If I’m being honest, there is no joke as tired as the pointless, excessive cursing. This isn’t to say that I’m opposed to using expletives in art, especially if they inform something about the character. After all, I grew up listening to George Carlin's records, whose views on language go beyond mere shock-jock material and explain that it isn’t what we say as opposed to how we say these things. What we need to do is take the extra effort to understand that few words are too taboo (mostly in the world of terms derogatory to a group of people) to not be juxtaposed into a regular sentence, adding humanity and weight to them.
That is why it’s painful to be around people who don’t know any better and get to a familiar exchange:
“Are we allowed to curse?”
“Fuck yeah, bitch.”
Laying on the cursing in a simple yes or no scenario stops being pleasant the moment you get your G.E.D. and throw your cap in the air. This act is for the kids who still see the world as something silly and wondrous, who don’t understand what it’s like to love alcohol so much that you form a deeper depression. You don’t know any better, but I hope that as you go out into the adult world that your profanity begins to be shaped more as an art form. Language has always been like putty, capable of being shaped and interpreted however the eyes choose to see it. Don’t just stop at “Fuck yeah, bitch.” Go further, understand the weight of a well-placed curse word, so that it punctuates a moment beautifully.
If you want to know of a great example, let me introduce you to Adam Mansbach’s 2011 book “Go the Fuck to Sleep.” Most of you likely know it because of a famous reading done by foul-mouth extraordinaire Samuel L. Jackson, who really plays up the emotion of a parent watching their child try to avoid sleep. There is an underlying frustration in Jackson’s performance that makes this the ultimate partnership of author and audiobook narrator. Forget Jeremy Irons and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” Jackson and “Go the Fuck to Sleep” is the real masterpiece, reflective of Hollywood’s greatest bad-ass doing everything in his power not to shake the baby and yell the title into its face. Because we all know that while it’s our instinctive reaction, it would have the opposite impact.
Now I’m sure there’s a fraction of you that are wondering how this particular instance of profanity as punctuation is something that I adore. After all, yelling profanity at kids is something that is unpleasant and would be considered abuse. What makes this particular instance okay?
What Mansbach has created would be on a short-list of titles that I’d put up for The Great American Satire™. Right now the list only really features The Book of Mormon. To me, there is something about satire that needs to speak to a bigger trend, where the comedy comes as much from the character as it does inform how the audience sees the world, creating an interactive experience where we grapple with serious emotion through the comedy. I accept that both of these have moments that are very reliant on saying “fuck” repeatedly, but it’s not what they say but how they say it.
“Go the Fuck to Sleep” as a title alone is hilarious, reflecting a simple act charged with deeper emotion. If it was just “Go to Sleep,” you might as well put on lullabies and read “Goodnight Moon.” It’s something so innocent and sweet, making you imagine that these pleasant images are making your child sleep with a sense of peace. Everything is pure when you read “Goodnight Moon,” because we have this image of making the child as peaceful as possible.
For Mansbach’s world, it suggests that it is all wish fulfillment. If you’re not a parent, the story may still make you laugh, but I doubt it will be as hilarious. You almost want to just steal a baby for a day and see how that goes just to appreciate a punchline (don’t steal babies, please). I am the uncle of two wonderful nieces. I love them and only want the best for them as they grow into smart little women. As much as you want to just box it up in Precious Memories boxes, however, parents know that you only do it to repress the awfulness, the embarrassing moments that would make the kids never want to go outside for fear of having the world know that they yelled for two hours over a torn waffle.
We love our kids. They’re the future, but we also have to accept that they’re by no means born of rational minds. They have compassion and will eventually see the humanity in everything, but Winston Churchill put it best when he said that “Leave it to children to do the right thing when they have exhausted all other options” (at least I think that’s how it goes). They are naïve, not totally understanding the value of simple acts like sleeping for eight hours and eating lunch. They yell because they are confused, and there are times when you forget they are too young to understand what conservation is.
You need to be a parent to appreciate the occasional outburst of frustration, to know that while the child means well you just want them to fly right for one day. Is it too much to ask? Can’t they recognize that your love has a currency that has a deeper value? Hold onto those pennies, kids. Recognize that you’ll outlive that torn waffle by several decades.
Which brings me back to the book. Why is it okay to use profanity so directly? I would like to think that everything that I’ve just said should give you a sense of the internal frustration of a parent or a guardian who has to deal with kids. When we say “Go the Fuck to Sleep,” we’re not saying it with a viciousness, or at least a permanent one. It’s a moment to vent the frustration through art, recognizing a universal experience that anyone with kids has faced. Even the best have refused to go to sleep, and that is holding the world back from moving forward. Your limited free time rests on the shoulders of this kid going to sleep. Joy is in those closed eyes. “Goodnight Moon” may be a more subtle version of this, but “Go the Fuck to Sleep” gets to the heart of matters more directly.
It’s a satire directed towards adults and one that borrows heavily from the world that they personally understand. It subverts the children’s literature phenomenon by using the cutesy poetic structure to capture deeper anguish. Even if it makes no qualms about how desperately it wants the child to sleep, the way that it evolves from repressed frustration to full-on anger, being yelled from a downstairs couch while watching a movie is a familiar routine. We have sacrificed so much of our day, running on empty before noon, and to hear them crying shows that your joy has yet to start.
For instance, take this passage:
All the kids from daycare are in dreamland.The froggie has made his last leap.Hell no you can't go to the bathroom.You know where you can go?The fuck to sleep.
On the surface it sounds savage, but that’s only for those who themselves are tired and don’t want to deal with children for one whole hour. Placing the innocent imagery of dreamland and froggie into such an angry scenario shows the façade. Adults don’t really care about these cute things. It’s more of a coping device for children in hopes that they can rest peacefully. Even to juxtapose it against other kids who actually are sleeping shows how annoying the child is, not falling in line in the one way that you want them to.
Obviously this is geared at adults, and the joke is very one-note: a lullaby full of cursing and underlying rage. However, that’s the magic of these types of books. They look so innocent in nature. The artwork has a familiar softness that would make it easy for the child to mistake as their own. Still, you want to keep it on your personal shelf, finding an amusing anecdote to remind you that your frustration is not unique. Every parent has experienced it, and there is some catharsis in reading those words. Consider it a form of recognition, of a parent who’s doing everything to do their best, but ultimately has anger issues. Nobody’s perfect, and the anger in this book isn’t a reflection of a bad parent. If anything, it’s a sign that you are a good parent, holding back your anger from negatively impacting their life (of course the juxtaposition of a child trying to do innocent moments like getting milk adds a fun form of yelling at cute things).
If you have to ask me what makes a great book, it’s to latch onto a universal idea that we all have personally thought about but condense it into a narrative allegory that highlights those feelings on a human level. I’m talking about moments of exploring racism in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” or the secret feminism of “Little Women.” I want to write books that capture modernism in such a way that it transcends time, appealing to audiences today and in a decade. You can’t just do that, obviously. You need to get lucky.
There is a reason that I look at B.J. Novak’s “The Book with No Pictures” and think it’s one of the greatest books ever conceived. It takes something so obvious and makes it open to endless interpretations. I almost want to shake my fist at Novak for thinking of something so perfect.
That is why I see “Go the Fuck to Sleep” as a novelty and something that we may be talking about for a long time. It captures a basic human condition in such a manner that even with a lot of profanity per page, it all fits in punctuating the rage that parents have felt. This could easily go south, finding parents having fantasies of strangling kids or outright negligence, but that’s not the point. The anger is passive, and it’s here that everything works. The cursing serves as the anger in your throat, hoping that staying calm for one more minute will get that child to sleep.
How do you use profanity in effective ways? I say that you look at a situation and understand if it calls for this type of reaction. Seriously think about it. Are you just saying “Fuck yeah, bitch” because you can, or are you saying “Go the Fuck to Sleep” because of some deeper pain? I’m not saying that there’s not an in-between where it can be used for more alliterative purposes, but I encourage you to think about language as something more constructive, more interesting to your reader. Once you figure that out, everything is on the table and ready to be played with.
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