Stream It Or Skip It: ‘History Of Swear Words’ On Netflix, A Nicolas Cage-Hosted Exploration Of How Swear Words Came To Be

Swearing is cathartic. Swearing is funny. Swearing is, dare we say it, pretty healthy. It’s all sorts of things wrapped up in the expression of words that are normally thought of as taboo. But where did these words come from, and how did they become swear words? A new Netflix comedy series takes a look at the origins and uses of these words, hosted by an actor who uses them on camera all the time: None other than Nicolas Cage.

HISTORY OF SWEAR WORDS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The camera pans in on host Nicolas Cage, glaring into the camera, as music swells. Then he says, “The fuck are you looking at?” Cage then launches into “fuck”-laden phrases from movies and popular culture, including Bill O’Reilly’s “Fuck it! We’ll do it live!”

The Gist: History Of Swear Words is a funny but educational look at the etymology of various swear words, how they came to be swear words, and why they work so well as swear words. Each episode focuses on a single word: “Shit”, “Bitch”, “Pussy”, “Dick”, “Pussy” and “Damn”. But they start off with the biggest swear word of them all: “Fuck”.

“Of all the swear words in the English language, none is as malleable as ‘fuck.’ It expresses the entire range of human emotions,” says Cage in his very Cageian over-the-top manner. And over the next 20 minutes, via interviews with comedians and actors like Jim Jefferies, London Hughes, Nick Offerman, Sarah Silverman, Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Zainab Johnson, and more, the power of the word is demonstrated in many ways, including how it can be combined with other words, and how it can be expressed as the greatest insult — “Fuck you!” — or the highest of highs — “Fuck yeah!”.

Linguistic experts like Melissa Mohr, Benjamin Bergen and Kory Stamper, who have studied the history of curse words, talk about the origins of the word “fuck” and the apocryphal stories surrounding it, like the one that said it was an acronym for “Fornication Under Consent of the King.” Then there’s a segment where author Elvis Mitchell talks about the use of “Fuck” in phrases like “Fuck The Police,” how the MPAA ratings system came about and how many “fucks” are OK for various ratings. For PG-13, for instance, you can say one “fuck”, as long as it’s not about “fucking.” As an adjective or adverb, it’s much more acceptable than as a verb, because that’s where it’s original meaning comes into play.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We can’t think of a show like this, and we also wonder why no one has thought of this until now.

Our Take: If you’re going to do a “history of swear words” docuseries, it’s a good idea to go in the direction that EP/director Christopher D’Elia —no, not THAT Chris D’Elia— and EP/showrunner Bellamie Blackstone did, which is not take things at all seriously. The funny tone of History of Swear Words is enhanced by its host, of course. Nic Cage, sporting a shade of black beard, hair and toupee not seen in nature, is in rare form here, giving signature bug-eyed takes on the segments where he describes the word “fuck” and all its uses. He even imagines an actor, who looks amazingly like him, and the frequency he uses “fuck” over all other swears.

The interviews with the comedians and experts are generally pretty good, too, especially the PhDs and other academics who are discussing swear words in an academic manner, but with some glee attached to it. Those interviews aren’t as dry as you might think, simply because those experts just seem to have so much fun talking about these words.

What we wonder about is how, with each word holding centuries’ worth of history, and all the uses that each of the examined words can have, why the show sometimes veers off course in an episode to talk about a more general cursing-related topic instead of just concentrating on the origin of the word. In the episode about “Shit”, for instance, there’s asides about the PMRC getting parental warning labels on records and an experiment about how long you can endure if you curse while doing it.

But there’s nothing about the various farm-animal-excrement uses of the word. What’s the difference between “bullshit” and “horseshit”? And why has “batshit” gotten so popular lately? We would have liked to hear a discussion of that instead of the ice bucket experiment.

One other thing that has us scratching our heads: Do we really want an etymological deep dive into the word “Dick”? We can think of so many other words we’d rather hear about, starting with the all-powerful “c-word,” so powerful that we’re not typing it out. Maybe that’s being saved for Season 2.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “I’m Nicolas Cage. Have a great fucking night.”

Sleeper Star: Netflix is really pushing London Hughes; she has a recently-released comedy special on the streamer, and she’s one of the hosts of The Netflix Afterparty. She’s also one of the comedians that are interviewed for this series, and she does a great job, especially when she says “Don’t swear for swearing’s sake; we’re better than that. Swear because you mean it.”

Most Pilot-y Line: We can’t think of any.

Our Call: STREAM IT. History Of Swear Words packs a lot of information into each 20 minute segment. And though the segments stray from their respective topics a bit, everyone looks like they’re having a cathartic good time talking about the biggest curse words in the English language.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream History Of Swear Words On Netflix