A recent post on Regina Lynn’s blog regarding a humorous trademark dispute reminded me of the essay Ashley wrote for the DeCal entitled “Grace of Fuck”. Within it she discusses some interesting semantic implications of the verb form of “fuck” acting upon a direct object.
While it’s true that in some contexts fuck is indeed used to express anger (as is often the case with the exclamatory Fuck!, the verbal command fuck you, or some uses of the present progressive functioning as the adjective fucking, etc.), its different forms hold several other often-fluctuating implications. The verb form of the word itself can mean one of several things; to fuck with someone implies some vague sort of teasing or tormenting, while to fuck someone over denotes some action of betrayal or sabotage, &etc.
The most notably powerful verb form, though, is that which utilizes the personal direct object: to fuck someone,which is generally accepted to mean, in more passive and appropriate phrasing, to have sex with someone. This use is particularly interesting in that it transforms the clause’s personal object from direct to indirect, negating the use of the preposition with and indicating a new sense of acting upon another person rather than engaging in an action with him or her. In this sense, the word draws a remarkable new sort of modernist meaning that may at once be liberating and emotionally devastating, thus creating a new realm of value in a single verb that is doubtless very useful for drawing certain implications in a literary setting. –Ashley Lystne – and then you explode.
I can actually recall at least one instance of the phrase “fuck with” that may be problematic. Eazy-E recorded a song entitled “I’d Rather Fuck You” for the N.W.A. album Efil4zaggin that uses “fuck with” describing intercourse rather than torment (the chorus and lyrics would switch between the phrase “I’d rather fuck you” and “I’d rather fuck with you”). This may, of course, be entirely pragmatic. Eazy-E has a habit of sampling the music of Bootsy Collins, and this song is no exception. Here he samples “I’d Rather Be With You” by Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The “fuck with” can be be seen as the pragmatic necessity of maintaining the meter of Bootsy’s original while continuing with the intent to change the meaning of the phrase to something explicitly more carnal. This is consistent with the nature of the lyrics, which are very explicitly sexual and misogynistic (as was typical of Gangsta Rap at the time). As such, the more intimate meaning of the sexual “fuck with” could have been entirely accidental.
Nonetheless, this choice of phrasing, whether intentional or accidental, creates a far more complex meaning within the song than the standalone “fuck” would have. As described earlier, there’s the irony of the intimate connotation the direct-object-absent “fuck with” contrasted with the sexual misogyny of the verse lyrics. However, there may be another level of (possibly intentional) irony as well which lies in the more common meaning of “fuck with.” When “fuck with” acts upon a direct object it typically means torment, as Ashley described. When taken with this meaning “I’d rather fuck with you” stands in agreement with the misogyny of the verse lyrics rather than in contrast to it. The irony here lies in the assumption that sex is not torment. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and further may not be the case in this song.
