playground when I went to school.
Starting to read it is a bit of a culture shock. You can't, he writes, do this because it'll make you look gay. You shouldn't do that because it'll make you look a total spaz. For all I know, kids may still think that doing your homework is gay, but the world I live in mostly regards "gay" and "spaz" as words which aren't acceptable to fling about as generic insults. Reading it causes a series of minor mental flinches.
Remarkably soon, though, I found myself settling down into the world of thickos and duh-brains, and didn't bat an eyelid at the use of "skill" as an adjective. Being permitted to slither back to adolescent language is something of a guilty pleasure, actually. It's language appropriate to the era, which means it's somehow ok to laugh at the fact that wearing a woolly hat is gay.
Very occasionally - usually when I'm concentrating on something else - obsolete junior school phrases work their way into my sentences. The ones I regard as obsolete are usually either offensive or (as you might say) would make me look like a spacker in this day and age. Relaxing into that environment was surprisingly enjoyable; I have yet to decide whether I should regard this as a bad thing. If I unexpectedly start calling people gaylords or bumboys, you will let me know, won't you?
I'm curious, though, as to whether the author deliberately made the proprietor of the corner shop Welsh (well, his name is Rhydd, nationality unspecified) to avoid tackling what a bunch of teenagers in the 80s would have called an Asian. Possibly he just didn't want to pander to the cliché - fallen into by most things set in the 80s - that all corner shops are run by Asians.
One of the bits of blurb on the cover of the book says that the Times thought the book was "luminously beautiful". Which strikes me as total nonsense. The writing is fantastic, and the narrator does have flashes of really beautiful language. The book, on the whole, though, is grubby. Grubby and angry and awkward in the way that being a teenager is - Mr Mitchell is brilliantly convincing writing as a thirteen year old. He's caught the way social complexities in school life are way more involved, and important, and even life-threatening than an adult can possibly understand. The narrator's use of language changes subtly in different situations; it's very cleverly done. I'd defend the writing against all comers, but "luminously beautiful" it ain't.
Anyway, it's a book well worth reading. I commend it to you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:09 am (UTC)I hadn't really noticed that "handicapped" specifically had fallen out of use here. To me that seems like a fairly non-offensive phrase (but I can believe that for various reasons beyond my awareness, it isn't).
The interesting thing is that the most common users of non-pc terms relating to disability tend to be... the disabled. "I'm not bloody vision-impaired, I'm blind", as my parents' next-door neighbour is fond of saying.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:24 am (UTC)Handicaped/Disable/Less Able Bodied
Heck, Spazz is a derivation of Spastic, which was once a medical definiton, both being non-pc words.
We almost seem to think that the words we use will make the condition less of a problem.
Alas the real problem is more deep seated in the human mind, in that we are designed to group items together as it is a way of reducing process overheads, thus it is in our nature. The name of the group will always end up offensive as people like to be treated as inderviduals.
We exasibate the problem when it comes to things we are scared, don't understand or don't like, thus racial banding. We percieve them as different from us.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:29 am (UTC)At least, as far as I'm aware cretin isn't particularly offensive. I may have missed a memo.
Edit: obviously if you're calling someone a cretin, you're going to offend them. You know what I mean :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:43 am (UTC)[*] This general lack is still presumed on my part (due to lack of evidence). If you call someone on it, do they regard it as an oddity on your part, or are they surprised about the meaning?
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 12:42 pm (UTC)Of course, imbecile has similar problems, being the term (or ex-term, I'm not quite sure) for a specific degree of mental retardation.
I suspect that pretty much all our terms for 'offensively stupid' have less than stainess backgrounds. But I'm not quite sure that saying 'Aaargh, you total offensively-stupid-person!' to my various argument-partners will quite hit the spot...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 01:40 pm (UTC)My cousin describes his hypertonic hand as spastic, but he has CP so I am not going to tell him not to do it. :)
My own contribution to this thread: eppy. As in, don't have an eppy. It took me a long time (i.e. I was nearly 18) to realise that it came from 'epileptic fit' and thus was not a good word to use.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:00 pm (UTC)Yes, ditto. Except by the time it reached us, it had mutated into "heppy", which further obfuscated its meaning.
I only really cottoned on when people occasionally lengthened it to "hepileptic".
See also: flid, contracted from "Thalidomide".
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:27 pm (UTC)But then I'm not sure skillish or flid or ragger are technically words either :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:40 pm (UTC)Really? (via raghead?) That's news to me.
It was used when I was a kid to mean someone who wore raggy clothes - not actually ragged, but unfashionable, cheap, maybe secondhand. Activities such as shopping at jumble sales, or at Poundstretcher, or not having the money for something could get you called a ragger.
So it's entirely possible that this is an independent insult, devoid of turbanage.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 11:52 am (UTC)Being purely associative here, I can't remember if they cut Anya's "Why can't you just masturbate like the rest of us" out of the post-watershed one.