Okay, so as you may or may not know, I have emetophobia, which is the fear of vomiting, and I am currently undergoing exposure therapy to try and kick it before I go off to uni. For a more detailed insight to my experiences, you can visit my other blog: http://emetophobiadiary.blogspot.com/
Anyway, exposure therapy involves creating a hierachy of things that go from something that would provoke the least anxiety (so in my case, vegetable soup) all the way up to something that would lead you to go into a complete state of panic (someone throwing up on me or near me). Anyway, my recent task was 'implied vomiting' such as in Scrubs when people throw up and you don't see it, just hear the audio. My counsellor found me a video on YouTube which wasn't like that, but involved a girl infront of white background sticking her fingers down her throat trying to induce vomiting. And this was a three minute video. As I watched this several things occured to me:
1. There are some very disturbed people on the internet.
2. People will almost undoubtedly do anything for money. Although there is not enough money in the world you could pay me to make myself sick.
3. How the hell did this girl go for so long without making herself sick?!
I had to watch this video 6 times in total before I was basically okay with it. In that time this clip actually had a title "Sick Film." My 'homework' for this week is basically to watch it on and off until my next session. I went to watch it today and in the description found that this is the first scene of an actual film, which, after some curiosity and a bit of Googling (with my glasses off in case there were images!) I discovered is a 20 minute "art" project by a man named Martin Creed, and this consists of 19 clips of people vomiting which was filmed on a completely closed set, even without the director, and this was actually shown in a theatre in London in 2006. Again, several things came to mind:
1. How in the world is vomiting 'art?' It is a bodily function that is not only disgusting but inconvinient.
2. Why would people pay to watch 20 minutes of different people vomiting? Surely there are better things to spend your money on?
3. Why would people be willing to let themselves be filmed while making themselves throw up? Are they that desperate to be an actor or do they just want to lose every ounce of dignity they have for a bit of money?
Another strange part of this is that you can also buy this on DVD if you're interested. Why you would be, I don't know, but if strangers vomiting on camera is your thing, then get your taster by YouTube-ing "sick film" and clicking on one of the first videos that comes up - white background with a random girl. I'm sure you'll find the one I mean.
