Oedipus in the cybercafé.
The interjection is the part of the sentence where meaning is optional. It’s the part of the sentence where you say things like ‘wah’, ‘oh’, ‘hey’ and even ‘f**k’, and they do not necessarily have to mean anything except maybe hint to the state of your emotions at the time. I on the other hand, don’t believe that they sometimes do not mean anything. I believe that every word we say mean something to us else we would not say it. The meaning maybe small and insignificant in relation to the meaning of all other words we know and use, but it is there all the same and we do use them because we mean something by them: we take them for granted by they are there all the same. Now hold on to that idea and read the rest.
I was in Batu Gajah, Perak last week visiting some relatives (Ain’s side). On Wednesday, I decided to get some work done and communicate with some people online. The net was down at the house so I went to the nearby cybercafé. It was a nice place with more than 40 computers in it. The place was relatively empty with only about twenty school boys on holiday playing video games. Unlike most cybercafés where each machine blares away at full blast, each machine here is provided with headphones so as not to disturb others who want less noise. This means that when they exclaim, others who are not wearing headphones would hear everything. This was an interesting opportunity for people watching, I thought.
About two machines away there were several Chinese boys playing some shoot-em-up game online with their headphones on. I noticed that after a few minutes, they got into the game and forgot others around them. They then started to swear each time something they find exciting happen on screen. Of course they swore in Cantonese. I was thankful for the little Cantonese I know, I was able to make out what these boys were saying.
A couple of the boys were much louder than the others, perhaps because they were less self-conscious or because they forgot that they were surrounded by people, or in fact they knew and they wanted the attention. They began to swear loudly.
At first, they began with longer phrases, like (in Cantonese) “Go home and f**k your mother” – swearing at the screen spiritedly. Then as they got more and more excited, they just used, “f**k your mother”. This particular phrase was repeated at a few second intervals for the rest of the morning. When I left for lunch and after lunch nap followed by after nap nap, they were swearing this phrase at the top of their lungs repeatedly. I wondered if the phrase was really semantically empty. If it was then these boys were very inarticulate and had a very limited range of swear words. To have your swear words limited to just one phrase that was may mean they were mentally retarded, which I thought was unlikely looking at their playing of the video game. So they must be repeating the phrase for a different reason: their attachment to the phrase was well beyond normal. I ventured to guess that these boys, the two in particular, harbored deep-seated Oedipus complexes. Deep in their mind; in their ID, they sorely wanted to f**k their mother but since they cannot do that, with it being socially unacceptable and all,
So here was Sophocles' play, Oedipus Rex being re-enacted deep in the minds of these young boys. They are perhaps, as Freud said, "You all know the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by fate to kill his father and take his mother to wife, who did everything possible to escape the oracle's decree and punished himself by blinding when he learned that he had none the less unwittingly committed both these crimes" (Freud Introductory Lectures (Twenty-First Lecture)).
I left the cybercafé with the phrase being repeatedly shouted at the screen in the room behind me and I wondered if this was possibly symptom of a deeper set of problems in the society. Or perhaps it was merely an instance of young boys misguidedly thinking that swearing makes you appear tough or adult-like. Or perhaps, this was merely a release of energy much curtailed in schools. The other possibilities may have been more likely but I think my initial one had some merits too. Age-wise, these boys were about at the end of the latency period and possibly entering their genital period.
As they played their virtually murderous game I hoped that this was what Kristeva meant by the “primitive effort to separate ourselves from the animal” when she writes, "by way of abjection, primitive societies have marked out a precise area of their culture in order to remove it from the threatening world of animals or animalism, which were imagined as representatives of sex and murder".
Perhaps, I was reading too much into the video game. I hoped that I was wrong.
In case you want a refresher course on Oedipus Rex.
References.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. (16.330).
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.
I was in Batu Gajah, Perak last week visiting some relatives (Ain’s side). On Wednesday, I decided to get some work done and communicate with some people online. The net was down at the house so I went to the nearby cybercafé. It was a nice place with more than 40 computers in it. The place was relatively empty with only about twenty school boys on holiday playing video games. Unlike most cybercafés where each machine blares away at full blast, each machine here is provided with headphones so as not to disturb others who want less noise. This means that when they exclaim, others who are not wearing headphones would hear everything. This was an interesting opportunity for people watching, I thought.
About two machines away there were several Chinese boys playing some shoot-em-up game online with their headphones on. I noticed that after a few minutes, they got into the game and forgot others around them. They then started to swear each time something they find exciting happen on screen. Of course they swore in Cantonese. I was thankful for the little Cantonese I know, I was able to make out what these boys were saying.
A couple of the boys were much louder than the others, perhaps because they were less self-conscious or because they forgot that they were surrounded by people, or in fact they knew and they wanted the attention. They began to swear loudly.
At first, they began with longer phrases, like (in Cantonese) “Go home and f**k your mother” – swearing at the screen spiritedly. Then as they got more and more excited, they just used, “f**k your mother”. This particular phrase was repeated at a few second intervals for the rest of the morning. When I left for lunch and after lunch nap followed by after nap nap, they were swearing this phrase at the top of their lungs repeatedly. I wondered if the phrase was really semantically empty. If it was then these boys were very inarticulate and had a very limited range of swear words. To have your swear words limited to just one phrase that was may mean they were mentally retarded, which I thought was unlikely looking at their playing of the video game. So they must be repeating the phrase for a different reason: their attachment to the phrase was well beyond normal. I ventured to guess that these boys, the two in particular, harbored deep-seated Oedipus complexes. Deep in their mind; in their ID, they sorely wanted to f**k their mother but since they cannot do that, with it being socially unacceptable and all,
So here was Sophocles' play, Oedipus Rex being re-enacted deep in the minds of these young boys. They are perhaps, as Freud said, "You all know the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by fate to kill his father and take his mother to wife, who did everything possible to escape the oracle's decree and punished himself by blinding when he learned that he had none the less unwittingly committed both these crimes" (Freud Introductory Lectures (Twenty-First Lecture)).
I left the cybercafé with the phrase being repeatedly shouted at the screen in the room behind me and I wondered if this was possibly symptom of a deeper set of problems in the society. Or perhaps it was merely an instance of young boys misguidedly thinking that swearing makes you appear tough or adult-like. Or perhaps, this was merely a release of energy much curtailed in schools. The other possibilities may have been more likely but I think my initial one had some merits too. Age-wise, these boys were about at the end of the latency period and possibly entering their genital period.
As they played their virtually murderous game I hoped that this was what Kristeva meant by the “primitive effort to separate ourselves from the animal” when she writes, "by way of abjection, primitive societies have marked out a precise area of their culture in order to remove it from the threatening world of animals or animalism, which were imagined as representatives of sex and murder".
Perhaps, I was reading too much into the video game. I hoped that I was wrong.
In case you want a refresher course on Oedipus Rex.
References.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. (16.330).
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.
Comments
That's coz I will not be held responsible for my dotter's expletive portion of the vocabulary.
Upbringing? My parents only know quarter of my swearing vocab, only the bahasa malaysia and english portion anyway.
Besides, you are only deemed by society as rude when you get caught swearing. Try swearing in your mind, it helps....