You can't do that on television!
You probably thought you’d seen the last of my posts on farting. I mean, how much more is there possibly to say? Well, think again, my friend – I’ve barely plumbed its complex depths. This post is dedicated to the Argentine anthropologist Marcelo Pisarro, who introduced me to the case of María Amuchástegui and got me thinking more about the topic.
(For the record, I do cover some of the content from this post in my book Silent but Deadly, but didn’t have the space to do it justice. For those interested in gender and farting, I’ve also been interviewed on this topic for the ABC podcast ‘Ladies, We Need to Talk’.)
In the mid-1980s, a Canadian kids’ TV show called You Can’t Do That on Television started airing in Australia. I don’t recall much about it except that in every episode someone would end up getting covered with a bucket of green slime. I assume this was the reason for the show’s title, although clearly you could slime people on television. In hindsight, if they’d really wanted to push boundaries, what they should have done was have cast members fart, because that seems to be the one thing you still can’t do on television.
Now, this is not to say that no one has ever farted on camera – at least, based on all the ‘celebrities fart on camera’ videos on YouTube (like this, this, this and this). Having sat through a number of these uniformly excruciating clips,1 it does indeed appear as if various farts have been caught on TV and in film. For example, the following scene in This is 40 where Paul Rudd farts in bed is apparently real. Likewise, although you can’t hear him cut the cheese in the film, the police lineup scene in The Usual Suspects was allegedly unscripted and precipitated by Benicio Del Toro farting just before he delivered his line.
But what these videos do point to is the fact that responses to farting are strongly gendered. With only a few notable exceptions, it’s mostly men caught farting on film and they are generally pretty unabashed in admitting it. However, whenever there is an incident involving a woman, the response is a ‘did-she-or-didn’t-she’ social media frenzy that some wit invariably deems ‘fartgate’. In response, the woman in question adamantly denies that she has farted, generally suggesting that microphone feedback, squeaky chairs or other culprits are to blame.
Even Whoopi Goldberg, who took her stage name from, of all things, a whoopee cushion, frequently jokes about her flatulence, and has appeared to fart on The View several times – once in 2011 and once in 2014 – has felt the need to clear the air (sorry!) about her alleged flatulence. In an article titled ‘I did NOT fart on air!’, she insisted that the fart noise was, in both instances, the result of feedback from a microphone. In her words, ‘I’m thinking, “Damn, that’s weird, what can I do?” Oh, I know! I’m gonna pretend I let a little something go. As a joke’.
Certainly, the whiff of scandal2 surrounding a suspected farting-on-camera incident can haunt female celebrities years after the event – as the British singer and former X-Factor judge Cheryl Cole can attest. In 2010, there was intense debate about whether she did or did not fart on air in an episode of the X-Factor. As far as I know, she didn’t comment on the original incident, but two years later, she was forced to address rumours about her farting. According to the Belfast Telegraph, Cole noted that she was always blamed for farts on airplanes. In her words, ‘I know they’re thinking, “Cheryl Cole thinks it’s OK to fart on a plane as she’s special”, and it’s so not true’. She continued, ‘There should be a sort of aerosol that can be sprayed into the air, and it would find the guilty person’.3
But perhaps the most extreme case is that of the Argentine celebrity María Amuchástegui. Known as ‘Argentina’s Jane Fonda’, she had a daily morning fitness show on TV in the 1980s. In 1986, a rumour began that she had farted on air during the filming of her show and then run crying from the studio. Bearing in mind the fact that I do not speak a word of Spanish,4 from what I have been able to gather from YouTube clips (like this and this) and articles (like this, this and this), the rumour was started by a group of pranksters and fuelled by a subsequent magazine article.
Although there was neither video footage of the alleged fart nor reliable contemporaneous witnesses, the story soon took on a life of its own. In fact, so powerful was the rumour that, to this day, many Argentinians insist that they witnessed the incident on television, which is as good an illustration as any of the power of suggestion.
Many commentators have since argued that Amuchástegui’s career suffered as a result of the story, to the point where she eventually left the TV industry. Although Amuchástegui downplayed the impact of the incident on her career, its effects clearly lingered. As she reflected in an interview,
‘I don’t know why they did it and who it was... They could have invented something more truthful. Yes, even my nephews wonder: but how is it going to be true if the programmes are recorded, if they don’t go live? And of course, if the accident had occurred, it would not have aired... If it had happened, we would have done the same thing we do when there is something we don’t like: we delete it and record again’ (translation by Google Translate).
Of course, there’s a small possibility that Amuchástegui did, in fact, fart while recording the show – as I’ve previously noted, exercise tends to precipitate both farts and varts.5 For example, according to Grantland, eighties fitness guru Richard Simmons (who I assume is no stranger to exercise-induced farts himself), used to occasionally start his ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies’ exercise classes with ‘Absolutely no farting… People eat fucking Mexican food and I have to suffer’.
As Simmons’ expletive-free exercise videos attest,6 the lack of footage of something is not, in itself, a testament to its absence – this is alluded to in Amuchástegui’s observation that if she had actually farted, the footage would simply have been edited out. Indeed, it’s worth noting that the actor and dancer Aníbal Silveyra, who worked with Amuchástegui on the show, later indicated that he witnessed the incident, which he said occurred when they were doing sit-ups, and was only noticeable because of Amuchástegui’s extreme reaction to it.
Still, even if she had farted, that would probably be the least remarkable aspect of the entire incident. The only extraordinary thing is the public reaction to the rumour, which has continued to live on, years after Amuchástegui’s death. As one YouTube commenter observes, based on the response, you could be forgiven for assuming that flatulence was a mortal sin rather than a natural bodily function that can happen in the wrong time and place to anyone.
Besides, even if there was footage of the fart, anyone can fake fart footage – as a video of Amuchástegui herself attests. Indeed, there’s a whole YouTube industry devoted to adding fart soundtracks to pretty much anything you can imagine (my favourite being the Fart Olympics). In fact, one of the problems with the YouTube celebrity farting videos is that we can’t be sure all of the farts featured are real.
One example that stands out is footage of the former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly farting on air during a live broadcast. I was intrigued by the case, because it’s a rare example of a female celebrity amused by her own flatulence rather than mortified by it.7 The problem is that the footage is fake. Although treated credulously in YouTube coverage, after some further research I discovered that she’s actually laughing uncontrollably at a prior guest confusing ‘fighting’ with ‘farting’, rather than farting herself – some diligent soul has added in the well-timed (albeit not entirely natural-sounding) fart noises.
Tellingly, the fake-fart-footage phenomenon seems to afflict female celebrities more than male ones, although a notable exception can be found in a recently circulated video of US President Joe Biden farting. The footage is actually fake; fart noises have been placed over the sound of microphone feedback. But the intensive media preoccupation with Biden’s flatulence, and the endless compilations of Biden fake-farting videos on YouTube, speak to a very specific context: namely, concerns about Biden’s fitness to be president.
Now, none of this is to say that, ageing presidents aside, men can fart with impunity – there is plenty of footage of men embarrassed by their accidental on-air farts. Notably, even fart pranksters on YouTube, who are uniformly male, don’t actually fart, but instead use fart-sound devices. But it’s very difficult to imagine a female celebrity responding to the embarrassing noises emanating from her chair in the way that Paul Rudd (yes, the farter from This is 40) did in a publicity interview for Ant-Man. For the record, it’s fake flatulence, but it’s unrepentant fake flatulence.8
The nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac allegedly expressed the desire to one day be ‘so well known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would… permit me to break wind in society and society would think it a most natural thing’. Based on my research, I’m forced to conclude that this is a utopian dream: no one gets to fart with impunity, even (actually, especially) celebrities.
But if you’re going to fart in public (allegedly or otherwise), it’s clearly best to be a man. Failing that, I’d advocate at least responding like one, rather than with denial or mortification. Because there’s not a single person on earth who could witness your flatulence without thinking ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.
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I think it’s fair to say that I have suffered for the sake of researching this piece. Look, I’m as fond of fart videos on YouTube as the next person, but adding an Entertainment Tonight-style voiceover to the footage kills the love.
I swear that one’s not my fault; I’m just copying magazine headlines.
I assume she’s been inspired by the use of urine detector dyes in public pools. But here’s the thing: despite their appearance in numerous films (e.g., Take This Waltz), the existence of such a dye is apparently a myth. So pee away, my friends, because no one will know.
Well, except for la cucaracha, which I actually learned in my grade eight Italian class.* I have had to rely on Google Translate to translate articles and Spanish-language YouTube clips about the incident, so take everything I have written with a grain of salt.**
*My Italian teacher was renowned for not being able to speak a word of Italian herself.
**In all honesty, you should probably do that anyway.
For instance, I’m 99.9% positive that this is a vart rather than a fart, although it’s treated as the former in the YouTube compilation.
Kind of like Peter Russell Clarke, who all Australians of a certain age will remember. Clarke came across as genial and wholesome on his eighties’ cooking show Come and Get It, but had a foul mouth even by Australia’s extremely lax standards – as the release of numerous blooper reels have subsequently revealed. Personally, I would have enjoyed the show much more as a kid if they’d left the swearing in.
Watching the footage increased my respect for Kelly ten-fold, until I realised it was fake. However, this clip of a female Swedish news anchor laughing at her own on-air fart is clearly real. Is this definitive proof of gender equality in Sweden?
Clearly, his response is also about illustrating that the noise was caused by the chair rather than his anus, but I can’t think of a female celebrity who would have taken the joke quite so far.