Not in Front of the Children (3)/25 Hour News
In the first two instalments of our look at the English language’s permanent residents of the naughty step, we examined two of the most unspeakable words linked to sex and race respectively. Now we turn our attention to disability, and the one word associated with the disabled that the utterance of which will generally be followed by the proverbial pin dropping.
SPASTIC
Anyone of the generation exposed to the severely disabled Joey Deacon on ‘Blue Peter’ and whose awareness of his remarkable achievement in writing his autobiography is sadly overridden by the memory of the toe-curlingly awkward live interview with him conducted by Simon Groom, Christopher Wenner and Tina Heath will instantly recognise this word, which remains a medical term applied to specific conditions in anyone afflicted with cerebral palsy. However, it wasn’t long before Joey quickly became a lazy playground insult, along with spastic itself and the abbreviated ‘spaz’. How we, the able-bodied children of Britain, chortled at the charity shop bearing the name ‘The Spastics Society’, ignorant of the organisation behind it and oblivious to the sterling work done on its behalf. Children are a careless breed indeed.
Ian Dury, a man whose own childhood was blighted by the late 40s polio outbreak, laudably attempted to liberate the word from both the medical profession and the infantile snigger with his incendiary single attacking the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons as patronising, ‘Spasticus Autisticus’. The song elevated the disabled to the heroic status of Spartacus, yet fell foul of the radio censor for fear of causing offence, regardless of the disabled Dury’s perfect right to use it in any way he saw fit. Being the brilliantly witty wordsmith he was, it came as no surprise that he should opt to reclaim spastic with such mischievous abrasiveness.
There are various words it’s no longer feasible to use as descriptive terms for the physically or mentally disabled that were once commonplace – cripple, handicapped, backward, slow, simple, Mongoloid, retarded, retard – but spastic is today the greatest verbal no-go. A reminder of how strange it now seems when the word is used in its proper place can come when viewing archive appeals for charities. One from the late 50s/early 60s features the northern comic actor Wilfred Pickles who is pictured at a school for the disabled before turning to the camera and pleading with the viewer to ‘send some money to help spastics’. I defy anyone of a certain age to watch it and hear Pickles’ broad Yorkshire accent pronouncing the word and not burst out laughing.
That’s the problem with spastic, and why I think the word has been forcibly removed from the common vocabulary. The condition itself is, of course, terrible and not remotely amusing, but the word is undoubtedly funny. There’s no getting round it. It’s just one of those words like ‘poo’ that provokes a smirk, whatever one’s age. I should imagine it’s why the Spastics Society became Scope in 1994. However, this only seems to be the case in Britain. Across the pond, spaz is sometimes spelt spazz and is generally regarded as inoffensive as (and often interchangeable with) words such as nerd or geek. It even surfaces in several American products, including a lip-balm named ‘SpazzStick’ and a soft drink called Spaz Juice. There are numerous notorious differences between certain British and American meanings of slang words – ‘fag’ being one, ‘fanny’ being another; but the casual employment of spastic or spaz appears especially startling from a British perspective.
Perhaps it’s a measure of how far we’ve come in recognising spastic as a word to avoid that we find its use in America so oddly uncomfortable. That said, I’m afraid the word and its abbreviations sometimes slip out when describing my own ineptitude at any task I fail at; blame it on my age. And Simon Groom, the spaz.
Petunia Winegum
-
June 13, 2015 at 9:36 am -
The wikipage about the Atlantic Wall over this word is quite erudite. Did you scan it during your research?
in 1978, Steve Martin introduced a character Charles Knerlman, aka “Chaz the Spaz” on Saturday Night Live, in a skit with Bill Murray called “Nerds”. Bill Murray later starred in the movie Meatballs which had a character named “Spaz.”[8] Both shows portrayed a spaz as a nerd or somebody uncool in a comic setting. Thus, while Blue Peter shaped the modern British understanding of the term, American viewers were being bombarded with a different image
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpasticIt seems a perfect example of how the BBC can indeed groom a nation.
There’s an interesting lyric in a song off Bruce Springsteen’s first album in 1975 or so whicjh bears witness that the US language had a different notion about the word. I must admit that Spastic has a very different meaning to spastic to my mind.
“The ragamuffin gunner is returnin’ home like a hungry runaway
He walks through town all alone–“He must be from the fort,” he hears the high school girls say
His countryside’s burnin’ with wolfman fairies dressed in drag for homicide
The hit-and-run plead sanctuary, ‘neath a holy stone they hide
They’re breakin’ beams and crosses with a spastic’s reelin’ perfection
Nuns run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleadin’ immaculate conception
And everybody’s wrecked on Main Street from drinking unholy blood
Sticker smiles sweet as Gunner breathes deep, his ankles caked in mud
And I said, “Hey, gunner man, that’s qucksand, that’s quicksand, that ain’t mud
Have you thrown your senses to the war, or did you lose them in the flood?”-
June 13, 2015 at 10:10 am -
Yes, I did take a look at the Wikipedia page. I have to admit I was largely unaware of the American employment of the word.
-
June 13, 2015 at 2:01 pm -
the toe-curlingly awkward live interview with him conducted by Simon Groom
It was toe-curling indeed…almost as bad as Simon trying to talk ‘CB’ in the States and enquiring in clearly articulated “BBC Polite” if there were any ‘smokies out there’ ! Come back Boogie, Hustle and Bump-all is forgiven.
John Noakes would have never stooped…
…and GET DOWN Shep!
-
-
-
June 13, 2015 at 9:52 am -
From the moment Crippled Son was diagnosed, at age 6 months, as a Spastic, he was refereed to as “Daddy’s Little Cripple’ or a little later as ‘ Sméagol Gollum’ (cos he he’d commando crawl over the carpet moaning ‘I don’t likes it I don’ts’, looking for all the world like the Gollum from the Cartoon Hobbit film of 1979(?) ). I was determined he wouldn’t grow up ‘differently able’ or whatever other euphemism was currently PC for being a Spaz. If the cap fits, wear it-own it-then give everyone else a handicap.
He’s been taking flying lessons and learning to drive recently, so I guess I must have gotten something right …all those years of my shouting across the dinner table “Oy! Tiny Fucking Tim, I know you’re a cripple but you don’ t have to act like one, get your fucking hands straight , your name is ‘Kris’ not Joey-fucking-Deacon!” …..yes I sucked as a parent.
-
June 13, 2015 at 10:13 am -
I remember Ian Dury said the ‘special school’ he attended had a tough love-type approach, that if anyone fell over they had to get themselves up without any assistance.
-
June 13, 2015 at 12:06 pm -
tough love-type approach
There is however a very thin line between ‘tough love’ and ‘abuse’…and I was often way over on the wrong side of that line. Which explains why my crippled kid can play the guitar with ‘normal’ fingers but suffers from a rare form of vertigo and LOUD noises can send him into what looks like a petit mal seziure. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the musical talent of a Ian Curtis or John Lydon.
He does have a cat though, named ‘Bonnie’ -after The Situation ….so the Kid has some taste I guess.
-
June 13, 2015 at 1:23 pm -
Anyone who owns a cat – or more accurately, is owned by a cat – is OK in my book.
-
June 13, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
is owned by a cat
Indeed, a fact I remind him of everytime he grizzles that she, his cat, will insist on sleeping on his wheelchair seat.
-
June 13, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
Cos it’s Caturday and I have my photobucket open on the screen…http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/horta/IMG_6100_zpsra65d30l.jpg
-
-
-
-
-
-
June 13, 2015 at 9:58 am -
No need to apologise for using whatever words you choose. It’s about time that we all grew up, and stopped being so easily offended by mere words. I take issue with your assertion “it came as no surprise that he should opt to reclaim spastic with such mischievous abrasiveness.” It’s not his or anybody else’s to reclaim, words belong equally to all of us. The same applies to last week’s word nigger. The fact that the black community are “allowed” to use it with impunity, based on their “reclaiming it” cuts no ice with me. Also I think it’s rather sad when organisations like “SCOPE” change their name so as not upset a few easily offended folk. It never seemed to bother poor old Brian Rix.
If I feel like using nigger, spastic, cunt, cretin, retarded or any of the other so called “taboo” words, then I will. This is yet another manifestation of the zealous PC brigade at work. It accounts for dustmen now being referred to as refuse collectors, firemen as fire-fighters and so on, which begs the question if fire-fighters fight fire, do freedom fighters fight freedom? Words are only words, like I was told many times when I was a boy, “sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you”.
-
June 13, 2015 at 10:06 am -
I recall childhood days long before ‘spastic’ became an insult. There were children about in what then passed for wheelchairs, and calipers.
I don’t recall any bullying or teasing, but it was a long time ago, & I think there was some isolation of the victims. I also remember polio sufferers at school; it was only in my teens that the Salk vaccine was introduced.
Off topic a bit I know, but I think of the then prevalence of these damaging diseases, TB too; all the sons next door had it. We were expected to have measles, mumps, chicken pox & whooping cough as a kind of childhood rite of passage; ‘better now than later’ was the attitude. Still got the scars from scratching despite instruction not to, but calomine was no miracle drug, it was just all there was. -
June 13, 2015 at 11:00 am -
Yes, I also strongly disapprove of the afflicted being able to reclaim a word and the rest of us being forbidden to use it. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings … they don’t have inhibitions about gay or mong or other words, and they are usually used in a pejorative sense. For me, they really only become hate words if they are spat out with a complementary uncomplimentary adjective – ‘fucking’ being one such.
Yep, I remember the leg-iron equipped kids at school …
-
June 13, 2015 at 11:03 am -
I clearly remember being called a ‘spakker’ at Tipton Secondary Modern, c1972 by a boy who should have known better. Anyway, I beat him until blood came out of his ears. He never called me spakker again. To be honest, the lad developed a speech impediment and a slight limp afterward. Shouldn’t have called me a spakka.
-
June 13, 2015 at 11:53 am -
We had a boy in our class in Primary who had something wrong with him. I can even remember his name. I’m not sure what the condition would have been, mild palsy maybe. Anyhow, he couldn’t speak propely for sure and walked funny. The headmaster addressed the assembly about him and explained… something…. All I know for sure about the explanation was that this boy was under no account to be bullied, and I don’t recall that he ever was, except for once. I saw another boy, who oddly was one of the boys most likely to be bullied because he was a bit of a pansy. Anyhow, I staunchly reproached him and we had a set-to. Unbeknownst to me, his dad had had him take boxing lessons (presumably as part of the anti-pansy therapy) and with a swift one-two he put me down with a bleeding nose. A teacher arrived post-haste demanding to know why I was bullying pansy-boy… Of course, to explain to the dumbass teacher the truth of the matter would have demanded snitching, so I took my further punishment like a man. I think we must have been about ten at the time. The spastic boy never came into the same secondary school as me but pansy-boy did and we actually became school best friends for a few years… Life’s like that.
-
June 13, 2015 at 12:27 pm -
My 3 Lads are less than a year apart in ages (Xians and Family planning..) so they pretty quickly became a ‘crew’ in the playground. Crippled middle son’s wheelchair flanked left and right by his elder or younger brother respectively. If Crippled Son was ‘Sméagol Gollum’ then his younger brother was an Orc (as thick, mentally and physically, as he is wide) , the elder a Nozdrul (come on Pet…). You messed with ‘The Spaz’ at your peril and if his ‘Bruvvas’ didn’t pound you into the ground then “The Spastic Parrot” (sounds better in German) would ram you with his wheelchair in the shins ….and trust me, he could fell a 6ft bloke like that. The old NHS wheelchairs were nothing if not SOLID and the foot plates were solid slabs of metal.
-
June 13, 2015 at 12:35 pm -
“Nah, He doesn’t need a straw, but you might if you keep on addressing us when you should be talking to him” *Arnie Accented English*
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/horta/03.08.99.001_zpsxofv7bi1.jpg-
June 13, 2015 at 1:48 pm -
Excellent phrase TBD, I am so going to nick that. Also, a great photo. Thank you.
-
June 13, 2015 at 2:33 pm -
Am I allowed to say ‘aaaw’ in response to that photo?
-
June 13, 2015 at 3:03 pm -
Am I allowed to say ‘aaaw’ in response to that photo?
*waits for some anorak to tell us all that those are, infact, BR Class 123breakdown ‘Goatbuggerer’ Elec/Diesel Locs displaying the summer ’99 colours of Ruptured Duck Railways *
-
-
-
-
June 13, 2015 at 2:25 pm
-
-
June 13, 2015 at 2:22 pm
-
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }