I know it says so right in the title, but this isn’t a movie; it’s a symptom. Paddy Chayefsky – the screenwriter of the great Network – must be rolling over in his grave, because empty-headed, value-challenged shock television has spread like rot from the box onto the big screen, and now you too can make your way to a local movie house to see larger than life urination, vomiting, and bowel movements – all shot live in gloriously grainy digital video. If expressing distaste for this garbage qualifies me as an old fogy or a prude, so be it, as I simply can’t stomach this kind of self indulgent stupidity.
Jackass is a television show that combines the worst of reality TV with would-be frat stunts for guys too stupid to get into college. Guys with names like Bam, Steve-O and Johnny Knoxville show themselves to be cool by willingly indulging in behaviour verging on (and sometimes exceeding) self-flagellation. They’re joined by a few well known iconoclasts, notably controversial rocker/ poet/ author Henry Rollins and filmmaker Spike Jonze. All of this is aimed at folks who think anything outrageous is entertaining – inhale spicy wasabi up your nose until you vomit; how hilarious!
It’s carried out by a run-of-the-mill bunch of trailer trash – guys who can think of nothing funnier than sitting around with a camera on, electrocuting their testicles. A fair number of the gags they try are inventive; a few verge on inspired. But most are stupid and juvenile. And 87-minutes of it is far, far too much.
The problem with this sort of outrageousness is that – after the initial shock value – it simply pushes the limits for the sake of pushing the limits. And in this case, the limits they are pushing are the extremes to which people will go to show disrespect for their own bodies. Yes, a golf cart demolition derby is pretty entertaining – until one of the drivers is very nearly killed or reduced to quadriplegia. But what’s next? Onscreen castration just for laughs?
Jackass: The Movie has an audience because it’s different from anything else at the movies, and it’s outrageous. Sadly, its success pretty much guarantees plenty more future opportunities to spend your hard-earned cash to watch other idiots imitate them in more new movies that are nothing but low-budget, low-brow humour.
The role of art is to push society’s limits, but only the most insincere of Jackass boosters would pretend that this is art. As I said, it’s a symptom – a symptom of a society so over-stimulated by television, overblown movies and other more-is-better entertainment, that images of real people electrocuting themselves, getting bitten by alligators, crawling through a room full of mousetraps, pole vaulting into palm trees, purposely cutting themselves and inserting fireworks into their most sensitive of orifices is considered high entertainment.
This movie has no script, no acting, no crew to speak of, and no point other than to take a poke at society’s taboos while putting at risk the health and well-being of its low-IQ band of merry risk-takers. In 1976, Chayefsky’s script seemed pretty outrageous – culminating in onscreen murder, just to boost ratings. Well, just over a quarter century later, Jackass: The Movie comes darn close to fulfilling what once seemed a preposterously exaggerated prophesy.
And – as Network predicted – people are lapping it all up.
