IS POOPOO FUNNY? An essay by A. Casserly

Is “poopoo” funny? Well, that all depends. If we’re talking about actual fecal matter, the answer is “no”; there’s nothing funny about seeing it, smelling it, touching it, etc (as anyone who has a pet or a baby will tell you). Despite what many gross-out ‘comedies’ of the late 90’s/early 2000’s repeated endlessly, actual dung is not amusing in the slightest.

But why is the word itself funny? I think it’s because it’s hard-wired into some of our earliest memories. Parents seem far more concerned with whether or not a child is behaving well more than anything else, and one of the big taboos of child behavior was dirty talk. Even if you were acting like a little angel even mentioning something that mom or dad found unpleasant would get you into trouble. This was your earliest experience with authority, but oddly enough, you soon learned the innate thrill of challenging authority. Letting words slip that you knew would irritate a parent, guardian, teacher, or uptight babysitter was riding the razor’s edge between freedom and a time-out (or smack in the head), and your inner child still remembers that thrill, that fun, dare I say, that rebellion. Yes, folks, every challenger of societal norms, especially comedians, begins with “poopoo”.

So I stand before you, a man well into my thirties, to present my hard-work, a comic with a character named Poopoo. Am I ashamed? Not in the slightest! Because I’m walking that tightrope between humor and a spanking, between thrills and sitting-in-the-corner, between revolution and no cookies, all for the sake of a stupid joke! AND I’M GLAD, YA HEAR ME?! GLAD! WAAA HAA HAA HAA HAAAAAAA!

….

Of course, in Zarbonok’s homeworld “Poopoo” is just the name of his family line, likely with no comical aspects whatsoever.