Rise of modern usage
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The first use of the word "fuck" on British television came on November 13, 1965 on the satirical show "BBC-3" (no relation to the present channel of that name). The theatre critic Kenneth Tynan declared, apropos of nothing, that "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck' would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden.".

It is believed that the first rock song to have the word fuck is The Doors' song "The End" on their self-titled 1967 album "The Doors". The line containing the word is "Mother, I want to fuck you". Jim Morrison screams out the last two words so that they can't be heard clearly. Another early example of the use of fuck is Beatle John Lennon's 1970 song "Working Class Hero" in the lines:

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
The Beatles also seem to have used the word in the song Revolution 9 in the line "join the fucking navy."
The first short story to include fuck in its title was probably Kurt Vonnegut's "The Big Space Fuck", originally published in 1972. Exhibiting Vonnegut's characteristic blend of pessimism and humor, this story tells of a polluted and overpopulated Earth. On midnight, 4 July 1989, the United States fires the Arthur C. Clarke, a missile whose warhead contains eight hundred pounds of freeze-dried semen, aiming at the Andromeda Galaxy. This story, which contains many allusions to earlier Vonnegut works (such as character names and the "chrono-synclastic infundibula"), was written as a personal favor to Harlan Ellison. First published in Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, it is reprinted in Palm Sunday.

George Carlin once commented that the word fuck ought to be considered more appropriate, because of its implications of love and reproduction, than the violence exhibited in many movies. He humorously suggested replacing the word "kill" with the word "fuck" ("make fuck, not kill") in his comedy routine, such as in an old movie western: "Okay, Sheriff, we're gonna fuck you, now. But we're gonna fuck you slow..." Or, perhaps at a baseball game: "Fuck the Ump, fuck the Ump, fuck the Ump!" More popularly published is his famous "Filthy Words" routine, better known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television."

One of the earliest mainstream Hollywood films to use the word fuck was 20th Century Fox's MASH (during a football game segment), directed by Robert Altman and released in 1970.

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Charles Rocket uttered the epithet in one of the earliest instances of its use on television, during an episode of Saturday Night Live '80 (1980), for which he was subsequently fired.

The Sopranos holds the dubious title of being the first television show to win the Best Drama Emmy Award in which characters repeatedly say fuck and many variations of the word as well. (The show is not on network television, it is on HBO.)

The show that holds the record for the most numerous utterances of the word on television is the HBO series Deadwood . The constant use of the word soon inspired a web site dedicated to keeping track of the Deadwood Fuck Count, which has recorded about 1.54 "fucks" per minute. Many of those expletives, and others colorful phrases, are spoken by the character Al Swearengen, played by Ian McShane, who won the 2005 Golden Globe Award for best actor in a television drama for his role in Deadwood.

A few films such as Totally Fucked Up and So Fucking What (Also called SFW) have used the word in their titles.

Comedy Central will sometimes show movies with uncensored usage of the word after 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time, most frequently on Saturdays (technically Sunday morning). This is the only time slot where the network will air South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
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