Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

Almost immediately, that slice of mint does its vengeful work. Creosote literally explodes, issuing forth a tidal wave of vomit that splashes every comer of the dining room. In the center of this dripping mess, then, sits Creosote, his belly blown open so that one can see his rib cage; but his red, fist-like heart relentlessly continues pumping as it dangles under his chin. His eyes are open, his face still carrying that mask of impassive brutishness he has worn throughout the scene. The maitre d’, overjoyed and very self-satisfied by the success of his revenge plot, gives Creosote the check.

To Laugh, or To Scream?

This scene, involving non-stop nausea and a graphically exploded body, sounds more horrific than comic. It, like so much of the humor of Monty Python, is on the dark side. The scene has few peers in the annals of motion picture comedy, save perhaps the pie-eating sequence in Stand By Me. But even that seems tame next to the spectacle of Mr. Creosote’s extravasation. The philosophical question it raises is: how is it possible to laugh at humor as black as this? Though it may seem paradoxical that mirth could issue from depicting a situation so gruesome and disgusting, perhaps this will not strike us as so strange when we recall how much humor—such as bathroom humor—revels in the repulsive. And yet there is nevertheless something perplexing about this scene. How can the gag function as a source of comic amusement for so many, rather than leaving them trembling in horror? Why is the sequence comic rather than horrific? This seems paradoxical. Since negotiating paradoxes is one of the charges of philosophy, answering that question is the aim of this chapter. And in the process, we wish to learn what Mr. Creosote can teach us about laughter.

Let us agree from the outset that many people laugh at this scene; they find it comically amusing. This is not to deny that some also find it disgusting, and even unwatchable. And even those who enjoy the routine may experience moments during it when their stomach feels on the verge of revolting. Nevertheless, there are a significant number of people who find the scene on balance risible, and even continuously so—that is, they laugh all the way through. Our question is, How can they do so? How can anyone find the explosion of a human body to be comically amusing? If anything, the prospect is horrifying.

One way to make some headway with this problem is to think about what makes for horror, especially in mass culture.13 In popular fictions, including literature and motion pictures, horror is typically focused upon a particular sort of object, namely, a monster—that is, a creature whose existence is unacknowledged by science and who, in addition, is dangerous and disgusting. For example, the Frankenstein monster is a scientific impossibility—electrifying dead flesh will fry it, not animate it—and the monster is disgusting, an impure being constructed of rotting, dismembered body parts. And perhaps most obviously, the monster is dangerous: it kidnaps, maims, and kills people.

Maybe we are tempted to think of the restaurant vomiting scene as horror rather than comedy because Creosote, it would appear, shares many of the attributes that characterize horror. For example, I expect that he is a physiological impossibility; even supposing that someone could reach his girth, it is unlikely that he would be able to move on his own power. Creosote is of a scale of obesity where the patient usually has to be moved by handlers. But Creosote is also beyond the ken of science, both in the manner of his explosion and, then, of his survival. People don’t burst like that, balloons do; and if they did, they would not live to tell the tale. But one suspects that Creosote will have himself sewn up again in order to eat another day.

Moreover, Creosote, like Frankenstein’s monster, is certainly disgusting. In the first instance, his behavior is disgusting. His constant vomiting presents a challenge to the strongest stomach. I think that were it not the case that film is odorless—that, thankfully, smell-o-rama has not yet been perfected—many viewers would be unable to hold onto their own dinners throughout this episode. Indeed, Creosote’s name suggests a foul odor, inasmuch as it labels a colorless liquid, a pungent burning agent, that smells of smoked meat and tar. Creosote’s incontinence, furthermore, functions metonymically in the same way in which the rats, spiders, and other vermin that inhabit the vampire’s lair function—namely, as disgusting things designed to accentuate the abominableness of the thing to which they are attached or which they surround.

But it is not only what is connected to Creosote that is disgusting. Creosote himself is loathsome, an abomination. Undoubtedly, he is the sort of thing we call monstrous in ordinary language. Like the Frankenstein monster or the creatures in the Alien and Predator series, Creosote is physically repulsive. The thought of being hugged by Creosote is probably enough to make most of us squirm; and imagine what visualizing a kiss on the lips from him might do to your digestion. Once again, like the Frank-enstein monster, the Alien, and the Predator, there is something viscerally revolting, unclean, and impure about Creosote.

It’s the impurity of the monster in horror fictions that elicits the response of disgust from audiences. This impurity, in turn, is rooted in the ontology, or being, of horrific creatures. Such creatures are violations or problematizations of our standing cultural categories. For that reason they are abominations possessing a combination or collection of properties that our culture trains us to revile on contact. For instance, the Frankenstein monster violates the categorical distinction between life and death. It is both. It is a walking contradiction, as is Chucky, the puppet that kills, from the film Child’s Play. The Predator, a category violation if there ever was one, is part crab and part primate. The Blob