I just saw a TV commercial for TGI Friday’s (a chain of bar/restaurants) that uses the word “hell”. You know, “hell”, as in Hades, Shayol, the Underworld, the place where the Devil hangs out. The word is used in the phrase “Hell, yes!”, and its mentioned in passing as something the patrons of this establishment might say in response to an inquiry about going to Happy Hour.

“Hell” isn’t much of a curse, or a dirty word, or foul language. It has no sexual or scatological uses. But its use in polite company (and certainly in TV commercials during the news hour) has been quite proscribed in the past. Usually it’s substituted by the absolutely ridiculous “heck”, although I never did understand why. “Hell” is a proper noun, it’s in the Bible, and it certainly doesn’t qualify as a violation of one of the commandments. Nobody but the Church Lady or Gomer Pyle or Aunt Bea and other such stereotypical goody two-shoes prudes says “heck” any more. In fact, fairly or not, it smacks of pious hypocrisy. It’s kind of like “gol-darn” or “durn” or “dang”. People who resort to those euphemisms draw more attention to what they’re not saying than if they just came out and said “damn” or “god damn” up front.

We hear this kind of language all the time on TV now, especially in prime time drama, but commercials are usually carefully crafted to not offend anybody. To hear “Hell” dropped casually in a restaurant commercial is a first for me. We have crossed some kind of line.

The whole idea of “dirty words” or “foul language” never made any sense to me. Sure, I can imagine religious folks being offended by casual use of a word their faith forbids to be uttered. Likewise, I can see how terms referring to bodily functions and certain body parts might be considered rude, but substituting medical terminology for such perfectly natural words is certainly pretentious. In Victorian times, people said “limb” instead of “leg”, or substituted “bosom” for “breast” because they were really tight-assed, and surely “Hell” must fall into a similar category. I remember as a kid, the title of the film “To Hell and Back” provoked us all to giggles, but surely we’ve outgrown that by now.

I guess every age has its taboos, “nigger” is now considered very bad manners, and it certainly is when used as an insult, but refraining from uttering it does not make racism magically go away. The same can be said for such terms as “faggot” and “queer”, “cripple” or “retarded”, all terms which are perfectly acceptable when used in other contexts.

We spend too much time worrying about the hidden meanings of words. Maybe hearing “Hell” in a fern bar commercial is a good thing.