The History of the Fart Joke

[Pernicious]

Forty years after Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles revealed the beaning of life in the campfires of a million Hollywood horse operas, fart humor has become a staple of sitcoms, stand-coms, rom-coms and, yes, even zom-coms. Indeed, if the 1993 film Scent of a Woman were remade today, its blind protagonist would likely detect more than just whiffs of desperation.
This year’s models range from Heinz’s famously rude Super Bowl ad, to the Belcher kids’ Fart School for the Gifted music video on the Fox cartoon Bob’s Burgers, to Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, a movie he ripped on The Tonight Showwith his own peremptory headline: “Boy Blunder Farts His Way to Failure in Worst Western.”
The formula for the successful fart joke is not rocket science, even though it is methane-based. “In film, it’s considered the lowest laugh there is,” says Adam McKay, the onetime head writer at Saturday Night Live. “To reach escape velocity with a fart joke, you’ve first got to bust through the shame wall. Everyone likes to think they’re smart and have highbrow taste in comedy, but the truth is, none of us do.”
http://www.newsweek.com/history-fart-joke-275251