Now shoot the puppy
In these times of emotional liquidity you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing is still taboo. But a few taboos remain: death, religion and folk dancing, obviously, plus incest and doing inappropriate things with animals. Oh, and if you’re Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, saying anything concrete about your political intentions.
The modern take on taboo is that it relates to strong social prohibition of the flesh-creeping variety, and clearly such forbidden areas have evolved to protect people. The term was borrowed from the Tongan language and appears in many Polynesian cultures for which tabu referred to practices to control and contain the potentially dangerous power of the gods. All this will be explained in the Power and Taboo exhibition that will open at the British Museum on September 28.
Captain James Cook introduced the word to English by using it in his journals in 1777, and it has since signposted no-go areas where only the perverted would venture. Thanks to political correctness, these now extend to identifying people by stereotype, buying from corporations that don’t use fair-trade sources, telling a 9/11 joke and dressing up as a Nazi at a fancy dress party. There is also a new term for doing the unthinkable: shoot the puppy.