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The Psycho-Social Bases of Scatological Humor: The Unmasking of the Self

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The interest of this subject lies in the fact that what would appear to be a mere biological necessity creates a scandal. The general characteristics of scatological humor are mockery of authority, physical contact with excrement, oddity of the act of excretion, contemplation of the act or substance as a satisfaction in itself, incompetence or naiveté of the actors, public awareness of a private act, de-emphasis of the human face and emphasis on the posterior, and disarrangement of the clothing. Ilustrative material is drawn from jokes, limericks, and references to Rabelais, Swift, Céline, Grass, Kosinski, Legman, etc. It becomes evident that by using Erving Goffman's model of dramaturgical sociology (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City: 1959), we can see that scatological humor removes the props by which the self attempts to create and control its image: clothing, privacy, secrecy, composition of the face, and self-control. There is a general debasement of the human individual and at the same time an exaltation of the basic organic existence of the self. This situation, whether in jokes or literature, can be precisely expressed in Sartrean (and generally in an existential vocabulary): Scatological humor, unexpected flatulence, public excretion and other such acts are the proof of the independent behavior of the en-soi, which reveals the ultimate facticity (the rootedness of the pour-soi in the en-soi) of the pour-soi and destroys the latter's claims to be the origin of itself, of its freedom, and threaten the very existence of the pour-soi. This reduction of the self to flesh is Sartre's definition of sadism. We are then encouraged to develop the following hypothesis: Scatological humor is more evident in a society where strong individualism is a cultural value: conversely, scatological humor would be less obvious in a society where the individual was of lesser importance, where his identity was created by fixed social roles or by strong tribal definitions.

THE PSYCHO-SOCIAL BASES OF SCATOLOGICAL HUMOR:

THE UNMASKING OF THE SELF

William G. Plank

On the semi-arid slopes of the Pryor Mountains in southern Montana, wild stallions mark their presence with great heaps of manure which the biologists call "stud piles." When all the forage has been buried by a severe winter, some biologists believe they paw this out of the snow and survive on it. Wolves and lions or combed and powdered poodles make similar statements, whether in the forests of Alaska, on the African plain or against the lamp-posts of New York and Paris. A house cat deprived of litter reacts in a way we can easily anthropomorphize into fear and shame. The chimpanzee, Washoe, when this essay was originally written, having learned 250 terms in sign language, expresses her anger at her trainer by associating his name with the sign for filth or excrement. There is no doubt that for the higher animals--excrement possesses meaning; and for the highest (or merely the most powerful) animal that meaning is the most complex.

The existence of scatological humor is as a tension between two terms of a dialectic structure. The first term of this dialectic is the hidden and the disgusting, which upon being revealed contribute to the loss of self-image, with a resulting and often ambiguous shame. The second term is the fascinating and visible, with the assertion of the most secret, private, and individual self and the illogical and often brutal claim to the values of that very organic self. Excretion is a universal characteristic of the human; as such, its existence approaches the ontological. Thus, in the combined disgust and fascination it provokes, the public turd is a restatement on the most basic level of the confrontation of the self with society, of a kind of shameful pride the private self knows when faced with the Other; it is the artifact left by a self uncertain whether it is a sacred individual or merely a social event, deposited with a mixture of defiance and shame.

Appended to this essay are three scatological jokes, taken as typical (archetypical); by referring to them, it is possible to list the characteristics of most scatological humor. In thirty-five years of research on dirty jokes and their meanings, Gershon Legman lists many more we could have selected from his publications, which for their scope and insights are extremely unlikely to be equaled by any other scholar. ¹ Scatological humor is characterized by the mockery of authority, physical contact with excrement, oddity or uniqueness of the act of excretion, painful awareness of the substance, contemplation of the act or substance as a satisfaction in itself, incompetence or naiveté of the actors, public awareness of a private act, de-emphasis of the human face and emphasis on the posterior, and disarrangement of the clothing.

By using Erving Goffman's model of dramaturgical sociology (a philosophy of sociology which is obviously an existential approach), we can see that scatological humor removes the props by which the self attempts to create and control its image: clothing, privacy, secrecy, composition of the face, and self control. Dramaturgical sociology is the use of the dramaturgical model, of theatre terms, to describe the dynamics of interpersonal behaviour. Rather tritely, as Goffman admits, the world becomes a state and the men and women merely players. But for every stage there must be a back-stage--and it is this back-stage and its invasion by strangers or the uninvited which interest us here. We have only a certain amount of control over the impression made on that state, the final evaluation being left to the audience. The backstage, however, is the sacred area of the performers, wher3e they control the situation and where they prepare for the presentation; they control the places where they attend to their biological needs:

In our society defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them. ²

Presentation is made even more difficult if the posterior is substituted for the face, (as is the case with the Salesman's Wife) or when privacy is denied the self (as is the case in the military and in organized sports, where individual values are counterproductive to discipline or team-effort). It is simply no accident that executives and officers have private bathrooms and that those people whose behaviour must be standardized--whether they are workers or soldiers--are deprived of bathroom privacy. The lack of ability to control the backstage changes the presentation of self and the sudden loss of that control provokes laughter, for reasons we will surmise on later. Characteristics of back-stage behaviour are

Reciprocal first-naming, cooperative decision-making, profanity, open sexual remarks, elaborate griping, smoking, rough informal dress, sloppy sitting and standing posture, use of dialect or sub-standard speech, mumbling and shouting, playful aggressiveness and "kidding," inconsiderateness for the other in minor but potentially symbolic acts, minor physical self-involvements such as humming, whistling, chewing, nibbling, belching, and flatulence. ³

And what becomes of great interest to us later in the essay is that "By invoking a backstage style, individuals can transform any region into a backstage." ⁴ That is to say that by scatology an individual can do one of two things, as suggested by the remarks on the dialectic existence of scatology at the beginning of this essay: He may embarrass himself but he also may well extend the back-stage, i.e., the range of his control of his presentation into the front-stage by his back-stage language and behaviour. A profane and noisy plumber may very well take over a ladies' tea-party by redefining the environment by his language. A number of jokes could be offered to demonstrate this idea--and it was indeed the technique of the early humor of Eddie Murphy during his beginnings on Saturday Night Live.

One of the most blatant examples of the loss of control over the back-stage area occurs in Jonathan Swift's poems "Strephon and Chloe" and "Cassinus and Peter." In the former, Strephon and Chloe are forced on their wedding night by the richness of the wedding feast to relieve themselves, bringing the purity of romantic love down to physiological reality. Note particularly the emphasis Swift places on the change in facial expression:

O Strephon, e'er that fatal day

When Chloe stole your Heart away,

Had you but through a Cranny spy'd

On House of Ease your future Bride,

In all the Postures of her Face,

Which Nature gives in such a Case;

Distortions, Groanings, Strainings, Heavings:

'Twere better you had lickt her Leavings,

Than from Experience find too late

Your Goddess grown a filthy Mate. ⁵

In the latter, Cassinus, greatly in love with Caelia, and unable to contain his amorous curiosity, sneaks into Caelia's bedroom. He is crushed and cast into a black melancholy upon finding her chamber-pot. No longer interested in life after having discovered "Caelia's foul Disgrace," he explains his emotional disarray to his friend, Peter, by saying

And yet, I dare confide in you;

So, take my Secret, and adieu.

Nor wonder how I lost my wits;

Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits. ⁶

This general debasement of the individual provoked by a scatological event, whether humor, unexpected flatulence, public excretion etc., can be precisely described in Sartrean (and generally existential) terms: It is the proof of the independent behaviour of the en-soi which reveals the ultimate facticity of the pour-soi. Facticity, in Sartre's definition, means (among other things) the fact that the pour-soi, or the consciousness of being conscious, is rooted in the organic and inorganic reality of being. This independent behaviour of the en-soi thus destroys the claim of the pour-soi to be the origin of itself, of its freedom, and threatens the very existence of the pour-soi--for the pour-soi is freedom. That stark evidence given by the en-soi of its power to destroy the pour-soi reduces the latter to an aspect of the en-soi ; this reduction of the freedom of the en-soi, to flesh, is Sartre's definition of sadism--an idea we must return to later. Why do we laugh at this evidence of the destruction of man's freedom--which is the basis of scatological humor?

The source of the humor of the television comedian, Foster Brooks, is identical Foster Brooks is a mature, handsome, well-groomed, expensively-dressed, serious-looking, successful man--until he speaks. Then h is body betrays him. He belches, stutters, and sways drunkenly--and we laugh because the en-soi shatters all his claims to freedom and dignity. But we must consider the other term of the dialectic--that brutal claim to self-worth cast in the very face of a society which would submerge the individual and toward which the individual feels fear, anger and defiance. That claim is expressed in the grumus merdae.

"A strange scatological usage, not really well understood," writes Legman, "is the grumus merdae, the 'little pile of shit' left behind at the scene of the crime (even of murder…." ⁷ It is not the result of fear, Legman believes (although now with the use of DNA by criminologists, it would be unwise to leave such a thing), but is rather an expression of "anal-sadistic contempt and hatred of the victim." ⁸ This grumus merdae is, I believe, the very essence and the most blunt expression of the individual's assertion of his personal existence, no matter how distasteful it may be to official society. I had to reject my attempt to classify the butt of humor in each of the 97 scatological limericks collected by Legman, ⁹ realizing finally that the contemplation of the scatological element was the reward in itself. They are the "openly joyous folk-expressions of delight in the actual throwing of shit,"¹⁰ he writes. Such acts are also common among apes and monkeys. They are the grumus merdae of any person who repeats them, left defiantly on the doorstep of official culture, treating taboo subjects with taboo words, repeated and emphasized by the peculiar meter of the limerick form in which the listener may anticipate the shock of the final plop of the last line. They are little linguistic bombs cast haphazardly by nasty terrorists. We may see the same phenomenon in the French humor and satire magazines, Charlie Hebdo and Hara Kiri (now defunct, I believe), where the humor is sexual and often ferociously scatological. It is directed against the official world. The outhouse poetry of the childist Gargantua and his invention of the torche cul (arse-wipe) were the great grumus merdae left at the scene of the crime Rabelais perpetrated against medieval learning and the medieval world-view as he conceived it.

Céline's misanthropy and his vicious prose in Mort à crédit, D'un Château l'autre, Nord, and Rigodon provide scatological scenes to support the angry physician's contention that man is, in his words, a "bag of shit.," His depiction of the crossing of the channel during a storm which made everyone (including the dogs) sick; the sight of the officers of the Vichy government in refuge in Germany, caught by Allied bombers while relieving themselves in the weeds, and fleeing toward cover with their pants around their ankles--such scenes effectively make his statement against a society which returned the disgust he had for it.

Finally, however, whether we laugh at scatology may depend on whose side we are on, whether we are for the teller against society or whether we take the side of official culture. We do not find anything amusing in Jerzy Kosinski's description in The Painted Bird of a wandering child who is thrown into a pit of excrement and pushed under by a band of ignorant peasants because he had dropped a holy book during a church ritual. On the other hand, we have a tendency toward a wry and amazed smile when we read Céline's description in Nord of a crippled and aged Nazi Landman carried about on the shoulders of a gigantic Polish refugee, who, on night during an Allied air-raid, threw the old tyrant into a pit of liquid manure where he drowned and was not found until morning.

If power is the basis of all human interaction (as Bernard-Henri Lévy eloquently insists in his Barbarie à visage humain), and if scatological humor has that dialectic existence as I defined it at the beginning of this essay and of which we have seen examples, then it is an unavoidable conclusion that scatological humor and perhaps all humor is a function of power and that our laughter is a political act. The reduction of human freedom to the en-soi , to flesh, is the definition of sadism for Sartre. In the Arabian Nights, Abu Hassan "brake wind" during the marriage feast, an act for which he exiled himself and gave up his wealth, his bride and his native city. "Behold, he let fly a great fart," reads the translation. Do we find that amusing because it is merely literature or does our amusement come from a more suspicious source? If we do not find scatology always funny it is because we must encounter it in the political situation which is congenial to our preconceptions.

Legman asserts that "the final meaning and the eventual end of all scatological jokes and strivings is a tremendous explosion of hatefulness and violence, in which the whole world is to be blown up (by men's invention, the Atom Bomb, or the next invention) leaving nothing but a pile of shit." ¹¹ He then questions what we are really laughing at and whether or not defecation is not thought of as a kind of ultimate act "somehow thought of as a solution." ¹² As such, he suggests that scatological humor has a suicidal meaning. We have already seen that it may be the destruction of the presentation of self or the glorification of the most secret organic existence of the self, so that in any case the dynamic of such humor is in struggle, power, and the very existence of the self. It becomes sadism if we apply Sartre's definition to it. It may be that humor, particularly scatological humor, is not an effective way to deal with an unacceptable existence, since it is merely a suicidal throwing of excrement and an exaltation of the individual on his most elementary and anti-social level.

We are now in a position to deal with the question Günter Grass poses in The Flounder:

We look at one another in amazement.

We have something to say to one another.

My waste--closer to me that God or you or you.

Why do we part behind a bolted door

instead of admitting guests

with whom, sitting noisily at the table the day before

we predestined beans and bacon?

From this time on (per decision) we will each

eat singly

and shit together,

thus neolithically fostering insight. ¹³

The answer appears clear: Scatological humor is cruel and on the level of scatology all men are enemies, scenting the posts that mark the boundary of the self, marking their territorial limits with stud-piles. We may eat together in good fellowship but we will lock the bathroom door because in that position we are not composed and we are vulnerable to attack.

It remains to state the following hypothesis: Scatological humor is more evident in a society where strong individualism is a cultural value; conversely, scatological humor would be less obvious in a society where the individual was of lesser importance, where his identity was created by fixed social roles or by strong tribal definitions.

APPENDIX

Three Archetypical Scatological Jokes

(These jokes are well over fifty years old)

Mustard and Beans: Two country boys named Mustard and Beans went to the city and checked into a hotel. Not being accustomed to modern convenience, Mustard found it necessary to go out the hotel window, where the results fell on the head of a policeman. The policeman saw where the deed originated and went rushing up to the room. He burst into the room with his hat in his hand and confronted Beans with "What do you call that?" Beans, being intimidated, and trying to deny guilt, pointed to his companion and stammered, But, but what about Mustard?" And the policeman replied, "Mustard, hell, it's pure shit."
The Boston Warbler. A man on his way through a public park was forced to relieve himself on the grass. He just barely was getting himself together when he saw a policeman coming, and fearing arrest he hastily placed his hat over what he had done. The policeman found him holding his hat down on the ground. "What have you got there, fella?" asked the cop. Thinking fast, the man replied, "I was passing through the park when I saw a Boston Warbler, a very rare songbird which is worth a thousand dollars to a pet store owner or a zoo. I was lucky to throw my hat over him, but since he flies very fast, I need to go get a net to be sure not to lose him."

"Well," answered the policeman, "why don't you go and get the net and I will hold the hat?"

"Thank you very much," replied the man, who took off happily.

Then another policeman came along and asked the first one what he was doing. The first policeman explained, whereupon the second one suggested that they catch the bird themselves and split the profit.

"Very well," said the first policeman. "I'll take the hat away and you grab him before he can get away." They made ready and the first snatched the hat away and the second grabbed the bird.

Did you get him, did you get him?" yelled the first policeman.

"Naw, he got away," answered the second, "but not before he shit all over me."

The Salesman's Wife. A travelling salesman's wife, being bored with bridge parties and staying at home while her husband was out, insisted one day on accompanying him just at the time he had to sign of on a big deal in a distant town at an hour which allowed him just enough time to arrive by driving very fast. Unfortunately, she had taken a laxative, and, when her husband refused to stop at a restroom, claiming he had warned her of the danger of the trip, she was forced to relieve herself out the

window. Just at the moment they passed two bums hitch-hiking; they were both covered by the substance.

"Man," said one, "What kind of tobacco was that dude chewing?'

"I don't know," answered the other. "But did you see the jaws on that son of a bitch?"