A Living Language

Ball of Fire, 1941

Slang was a big deal in the 20th century. Specifically the 1920s, the moment when it leapt out of its lower class bunker and into the mainstream. Slang was a pulse-taking, a shared language more about the feeling of words than their meanings, and it felt genuinely new. It helped that slang itself kept reinventing itself with each decade, as a new cycle of teenagers adopted their own version.

This constant renewal made for a short shelf life: no sooner would one set of kids create their own “slanguage” than a new version started to spring up among even younger kids determined to set themselves apart from the previous generation. This is the problem Gary Cooper encounters in the charming, delightful screwball comedy Ball of Fire, which combines nearly all of my favorite tropes. It’s a story that exposes the silly ineffectiveness of words, and explores a painful dual reality: If language can be used to clarify and communicate, it can just as easily be weaponized to obscure and deceive.