When the poop hit the fans

GROWN-UP CRITICS HAVE gushed, mostly, over the movie version of the kids' TV show "SpongeBob Squarepants." They've called it "a joyful spasm of whacked-out surrealism" and "a marvel of unleashed childishness." They can't decide whether SpongeBob himself is "exhilaratingly subversive" or "brilliantly unsubversive," but they know his movie is hip. "Throws humorous fishbones to the older crowd," says The Washington Post. "It's cognizant without being self-consciously knowing," insists Salon, as if Bob were a French penseur and not a sponge who works as a fry-cook.

The reviews from the target demographic are slightly less high-minded. In November, the New York Daily News asked a handful of first-day moviegoers for their opinions. Nine out of nine kids gave the movie a thumbs-up. Patrick, 4, enjoyed the music. Ryan, 11, "thought David Hasselhoff was very funny." But three of the underage critics cut to the chase. "It was funny," 5-year-old Paige reported, "especially when they showed their butts."

Nostalgia is not to be trusted, but it's not always wrong either. I seem to recall that once upon a time, back in the Johnson administration, the stars of children's movies, whether flesh and blood or animated, "worked clean," in comic Bob Newhart's famous formulation. Now you can't watch a kids' flick without stepping in poop. Potty humor has become de rigueur for movies aimed at children.

Harry Knowles, who tends the film-geek site Ain't It Cool News (aintitcool.com), denies that anything has changed. Vulgar humor "goes all the way back to black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons," he asserts. "[It's] been around since the dawn of cinema."

But Knowles was born in 1972, and he's not a parent. A quick scan of Internet chat groups reveals that parents now take poop and fart jokes as a given, and they're angry. "I know elementary schoolers love fart jokes," lamented one parent on FamilyEducation (familyeducation.com). "But do we have to feed it to them for profit?" Some moms and dads view the trend as more proof of social decay. Others just find the jokes boring and irritating, but all take it for granted that they're everywhere.

Many professional pop culture watchers agree. Famed critic and talking head Leonard Maltin, an adjunct professor of film at the University of Southern California, calls potty humor "standard operating procedure for any film aimed at kids or young people." For 10 years, critic Nell Minow has been watching five or six kids' movies a week and posting the reviews to her Movie Mom website (moviemom.com). Potty humor, confirms the Movie Mom, "was already pervasive when I started in 1995." Even the best movies, she says, go for easy laughs. The only issue is how much -- whether a fart gag lasts mere seconds, as in "Finding Nemo," or should hire its own agent, as in "Shrek."

For nonparents, and for those too young to remember when things were different, the final proof is in comparison. "Homeward Bound," "Dr. Dolittle," and "101 Dalmatians" were big hits in the 1960s, and again 30 years later. All the `90s versions add bathroom humor not present in the originals. The neo-Dolittle, played by Eddie Murphy, wrinkles his nose as he treats a rat for a gas attack. A new puppy named Whizzer joins the updated Dalmatian litter, and pees on a picture of Cruella De Vil.

How did the epidemic start, and when? Even the pros, Minow and Maltin, are stumped for a date. Both critics, however, point the finger at the same patient zero: Mel Brooks.

"Blazing Saddles" changed movie humor, even if the effect wasn't felt in the kiddie division for years. Released in 1974, the film included a famous vignette of cowboys sitting around a fire eating beans and farting. "The campfire scene," says Maltin, "was outrageous and successful precisely because a gag about flatulence was unheard of in movies at that time."

Apr Mel, le deluge. The fart scene was a lowbrow reprise of that fateful day when Lytton Strachey changed the tenor of Bloomsbury conversation. Strachey, Virginia Woolf, et al, may have been artists, but they were also decorous Edwardians -- till the evening Strachey saw a stain on Woolf's dress. "Semen?" he asked, and when Woolf laughed instead of blanching, sex became something the clique could discuss.

In Hollywood the taboo against sex fell in the 1960s, long before "Blazing Saddles" killed the taboo against poop, perhaps because in the 1960s studios still made most of their movies for adults. In the decades after "Blazing Saddles," as Hollywood began to aim more of its products at those consumers most likely to leave the house on Friday night -- meaning teenagers -- gross-out humor became a staple of scriptwriters. John Belushi's antics in 1978's "Animal House" hastened the trend.

By the 1980s, crass had become the dominant strain of film comedy. The original "Porky's" earned $105 million at the box office. The "Police Academy" franchise, which introduced viewers to the concept of a full cavity search, lasted 10 years and six sequels. But the poop didn't really hit filmdom's youngest fans till the `90s. Once again, the culprit might be Mel Brooks -- though this time he was just following orders.

The story goes something like this: In 1989, director Amy Heckerling had a smash hit with a saccharine comedy called "Look Who's Talking," which she also wrote. The film's gimmick: Baby Mikey can talk, and in Bruce Willis's wisecracking voice, but only the audience can hear him.

The studio ordered up a quickie sequel. Heckerling directed again, but this time let her then-husband Neal Israel -- cowriter of most of the "Police Academy" movies -- handle the screenplay. Israel turned "Look Who's Talking Too" into a now-notorious scatfest. Where the original had only touched on dirty diapers, Israel took the sequel straight into the toilet. Literally. A baby voiced by Damon Wayans spends much of the film scaring Mikey and his new sister with tales of a monster named "Toiletman." Finally, the toilet itself speaks, and when it does, the voice is provided by none other than Mel Brooks.

Whatever happened between "Look Who's Talking Too" and the opening scene of "Shrek," in which the ogre wipes his butt with a page from a children's book, is murky at best. Kids got some potty-humor education in written form during the early `90s, as toilet-training manuals like the Japanese "Everybody Poops" touched off a boomlet of progressive-minded potty books. The Heckerling films were rated PG-13, so they were, at least nominally, aimed at adults. But kids watched "Look Who's Talking Too" on video, at home, and loved it. And the timing is telling. Just before "Look Who's Talking Too" there is "The Little Mermaid," whose title character suffers for true love. Three years later, the cat from the "Homeward Bound" remake, voiced by Sally Field, is fleeing from a stinky mound of cougar dung.

Whatever the cause, sometime in the late `80s or early `90s, filmmakers began hedging their bets with potty humor. Minow says the decision was conscious, commercial, and driven by focus groups and global markets. "Bathroom humor works in every language," she explains.

"Shrek" and its sequel made $750 million. Potty humor sells, and it's here to stay. It may grow old fast for parents, but will always retain the all-important shock value with the moviegoers who matter. "It's always new to the audience." says Minow. "The audience is always 6."

It's also harmless and age-appropriate compared to what follows when kids hit junior high: sex and violence. The real offense, after all, isn't a few poop jokes, but the cynicism of the studios, and that's incurable.

"It's like what my mother used to say," recalls Minow. "People talk that way because they have no imagination."

Mark Schone is a writer living in Brooklyn.