Language police? (Warning, does not mention R-P-)

[CanadianJohn]

I forget the wording, but there was something in the book 1984 about controlling thought by controlling words. I'm in Canada, where, under the thumb of our Liberal government, we have gone very far down that road.

Looking thru the on-screen movie guide, there was listing for the movie Zooey and Adam which states: "A couple ... experience a traumatic event where the woman ends up pregnant". I'm thinking, what kind of traumatic event might that be? A house fire? A car crash? A tornado?

In the movie, btw, the young couple is camping, their campsite is crashed by three drunk men, two hold down the husband, while the third inflicts the "traumatic event" on the wife. The movie makes no secret of the subsequent reporting of the crime, the police inquiry, the conviction and sentence of the perpetrators, including the use of the r-word several times.

So... I'm thinking... have the language police got so strong a grip on us, that we can't even use the word R-P-

A young, recently married couple are having difficulty conceiving. Everything changes after Zooey becomes pregnant during a traumatic vacation.

IMDb synopsis

After seven months of a couple's pursuing fertility, she becomes pregnant as a result of rape, and although they don't know the father's identity, they decide to have the baby anyway.

Rotten tomatoes

I am surprised rape wasn't included in the synopsis but perhaps they didn't want to reveal too much of the plot?
Not sure why you haven't used it in full though in your title/post.

You are thinking of newspeak, a language designed to diminish the range of through.

By using the word traumatic, I would argue you are increasing the range of thought as while it is reasonable to assume the traumatic event refers to rape, it could refer to other scenarios.

In this case, the word traumatic acknowledges that it is likely a scenario where pregnancy occurs by rape, against the woman's will. I think this is one occasion where it's easy to read more into it than there likely is.

I did find the word rape hard to see, hear and use for many years. Particularly the stupid yellow oil crop 🤣

But I would want to avoid films with rape as a plot device, so would prefer it mentioned than not.

I suspect it’s more about spoilers than censorship, to be honest.

I'm wondering how she could become pregnant from a house fire.

I think it's probably intended to not cause any distress to people who might be triggered by the word. Which is a good intention, although unfortunately leads to the possibility of someone who can cope with the word but not the visual depiction watching the film without realising what it contains.

Better anyway than the people who think that writing "r*pe" or whatever will somehow magically prevent it acting as a trigger.

And sadly so many films nowadays seem to revel in unexpected scenes of sexual assault that survivors would do well to check the content very carefully in advance.

I think it was more about not revealing spoilers than anything else.