The U.S. trademark register is full of shit (or at least a few turds)

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been refusing plenty of applications for marks containing curse words on the dubious ground that they are too commonplace to serve as trademarks. Ever. As I explained in my last post, these applications include SHUT THE FUCK UP legal services, KEEP FUCKING GOING jewelry, and YOU’RE AWESOME KEEP THAT SHIT UP dinnerware and oven mitts.

After that shocking exposé, we’ve earned a sweary tour through those scandalous marks that have made it onto the federal register. Applying to register these before the Supreme Court eliminated the ban in 2019 would have been a complete waste of time and money. But they have now officially penetrated the federal database. I’m not including the multiple asterisked-for-your-protection marks now on the register, though those too wouldn’t have made it through during the heyday of the scandalousness ban.

Let’s start with the shitstorm.

Watch your cussin’ language: Veronica Mars ups the ante on the swear jar

During her storied career as a stage, film, and television actress, Kristen Bell has received many honors and awards — she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6225 Hollywood Boulevard! — but, until now, no one has recognized her as the Queen of Television Euphemism. From her thespian throne, she ruled 2019, first as Eleanor Shellstrop in Seasons Three and Four of NBC’s The Good Place, a series in which profanity is automatically and ontologically replaced with euphemisms. Eleanor tries to say things like “motherfucking shitballs,” but they all come out like “motherforking shirtballs.” So, there’s no swearing in the Good Place, except that the Good Place is actually the Bad Place, so it’s hard to tell whether euphemism is diabolical or divine. Then, thanks to Hulu, Bell reappeared as Veronica Mars, grown-up private eye, in Season Four of Veronica Mars, another show in which euphemism is practically a character.

The seven deadly synonyms

In Sinclair Lewis’s prescient 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, the ignorant demagogue Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip wins the 1936 election with the support of millions of impoverished and angry voters. Among the more serious totalitarian indignities of Windrip’s “Corpo” government are the curtailing of women’s and minority rights and the building of concentration camps. Another tactic is the bowdlerizing of language and the forbidding of words and phrases that seemingly run counter to the administration’s noble ends.

Fast forward to the present day.

Flight of the Conchords uckin’ with my shi-

New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, consisting of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, had a two-season TV series in 2007–09 full of inspired parody and goofy adventures. The show’s language is generally mild or euphemised:

So when truly strong language is called for, it’s a big deal. Here, mild-mannered and long-suffering band manager Murray Hewitt finally loses his patience:

Give my revamps to Broadway

 

When Stephen Sondheim was writing the lyrics for “Gee, Officer Krupke,” to be sung in the 1957 musical West Side Story, he was hoping to be the first person to use a serious four-letter obscenity in a Broadway show: “Gee, Officer Krupke—Fuck you!” This did not come to pass. Columbia records balked because obscenity laws would prohibit the recording from being shipped over state lines. In the end, the line was changed to “Krup you!”— Sondheim has since maintained that it may be the best lyric line in the show. Is there any doubt what the lyric would be if it were written today? In the fifty-plus years since West Side Story, the expletive is not only fully accepted in the theater, but roundly applauded.