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Jackass Number Three

Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius

It was 2001, the Baltimore Ravens were Super Bowl champs and it would be another three years until the words “wardrobe malfunction” became part of the cultural landscape. After being pelted with snowballs on his inauguration, George W. Bush limped into the White House with most commentators stating that without a popular mandate not much would happen legislatively. With September 11^th looming on the horizon, instead of focusing on important business, our Congress was trying to protect the American people from what they saw as a bigger threat. Global warming? No. Loose nukes? Not a chance. Lack of a balanced federal budget? Forget who was President? No, no, the answer was the television show “Jackass.” That is right, an MTV show with Johnny Knoxville and the boys living up to the title.

Led by former Vice-Presidential candidate and future traitor to his party, Senator Droopy Dog, I mean, Joe Lieberman, set his gun sights on “Jackass” after a Connecticut teenager set himself on fire while apparently trying to imitate a stunt he had seen on the show. Lieberman felt the show was “so potentially dangerous and inciting, particularly to vulnerable children, that they should not be on TV.'' Even though the show is filled with warnings and disclaimers and rated for “adults only,” Lieberman wanted Viacom, which owned MTV, to cancel the show or at least take greater responsibility over its content. Now what Lieberman was doing was nothing new to Washington, it is an age old tradition among our elected officials to go after Hollywood because it is like feeding chum to sharks when it comes to the American people, very little risk against a great deal of reward. Former Vice-President Dan Quayle attacked “Murphy Brown” for glorifying unwed motherhood. The first President George Bush went after “The Simpsons” because, well, that Bart was so sassy and the creators of the show repaid the favor by having the ex-President move in across the street for one episode. There was political hand wringing regarding all the situation comedies like “Rosanne” and “Married With Children” where fathers were coming off like dolts and idiots. Cartoons like “South Park” and “Beavis and Butthead” were seen as sirens calling American youths to the rocks by Belt Way choruses. When there was any free time left over from protecting children from the evils of television, there was Tipper Gore on the offensive against rock-n-roll and rap, particularly Public Enemy and Twisted Sister. The FCC crusaded against Howard Stern and other shock jocks, and sex and violence in the movies.

These episodes are always a win, win, win situation for everyone involved. The American public gets to hypocritically feel their values are being upheld even though they are the ones watching the shows, politicians get votes, and the shows or performers get more eyes watching their programs. That is if the CEOs of the corporations which own the shows do not get all Chicken Little “the sky is falling” like and cave in to political pressures. It happened with comic books in the 1950s. Fearing government regulation, they cleaned up their content, the readership dried up, and only one major company survived (DC) and a handful of minor ones (including what would be Marvel). Several of the shock jocks like Bubba The Love Sponge in the 1990s disappeared, were fired, or lost market share when the companies ran for the hills.

It is also what happened to “Jackass.” Viacom panicked. They canceled all airings of the show before 10:00 PM, then refused to air repeats of later episodes, and finally started censoring the content of the show. With that, star Johnny Knoxville decided it was time to call it a day and the cast’s swan song was to be their 2002 film, Jackass: The Movie. It was a way of saying good-bye to fans of the show in the most vulgar way possible. With a budget of just $5 million in order to guarantee a profit, it took in $60 million in its American run alone. So long, farewell…. you mean people pay to see people act like morons? Not so fast…

Except for Johnny Knoxville, who seemed to have a promising acting career ahead, what else is the rest of the cast going to do to make this much money? Hurting yourself for cash has a limited shelf life. At some point, all the damage leads to creaks, groans, and a dull ache like a pebble in your shoe, or in various parts of your body that will not go away, and it is going to be a lot sooner than any of the cast would like to admit. So, before they are in wheelchairs, hopped up on pain pills, and comparing plastic body parts, they are probably going to squeeze in as many of these things as they can.

Movie critics and the talking head circuit will lament the Jackass crew as another sign of the degradation of our society. The boys are just following in the footsteps of the freak show that your grandparents and great-grandparents went to. We think of the sideshow or “ten-in-one” as just the bearded lady and the fish boy, human oddities. These shows were often populated by normal-looking people, men and women who were often on the run from something, who were known as the “working acts” who performed magic acts, stunts, or some other physical feat that thrilled the audiences. These “working acts” were the ones who were expected to draw the crowds, enticing people to enter the tent or building because of their danger and excitement. Like Jackass, these acts were often criticized by the press, clergy, politicians, and community leaders, because young people tried to imitate the physical feats they saw in these sideshows.

Television ultimately killed the sideshow, so it is only fitting that television would bring at least part of it back with ‘Jackass.” (On radio, Howard Stern brought the physical freaks back to the public eye with his “wack pack” of human oddities. Another aspect of some sideshows, the "hootchie-kootchie" or “grind” show, can be seen with Stern’s reliance on porn stars, lesbians, and nudity. While verbally graphic, like the “hootchie-kootchie” show, the act works better because of what is hidden, not what is seen.)

Like the freak show, if the curtain is drawn back, if movie critics reveal what appears on the screen, what makes Jackass 3 work is destroyed. For that matter, how does a critic evaluate this kind of movie? There is no overarching narrative. None of the crew are acting. For that matter, one cannot even evaluate the cinematography. It is just freak act after freak act after freak act and they either work, the audience finds them funny, or they do not. Are they funny? Yes. Should anyone be proud of admitting they are humorous? No. Similarly, who wants to admit that those forming the trunk of your family tree probably stood slack-jawed watching the sword swallower, the fire eater, the body piercer, or walker up “the ladder of swords”? While we like to think that we are a nation of higher ideals, a thousand years from now, we might conquer the cosmos and uncover the answers to all the mysteries of the universe, but pull-my-finger jokes and watching someone take a football to the groin will still be box office gold. I guarantee you that in the 24^th century, Worf and Picard are hitting the holodeck to watch some futurist Steve-O place fireworks up his backside.

When I was in high school, my friends and I watched Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf, which featured a scene where the main character stood on the roof of his car in a surfing-like pose as the vehicle was in motion. Every weekend we imitated this scene until one of us, (me) went through the windshield of the car. So, I know from personal experience that kids imitate what they see. Judging by photos on my nephew’s Myspace page of him snorting pepper, stupidity continues to this day. So, should we protect our children from Jackass? The answer is, that in this mass media world, we cannot. Youtube and other websites are filled with poor men Jackass want-a-bees. Get rid of Jackass-like shows and there are a thousand other television shows and movies that young kids will imitate. The world is not made of pillows and while it like shooting fish in a barrel politically to rage against such shows, the only way you are going to stop such stunts is not to watch them. The sideshows ended because people stopped going to them. If you think Jackass is bad for the culture do not go to it.

Verdict: Sideshow humor at its best