The Sociological Ramifications Of A Flying Pooping Baby

In his 1908 paper Character and Anal Erotism, no less a pioneering psychoanalyst as Sigmund Freud posited that "many people who exhibit certain character traits -- orderliness, parsimoniousness, and obstinacy -- also speak of a particular childhood relationship to a particular 'bodily function' and the 'organ concerned in it.'" Freud uses the essay to answer two questions: first, why would childhood anal erotism disappear? And second, why the connection between particular character traits and shit?

To cut to the chase, Freud suggests that between the ages of 5 and 11 -- after the initial anal stage [1], but before the genital stage [2] -- we go through a period of sexual latency, during which we develop "reaction-formations" (such as shame, disgust and morality) to stem sexual urges which were once very much a part of us... anal erotism is subordinated to genital erotism.

Bottom line: people who enjoy their poop -- and all of us do, at least at early stages in our lives-- have to give up their former anal source of pleasure in order to submit to the genital source.

That's a polite way of saying that "growing up" entails deferring to the power of nookie over the pleasure of potty.

[3]

A newly-born baby acquires super powers when he is catapulted through a hospital window into a jar of the "essence of adult" of Pilkey's adult hero, Captain Underpants. The baby boy -- now with cape and diaper to accommodate modesty -- is reunited with his parents, and ready to take on the bad guys of the world.

But Deputy Dangerous, the evildoer who extracted Captain Underpants' essence, has other plans. Attempting to zap one of Super Diaper Baby's poopy diapers into his transfer helmet via satellite, the plan backfires and Deputy Dangerous is transformed into a walking turd and thereafter christened Deputy Doo-Doo.

Later, Deputy Doo-Doo is deposited into a nuclear reactor and grows to gigantic, mutant-turd heights, and begins a Godzilla-like rampage. But -- ta da! -- Super Diaper Baby saves the day by detaching the enormous roll of toilet paper from atop the Bob's Toilet Paper Company factory and wrapping Deputy Doo-Doo from head to toe.

[4]

And so there is an ongoing battle between the young and the poop-shameless, and the old and the poop-shameful. This endless conflict most recently reared its head when a California grandmother created an international stink over a comic novel called The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby [5].

It all started when Pam Santi of Riverside, CA, discovered her grandchild following instructions in Super Diaper Baby that taught how to draw the chief villain in the book, Deputy Doo Doo. Outraged, Santi demanded officiously that the offending material, intended for children ages 7-to-10 -- well within the 5-to-11 range that Freud identifies as development of "reaction --formations" to anal/poop erotism -- to be removed from the library shelves.

In attacking Super Diaper Baby and its creator Dav Pilkey, Santi took on the work of a creative thirty-something young man who has sold millions of parentally-sanctioned copies of his book to shameless youngsters who enjoyed such imaginative creations as carnivorous talking toilets, giant radioactive turds, and a flying, poopy-diaper-clad super-powered baby. In her righteous indignation, Santi took issue with work that has made it fun for 7-to-10-year-olds to hold on to and celebrate their fascination with bodily functions at an age Freud suggest they should be developing a sense of shame and reticence about such matters.

Freud posits that, for the purpose of ensuring the predominance of genital sexuality, shame and disgust arise WITHIN the psychic mechanisms as much as they are imposed from without. That seems to imply that some sort of shameful reaction to bodily functions would arise naturally in the child, even if that child didn't happen to have an activist grandmother like Pam Santi contributing her two cents.

The success of Super Diaper Baby, however, suggests otherwise. It seems that when these issues are engagingly and humorously packaged, millions of children embrace their fascination with their bodily functions -- elevating them to a healthy, un-self-conscious level that contradicts Freud's contention of an inevitable shameful reaction for the sake of genital preoccupation.

So is Pam Santi the last defense of civility? Without constant supervision, would America's children find themselves mired in a world of potty humor, unable to graduate to the healthier world of genital preoccupation?

If "civility" is a world of Shameful Shitting, then, yes.

As a Shameless adult male who has openly celebrated his bodily functions all his life, and who has joyfully embraced PoopReport since discovering it six months ago, I believe it is time to rethink some of Freud's notions in favor of the playful ideas promulgated by Dav Pilkey. Shamefulness is not inevitable -- nor should it be. We do not have to turn away from the business of bowels and bladders in order to become adults.

In a sense, many of us who have found our way onto PoopReport are like Dav Pilkey's young readers -- refusing to sublimate our instincts to more conventional, shameful notions, no matter what our grandmothers may say. Perhaps we PoopReporters are the unknowing generals of an army of poopers that will win the ongoing battle between Shameful and Shameless, leaving Freudian notions of repression and sublimation (and those like Pam Santi who would seek to uphold them) behind us.

Whatever the case, three things are certain: Pilkey's books will remain on shelves despite censorship challenges; the ongoing battle between juvenile fascination with poop and pee and the "civilizing" influence of authority figures will continue; and I'm going to give The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby to my little cousins for Christmas.

-- The Big Wiper [6] with Poopshipdestroyer [7]