The will is intrinsically reluctant to submit to others. Untold authority figures everywhere have seen this demonstrated too many times to mention in what has become a clichéd interaction: authority figure forbids something, and the person over whom authority is supposedly wielded does precisely what is forbidden. It’s interesting to note that kids, especially once they’ve got 12 or 13 years of life under their belts, are most susceptible to this impulse.
This discussion is not just a neat little metaphysical hook to hang an article on—it’s relevant to one of the most entertaining and controversial shows not available on Canadian cable (digital and satellite subscribers excepted). The guys in Jackass do everything you’re not supposed to do, and some things that aren’t so much explicitly forbidden (though common sense implicitly damns them as idiotic) as just plain random and peculiar.
But the forbidding doesn’t end there. Concerned legislators and parents, alarmed at some children’s actual commission and the possible predilection of others towards imitation of Jackass stunts, have condemned /attempted to forbid viewing of this program (e.g. erstwhile vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman).
And finally, it would be amiss to omit the disclaimer tagged on to the end of every Jackass episode: kids, don’t try this at home, and don’t send us tapes—we won’t even open them!
So, with all this air of prohibition surrounding this show, how do you watch it? Other than going above and beyond basic cable, something prohibitively expensive for most students, there is little one can do. Far be it from the Varsity to condone media piracy, but it has been said that encoded files of Jackass episodes are widely shared over popular peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. However, the feasibility of this practice, as well as its legality, is uncertain at best.
But why this entire hullabaloo? Why all this effort to bother seeing something that bothers so many people? Simple: it’s funny as hell.
The more complex answer is that it represents a unique stage in the constantly amazing evolution of the American popular consciousness. TV is arguably the dominant cultural force in North America. The fact that so many youths are laughing their asses off watching a bunch of 20-something males injure and degrade themselves in diverse ways says something about the American (and, by extension, Canadian) zeitgeist.
Jackass would not be possible without Tom Green, that much is certain. The videos might have been circulated in some occult underground circles, out of the view of mainstream culture, but without Ottawa’s most famous native son to whet viewers’ appetites for random street performance and reflexive-absurdist comedy, Bam Margera, Johnny Knoxville et al. would be shit out of luck. But the relationship is not directly parental between Tom Green and Jackass—it’s more like a half-brother/quarter-cousin thing. At heart, Jackass is really an extended skateboarding video filled with stupid stunts, the kind of thing The Tom Green Show would’ve been if Tom Green could skate as well as Margera and had a comparable posse, rather than just one sidekick.
Regardless, Jackass is the more important cultural document: it is both more blatant and dangerous. As such, it is the better indicator of current cultural mores, and of the degree to which popular consciousness has slid into decadence and become inured to the essentially ludicrous (if incidentally hilarious).
