now only use four-letter words, writing prose.

Anything goes.”

—Cole Porter

            My wife and I are interested in history, so we decided to take a look at The Great, the story of Catherine the Great on Hulu. Of course, it was done in English, not Russian, and we soon discovered that every other sentence contains the “F” word. Even Elle Fanning, who plays Catherine as a young woman, uses it freely.

            We stopped watching in disgust. Surely, the Russian court didn’t use the Russian equivalent in ordinary conversation. In many other movies and television shows it’s the same thing. Many shows feature the “F” word early and often.

            What’s the attraction? Is it supposed to say something about the characters? Such as they don’t have decent vocabularies? Or they were brought up in pig pens? Oops. Didn’t mean to insult pigs. They are actually very clean animals.

            Overused bad language certainly doesn’t add to the dialog. Even mature actors who should know better curse like drunken sailors, accepting parts that have filthy language as a matter of course. Jane Fonda and Steve Martin, are you listening?

            No, I don’t want to go back to the horrid old days when every movie was essentially G-rated, and there was a tsar who made sure that the last “damn” was uttered by Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. But authors should learn how to write good dialog without resorting to the easy out of filthy language. Take a tip from Cole Porter.