Slang

[vardathemessage]

script:
MIDDLE-AGED MAN

Well, I think it’s a disgrace, parading around all ponced-up like a pack of bleeding woofters. Bloody hell, what’ll they think up next?

Slang:
ponced up = Dressed up; or overdressed
woofters = male homosexual

Comments

[velvetspur.livejournal.com]

Back in the day I can see where those not in the know wouldn't know what this meant. What is interesting about this comment however, in this context, is that apparently the gay slang had slopped over into the mainstream, appropriated as a cut-down of course.

Hmmm. I wonder though if the put-downs came first, and then became part of gay slang as a way to take control of them? "We're here, we're queer"...etc.

Funny how words become international weapons, shorthanded by the waiters as Jack Fairy floats by: "Maricone, epicene, sexe douteux, Le Vice Anglais."

Speaking of Jack, it occurs to me that he is the very embodiment of Genet's Divine in "Our Lady of the Flowers." What is it Mandy says? "This wreakage of the streets." Yep.

[rougevelvet.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I wonder though if the put-downs came first, and then became part of gay slang as a way to take control of them?

sounds highly probable to me

[sasha-masoch.livejournal.com]

What struck me as odd about "vice anglais" is that I'd never heard it used to reference homosexuality, but only a penchant for whippings. It was a reference to caning etc. at English public schools, as in Ian Gibson's book The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England.

[q-spade.livejournal.com]

It was a reference to caning etc. at English public schools...

I wonder if perhaps the use of le vice anglais/the English vice to refer to homosexuality in VG is an indirect suggestion of the homerotic potentiality of the single-sex public school system?

I've heard the term as a reference to whipping/caning as well; also (rather unkindly!) as a reference to hypocrisy, both in the movie Wilde* and in conversation.

*Once I get home, I'd be glad to reference the script on that; I'm pretty sure it's in the scene where Oscar shows Queensbury's note to Ross.

[vardathemessage.livejournal.com]

One of the first naughty things I remember learning about sex was that French meant oral, Greek meant anal and English meant whipping, haha. It does seem that the guy in VG saying "Le vice anglais" is American, so he might be getting at the idea that all British men are swishy.

[vardathemessage.livejournal.com]

I should have said, in using the phrase, "Do you speak French?" etc.

[vardathemessage.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Jack, it occurs to me that he is the very embodiment of Genet's Divine in "Our Lady of the Flowers."

Yes, we can only wonder what he's been up to in the years since we see him in the schoolyard.