In American slang, the expression "spaz" is to a great extent tame, and is for the most part seen as a cool word for ungainliness, now and then connected with overexcitability, extreme startle reaction ("unsteadiness"), over the top vitality, or hyperactivity. Its utilization has been recorded as far once again as the mid-1950s. In 1965, film faultfinder Pauline Kael, clarified to her followers, "The term that American teens now use as the inverse of "intense" seems to be 'spaz'. A spaz is an individual who is gracious to instructors, plans for a profession, and has faith in official qualities. A spaz is something like what grown-ups still call a square." The New York Times feature writer comparatively clarified to book lovers that spaz signified "You're strictly from 23-skidoo." Benjamin Zimmer, manager for American word references at Oxford University Press and analyst at the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research in Cognitive Sciences, composes that by the mid-1960s the American utilization of the term spaz moved from "its unique feeling of 'spastic or physically ungraceful individual' to something more like 'geeky, strange or uncool individual.'" By differentiation, in a June 2005 bulletin for "American Dialect Society", Zimmer reports that the "most punctual event of awkward "spaz" (instead of uncool "spaz")?" is found in The Elastik Band's 1967 "unquestionably bland carport rock single" "Spazz".
Later in 1978, Steve Martin presented a character Charles Knerlman, otherwise known as "Chaz the Spaz" on Saturday Night Live, in a drama with Bill Murray called "Geeks". Bill Murray later featured in the film Meatballs which had a character named "Spaz." Both shows depicted a spaz as a geek or some individual uncool in a comic setting. Subsequently, while Blue Peter molded the current British understanding of the term, American viewers were being barraged with an alternate picture. In time, the term spaz, in the same way as its partners geek and nerd, lost its hostile nature and developed into a term frequently utilized as a part of rebuff toward oneself.
In his tune 'Goodnight Saigon', Billy Joel recounts the story of junior American troopers going to Vietnam, innocent on entry and some retreating home in body sacks at last. He sings, "We came in spastic like tameless steeds, we cleared out in plastic as numbered carcasses." The verses are not the slightest bit hostile in this American connection.
The term once in a while shows up in other North American motion pictures or TV arrangement, for example, Friends and accepts an alternate response from British and American groups of onlookers. In one scene, Rachel alludes to herself as a "clothing spaz" because of her powerlessness to do the clothing. This remark was considered hostile enough by the British Board of Film Classification to give the scene a 12 rating. Different scenes in the arrangement are appraised a step lower at PG. Likewise, Rugrats: Tales From the Crib Snow White got a PG rating focused around Angelica calling Kimi "Spazzy".
The contrast in understanding of the term in the middle of British and American groups of onlookers was highlighted by an occurrence with the golfer Tiger Woods; in the wake of losing the US Masters Tournament in 2006, he said, "I was so in control from tee to green, the best I've played for a considerable length of time... Yet when I got on the green I was a spaz." His comments were telecast and attracted no consideration America. Anyway they were broadly reported in Britain, where they brought about offense and were denounced by an agent of Scope and Tanni Gray-Thompson, a noticeable paralympian. On learning of the disturbance over his remarks, Woods' illustrative speedily apologized.
The Transformers Power Core Combiners line of robot toys was to incorporate a character named "Spastic". Hasbro, the creators of Transformers, said that it would not discharge "Spastic" in the UK. This did not prevent vocal British fans from cautioning different news outlets, inevitably bringing about the name being changed for all business sectors to the less-hostile "Over-Run." The online memoir for an alternate Transformer, Strafe, portrayed him as "spastic" in ahead of schedule discharges, yet when the debate ejected about the saying, they changed the expression to "twitchy."
On June 29, 2007, Ubisoft of France pulled one of their recreations called Mind Quiz: Your Brain Coach, for alluding to players who did not perform well at the amusement as "Super Spastic". The organization expressed "When we were made mindful of the issue we ceased conveyance of the item and are presently working with retailers to draw the diversion off the business sector." Similarly, Nintendo reviewed Mario Party 8 in the UK in the wake of discharging a variant holding the line "turn the train spastic" in its dialog.
