How memes could save the country…again

In a 2017 Paris Review essay, writer Anne Julia Wyman waxed lyrical on the power of Yasujirō Ozu’s 1959 fart-tinged masterpiece, Good Morning.

The film is “a chamber piece for all the human linguistic instruments,” she writes, but it’s the farts that make the film so memorable. The power of a fart onscreen is twofold: it’s both taboo and warmly human, a reminder that we all share certain bodily realities that can be a source of shame and a strange gesture of unity.

Ozu is not alone in creating a paean to the humble fart. Benjamin Franklin tried his hand it in a famous [1781] letter now known as “fart proudly,” or “to the royal academy of farting.”

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He wasn’t just doing it to be funny. Franklin knew just what Ozu knew, and what all the best comics know. That a fart can be more than just an embarrassing social faux pas. It can be a medium and a message at once, a way of communicating something so human, so honest, so basic that it almost eschews the need for language.

I keep thinking about this during our current election cycle, when the choices we’re faced with are Kamala Harris, an accomplished politician with a proven track record, and Donald Trump, a one-term, disgraced former President, a courtroom farter, and someone who barely values human life even within his own family. It’s not really a choice at all, if you’re paying attention. But the frustrating thing about living through this moment in time and watching the polls get closer and closer is that what feels basic to so many is still not clicking for a baffling number of swing voters. 

Which is, of course, where the farts come in. We know that Trump’s fanbase won’t be dissuaded from voting for him for just about any reason. If he can get away with dancing for 40 minutes at a rally, talking about Hannibal Lecter as if he were a real person, and ranting about how people don’t eat bacon anymore because of windmills, he can just about get away with anything, and has. It’s frustrating, but it doesn’t change what’s real. Most of the people in this country know that Trump is a disgusting idiot, and while it might not be politic to come right out and say it, it’s simply a fact. So why attack him on policy, which is barely-existent and hateful when it does exist, or on the bizarre anti-trans views he’s so recently adopted. We know none of it matters. We might as well just talk about the farts. At least that’s something that most people seem to understand.

After all, we have proof that it kind of works. Way back in 2012, when gay marriage wasn’t legal in every state and the choice was between a second Obama term and moderate Republican Mitt Romney, the combination of peak Internet, peak Twitter, and a rolling lineup of memeable Republican clowns made for a perfect storm. We got meme generators that forced Rick Perry to state controversial 2012 opinions (“Katy Perry is better than Nicki Minaj”), and endless commentary about Paul Ryan’s shirtless pecs. But the real work had started way back in 2003, when sex columnist and “Savage Love” podcaster Dan Savage took down then-Senator Rick Santorum using a simple Google search. He created a website that would forever link the pro-life, anti-gay politician with “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” That Google page one result stayed strong for nearly a decade, and showed the power of gay irreverance to completetly unseat idiots with minimal effort, and huge laughs.

That spirit has proudly continued into this election cycle, and it’s part of what’s been keeping us sane throughout it. A meme is in many ways a visual fart. It’s quick, instantly hilarious, and points out something uncomfortable about our shared humanity. Or lack thereof. It’s as easy to be disarmed by a video of Tim Walz petting a kitten as it is to be disgusted by reports of Ron DeSantis eating a pudding cup with his fingers. It’s the kind of shorthand that tells you exactly who a person is, and what they stand for. On the one side, we have something recognizably human and warm. On the other, something so devious and disgusting we have to laugh at it just to make that oily feeling go away. 

Reducing politicians to disgusting poopy-pants idiots might seem like going low, and we’re not supposed to do that. But I think there’s something more to be gained here. Because if voters aren’t put off by Trump’s actual crimes and human rights violations, the only thing we have left to work with is the very fact of his repugnancy, the things that make him human in the worst way.

In other words: We all fart, but not all farts are created equal. 

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