[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I'm a loving and nurturing father raising my children with strong values.

Doesn't mean that type of person doesn't occasionally swear like a sailor with Tourette's Syndrome.

Yeah but May is from a generation (canonically) where that is considered crude and inappropriate in the extreme. Her generation is the one that would be shocked by even the hint of impropriety in language or media content- a "June Cleaver" type, if you will. In the comics she has NEVER dropped so much as a "sh**" or a "SoB" or an f bomb, because she simply WOULDN'T. She's like my grandmother that way. (I can count on ONE hand the number of times she has dropped ANY foul language during my entire life. And this is a crazy lady who took a sledgehammer to a rabid skunk....) Aunt May is cut from the same cloth- prim and proper.

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

Yeah, I'm calling a flag on the play that it's out of character for a born and bred New Yorker to not drop an F-bomb every now and again, and that they lose their status as a moral compass when they do so.

If anything, I think this would highlight just how taken aback she is by the situation.

Might not be out of character for MOST New Yorkers, but yes it is VERY out of character for her. May goes back to the clean-cut, "tv family" image of the 50's and 60's in her speech and behavior- in fact in the comics she has even called Peter out on HIS occasional use of "foul language"! So yes, in this case it very much goes against her character's moral code.

Originally Posted by ToTheNines

Exactly. Most everyone I know curses, even my grandparents. It's just lazy writing to have a pure-of-heart character never do anything "wrong". I know wonderful people who swear a lot and absolute scum who don't.

But yeah, she just found out her nephew was Spider-Man. Be real. Also, it got one of the biggest laughs of the night in my theater.

Not lazy wrting. There ARE people who do not curse. My grandmother is one of them. I've heard her do it only TWICE in my life- and both times she was raging mad (at my uncle) and the sheer shock of even hearing her say something like that made the rest of us leave the room in a hurry because we understood that she was PISSED. Aunt May is even more reserved in character. Always has been.

Originally Posted by plastroncafe

I think what's changed is how we expect women that age to act/dress.
Let's not forget, that Marisa Tomei now is older than Rue Rue McClanahan was when she started playing Blanche on the Golden Girls.

You are not wrong there. May would have grown up in a time where women in general were not supposed to even know such words much less use them. Now women use that sort of language all the time and no one bats an eye. But it's still jarring when it comes from a character you KNOW would never talk like that!