For decades it was standard to just make Vomit sounds and imply vomiting, which I am okay with but it seems in the five years or so it has become standard to actually show the vomit which grosses me out to no end. Please Hollywood, stop showing the vomit.
It’s also the relentless over-the-top repetition aspect (a technique that Monty Python liked to use a lot) that helped to propel it into gut-busting hilarity.
At the very least. I’m still probably not going to think it’s funny but at least I won’t be grossed out too. I’m sure there are exceptions but it’s pretty rare you see the actual shit or giant snot glob so why we gotta see the cookies whilst they’re being tossed?
For me, vomit sounds are like ‘hyoo–OOO(K)’ (guttural stop there) followed by what sounds like pouring a pitcher of water into the toilet bowl. (The toilet bowl is my receptacle of choice.) None of this coughing and retching once the outflow has begun; just the initial karate calls and pouring sounds. They never do that in movies.
Google “Bob Kempainen” for the first real-life high-profile example of this. It happened a few years after Bush v. 1.0 blew chunks all over the Japanese Prime Minister, and therefore gave comedians fodder for months afterwards.
In short, what would you be willing to do for $100,000 and a sport on the U.S. Olympic team? Dr. Kempainen (yep, he’s a physician) found out about, oh, 23 miles or so into the marathon trials, which were broadcasted on live network television.
:eek:
During the Olympics, the little piece they did on him showed him doing you-know-what, and then he stood next to a chalkboard in a white coat, writing numerous slang terms for that bodily function while explaining its physiology.
Pete Sampras did the same thing a few months later at the U.S. Open, although he did manage to stagger to courtside first. Dave Barry was there, and wrote a column you wouldn’t want to read over breakfast. Oh, and he won, too.
I don’t think there’s any inherent reason that vomit can’t be funny. But I can’t think of any example I’ve seen where it actually was. In fact, I’m having a hard time even thinking of examples I’ve seen where there was an attempt to make it funny.
For comparison, farts aren’t inherently funny either, but I’ve certainly seen cases where they were, when presented right, and folks quite often attempt (often unsuccessfully) to portray them as funny.
I’m a guy, and I find nothing less funny than vomit jokes.
I like the way the fish in the aquarium all scatter when they see Creosote coming into the restaurant.
A vomit scene I found funny: the ipecac (puke contest) scene on Family Guy. (Can be seen on hulu here)
When I try to analyze why it’s funny, I come up with three things.
- Timing. The scene’s ability to make me laugh depends, as comedy often does, on well-executed comedic timing.
- Cartoon violence. Can we take it as given for the purpose of this thread that cartoon violence can be funny? The distress that the characters undergo in this scene (which they bring upon themselves by cheerfully doing a Dumb Thing) counts, I think, as cartoon violence. (Vomiting works well as a form of “funny violence” since it doesn’t feel good at the time and is extremely undignified but doesn’t cause lasting harm.)
- The over-the-top quality that has been mentioned in connection with the Monty Python scene.
Hey, I know gross 
Most of the reasons that I find it funny have been covered by others, but I also love that several other patrons are scolded by their companions for tiny belches, etc. At the same time, one of the guests that leaves offers up “I’m having rather a heavy period” as a socially acceptable reason for needing to leave. The ultra-offensive cleaning lady at the end is the cherry on top.
My girlfriend told me the other day that her friend had died by drowning in her own vomit after passing out. I said, “Is that some sort of sick choke?”
At least she didn’t choke on someone else’s vomit.
I first saw “This Is Spinal Tap” in a crowded theater with a couple hundred other people who also didn’t know that scene was in the movie, only that a drummer had died “in a manner too revolting to relate” per the newspaper’s reviewer.
BTW, Scotland Yard still doesn’t have any way to identify whose vomit it was. You can’t get DNA from stomach contents. :o
There is no way to make vomit funny to me. I find it revolting and it can trigger nausea in me. Feeling like I’m about to puke myself because some idiot writer who didn’t have to see the puke thought it would be funny makes me stabby. I don’t laugh when I’m feeling stabby.
I blame SNL. It became there thing in the mid nineties when they had no other jokes. Mean Girls and Perfect Pitch are both produced by SNL producers and actors. Don’t have a joke? Fall back on the worn out vomit bit. The favorite joke of the uninspired and untalented.
The only vomit scene I ever remember laughing at was one of the ones that implied a vomiting with sound effect but showed no actually vomit.
It was the scene from Caddyshack where the kid is drinking leftover cocktails and gets one with a cigarette butt in it and goes outside and ralphs in the sun roof of a Porsche.
So it can be done with humor, but there is no need to actually see the act.
There’s only one vomit jokeI ever found funny, and that includes Monty Python and Team America.
The last time I saw “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, I was in a place where I couldn’t change the channel, and they had a segment which showed numerous babies projectile-vomiting. I so did not need to see that. :mad:
In fact, when the show started, that was one thing they said upfront that they would NOT show, so don’t bother sending them in.
(Of course I don’t remember it, but my parents have said I was awfully good at that as a newborn until my formula was correctly adjusted.)
I did enjoy the Mr. Creosote scene from Python, but my favorite barfing scene is the episode pf Seinfeld where Jerry and George are trying to pitch their script to Russell Dalrymple, who has picked up a stomach bug by eating some food that Kramer sneezed on. Dalrymple excuses himself and trots to the bathroom, so you don’t see anything, but you hear him go RUUAAGGHH!! RAAUUGGHH! really loudly, while Jerry and George kind of look at each other. That is a barf scene done right.
No one’s mentioned the pie eating contest in Stand By Me.
I hate barf scenes. The sound is bad enough, but I always try to find out if a movie shows vomiting before I see it, so I can be ready to look away.
I really hate that it’s starting to pop up more frequently on TV. “House” was hard on me.