Andy Dehnart, Wesley Morris, and Alex Pappademas
Doing Really Dumb Things: A Fixture of American Adolescence
By Alex Pappademas
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2001, at 12:55 PM ETThe last thing that really made me happy was this Sunday's episode of Jackass, specifically the long montage (scored to the Undertones' rapturous "Teen-Age Kicks") of various jackasses going off a high diving board on pogo sticks and Razor scooters and stilts and skateboards and BMX bikes.
Like everything executive producer Spike Jonze does--from his skateboarding short Eric Chaplin to Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice" video, where Christopher Walken gets a case of Astaire-grade happy feet--Jackass takes contagious pleasure in the way human movement looks on film (or, OK, tape). With its long takes and unself-consciously raw cinematography, it's a Lumiere-esque island of minimalism amid the otherwise jackrabbity, mise en scène of MTV. Also, it's funny when they fall down.
I'm not the only one who likes this show, obviously. Two more kids got hurt yesterday while shooting a Jackass-style stunt in Kentucky. A 17-year-old hit his 16-year-old friend with a car while two other kids watched, camcorders in hand, hoping (despite the warning at the end of every Jackass where it says they won't even look at submissions from viewers) that the tape would get them on the show. The 16-year-old suffered a broken leg (which will probably just cement his status as the coolest kid in school, but I digress).
My local Fox affiliate showed the footage last night--you see a couple of practice runs, where the kid jumps out of the way at the last second, then the real stunt, where he tries to jump up and clear the car, slams into the windshield and flies over the back of the car. They showed it on a loop, back and to the left, back and to the left, like the Zapruder film. (At one point, somebody in the control room screwed up and the loop ran behind the anchors while they introduced a segment on Robert "No, Wait, NOW I'm Scraping Bottom" Downey Jr.--a nice visual icon for RDJ's truly jackassed self-destruction. Always crashing in the same car, y'know?)
After a while, the clip sort of becomes abstract, the kid as a Roger Rabbit blur above the car, the shower of glass that falls into the lap of the guy in the passenger seat. This is starting to read like dime-store DeLillo, I know. But doesn't the fact that practically every stupid thing anybody does now ends up on tape and on the news make us all into characters from Underworld: The Director's Cut?
Doing really, really dumb things, after all, is sort of a fixture of American adolescence. But at the same time, while I'm as creeped out by Joe Lieberman's soft-spoken moral watchdog routine as anybody who values their right to make choices vis-à-vis entertainment ought to be, I recognize that Jackass does make masochism look fun/cool. And that if you want a 16-year-old to try something, the best way to do it is to sternly warn him not to.
Andy, you're the reality TV guy--you can speak to this, I hope.
AP
Doing Really Dumb Things: A Fixture of American Adolescence
By Alex Pappademas
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2001, at 12:55 PM ETAndy Dehnart publishes Reality Blurred, works as a Web producer and free-lance writer, and is pursuing a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing. Wesley Morris is a film critic at the San Francisco Chronicle
. Alex Pappademas is an editor at Blender
, a new music magazine. Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: President Bush on drilling, MTV and the youth market: same situation? Talk to WillV here. Thread your way through all the posts saying yes they do have the ads in Chicago (we know now, OK?) and find some posted lists: Zeitguy's Rools of Cool, Paul Caniff's answers to questions, and Gypsy's theory on disco. Jared White suggests Eggertian rather than Eggersesque. Check out the checkmarks for discussions on criticism and music. For more good stuff on film reviews read in full the fascinating posts from Steve Sailer and Aluminum Man (below). Done all that? Congratulations, you are now a complete popular culture Instant Expert. (Or a Breakfast Table Fray expert--same thing.)]
At the risk of sounding churlish--or rather, gleefully trying to sound churlish--the comment of your "Breakfast Table" writer about the Bush administration--"Essentially, they're politically motivated cowards" [Monday's entry]--demonstrates an acute lack of insight into, well, one of the great features of civilization. Politically motivated bravery is usually a suspect virtue--it led Napoleon into Russia, Hoover into a principled stand against "hand-outs," and Tom DeLay into being Tom DeLay. The real problem is that the Bushies face no bullying from the other side of the aisle: nobody who is willing to demagogue them, dog them, and dice them into the neutered conservatism which was Jr.'s daddy's trademark. In the weird mores of Washington, the dogger/dicer really doesn't have to have a national constituency--just a nasty taste for institutional infighting. If only Wellstone had Gingrich's taste for lowmindedness.
--Roger
(To reply, click here.)
Having recently become the film critic for United Press International, I've been thinking a lot about these issues. The biggest problem with movie reviews in general is that reviewers are so homogenous--almost always male, white, upper middle class, with a grad degree in humanities or liberal arts, urban, high IQ, intellectual but not hugely logical or well-informed about things beyond the cultural realm like business or science or sociology, and extremely opinionated--that the tastes of huge demographic groups get ignored. I fall in most of those categories, too, but coming at a rather late age to this trade, I just don't as often experience anymore the testosterone surge that makes me want to shove my opinion down the throats of people who aren't like me.
For example, women. Over the years I've noticed that women generally don't like the same movies I like. That used to offend me greatly. I figured I could cure women of their bad taste in movies by exposing them to the really good stuff (i.e., what I liked) and explaining to them--over and over again--why it's better than the crap they liked. Slowly, though, I grew to respect women and their tastes more. I also learned that lots of other people aren't as smart as me and that making them watch what I liked to watch wasn't going to make them enjoy it more. Now, I take steps to help put myself in other peoples' shoes...
--Steve Sailer
(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)
Most Tom Green fans (and I'm not one of them) will have already decided to see Freddy Got Fingered a long time ago, and nothing that reviews have said (or will say) makes any difference. The same is true of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy or the last installments of the increasingly awful Star Wars series. In fact, contrary to what the Breakfast Tablers are suggesting, I think most people have their minds made up about whether or not to see any given movie long before reviews hits the stands.
What informed, thoughtful, articulate critics can do is make us see, hear and understand things in movies that we otherwise might miss. They can challenge us by forcing us to examine elements that we might otherwise pass over, and make us look at a movie from a perspective perhaps unlike our own.
--Aluminum Man
(To reply, click here.)
(4/25)
What did you think of this article?
Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum
SPONSORED CONTENT
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
The John Cassavetes Movie That Changed American Cinema Forever
Am I Wasting My Money if I Give to a Needy Family at Christmas?
Troy Patterson: What I Love About Glee
Hurray! We Won the War on Spam.
Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball Is a Crude, Fantastic Mess
Thanks, FDA, but We Don't Need Your Protection From Raw Oysters
Reader Comments From The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: President Bush on drilling, MTV and the youth market: same situation? Talk to WillV here. Thread your way through all the posts saying yes they do have the ads in Chicago (we know now, OK?) and find some posted lists: Zeitguy's Rools of Cool, Paul Caniff's answers to questions, and Gypsy's theory on disco. Jared White suggests Eggertian rather than Eggersesque. Check out the checkmarks for discussions on criticism and music. For more good stuff on film reviews read in full the fascinating posts from Steve Sailer and Aluminum Man (below). Done all that? Congratulations, you are now a complete popular culture Instant Expert. (Or a Breakfast Table Fray expert--same thing.)]
At the risk of sounding churlish--or rather, gleefully trying to sound churlish--the comment of your "Breakfast Table" writer about the Bush administration--"Essentially, they're politically motivated cowards" [Monday's entry]--demonstrates an acute lack of insight into, well, one of the great features of civilization. Politically motivated bravery is usually a suspect virtue--it led Napoleon into Russia, Hoover into a principled stand against "hand-outs," and Tom DeLay into being Tom DeLay. The real problem is that the Bushies face no bullying from the other side of the aisle: nobody who is willing to demagogue them, dog them, and dice them into the neutered conservatism which was Jr.'s daddy's trademark. In the weird mores of Washington, the dogger/dicer really doesn't have to have a national constituency--just a nasty taste for institutional infighting. If only Wellstone had Gingrich's taste for lowmindedness.
--Roger
(To reply, click here.)
Having recently become the film critic for United Press International, I've been thinking a lot about these issues. The biggest problem with movie reviews in general is that reviewers are so homogenous--almost always male, white, upper middle class, with a grad degree in humanities or liberal arts, urban, high IQ, intellectual but not hugely logical or well-informed about things beyond the cultural realm like business or science or sociology, and extremely opinionated--that the tastes of huge demographic groups get ignored. I fall in most of those categories, too, but coming at a rather late age to this trade, I just don't as often experience anymore the testosterone surge that makes me want to shove my opinion down the throats of people who aren't like me.
For example, women. Over the years I've noticed that women generally don't like the same movies I like. That used to offend me greatly. I figured I could cure women of their bad taste in movies by exposing them to the really good stuff (i.e., what I liked) and explaining to them--over and over again--why it's better than the crap they liked. Slowly, though, I grew to respect women and their tastes more. I also learned that lots of other people aren't as smart as me and that making them watch what I liked to watch wasn't going to make them enjoy it more. Now, I take steps to help put myself in other peoples' shoes...
--Steve Sailer
(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)
Most Tom Green fans (and I'm not one of them) will have already decided to see Freddy Got Fingered a long time ago, and nothing that reviews have said (or will say) makes any difference. The same is true of the upcoming Lord of the Rings trilogy or the last installments of the increasingly awful Star Wars series. In fact, contrary to what the Breakfast Tablers are suggesting, I think most people have their minds made up about whether or not to see any given movie long before reviews hits the stands.
What informed, thoughtful, articulate critics can do is make us see, hear and understand things in movies that we otherwise might miss. They can challenge us by forcing us to examine elements that we might otherwise pass over, and make us look at a movie from a perspective perhaps unlike our own.
--Aluminum Man
(To reply, click here.)
(4/25)