Lew Stringer wrote:
Interesting responses. Each to their own of course but I found it bizarre that some people find real life farts funny, but not in the comic strips! Conversely I don't find it funny if people deliberately do it in public but I think it's harmless and inoffensive in a humour strip.
Lew
Just to be clear, with my own example, I wasn't suggesting that people deliberately farting in public was funny, but there are conceivable situations where, in spite of ourselves, real life farts can be funny. A pompous high-minded spiritual monologue from the pulpit interrupted by loud trumpets from a near-deaf old lady who doesn't realise she's doing it may be funny because of its sheer inappropriateness and out of embarrassment.
There's also the supposedly-true story of the girlfriend being picked up by her boyfriend to be driven off to a date. Her stomach is bulging with wind but she hasn't had time to go to the toilet. She's absolutely, utterly desperate to get it all out. He opens the door for her to slip into the passenger seat. She realises she only has till he gets round the car and into the driver seat to let it all out and avoid extreme embarrassment. So she expels the gas in one massive long trumpet that seems to shake the seats. Luckily it finishes just as he opens the car door and lets himself in.
Then he introduces his two elderly parents who are sitting in the back seats.
Both these examples may be funny because of the situation,the embarrassment, and breaking of social taboos - but not because farting *in itself* is funny.
Gross out humour has been around a lot longer than 25 years but I don't think the comics establishment were out of touch for not featuring it (let's be honest; for both children and adults, fart and bodily function gags have always been considered the lowest of the lowbrow; scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel stuff) but because they thought sinking to such lowest common denominator fare was way beneath them.
Similarly, the ITV of old wouldn't have filled its evenings with celebrities eating animal genitalia and having maggots dumped on their heads, or its mornings with the Jeremy Kyle Show. These things certainly existed: Clive James on TV used to delight in showing clips from the likes of the Japanese Endurance or America's Jerry Springer Show, as examples of how lowbrow international TV could get. Now, desperate for ratings and wholly dumbed down, ITV is filled with the same sort of fare. Do we say ITV has "evolved"? Or would "devolved" be more appropriate?
I'd also question this idea that children have somehow "chosen" this material. Children's entertainment is devised by adults, created by adults and imposed on them by adults. Whether we give them lowest common denominator crudity or clever, creative, imaginative fare is entirely down to grown-ups (and, of course, dependent on the skills and creativity of those grown-ups.) Whether to aim high or low is entirely down to them.
I'm also inclined to think the fart/snot/turd angle in comics is probably part of the sweeping infantilisation of society which, again, it's hard to think of as a positive trend or "evolution."
