OMG!: Profanity in a Profane World

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Alexander Carpenter in Editorial

Recently our Student Services and Dramatic Arts Society co-presented a free showing of Lyrics from Lockdown, a spoken word performance by Bryonn Bain. Mei Ann Teo, the director of the show, prefaced the show with a disclaimer: “This is a true story of wrongful imprisonment. There are times when profanity is appropriate to describe profane conditions.” And the saga that Bryonn shared that Sunday, of systemic racism, negotiating the various responses to it in the black community, as well as the thoughtful death row letters of a seventeen year old who was unjustly convicted, a case championed by Amnesty International, was certainly more serious than the missed quiz question I just heard a student utter a flippant “f**k” over.

But apparently, despite the director’s caveat, someone wrote in to the president to complain that they are heard some bad words: damn, piss, s**t, etc. (A smart actor, Mr. Bain mumbled some of them, emphasizing the choking injustice.) Not only that, but a few other folks on campus as well have objected to the show because of the language. As usual, no one has actually stood up and talked to the artists involved.

These mostly anonymous censors certainly have a right to express their taste, and I think that a good education should broaden folks’ vocabularies beyond the dullard’s default to a couple-a friggin adjectives. But by focusing on less than one percent of the words, they reveal that they missed the social justice message of Lyrics from Lockdown. Naturally, given our increasingly diverse student body, all of the tens of students I’ve asked about the show praised it highly. One student I heard talking to another faculty member said it made her very proud to be at our college.

It just doesn’t strike me as in good faith (in all senses of that phrase) to listen to a man who tells a story about being wrongly locked up for two nights and three days and then at the end say: “Um. Not cool, dude. You swore.” But these folks aren’t even facing the artists. They are complaining to others. This sort of behavior is not conducive to community, particularly one that wants to pursue conversations about faith, learning, and Adventist identity. The last I checked, talking over folks’ heads is not a conversation.

Of course, as a member of the audience, I felt that the lyrical profanity expressed the inanity and insanity. Bain gave us a gray world not shown by Hannity, but, it is a true reality, for far too much of humanity. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” I’m personally glad for the chance to see and hear from New York while cloistered in Angwin. What a profane miracle.

Yes, sometimes seeing the world through anOther’s eyes can be shocking. But sometimes, that’s the point. It definitely was in Lyrics from Lockdown. It was a free show, no one was required to attend, and Bryonn Bain was a guest on our campus. Unless the folks objecting have also spent three days in New York jails because of the color of their skin or worked within the soul-sucking prison industrial complex, I imagine we probably shouldn’t be telling guests how they should describe their experiences with racism and wrongful imprisonment. There was nothing tasteless in the truth that Mr. Bain shared about how he was profiled and dehumanized. Now if someone is more offended by swearing than racism and injustice, at least going public about that confusion of priorities is a good place to start a conversation, I guess.

There is a quaint myth out there that Christians don’t use strong language. But in fact, the Bible spits plenty of vulgar language. For example, Isaiah writes, and the Authorized King James Version committee of scholars translates, “Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? (36:12)” Oh, snap! And Saul calls Jonathan a “son of a bitch,” which I find repulsive, but it fits with the narrative that’s unfolding in 1 Samuel 20 of the first king of Israel destroying everyone around him. There’s more. But most importantly, Jesus calls us to care about captives and even bring freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4). And Bryonn Bain, who uses his Harvard Law degree in his prison reform work, seems to be doing the work of the Lord. And from my reading of the Gospels, especially Matthew 5:22, as long as someone is not swearing at another person, Jesus really cares less about what we say, and a lot more about what we do.

This gets back to an old problem: prooftexting in which folks focus on a word or link random verses while losing sight of always, already present truth. All too often we not only do it with the Bible, but also with folks around us, taking them out of context, and looking for a way to dismiss messages that don’t fit with our sheltered experience of the world. As the great Christian pastor Tony Campolo likes to say, “I have three things to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

After all, although we teach nineteenth century literature, history and visual arts here, Pacific Union College is not a finishing school. But we do have some work to finish. And a world of actual injustice, not merely words, to get upset about.