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 The Silver Screen Is Getting Browner: An Analysis Of Poop In FilmPosted 02.14.2005 by The Big Wiper (2244)
Back in January '03, before I became an active PoopReporter, I was a lurker. And back then, it was the Movie Poop Scene Archives that especially caught my eye. I'm still partial to that section of this site, to the extent that over the past two years, I have contributed forty-six entries to the cause. Recently I decided to undertake a statistical analysis of our impressive offerings, utilizing IMDB.com to gather research on 230 of the 239 films currently featured on the site. (A handful of the archived films failed to come up on IMDB.) My goal: to uncover any trends in movie poop scene proliferation. (Click here to see the data table.)
There are four films from the sixties with archived poop scenes, seventeen from the seventies, 45 from the eighties, 81 from the nineties, and 83 from 2000 until today. Although its unlikely every poop scene from the past fifty years has been archived on PoopReport, I believe a very high percentage of them are, given the fact that scores of poopers have been sending in these reports over a three-year period. I am quite a movie buff myself. I have a collection of over 125 films; and, as a writer, I've watched hundreds of classic films from the thirties, forties and fifties, paying close attention to dialogue and plotting. There are very likely no films from these earlier decades with poop scenes -- images of overt sexual acts or references, as well as bodily functions, were strictly prohibited during this period. Cultural mores and taboos, enforced at the time by the studios themselves but aided and abetted by organizations such as the Roman Catholic-inspired Legion Of Decency (founded in 1934 to "combat the making of immoral Hollywood movies") all but ensured poopless scripting. But by the late fifties, the old studio system had begun to crumble; independent film producers had arrived upon the scene with more freedom of subject matter. The Legion Of Decency had moderated its position, and had ceased to exist altogether by 1975. So it's no coincidence that the earliest archived poop scene, in 1964's Dr. Strangelove, is from the sixties, when censorship standards had started to relax. The late sixties ushered in the well-documented sexual revolution, accompanied by the communal Shamelessness of Hippie culture, best exemplified by the open peeing and pooping in the fields at Woodstock. By the seventies, reflecting trends in the culture, images of more graphic sexuality were cropping up more frequently in scripts, along with particular bathroom functions. We have 17 movies archived from the seventies -- more than triple the number from the sixties. By the late seventies, films like Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong, 1978) and More American Graffiti (1979) were drenched in counterculture terminology and attitudes towards both sexuality and bodily functions. In addition, John Waters' 1972 film Pink Flamingos went way over the top in depicting the transvestite Divine actually eating a piece of dogshit. (This was not faked or a special effect, as subsequent commentary about the making of the movie revealed. Divine, himself, was traumatized by what he had done, and worried that he would get sick -- although he supposedly didn't.) The eighties features 45 archived movies -- once again nearly triple the number from the previous decade. By this decade, films featuring poop scenes had branched out into all genres. 1980's Baby-Ruth-in-the-swimming-pool scene from Caddyshack and the gym-teacher-on-the-pot scene from Porky's II: The Next Day, were played strictly for laughs. But Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Das Boot (1981), and the Oscar-nominated Fame (1980) and Working Girl (1988) offered characters pooping at home or at the office, under unremarkable circumstances. In fact, it's worth noting here that Fame was a hip, enormously successful version of the old pristine (and poopless) forties and fifties M-G-M musical, complete with two scenes of students faking or taking serious dumps -- something Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire or Judy Garland would never have been caught dead doing. There was a veritable explosion of poop scenes in the nineties; we have 81 films archived, nearly doubling the selection from the eighties. Poop scene depiction truly began to come of age in this decade -- some of these films were Oscar winners, including Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), featuring an outlaw gunned down while shitting in the outhouse; and Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), in which two Union soldiers squat outside in the high grass near each other. Neither of these scenes was played for laughs, effectively conveying instead the tenuousness of less-settled periods in our country's history. Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, both from 1994, were two more critically-acclaimed works with crucial scenes of #2 action not played for laughs, revolving around issues such as mob hits and prison escapes. On the more frivolous side, 1999's American Pie continued the successful and time-honored tradition of working student shitting into a lightweight plot; while 1997's Austin Powers, with SNL alum Mike Myers, was the first installment of a franchise that has prominently featured fecal activity on the part of its broadly-drawn characters. That brings us to the current decade, the first of the new millennium. It's interesting to note that there are already 83 films archived in the first five years of this decade, which surpasses the total from the nineties -- with five more years still remaining. If this trend continues and PoopReport keeps on truckin', there could be at least 160-plus entries by 2010. Over 60% (140) of the archived poop scenes come from comedies. The remainder is divided equally among drama, action-adventure, and sci-fi/horror categories. My take on the preponderance of poop scenes in comedies versus other genres is that people are more comfortable when bathroom activity and bodily functions are played for laughs. 2002's Jackass: The Movie, Scary Movie 2 and 3, and National Lampoon's Van Wilder are all examples of the juvenile approach to the poop scene, depicting explosive diarrhea, surreptitiously-slipped laxatives, and dumps in inappropriate places at inopportune times. At the opposite end of the spectrum, three Oscar-nominated films -- The House of Sand and Fog (2003), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Sideways (both from 2004) -- each depict characters pooping uneventfully as a normal part of life. That depiction now seems light-years removed from the Legion Of Decency heyday, when the very existence of bodily functions was never even acknowledged. One other bit of trivia I found interesting: three actors in particular seem to have appeared in more poop scenes than any others so far (not counting sequels): Robin Williams has four, in Mrs. Doubtfire, One-Hour Photo, The Fisher King and Good Morning, Vietnam; while Jim Carrey (Dumb & Dumber, Me, Myself And Irene, and Bruce Almighty) and Tom Hanks (Castaway, Forrest Gump and The Terminal) offer up three apiece. So it's clear that poop scenes are certainly no detriment to an actor's career. If you haven't perused our archives lately, why not scroll through the entries now? Or better yet, go to your favorite video store and rent one or more of these films -- and see for yourself how Hollywood has grown in its depiction of a basic fact of life for every single human being on this planet. Post new comment
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