Pride (In The Name Of)
July 24, 2011 8 Comments
Seen on billboard overtop a downtown Safeway: “We Celebrate Pride”
One struggles to envision trying to explain this sign to a time-travelling visitor from the past. Yes, that is a food market. Yes, they put a sign above their market announcing that they, the market’s proprietors, ‘celebrate’ a deadly sin. No, please don’t ask me to explain the whys and wherefores of this.
What is next though? Should Safeway ‘celebrate’ wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy, and gluttony as well? Are these, too, now things we demand of our local food distribution centers?
Oh. Right. ‘Pride’ doesn’t mean pride anymore. It means homosexuality. Right.
It is interesting, and I truly mean this, how our language changes over time. I don’t think it’s an entirely dumb conjecture to suggest that, say, 150 years from now, the English word ‘pride’ will connote only homosexuality, and the one we currently know (from parades and such), let alone the one that referred to a sin, will have been entirely forgotten, or at least seen as antiquated.
All of which is part of the natural evolution of language, I suppose. The one thing I wonder though: if homosexuals are indeed so ‘proud’ of themselves, why the word-borrowing? Why the euphemism? Ironically, all this talk of ‘pride’ just goes to show that it is still – quite literally – the love that dare not speak its actual name.
“Should Safeway ‘celebrate’ wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy, and gluttony as well?”
Well, they certainly celebrate greed and gluttony. Lust and envy? Those are delegated to the marketing department.
Good point on the greed and gluttony. We wouldn’t want them to actually announce their ‘celebration’ of those things though, would we?
That’s what I find fascinating: evidently, either (1) we (or at least some people) will reward Safeway for announcing their ‘celebration’ of ‘pride’ by patronizing them more (or more loyally) in response to it, or (2) someone at Safeway thinks we will.
Either way: why?? is a question that springs to mind. Not that I have any answers here. Just questions.
As Vaclav Havel put it:
“Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;’ he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “What’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology. ”
Amazing how as our government becomes more and more like late stage communism people act more and more like they did under late stage communism.
I have a really close friend who is in the Cemetery/Mortuary business. That business, it seems, thrives on euphemisms. For instance:
Burial = Internment and Recording = Opening and Closing
Hearse = Casket Coach
Grave = Burial Plot = Funeral Property = Property
Tombstone = Headstone = Tablet = Memorialization
Etc.
We have/need euphemisms for death because (variously) it disgusts, scares, repels, saddens, grieves, etc. us.
We have/need euphemisms for homosexuality because….?
The answer that dare not speaks it’s rationale?
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