The Porcelain Goddess: New Cinematic Icon?
Recently, in an effort to fill in some gaps in my
queer filmography, I rented a bunch of movies with gay themes and/or characters. Among them was Gasoline,
an Italian film that came out last year that I'd heard had a good lesbian love scene. Within roughly 30 seconds
of the start, a woman throws up, very visibly and very unprettily. Barf, for me, is not an aphrodisiac, and I can't
imagine a love scene that could overcome the horror of that opening scene. The fevered groping, later in the
movie, in the stall of a public restroom did nothing to reverse my initial revulsion.
Gasoline served as the
celluloid straw that broke the cammello's back for me. The Italian antitourism film, it begs the question: What is
up with using puke as a modern cinematic device? I don't remember ever once seeing Katherine Hepburn,
Doris Day, Cary Grant, or even the Three Stooges spew chunks—and Grant's character in Father Goose was
drunk nearly the entire movie and the Three Stooges ingested everything from pillows to paint! The worst that
ever came of that was burping up a few feathers. So why is it that filmmakers today feel compelled to show us
this particular slice of reality?
If I wanted reality, I'd walk through the alley behind any bar or hang out at
frat-house drinking contests. I will grant that engagement with reality is an important part of maintaining a
productive life, but who says it has to be part of a movie—especially one that's not a documentary about, say,
bulimia? You might think I'm just choosing the wrong movies. If, for instance, I had opted to see gross-out
flicks, like Ace Ventura or Little Nicky, or horror movies—The Exorcist comes to mind—I would pretty much have
only myself to blame. Or even hard-core dramas, like Trainspotting. But comedies and romance movies? Not
even films for kids are safe from this trend: in Elf, Will Farrell hurls into a garbage can after spinning in a
revolving door, and in the second Harry Potter movie, Ron belches out a stream of slugs.
Is there a group
of people who actually enjoys seeing people toss their cookies? Forget I asked that—I learned a long time ago
that whatever the fetish, there is someone who has it. But how many of them can there be? Vomit, of course,
can also be meant to be funny—I remember a realistic hunk of lumpy rubber my brother bought at a novelty
shop once that you could put on the floor. But, like being pantsed, upchucking is only funny when it happens to
someone else.
Unless you're me—or one of the thousands of people who have emetophobia (fear of
vomiting—the fifth most common phobia, according to the International Emetophobia Society Web site). Then
it's just gross. Or maybe even downright horrifying, if you're truly phobic. Worse still—and I speak now as a
writer—hasn't the round-trip meal ticket become kind of a cliché? Lately, in the movies, anytime anyone is
scared, sick, shocked, agitated, drunk—well, evidently, the only way to show almost any emotion is to have
someone throw up. I mean, come on, screenwriters: get a little creative! Or look at some old movies, if you've
got no originality. Hundreds of characters languished in states of ill health in old movies, and we knew it
because they looked limp and wan, not because they had their heads hanging in a toilet bowl. And when Lou
Costello saw Frankenstein, did he yorch with fear? No, he sputtered and wheezed and clutched at Abbott.
When Otis on The Andy Griffith show or Bogart's Charlie Allnut in The African Queen show up rumpled, dirty,
and unshaven, we know they're drunk—we don't need any (not-so-)special effects to get it. Just because we
have the technology to make it look real doesn't mean we have to use it!
As my rational discussion turns
into a rant, I realize that apparently I have been holding it all in for longer than I thought. I also realize how rich
and colorful our vernacular English is: who would have thought there are so many synonyms for such a lowly
bodily function that an entire Web site would be devoted to them (www.VomitNames.com)? It's great to be an
American ...
c 2004 by Yvonne Zipter. e-mail yz@press.uchicago.edu . And check out her new Web site
www.yvonnezipter.com .