Nice writing. Everyone are a bunch of fucking cocksuckers and cunts.
I’m gonna venture to guess they didn’t exactly use that vocabulary in the 1800s. Hell cocksucker has only been around for a few decades
It’s like the only writers HBO can afford to hire are moronic teenagers. Just lazy.
Apparently the word "cocksucker" started to be used around 18something (first recorded around 1890 and it's safe to assume that it was in oral use decades before being printed) and the show is around, wait for it ... 1880.
https://idiomorigins.org/origin/cocksucker
https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_10191/
In the time that Deadwood was set, common use words today like damn, shit, and bitch were actually considered to be very offensive, and period used obscenities were similar to why you might hear in a comedy western these days. Language like that would not go over well in a drama series, so the writer of the series (who was not a "moronic teenager") opted to use modern profanity in lieu of period profanity.
shareThe profanity was definitely exaggerated.
shareGiven the drivel he spouts constantly here on MC, it comes as no surprise that GD5150 is wrong!
Milch's writing is anything but lazy and in fact, much has been written on the subject of the language in Deadwood:
"This focus on language is one of Deadwood’s great strengths. David Milch explains to Keith Carradine that, because of the idiosyncratic nature of the Old West, language was brute and harsh, but often masked with a Victorian vocabulary due the literary education of some inhabitants. “There was the cohabitation of the primitively obscene with this…ornate presentation,” Milch adds. The unique setting dictated the way of communication between friends and foes, as the chance of violence for a wrong phrase shadowed every interaction. The “thickness” of the language, Carradine notes, intimidated viewers initially. Once you get used to the dialogue, as I too had to do, the language is flourishing and immerses you in the show."
https://www.hpten.com/all-content/2021/9/30/theme-character-and-language-in-deadwood
Milch’s attempt to capture a sense of historical distance with the speech patterns of Deadwood succeeds marvelously, but not because the dialogue achieves true realism or gritty accuracy. Deadwood’s characters don’t talk quite like us, but neither do they talk like Dakota scalawags in 1876 probably talked. Instead, the show’s fidelity to the idea that the past is a foreign country results in dialogue that is just slightly stilted and formal, even as Deadwood’s characters say the earthiest and vilest things. The combination yields the most deliciously literary television dialogue I’ve ever heard.
https://slate.com/culture/2004/05/deadwood-s-linguistic-brilliance.html
"In most dictionaries, cocksucker, which is said eight times in the first episode, dates to around 1890."
https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_10191/