The attraction of repulsion

Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy chicha. It turns out that ‘controlled rot tastes good’; the particular rot you favour will depend on where you come from. In Sardinia casu marzu is highly prized: it’s sheep’s cheese crawling with maggots. Reading Rachel Herz’s book, it’s astonishing what people enjoy, even before you get to the section on Japanese pornography.

Herz knows whereof she speaks: she has acted as nose judge in the annual National Rotten Sneakers Contest, where finalists aged six to 16 vie for the accolade of smelliest shoe champion. Luckily she keeps such alarming personal information to a minimum and most of her arguments are elucidated with eccentric psychology experiments.

Herz starts by grouping repulsion in loose categories: bodily functions and excretions, disease-contamination, mutilation, animalistic behaviour, sex and morality. To make things horribly clear, she conjures an image that includes all these aspects; then in warped lecture-hall style, she methodically identifies and discusses every abomination contained in her scenario. Even students at the back of the class will be left in no doubt as to why the image of a woman chained like an animal and drinking urine is disgusting.

Next she brings in the experimental psychologists, who have thought up an impressive array of tests, often involving baffling logistics. If, for example, people are asked to remember something they feel ashamed of and then given the choice between a free pencil and an antiseptic wipe, they are much more likely to choose the wipe. Once they’ve availed themselves of the wipe, they are much less likely to give to charity than people who have not been given a chance to cleanse themselves.