The Last Taboo

I've come across the topic of vulgarity vis-a-vis HBO's new fantasy series, Game of Thrones, twice now.  The first time was in a thread at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen: I compared Game of Thrones to Deadwood:

I watched Game of Thrones a bit, and I was actually surprised you didn’t mention the foul language in Deadwood for comparison purposes. Both shows try so hard to beat the viewer over the head with the fact that they are for adults for adults for adults that even a small amount of reflection fosters the realization that they are quite obviously for men between 20 and 35. As a man between 20 and 35, I’d feel uncomfortable watching either show with someone not of that demographic.

The second was from this Daily Beast article, on the plethora of dick-shots in today's Hollywood films:    

No aspect of the minotaur’s penis was left to chance in the recently released Your Highness,

The fearsome appendage, which is revealed at a key moment in April’s medieval stoner comedy, came courtesy of extensive internal debates within and outside the film’s distributor Universal Pictures. How to light the half-man/half-bull’s prosthetic member? How big the balls? The penis’ startling physical dimensions, the state of its, ahem, romantic rectitude—all were subject to boardroom discussions between filmmakers, concept artists and studio executives, resulting in a breakthrough for the R-rated action farce.

“When we filmed it, the creature’s manhood is swinging back and forth between his legs,” said Your Highness director David Gordon Green. “It was actually the head of the studio who had the idea to give him a boner.

The article describes male nudity as "the Last Taboo", and male nudity may very well be the last taboo for mainstream film (I think Tony Comstock might disagree).  But the idea - popular in social conservative circles - that our society has no taboos remaining would be misguided were we to extrapolate from popular entertainment to the entirety of popular culture: just as taboos against violence, nudity, and language in entertainment have receded as we've gradually begun to feel more comfortable with representations of those things, new taboos have risen up to take their places.  A collective exercise may shed light on the puzzle of what those taboos are.

As was pointed out in the League of Ordinary Gentlemen Deadwood thread mentioned above, modern audiences would not be able to understand the foul language of the 1800s; this is why the writers of that show decided to anachronistically use the f-word instead of the bizarre curse words of the real wild wild west.  The intended effect is to shock the viewer; but to me - since I know it's anachronistic - it feels forced and self-conscious (I prefer the way the Rome producers combine the two aesthetic approaches to foul language in such delicious phrases as "By Vulcan's cock!" Here, both shock and exoticism are retained.)

As was also pointed out in that thread, today's bad language is often scatological; a hundred years ago, it was religious.  Since religious faith is largely dead in mainstream culture (making many social conservatives half-right), according the special power of taboo to religious curse language wouldn't make much sense nowadays.  I can freely exclaim "God damn you!" and "Jesus Christ!" without feeling like I've done a grave injustice or invited harm unto my person (unless of course I'm in the company of strong believers who reject mainstream popular culture).  

In its Modernist period, Western culture gradually discovered the importance of hygiene, and curse words became associated with the spread of disease.  Considering this, I would offer a radical hypothesis: perhaps in the great progress that modern medicine has made in eradicating even advanced stages of infectious disease, our cultural taboos have moved elsewhere: inequality comes to mind as one hypothetical.  This could explain why racial slurs cause even the most detached sociologist to cringe but as far as we are aware racial slurs did not bother many of our ancestors.  I'd argue strongly that one taboo on the rise for entertainment is a cultural injunction against representations of racism and other forms of inequality: could anyone imagine a truly racist or sexist film (that wasn't meant to reinforce the taboo) making it to theaters and being received with anything other than total disgust?