HBO and its production of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms pushes its child actor, Dexter Sol Ansell, to curse.
In a behind the scenes video posted to YouTube going over the making of the show’s second and third episodes, Dexter Sol Ansell is shown among members of the cast and production team singing a crude song about a woman shoving her fingers up a man’s butt.
It then cuts to actor Daniel Ings, who plays Ser Lyonel Bartheon, stating, “I realized pretty quickly shooting around Dexter that I was going to have to get comfortable kind of swearing around him. But he was cool with everything.”
From there it features a brief clip of Ansell saying, “I don’t like cursing at all and I only do it because it is my job. Yeah.”
In the show, Ansell participates in the crude song about the woman shoving her fingers up men’s butts and also uses foul language such as “[Expletive] your lambs.”
None of this is necessary for the show and, in fact, the source material does not include it.
Additionally, Father Chad Ripperger notes that this type of language is “vulgar because their reference is actually to some created thing in some manner. That’s lowly by nature. And that lowliness is precisely considered immodest. It’s considered immodest not just because it can be offensive to people hearing it. It’s primarily sinful, not because it offends people, it’s primarily because as Christians there should be a dignity in our speech or even as a virtuous individual following virtue there should be a tendency to avoid things that are lowly in common speech.”
He adds, “They do not fit the dignity of a Christian and therefore they’re immodest based upon the who. So the what is a violation in relationship to the who.”
“Vulgarity is specifically against modesty,” he said. “That’s its primary thing that it’s against. It could be against other virtues too, but it’s primarily against that.”
Father Jerome Magat also addressed the subject and even notes in his commentary, “It’s not uncommon either for our movies and our television shows now to have the use of bad language on full display as if it’s now become a normative part of how we speak.”
Later he added that poor language “lowers the moral fiber and fabric of our society. When we use poor language or curse language, we are speaking to our lower basest instincts, and this is not the elevated, free, and virtuous life that Christ calls us to as his believers.”
Additionally, he noted there are always other options to cursing and swearing as well, “Every time that cussing and swearing is used, trust me, there’s another way to express displeasure or surprise without using bad language. It’s quite possible.”
That is just so gross.
Excellent dive into why thislanguage matters beyond just offense. The Ripperger quote about vulgarity targeting our lower instincts nails it when we're making entertainment choices for kids. I felt weird watching some Game of Thrones scenes becuz of needless cursing, but framing it as speech that lowers moral fabric makes the harm way clearer.