About farting

I heard an amusing item on the BBC World Service that in Malawi there is a new bill before parliament which is attempting to make it an offence to foul the air by breaking wind in public. There seems to be some legal dispute as to whether the text is seeking to outlaw flatulence in particular or is making a more general reference to air pollution. However, the Minister for Justice, Mr Chaponda, is adamant that he is leading a campaign for public decency, telling the local radio, “Just go to the toilet when you feel like farting”.

My good friend and fellow potential criminal in Malawi, Pete, and I pondered together over dinner the consequences of this news. Would there be a mass public outcry and camping out on the square like in Cairo with the enraged citizens of... (sorry, I don’t know what the capital of Malawi is) protesting in defence of freedom of expression, perhaps with rhythmic chanting and farting ? (What do we want ?! prrfffff!!! One, two, three, four! What are we farting for ?! etc). As a libertarian myself I would probably be carrying a banner proclaiming: “Wherever you be, let your wind go free!”

And if the bill were ever passed into law, how would you enforce it ? Would there be a new branch of the secret police following you around and slapping you in handcuffs if you accidentally let one off ? And what about false accusations ? The mind boggles.

Actually, the Minister says it would be enforced by local chiefs in a way similar to the existing law on urinating in public. However, I do see a difference here: I may have perfect control over my bladder, but not over my sphincter. To paraphrase a popular aphorism of today: farts happen. To attempt to stem the eruptive force of nature by legislation smacks of King Canute sitting on his throne on the beach commanding the tide to turn.

As Pete and I mused on, Geraldine seemed less amused, she considered that perhaps Malawi would be her kind of place. Generally, it seems that women find farting less amusing than men. I wonder why that is ?

As a man I do find farting intrinsically funny.

Perhaps it is the joy at seeing a sudden loss of dignity in someone who had previously been giving themselves airs and graces; in other words it is the very essence of slapstick. There is the delight also of observing how people choose to react to this breakdown in polite social intercourse. Farting is the bathetic reminder that we are all human. I am reminded of Montaigne: “les rois fientent; et les dames aussi.” (Kings crap; and so do ladies). Rather than take this as a disappointment, we should embrace it as a cause for celebration of the entirety and universality of the human condition.

If my amusement at farting is branded as puerile, the attitude of a little boy, let me retort that embarrassment at it is equally the reaction of a little girl. Perhaps we need a more adult view, neatly expressed in a cartoon on display in our downstairs loo. Two impeccably dressed English gentlemen with tightly rolled umbrellas and bowler hats sit alone in a first class railway compartment reading the Times. The first asks: “Excuse me, Sir, have you just farted ?” The second replies: “Of course I have, do you think I always smell like this ?”

Farting is seen as taboo in most societies that deem themselves to be civilized and to have moved on from their origins closer to nature. People don’t want to be reminded of that side of their humanity, and the perpetrator is indeed “in bad odour”. Admittedly the smell can be decidely anti-social, especially in such a confined space as a lift. It has to be recognized though that in a simple more rural society, where people tend to live outdoors and closer to many other intense smells of nature, the chances are it passes unnoticed anyway, or at least can be more easily relativized as part of life’s great olefactory tapestry, which we have generally forgotten in our modern anti-septic world.

The true joy of the fart is of course not its smell but its noise (“The fart has no nose”, folk proverb quoted by Bertolt Brecht). There is a boisterous sincere vitality in a loud fart. Actually farts are like dogs, their bark is usually worse than their bite. The ones you have to beware of are the silent but deadly (SBD), sneakily and hypocritically emitted in their full and evil fetidness by those who then pretend it wasn’t them and accuse others. This gives rise to the folk wisdom of “he who smelled it dealt it” or in its more erudite form “he who perceived it conceived it”. No, far better is the honest audible farter.

A sonorous, full-bodied fart is worth cultivating. In the late 19thC, the Frenchman Joseph Pujol famously made a music-hall stage career as “le pétomane”. He was capable of farting at will and even able to play the Marseillaise through his anus. Actually, his muscular control was such that he was able to suck in the air and then expel it, so it wasn’t coming from his intestine at all and didn’t smell. There was me thinking he must have been on a special diet of brassica and pulses washed down with beer, but apparently not.

Although I lack the skills of Pujol and cannot fart at will, I do enjoy making the most of one, when it comes naturally. Fortunately, when concentrating at work or during an entertainment at a concert, theatre or cinema, they don’t seem to come, but afterwards, once relaxed... It seems sad that people such as the Minister of Malawi would deprive people, or perhaps I should say men, of this innocent pleasure.

One of my favourite Japanese poems in its elegiac simplicity goes:

“Letting rip a fart;

It doesn’t make you laugh

When you live alone.”

Subject of course to the right company, farts are for sharing.