When the kid finally stood up to the bully --
Imagine if he said, "This isn't karate -- it's Cobra Kai, motherfucker!"
THAT woulda brought the house down -- every damn house it was streaming in.
Nah. That type of language wasn't used in the originals. So existing in the same universe, the show shouldn't use it either.
shareI agree with your objection, but somewhat disagree with the basis of it.
Profanity is sometimes unavoidable, when the heat of your emotions consumes you too much, but at the same time, it's either a sign of instability (not able to control yourself) or immaturity, or bad upbringing, bad neighbourhood, bad friends and so on.
The pop culture of modern times also heavily influences people to become evil thugs instead of good human beings, so that has a lot of weight as well.
It's easy to say cursewords in a feeble, pathetic effort to appear tough. It's hard to actually BE tough.
If you are not used to it, holding the swearwords in can take a lot of effort and be way more a difficult task of self-control and self-discipline than just lashing out cursewords in a childish-looking, wannabe-thug stream of utterances that makes absolutely NO ONE respect you.
Can you really respect someone that comes to a job interview with constantly repeated cursewords?
Does it look like someone is very strong and tough just because they easily say some utterances that are basically verbal feces?
It takes a stronger entity to stand up for themselves without using those words, so it's more impactful to leave them out. Any time someone resorts to 'bad language', I see a childish, pathetic entity that tries too hard to impress others by external crap instead of internal strength.
There's a reason why teens, immature as they are, use profanity way more than adults - can you imagine an enlightened Shaolin Monk meditating and when someone asks them something, they start using profanity like there's no tomorrow? It would look and sound so out of place.
Profanity is easy, wisdom is difficult. Those things are on the opposite sides of a long, sliding scale. We don't need less wisdom in a TV show, we need more.
People seem to think profanity is 'strong', but when you can show the same thing without profanity, it's actually more respectful and clever, and harder to do.
In other words, profanity is like lens flare - if used only when absolutely needed, and sparingly, it can look 'cool' and add something meaningful to the scene or story. But if used constantly, it's just a crutch, an easy shortcut to making something that wasn't very good, appear as if it was.
Adding lens flares to everything doesn't make a movie better, it's just distracting and annoying, just like profanity everywhere would be.
It's like adding ketchup to gourmet food; sometimes ketchup has its place, but when the food is already exquisitely crafted, ketchup will just bring it down to fast food's level and thus ruin the culinary masterpiece and dining experience.
Profanity has its place, certainly, but just spraying it mindlessly, like you want to do, adds no value to anything, and just brings everything down to the level of crass thugs that don't care about subtlety or quality.
And let me tell you, my friend, this show is all about subtlety and quality. Well, the good parts, anyway (I am not crazy about the violent, unrealistic fights or the teen drama, but some of the shots are mindblowing, like the no-cut one-shot camera movement when everyone is fighting all over LaRusso's house - how the heck did they pull off something like that is beyond me!).
👍 Well said.
shareProfanity for the sake of profanity? I don't think so.
shareMaybe if he also pulls his nutsack out and just lets it hang there while he is saying it?
share