2 Girls 1 Cup is the unofficial nickname of the trailer for Hungry Bitches, a 2007 Brazilian scat fetish pornographic film produced by MFX Media. The trailer features two women defecating into a cup, taking turns in what appears to be consuming the excrement, and vomiting into each other’s mouths. “Lovers Theme” by Hervé Roy plays throughout the video.
The video became one of the best known shock videos in itself and for the reactions its graphic content elicited from viewers who had not seen it before. Around mid-October 2007, video-sharing sites including YouTube were flooded with videos of the reactions of first-time viewers.
Production
Viewers often speculate that the apparent feces are actually food substances such as refried beans, ice cream, or peanut butter.Some speculate that the vomit is real, but was regurgitated before reaching the stomach and does not contain any gastric acids. In the video, the majority of the vomit does not enter the mouths. Fiorito unsuccessfully argued in court that the excrement was actually chocolate ice cream.
Background
The video originated from a Brazilian distributor and pornographer Marco Antônio Fiorito (born 1 July 1971, in Sao Paulo), who describes himself as a “compulsive fetishist”. Fiorito started having interest producing films in 1994, and in 1996, with his wife, Joelma Brito, using her artistic name Letícia Miller, he began a fetish film business and soon moved on to coprophagia. The film was produced by MFX Video, one of several companies owned by Fiorito.
Authorities in the United States have branded some of Fiorito’s films as obscene and filed charges against Danilo Croce, a Brazilian lawyer living in Florida, listed as an officer of a company distributing Fiorito’s films in the United States. Fiorito explained that had he known that selling his films in the U.S. was illegal, he would have stopped. In his declaration he stated “I would have stopped because the money is not the main reason that I make these films.” He then added, “I have already made fetish movies with scat/feces using chocolate instead of feces. Many actors make scat films but they don’t agree to eat feces.”
The first few seconds of the 2 Girls 1 Cup video contain the text “MFX 1209” (the production code for Hungry Bitches) and the URL mfxvideo.com, the website of Fiorito’s MFX Video, leading some in the media to incorrectly believe the video is one of the many Croce had to surrender to the Department of Justice but was somehow leaked in the process.
Reaction videos
The popularity of 2 Girls 1 Cup was aided by a series of reaction videos, that is, videos depicting people reacting to watching it. Many videos exist on YouTube of users showing the original video (off-camera) to their friends and filming their reactions, although some may be staged. Even Joe Rogan, host of Fear Factor, a show notorious for the disgusting things its contestants are dared to eat, had to turn away in a reaction video posted to his blog. A reaction video starring a Kermit the Frog puppet proved very popular on the community-based website Digg.
In January 2008, Slate documented the reaction video phenomenon with a slideshow featuring various reactions. Violet Blue, an author, described this website as becoming “the new ‘tubgirl’ and goatse all in one disgusting moment of choco-poo-love” in a San Francisco Chronicle article.
Veteran porn star Ron Jeremy walked off while watching the video on The Playhouse. On the same program, singer Wyclef Jean sat through the whole thing without looking away or showing any apparent reaction, all while eating corn on the cob. Ace Frehley, formerly of Kiss, was shown the video on The Opie and Anthony Show in July 2009, and was unfazed, declaring, “Crazier things than that have happened on the road.” “Genuine Nerd” Toby Radloff was so disgusted by the clip that he had to immediately watch it again.
Impact
The video has led to many parodies and other shock videos with similar content. One of the most popular “sequels” is 4 Girls Fingerpaint, which consists of four women conducting themselves in similar scat-fetishistic activities. The title has also contributed to the titles and nicknames of other shock videos, including 2 Girls 1 Finger, 8 Girls No Cup, 1 Guy 1 Jar, 1 Guy 1 Screwdriver, 3 Orangutans 1 Blender, 3 Guys 1 Hammer, and 1 Girl 1 Cake, the nickname for the 2008 viral shock video Cake Farts. A short film by guitarist John Mayer to his blog entitled 2 Guys 1 Cup where Mayer and Best Week Ever correspondent Sherrod Small enjoy Pinkberry frozen yogurt in the same manner that the women in the original consumed the feces. Comedian Conan O’Brien created a parody called One Guy, Two Bowls starring Andy Richter, which shows Andy eating two bowls of soup. This video was created for O’Brien’s comedic website, Conan.XXX. Filmmakers Justin Roiland and Christian Le Guilloux made a five-minute series called 2 Girls, 1 Cup: The Show for the short film competition site Channel 101. It debuted in first place on 27 January 2008. Brandon Hardesty posted a video called 1 guy 1 lunchable, in which he eats the “taco filling” from a Mini-Taco Lunchable. Canadian comedian Jon Lajoie also made a song named “2 Girls 1 Cup song”, which described the activities in the video as if the two women were expressing their love for each other. The music video gained over 10 million views on YouTube.
In 2013, German company MediaMarkt marketed a cupcake maker dubbed “2 Girls 1 Cup-Cake Maker”. The product’s slogan was that it made cupcakes “So good that it’s impossible to film.”
The video was referenced in the British comedy series The Inbetweeners, in the series 2 episode A Night Out in London, with Jay bringing it up on his new laptop and Will reacting by saying “that can’t be real, that’s got to be chocolate!”. It is explained by a filmmaker to two women in the first episode of Inside Amy Schumer.
The video is referenced in the Family Guy episode Back to the Woods, where a cutaway gag sees Stewie Griffin’s disgusted reaction to the video being recorded by Brian.
Media recognition
In the media the video has been used as an example of the poor content quality of YouTube and similar video-sharing websites, and their tendency towards deliberately shocking content. Esquire magazine showed the video to actor George Clooney during an interview, prompting him to compare it to a rodeo, saying the point of the video was to see “how long you can last”. In an episode of Tosh.0, the entire audience is filmed reacting to this video. Host Daniel Tosh called it the World’s Largest Reaction Video in terms of number of people being filmed. The cast of Avenue Q, responding to The Muppets’ version of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, made a video of “We Will Rock You”/”We Are the Champions” (known as “We Will Rock Q”), ending with Nicky surfing the internet, finding 2 Girls 1 Cup (indicated by the soundtrack), and vomiting as the screen fades to black.
The site was featured in a Dr Pepper Facebook promotion open to minors, which resulted in The Coca-Cola Company terminating its relationship with the digital marketing agency responsible. Jim Edwards of BNET said that Coca-Cola has full responsibility for allowing the situation to occur, arguing that Coca-Cola selected an advertising agency that openly advertised “profane” advertising campaigns and that the Coca-Cola executive who approved the 2 Girls 1 Cup line failed to do research on what the name meant.