Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN
WHEN 1 first saw him across a room in 1947, I knew that Kenneth Peacock Tynan would become the first per- son on television' to use what ' the popular pppers have dubbed 'That Word.' It is not easy, and may even be slightly dishonest, to dis- cuss the use of a word
; which you yourself cannot
print. I consulted my Editor as to the rules of the firm and he advised me with his customary • psychological cunning, If you must use it, you must,' hoping, no doubt, • that this explicit authorisation would implicitly f onvey the. suggestion that a writer of my rich vocabulary would not need to do so.• With some- hesitation, I have decided to follow the ingenious device patented by Malcolm Muggeridge when reviewing Wayland Young in the New York Review of Books which was to use `wayland' as euphemism for the most famous of four-letter verbs. (He might have gone one step further and adopted Mr. Young's title in the peerage for the rldxt most famous of four-letter nouns so as to make a pair •of `wayland' and 'kennet.') It seems appropriate somehow that a man who stutters should have decided to risk the storm by shaping hislips to that explosive word just as I would ,not hAve expected the New Statesman to choose any other issue to print Marghanita Laski's analysis of the meaning of both the terrible twin word, but the Children's gooks Number.
I am glad that someone has at last breached the taboo. The second time it occurs, it will no longer make the air crackle with sacred lightning. Any- Pne• who has ever appeared on a series of un-
4focripted discussion knows the uneasy fear that it might slip out in a moment of conversational indignation. I'm told that Brendan Behan went on television once with the sole intention of hurl- ing it. into a couple of million living rooms only. to fall asleep before he reached the right poetic and revolutionary moment for its release. I trust that it is laughably unimaginable that Mr. Tynan. should, be penalised by either the BBC or the' National Theatre for saying what oft was thought but nc'er so audibly expressed.
There is really only one defence that com- mands respect - -a man mast be allowed freedom within the law to express himelf on the air. on the stage. on him or on paper. For the 'producer. Ned Sherrin, and the controller, How Wheldon, to claim that. the word was essential to Mr. i 1.)nan's point and 'germane to the subject' is simply not correct as anyone who watched the programme can testify. The chairman, Robert Robinson, asked whether Mr. Tynan, as Literary Manager of the National Theatre, would put on a Play in which sexual intercourse took place on stage. Mr. Tynan said he would and went on : 'I
doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word "wayland" would be particularly dia- bolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think any- thing that can be printed or said can also be seen.' Now this seems to me a non-sequitur. Mr. Tynan was not being asked about what could be said but about what could be shown in the theatre. It is not necessary to use the word to do the thing. And even if the introduction of the word could be justified by some tortuous logic, the result has been absolutely opposite to the one intended.
The BBC has now been forced into the position of announcing 'this is not a word which should be used on the air'—presumably no matter how germane to the subject. The next speaker to use it 'before the microphone will be deliberately flout- ing the rtiles and ,Cannot complain if he is pun- ished by being boycotted. None of the newspapers reporting the incident printed the word. So Mr. Tynan, unwittingly, has established that the word, in mass communications at least, cannot be printed or said. Does it not now follow from his own argument that this should not be seen?
Nor can I entirely accept Mr. Tynan's claim that he 'would have used it in similar conversation with any group of grown-up people. To have censored myself would have been an insult to the viewers' intelligence.' Only a boor or a bore never censors his conversation to suit his audience. I cannot believe that Mr. Tynan would have used the same word to his mother, to his tutor at Oxford, to the Committee of the National Theatre, to a group of nuns. As Professor John Cohen pointed out (in a very responsible and sen- sible interview with Julian Holland in the Daily Mail), 'I don't think there is any doubt that when a man says an obscene word in front of a woman he is in some measure forcing her to have a kind of sexual experience with him.' Language should be a seduction nor a rape, or, even worse, an inde- cent exposure. This word has obviously enormous potency (as Professor Cohen also argues) because it has not been disinfected or domesticated by con- stant repetition over centuries. As a propagandist and publicist for radicalism, Mr. Tynan seems to be curiously out of touch with roots that words have in the emotions of ordinary people. He must be one of the few journalists in Britain who could say that he used the word simply because it was appropriate and `I didn't expect' any reaction.' The arguMent that this is `only a word' is also not one which carries much conviction. So are 'nigger' and 'yid' and 'bastard' and 'whore.' It might be possible to use some of these words be- fore some Negroes, Jews, illegitimate children and prostitutes--but it is insensitive and discourteous to assume that you can use them all before all of them. It is by the use of words that man tames and educates the animal within him. In words lie the only true magic—a magic which does not evaporate under analysis. Indeed, the more we know about them the more effectively they work upon us. Mr. Tynan should realise that there arc 'rational people' who (unfortunately in my view and his) share some of the feelings expressed by William Barkley in his ludicrous and irrational Daily Express piece. Few of them are complete Barklies, who in the age of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Lord Beavcrbrook, can declare : 'I say simply that this is the bloodiest outrage I have ever known.' But even fewer are Marghanita Laskies. Mr. Tynan cannot change Britain without their sympathy and support.
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