Resistance is Futile
Good Evening. I am honored to be here, on this important occasion.
Each year, a select few are inducted into the National Screenwriters Guild of America and take a solemn oath to protect the American Language.
This induction is not taken lightly, for we place in your hands our what differentiates us humans from everything else on this planet: our ability to communicate with one-another.
The tradition of this swearing-in ceremony is a rich and proud one. As you all know, this oath began when the 112th Congress of the United States in America formed the Working Committee on Communication and Popular Culture. This Committee reviewed the effect that popular culture had on language, pinpointing the growth of many popular phrases, gestures and even sounds to their origin on television. Noting particularly regrettable instances in which TV writers had influenced the communication of Americans, such as the “Beavis and Butthead laugh” of the late 1990’s or the catchphrase “Did I do that?” of the late 1980’s, the Committee decided something needed to be done.
Initially NSGA was resistant to Congress’ overtures: give up our artistic freedoms? What about our first amendment rights?
That was until Saturday Night Live released a digital short entitled “I’m On a Boat.” Initially, the short was well-received, but quickly forgotten. Yet somehow the phrase “I’m on a boat” (generally spoken in a deep voice, often accompanied by a hand gesture keeping the palms flat and crossing the wrists) lingered.
Shortly after this, a TV show entitled The Jersey Shore had a short lived popularity. But in that time many, following the lead of a protagonist of the show, Mike “The Sitution,” adopted such ridiculous “Jersey Shore” names as “The Condition” or “The Appointment.” With these developments, the NSGA began to see the pattern more consistently. It became clear that phrases such as “you are the weakest link, goobye!” or “that’s so Raven” or even “Legen… wait for it… dary!” were not just innocent memes, but insidious messages, controlling our culture, distoring the way we communicate, and ultimately defining our very human connectedness.
I want to tell you a story that I hope will impart to you the importance of your new role as a NSGA inductee.
This is the story of my friend Thaddeus Kirkmeyer. Thaddeus was a Latin professor at Williams College. He raised two sons with his wife Constance, a professor of French Literature. He always used who and whom correctly, even in his spoken English, he collected and restored Eastern-European string instruments and kept several plants of fresh mint, arugula, and basil to garnish his dinners and desserts. He disdained television, and forbade his sons from ever watching it, though as is wont to happen, this rule was less vigorously enforced on the younger child. The older child, naturally got his exposure once he went away to college.
As his children became more immersed in this culture, and Thaddeus eased up in his old age and the increased down-time that being an emiritus professor brought with it, he began to indulge little by little. At first he just watched contest shows while at the gym, so phrases such as “is that your final answer?” and “you’re fired” slowly crept into his vocabulary. Then he let one or two sitcoms into his life, and along with them more new phrases. “I want to go to there.” Or “You killed Kenny, you bastards!”
Soon Thaddeus found himself attendings Lost parties and even filling himself in on the best of what he’d missed out on, signing up for a a 3 disks at a time deal on Netflix. He applied himself to his new discovery with academic rigor, determined to understand the history and development of this entertainment, the way he had worked for so long to untangle the etimologies and structures that had so fascinated him from his first Latin lesson as a grammar school boy in Connecticut.
That was until his stroke. Constance found him in his la-Z-Boy in front of their newly acquired flat-screen, paralyzed. I flew in from LA as soon as I heard.
I learned more about the functioning of the brain in the following 48 hours than a Neuroscience PhD. But all you need to know for the purposes of this story is that languages acquired as a child are stored in one area of the brain, and languages acquired as an adult are stored in an adjacent part of the brain. The stroke had wiped out the part of Thaddeus’ “hard-drive” that stored his childhood languages.
Now, I mentioned that Thaddeus had begun studying Latin in grammar school. And he mastered it at quite a young age. So both his English and Latin were gone.
But not his TV.
His newly acquired catchphrases became his linguistic connection to the world, to his nurses and doctors, to his family. “Gimme my baby-back baby-back baby-back…” became a signifier for hunger. “I’m lovin’ it!” became an expression of satisfaction or approval.
Thaddeus’ entire vocabulary was dependant on the choices that screenwriters had made. Some of those choices helped his recovery, and some may have made it more difficult. But there is no doubt that every single one of them had an acute power to connect him to those around him.
Since then, Thaddeus has re-learned much of his English and some of his Latin, but his native toungue remains Television.
So, inductees, as you take your oath to protect the American Language, I ask you to remember Thaddeus, and to think of us all as microcosms of him. You hold in your hands, and in your diction the power of communication, the power to build and destroy connections through language. Use it wisely.
