Episode #51
Why Do Movies Keep Making People Vomit? | The History of Vomiting on Screen with Jaina Cipriano
Why do movies and TV shows keep making people vomit? Vomiting scenes are everywhere in film and television. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re horrifying. Sometimes they’re meant to make us uncomfortable. And sometimes they seem to exist for no reason other than making the audience think, “Do we really need to see this?” In this special episode of What If I Don’t Like It?, I sit down with filmmaker Jaina Cipriano - who you may recognize from our ConAir episode, No. 45 - to investigate the history and purpose of vomiting scenes in movies and TV. We talk about how vomiting went from something filmmakers largely kept offscreen to something we now see in increasingly graphic detail, and what that shift says about changing ideas of censorship, realism, comedy, disgust, and audience expectations. We get into Hitchcock and Rebecca , the Hays Code, The Exorcist, Monty Python and the Meaning of Life, Yellowjackets, Triangle of Sadness , and some of the most memorable vomiting scenes in film history. This conversation is especially personal for Jaina. She has lived with emetophobia for more than 20 years, so watching vomiting on screen isn’t an abstract exercise in film criticism. We talk about what it’s like to have a phobia repeatedly confronted by movies and television, how filmmakers use vomiting to provoke a physical reaction from an audience, and why Jaina eventually made a short film exploring her own emetophobia, called Actualization . We also ask why filmmakers so often use vomiting as shorthand for excess, disgust, illness, intoxication, humiliation, or emotional overwhelm. When does a vomiting scene actually tell us something about a character? When is it effective horror or comedy? And when is it simply a cliché? And if filmmakers are trying to make vomiting feel realistic, why do so many movies and TV shows leave out the very things that actually make the experience human? This is a conversation about vomiting in movies and TV, film history, censorship, horror, comedy, disgust, emetophobia, and the strange power of one of the most universal bodily functions we have. ### FIND JAINA Website: www.jainaciprianophotography.com/ Short film: www.jainaciprianophotography.com/actualization-2026 Instagram: instagram.com/jainastudio ### WATCH / LISTEN TO THE PODCAST ️ YouTube: www.youtube.com/@MovieRuntime Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2iyYtsB5zeuoCJZ3D3fKJt Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-if-i-dont-like-it-a-movie-discussion-podcast/id1719394737 **GUEST:** Jaina Cipriano / @jainastudio **HOST:** Kt Baldassaro / @MovieRuntime What do you think is the most memorable vomiting scene in a movie or TV show? #FilmAnalysis #FilmHistory #Movies #FilmCriticism #HorrorMovies
