I F**king Loved History of Swear Words

I remember the first time I said “fuck.” It was magical.

I grew up in a house completely devoid of swearing. My parents did not swear, or at least not in front of my siblings and I, and the TV and movies I consumed were always age appropriate. When other kids on the playground would mention that they heard someone say “the f-word” or use other euphemisms for swears, I never knew what they were talking about. In middle school I was even in a production of Damn Yankees where we weren’t allowed to say “damn.” Aside from probably being a breach of contract with the show’s licensers, it also was profoundly stupid.

My relationship to swear words changed completely when I was fourteen, on a drama club trip to New York. I’ve been obsessed with New York my entire life, and prior to this trip I had been there at least twice with my family, but this was my first time in the city with any degree of independence. Of course, it was a school trip, there were grown-ups, everything was safe, blah blah blah, but I was a teenager with my best friends in a big city thousands of miles away from home. It was one of the best weeks of my entire life.

If you’ve spent any time in New York, you know that cursing is a part of the soundtrack of the city. It’s right up there with horns honking, ambulance sirens blaring, and people trying to scam tourists. It’s part of the dialect, and as my friends and I walked around that first day in the Big Apple, we heard our fair share of words that we weren’t allowed to say.

In addition to being in the city that never sleeps, my trip roommates and I were also teenage girls with bodies still on Pacific Standard Time and high on excitement. There was no way we were going to bed at a reasonable hour. That night we rode the wave any girl who has ever been to a sleepover has ever experienced- we got our pajamas on, got in bed, turned off the lights, and then just as we approached peaceful sleep someone would say something idiotic and send us all into a fit of giggles, waking us all up and starting the whole process of falling asleep over. That night, it was each of us finding the most hilarious way to say “fuck.” Around two o’clock in the morning, just as the bit felt like it was finally over, I whispered into the dark hotel room, “goodnight motherfuckers,” and to this day it’s still probably the funniest thing I’ve ever said.

I have been an avid user of swear words (when appropriate, of course) ever since, so imagine my delight when Netflix dropped a new comedy documentary series, History of Swear Words. I haven’t watched many docu-series, mainly because I have no interest in witnessing the animal abuse on display in Tiger King and I am a young woman who lives alone in New York City, so that rules out finding any enjoyment in true crime. But History of Swear Words is right up my alley.

Hosted by Nicolas Cage and featuring interviews with an eclectic mix of experts in the fields of etymology and lexicography as well as actors and comedians, each 20-minute episode explores the history and cultural impact of a taboo word in the English speaking world. The series kicks off with top tier swear words, fuck and shit, then explores the use of bitch as a derogatory slur, before rounding out the season with body part words, pussy and dick, and ending on a curse word that’s on it’s way out of the offensive canon, damn.

Each episode is both informative and hilarious, with a really enjoyable combination of the history of how these words came to mean what they mean today and how they’ve been used in arts and culture. This naturally came with a lot of the history of censorship in the United States, which is something that I find really fascinating as well as important. Additionally, a few of the interviewees are British and Australian, which provided an amusing contrast between how our respective cultures deal with swearing. The show also explores how designating certain words as offensive is used to leverage power and assert dominance over certain groups by deeming their language as immoral or invalid, such as how the word fuck came to prominence in the Black community before becoming mainstream, or as weapons against a marginalized group, such as how bitch has been used as a slur both for women and homosexual men.

In addition to loving the content of the show, I was so impressed by Nicolas Cage as a host. As a connoisseur of romantic comedies, I of course love him in Moonstruck, and as a millennial I am fairly confident that his reading of the line, “I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence,” in the film National Treasure was no less than a cultural reset. However, I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a single other Nicolas Cage film. Most of my knowledge of his work is from the brilliant compilation video, Nic Cage Freak-Out Montage. I don’t know much about his process as an actor, (according to his Wikipedia page he has developed his own method, which he calls “Nouveau Shamanic,” which sounds all sorts of bonkers), but based on his performance as the host of History of Swear Words, I would not be shocked if he goes through his scripts with a fine-toothed comb, exploring every possible line reading for each moment, a la a great Shakespearean actor going over scansion and finding perfect moments for varying pace, volume, and intensity.

Overall, I really loved binging through this show. It was a great distraction from the attempted coup in the capital. My one complaint, which is really less of a complaint and more of a request for a second season, is that they didn’t do an episode on the c-word. However, I am still immensely grateful to live in a time where we can go to Netflix and hear a Black woman with a PhD utter the sentence, “‘Dick in a Box’ was really a fascinating cultural moment.’” What a fucking blessing.