Poop Culture by Dave Praeger

Author:Dave Praeger
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Feral House
Published: 2010-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

Of all the troubles facing our boys in blue in Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol, Lieutenant Proctor is the most infuriating. The bumbling sidekick of the despicable Captain Harris, Proctor has authority in direct proportion to the quantity of ass over which his lips have grazed. A sycophant and an idiot, he kowtows before those who appreciate a good kowtowing, and is rewarded with the authority to be a jerk in the name of his superiors.

Nothing better illustrates Proctor’s arbitrary cruelty than his attitude toward the Academy grads’ efforts at community out-reach. Finding Mahoney and his comrades bonding with neighborhood youths over a game of basketball, he accuses them of goofing off and smugly promises to tell the captain. Driving off, he stops short to dash into a portable toilet on a nearby construction site. His longsuffering subordinates seize this opportunity to humble their tormentor. While Proctor contentedly reads Archie’s Pals n’ Gals as he goes about his business, Mahoney and gang commandeer a crane, lift the porta-potty off the site, deposit it in the middle of a crowded football stadium, and lift off the walls.

And then the national anthem begins. Pants around his ankles, Proctor is still a man in uniform; with the crowd staring, he stands and salutes.

An authority figure is expected to be perfect. His position implies that he’s a human being his lessers should strive to emulate. That’s why nothing gives an authority figure his comeuppance better than exposing him while he’s pooping. Shamefaced with his pants down, what’s revealed is the one thing that can undo him: his fundamental similarity to everybody else. The fear he inspired evaporates into scorn, and his rank, stature, and powerful friends become irrelevant.

It’s not just authority figures who have to worry about poop; any façade of dignity is vulnerable. In Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, a teenaged Eugene Morris Jerome lusts after his beautiful cousin Nora. He struggles to create an aura of sophistication as would befit a beau suitable for the lovely lady, and it’s all shattered when Nora walks in on him in the bathroom. He screams at her to shut the door. “She saw me on the crapper!” he laments. “Nora saw me on the crapper! I might as well be dead!” It’s not that Nora doesn’t herself poop, or that Eugene believed Nora did-n’t think he pooped, but that poop, the ultimate low, easily brings down the edifice of high.

When we’re pooping, we have to drop our mask. When someone sees what’s behind the mask, the impression the mask had created is gone. Eugene worries that Nora now sees him as just another stinky teenager. The whole football crowd sees Lieutenant Proctor not as a distinguished officer but as a guy with skinny legs who reads Archie on the pot. And while the stigma both Eugene and Proctor suffered comes partly from taboos against showing private parts, pooping makes it much worse. Proctor would certainly pick being merely naked in front of 50,000 people over pooping in front of them.

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