Why exces­sive swear­ing is essen­tial to Mar­tin Scorsese’s The Departed

“Whoop-de-fuck­ing-doo.” That’s the first word that Mark Dig­nam (Mark Wahlberg), a hard-boiled sergeant in the Boston Police Department’s Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions team speaks in Mar­tin Scorsese’s 2006 crime-dra­ma The Departed.

It’s easy to miss: more sar­cas­tic snarl than actu­al speech, he address­es it as much to the floor as to Matt Damon’s fresh-faced young sergeant Col­in Sul­li­van, who he is osten­si­bly con­grat­u­lat­ing on his grad­u­a­tion to the force, and who looks up at his supe­ri­or with an expres­sion of half-amused bewil­der­ment. But it’s a moment worth pay­ing atten­tion to – not only does it tell you every­thing you need to know about Dig­nam, it is also the key to under­stand­ing the film itself.

The word ​“fuck” appears 257 times in The Depart­ed. That’s rough­ly once every two min­utes, mak­ing it only Scorsese’s fourth most pro­fane film (The Wolf of Wall Street boasts a whop­ping 569 F‑bombs). Such exces­sive­ly foul lan­guage might seem prof­li­gate; a lazy way to inject some dec­o­ra­tive grit into a world of mob­sters and mur­der­ers. But in the hands of Scors­ese and screen­writer William Mon­a­han it is a strate­gic choice.

Swear­ing quick­ly becomes the cur­ren­cy of the film’s cen­tral pre­oc­cu­pa­tion: how to make your way as a hard man in a hard town. The Depart­ed is full of vari­a­tions on this theme, encom­pass­ing both the cops – in addi­tion to Dig­nam and Sul­li­van, there’s Leonar­do DiCaprio’s under­cov­er troop­er, Bil­ly Costi­gan, and the loud-mouthed Cap­tain George Eller­by, played by Alec Bald­win – and the mob­sters they’re pur­su­ing. This sec­ond group is led by Jack Nicholson’s psy­cho­path­ic Frank Costel­lo, who’s the kind of guy who idly plays with a sev­ered hand while enjoy­ing his morn­ing macchiato.

Despite falling on dif­fer­ent sides of the law, these men share more than the sum of their dif­fer­ences; both eth­i­cal­ly and tem­pera­men­tal­ly. (The mir­rored exis­tence of the two cen­tral char­ac­ters, Sul­li­van and Costi­gan, demon­strates this larg­er truth in micro­cosm.) The man­ner of their con­stant cussing is indica­tive of a com­mon tem­pera­ment: a wry world-weari­ness cou­pled with a need to speak plain­ly and to the point. When Dig­nam says ​“whoop-de-fuck­ing-doo”, what he means is ​“this is a tough job for seri­ous peo­ple and you’re going to have to do a lot more than grad­u­ate from the police acad­e­my to impress me.”

The Departed’s swear­ing is also very fun­ny. The humour lies in the ten­sion between this very straight-talk­ing qual­i­ty and the expres­sive­ness, almost poet­i­cism, of the lan­guage itself. The film’s pro­fan­i­ty is ornate, almost verg­ing on baroque. When asked by a fel­low offi­cer whether his depart­ment has any under­cov­er cops in Costello’s gang, Dig­nam replies with a per­fect tri­colon: ​“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck your­self.” This rhetor­i­cal flour­ish lands with dev­as­tat­ing effec­tive­ness; his col­league cow­ers in his seat as Dig­nam smirks.

Such lin­guis­tic flair is undoubt­ed­ly con­nect­ed to Boston’s Irish her­itage. Irish Amer­i­cans are the city’s sin­gle biggest eth­nic group and, as appar­ent in the char­ac­ter names, they dom­i­nate the film. Scors­ese him­self is Ital­ian-Amer­i­can, of course, but Boston native Mon­a­han draws upon his own community’s iden­ti­ty with great authen­tic­i­ty. With­out trad­ing in nation­al­is­tic stereo­types, The Depart­ed pays filthy trib­ute to Ireland’s rich lit­er­ary and poet­ic history.

Dig­nam and Eller­by are the film’s most enthu­si­as­tic swear­ers and, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, its most mem­o­rable char­ac­ters. They head up rival depart­ments with­in the force, and when we first see them inter­act their good-natured rival­ry is played out in a the­atri­cal ver­bal spar­ring match. ​“Go fuck your­self,” Eller­by tells Dig­nam. ​“I’m tired from fuck­ing your wife,” Dig­nam replies. ​“How’s your moth­er?” ​“Good. She’s tired from fuck­ing my father.” They then con­tin­ue to talk shop, per­fect­ly ami­ca­bly. Hav­ing struck two blows each, they are both, it would seem, con­tent to cease hos­til­i­ties. Swear­ing is thus a kind of safe form of play-fight­ing; the civilised officer’s ver­sion of a dick-mea­sur­ing contest.

Except that in The Depart­ed, no one is real­ly civilised: good men turn bad or get killed; bad men come out on top. This cor­rupt­ness is present in the lan­guage: char­ac­ters pep­per their speech with ​“shit”s and ​“fuck”s because theirs is a world in which peo­ple are con­stant­ly being pushed out or screwed over. ​“What’s the mat­ter smart ass, you don’t know any fuck­ing Shake­speare?” Dig­nam asks Costi­gan at one point. Who needs the bard when you have blas­phe­my this good.