The Fredösphere

Firefly came up in yesterday's post.  The use of Mandarin for cussing makes sense on its own, if Daniel Wolf is correct in asserting pidgins develop first for swearing and trading.  That's serendipitous, since Mandarin cuss words also solve a major problem for anyone trying to portray a military (or para-military) subculture convincingly on television:  getting the foul language past the censors.

Battlestar Galactica has the same problem.  The original series wimped out with incongruously clean dialog (although it is quite congruous with other aspects of the show's prettified style -- heck, even the guys had Farrah Facett hairdos).  The new series solves the problem with a bold, risky decision to use the word "frak" for the universal expletive.  Does it work?  I'd say pretty well, although the ol' fourth wall crumbles a bit every time the word is spat out.  By some amaaaaaazing coincidence, a human culture separated from earth by millenia just happens to have developed modern English in parallel with us, and theirs is exactly like ours except for one little word, "frak."  Oh, and they say "aboot" instead of "about."  But that's it.

Which brings me to my next point:  I'd like to recommend you try a little game I play while watching BG:  when you hear the word "Cylon," mentally substitute the word "Canadian."  It's fun!  What adds interest is the fact that the show is filmed in Vancouver and thus has more than its fair share of Canadian actors.  Listen to those accents -- hey, I'll bet that one is a secret Canadian (i.e., Cylon) fifth-columnist!  Heck, the fleet is crawling with them.  What horror!

You'll want to see Colby Cosh's typically atypical take on the Firefly phenomenon.  Also, see the official site for the new BG.  The mini-bios they crank out for the characters crack me up.  I love the description of Dr. Gaius Baltar, the despicable turncoat from the first season:  "Stylish, handsome and idiosyncratic, he offers the affected humility of the truly arrogant."  Wow!  He's just like me!

UPDATE:  The online liturature on invented expletives is vast.  Start by consulting the Wikipedia entry for satisfying your frakkin' faux foul language needs.