More than one generation are being raised by the television screen rather than parents, school, or good books. Therefore, television standards are perceived by many (subconsciously, consciously, or otherwise) as rules of conduct, something the older generation used to describe as proper manners. The “philosophy” of all those commercials with ridiculous aphorisms and primitively thought out recipes for life are fed today’s Telesapiens in lieu of the library of human wisdom. Rather than quote from the classics with their subtle eloquence, which no one needs, our young people quote from Yakubovich [popular game host], Crocodile Gena [animated cartoon character], or Verka Serdiuchka [male stand-up comedian speaking a funny mixture of illiterate Ukrainian and accented Russian in drag]. Excitedly, they tell each other about movies they watched and whose plots can be summed up with an Old Roman economy of words: he robbed, got caught, gave chase, fought, and killed all the bad guys. Television has given us a fourth dimension of reality. Much has been said and written about its cult of violence and depreciation of human life. Suppose we discuss the impact of its vocabulary.
A very long time ago, I visited a Russian village in the upper reaches of the Volga. Every special occasion — wedding, seeing off a conscript or funeral — ended with practically every villager dead drunk (women and children included). People would stagger down the village streets, yelling rather than singing songs, and cursing all the time, using the dirtiest of words [in which the Slavic languages are wonderfully rich]. Today, I am often reminded of that village in Kyiv’s streets, with the air thick with expletives. A couple of well-dressed young men approach, engrossed in a serious discussion and as they get closer, the first thing you hear are four-letter words. They seem oblivious to passers by, old and young. Young couples, looking into each other’s eyes lovingly, exchange unprintable epithets by way of compliments and endearments. Kids playing soccer or girls hurrying to school let off endless strings of expletives. And young beautiful and expensively dressed ladies are no exception from the rule.
But that is street life. Is the situation any better in our modern literature? Hardly. Reading a book, you are sure to come across the same kind of phraseology. In fact, this is not a way to let off the steam or assert oneself for the naive, but commonly used banalities. Regrettably, people of the Church are also among them. The Editors have received several letters quoting from the dirty vocabulary of certain Eastern Orthodox bishops caught in the heat of interfaith battles. In general, our current vocabulary is very much like the ground we walk, littered with garbage and feces. But what can we expect, considering our television standards? Television has taken an omnipotent stand in our society as its arbiter of elegance, even though turned like an old suit. Let me cite a couple of examples.
Increasingly often, actors appear on our home screen just to tell us anecdotes (once we watched them in comedies, vaudeville, or at least as narrators, but that is a different story). Almost all such programs are broadcast early in the evening, when children are sure to be in the audience. And who cares? The actors spare no juicy details or phraseology and every story is greeted with a guffaw from the studio audience. And all this from what is supposed to be our creative intelligentsia, actors we all know, our elite.
There is only one positive hero in our television series. We all know him: a detective or an honest fearless militiaman. These characters are portrayed by handsome well-built actors likely to be accepted as worthy examples by the rising generation. But listen to them talk! Theirs is a street mugger’s vocabulary of 10-12 expletives used on every occasion, in every situation, even when bending over the body of a friend killed by bad men. This is how our television portrays a really tough good man. With the aid of four-letter words.
Why is there no editing of the vocabulary used on the air? I think because television is run by boys and girls raised by this television. These media professionals cannot distinguish between good and bad prose, eloquence and banality; they seldom look up words in the dictionary to find proper synonyms. Why should they? There are a dozen or so strong words good for any genre, ranging from obituaries to top hits. Does this mean we have no hope?
