(Heh, came up with a title that will make people take notice for once…)
Are there any cultures where people don’t think there is anything funny about, um, bodily functions? (I believe Dave Barry says in one of his books that the Japanese are not amused by booger jokes, but since he seems to be basing this on a conversation with one person, I’d like more data.)
Conversely, are there any cultures where jokes about bodily functions are considered the height of polite and sophisticated humor? (13-year-old boys don’t count. They know perfectly well they are being rude.)
Please allow me to be the first to mention the French. I have no idea what their stance is on bodily functions, but I’m sure someone will bring them up one way or another.
Attempts to pet FP to make her(?) less fretful. Ouch! Never pet a porcupine.
Read the novel Delhi by Khushwant Singh if you can find it. Not only is Khushwant Singh a highly erudite, urbane, amusing, interesting ribald storyteller, in one chapter of this book he gives a mock-scholarly dissertation on Eastern fart lore.
Seems to me flatulence isn’t thought so horrible a thing in the Levant, perhaps through the Middle East. Might be related to ethnic groups with certain types of food intolerances, such as lactose deficiency.
A long time ago, a German fellow told me that American humor was about what happened in the bedroom, but German humor was about what happened in the bathroom.
There was a famous Sufi in the Middle East over 12 centuries ago, renowned for the kindness of his heart, known as Hatim al-Asamm (Hatim the Deaf). He wasn’t really deaf. He was a shopkeeper and one day an old woman came into the shop and farted, very loudly. To spare her embarrassment, he pretended to be stone deaf. For as long as the old woman continued to live, he kept up the pretense of deafness.
Here is an example of a Middle Eastern fart joke.
A well-respected citizen of a town, name of Sharif, attended a public banquet and as he was sitting down, he let out a loud fart. Everybody politely ignored it, but he was mortified. He immediately left town and went to live in a distant place.
Forty years later, an old man, he figured it was safe to pay a return visit because everyone would have long since forgotten. Seeing a young boy, he struck up conversation and mentioned, “You know, I used to live here. Haven’t been here for forty years.” The boy said: “I know when that was. That was the year of Sharif’s fart!”
Well, farting (in public) used to be illegal in ancient Rome. I bet nobody was laughing when a citizen got carted off to the jailhouse for blowing a big stinker. Or maybe they were…
Okay, I’ll bring up the French! They once had a performance artist trained in flatulence who was tremendously popular. I imagine one would have to find farts pretty funny (or at least entertaining) to enjoy such a thing.
“It is true, this I know, because Cecil tells me so.”
Once upon a time Harpo Marx told Alexander Woollcott the story of a guy he knew in vaudeville who made music by inflating a chicken and blowing the air out of the chicken’s…uh…anal orifice (sort of an Arkansas Bagpipe).
Quoth Big Al: “Why can’t I have friends like that?”
To supplement Dave Barry’s contribution for FP, it’s true that Japanese boogers are an untapped humor source. Farts, OTOH, have a long and honored tradition. There is one very old (3-400 years) story about an old man who could fart popular songs. He was asked to ‘play’ for the local lord, who rewarded him greatly for his performance. A member of the court, jealous of the old man, decided to learn the skill of musical flatulance himself in order to get in the lord’s good graces. Just before his big performance, however, someone slipped him a laxative. The resulting act was not well received, and the unfortunate gent was banished from the court.
I think this story is briefly mentioned in Ricky Jay’s “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women” in the chapter on Le Petomaine, the French Fartist (Flautist?).