Everyone Should Be A Jackass
Everyone Should Be A Jackass
Johnny Knoxville, Ehren McGhehey, Dave England and Dimitry Elyashkevich filming Jackass: The Movie | Still courtesy from TIME Magazine
Nothing like record-breaking temperatures to keep a lakwatsera like me indoors. This year’s summer has been nothing but punishing for people all over the world, but especially for us Filipinos. A season that’s usually characterized by outdoor socialization is now a commercial break from hell that I, personally, cannot wait to end. So, in a half-hearted attempt to pass the time, I scroll. I scroll through the usual social media drivel that keeps my boredom at bay. Windows open, blinds shut, electric fan on high, and I scroll. Video after video after discourse designed to make me angry, after video recap of discourse designed to make me angry. And after a few weeks of doing exactly that, my mind begins to wander to a simpler time: a time when going outside wasn’t a wallet-draining chore, a time when the internet wasn’t an exhausting loop of strangers arguing over each other, and a time when these weren’t my only options if I wanted to entertain myself. And in the midst of my mind-numbing scrolling, I came across a video that would change the course of my summer (maybe, my life) altogether–the cast of Jackass on a Pride float.
The cast of Jackass: Best and Last on float at WeHo Pride | Photo courtesy of the Official Instagram Page of Jackass
Admittedly, the sight didn’t come as a surprise. I believe it was the release of 2022’s Jackass Forever when the franchise’s passionate LGBTQ+ fanbase made itself known on social media. Well, to me, at least. Charmed by what I was seeing, I found myself completely engrossed in this world that members of my community have championed. What once was a peripheral cultural artifact that I hadn’t had the slightest interest in suddenly consumed my every waking thought. It started with a stunt that involved a bull and a giant see-saw, then a compilation of nut shots set to one of my favorite bands, then, without realizing it, I was giggling at men getting pelted with rubber balls at 50 feet per second. The allure of Jackass hit me like a bull does Johnny Knoxville: hard, fast, and critical. While this hyperfixation hasn’t resulted in any injuries as the former would, it does elicit some questions. What makes its gross-out humor so entertaining? How has it endured for as long as it has? And a question specifically for me: Why now?
Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, and Rick Kosick filming Jackass | Photo courtesy from Sean Cliver
How To Make A Jackass
It’s difficult to think of a time when recording you and your friends' antics and sharing it with the world was a novel idea. These days, gregarious acts of stupidity from people all over the world are virtually inescapable. Literally, we have entire systems dedicated to rewarding public nuisance, referred to by the ever-so-nebulous moniker of “the algorithm.” Who knows what it is or what it does, but it does its job well. It’s made it so that these gags have found a home on the internet. Namely, platforms like YouTube and Twitch bolster the popularity and creation of this type of content. But before the creative stylings of MrBeast, the Paul brothers, and IShowSpeed dominated screens against our will, the most popular form of boyish mischief were skate videos. Tricks and slams galore, skate videos were the perfect medium to show off your skill (or lack thereof) creatively and entertainingly. So it’s no surprise that the franchise’s inception is largely due to this subversive underground form of filmmaking. The brainchild of Big Brother magazine editor Jeff Tremaine, director and photographer Spike Jonze, and writer and aspiring movie star Johnny Knoxville, Jackass was a TV show that matched the X-treme energy that defined the early aughts.
The show combined the entertainment value of America’s Funniest Home Videos with the inherent risk of skateboarding. While its predecessors poked fun at the unintentional and lighthearted gags of everyday life, the MTV show generated footage from naughty setups for even naughtier punchlines. The show ranged from daredevil bits like Steve-O and Ryan Dunn boxing on stilts and Knoxville testing the strength of a safety cup in increasingly painful ways to more unsightly stunts like Steve-O backflipping into an inflatable pool filled with animal feces and Dave England making a vomit omelette (self-explanatory). All that fear, disgust, and cringe, condensed into a 22-minute episode, made it an undeniable hit. Despite the discomfort wrought on the audience, the shared smiles and groans inspired a sense of community. The cast and crew’s pure, unadulterated joy at their own juvenile tendencies was infectious, and the average American household couldn’t help but fall into a fit of giggles. The laughter behind the camera was what encouraged the laughter beyond the screen. Easing the viewer, as if to say, “It’s okay to find this funny.” Because, despite the uneasy feelings this series was built on, retching or grimacing is just as much of a reflexive reaction as a laugh, so might as well let it happen. Film it on a camcorder for maximum fun!
The cast filming a bit for Jackass Number Two | Photo courtesy of Sean Cliver
How To Keep A Jackass
Many would assume that shock humor could hit a point of diminishing returns. It’s almost unfathomable to think that there are ways to elevate a joke when its baseline already pushes boundaries. I thought so too, until I ventured deeper into this increasingly grotesque journey. After abruptly quitting the hit show, Johnny Knoxville returned to the franchise on the promise that the guys’ crazy ideas wouldn’t be stifled or worse, censored, as it was on cable television. With that, the Jackass films were born. Cue “Corona” by Minutemen, time to catapult headfirst into the silver screen.
Live snakes, taser-lined hallways, big red rockets, and tiny toy cars-they’ve got it all! This merry cavalcade of debauchery takes over once again. Now, with newly minted absurdist routines fit for a bigger screen. The team over at Dickhouse Productions aren’t to be underestimated when it comes to all the ways to make you wince. The stunts are bigger, badder, and meaner, with TV show favorites like the Poo Cocktail getting the sequel treatment in Jackass 3D with the Poo Cocktail Supreme or the Cup Test getting a more perilous makeover in Jackass Forever. Recurring characters like Irving Zisman, Gloria, and Party Boy/Bunny the Lifeguard also get some well-deserved time to confuse (maybe even titillate) the unknowing public. All in all, the movies were a smashing success every time to the utter bewilderment of the people behind the scenes and the general viewing public.
Plenty of people dismiss the show as distasteful rubbish, and while admittedly it tends to be, that doesn’t deprive the series of charm or artistic value. Richard Roeper from Ebert & Roeper gave his thumbs up to Jackass: The Movie and lauded the film as "a disgusting, repulsive, grotesque spectacle, but it's also hilarious and provocative.” And while it’s less than likely that the mainstream audience will ever come around to the franchise the same way letterboxd-ers have had over the years, that won’t deter die-hard fans from rooting for their travelling circus of punks. Ultimately, these very punks are what keep them coming back for more. There’s a very palpable love within these grand spectacles. Whether that’d be love for being a daredevil, love for the art of moviemaking, or love for each other, it spills over and makes a sentimental mess of us all. You don’t dedicate time and resources to creating an opening sequence as high-concept as the Pontiusaurus (wherein member Chris Pontius’s penis is costumed as a kaiju and wreaks havoc on unsuspecting citizens) or an end credits bed set to The Rolling Stones’s Shine A Light without an ounce of affection for what you’ve made. With your closest group of friends, no less.
The heart that this franchise possesses is its secret weapon. It’s what sets them apart from the very content creator landscape they inspired. John Waters was once quoted saying, “Good trash is, you never look down on it. You look up to it.” And I believe this unsung quality is something that makes the series worth doing just that.
Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze, and Johnny Knoxville on the set of Jackass: Best and Last | Photo courtesy of Sean Cliver
How To Be A Jackass
This summer, Charli XCX released the lead single from her newest album, Rock Music. She sings, “I’m really banging my head / I’m really hurting my neck / The nerve damage is real / But it’s the only way to feel something / Hurt yourself,” while she gets body-checked in a mosh pit. And while fans rushed to share their concerns with the lyrics, I found myself deeply resonating with what she was trying to express. In this age where the digital and physical are rapidly becoming indistinguishable, and artificiality is being treated as an inevitable, visceral pain is the only way to feel. At least the agony from a cathartic release is true and honest unlike the eyesore that is AI-generated media.
Everything in Jackass is real. The fall, the hit, the blood from a cut, the ensuing vomit that usually comes after–none of it has ever been played up for cameras. To them, the failure of a stunt gets the biggest laugh. An ironic situation where a miss becomes a goal. This level of authenticity is something that Hollywood has spent billions on trying to manufacture, and these guys have achieved it all with a beer in hand. And as much as it embarrasses me to say, it’s been therapeutic for me. This isn’t even the most unsavory path that my incessant scrolling has led me down. The debasement that these men put themselves through will never bother me as much as the indecipherable sludges of color and texture that ChatGPT endlessly churns out. I’d gladly suffer through hours of deleted footage than sit and watch warbling plasticine-smooth figures make their way into every device that I own. Just as much as a pinch assures someone that they’re no longer dreaming, the secondhand herniated disks that they deliver reminds me that I am alive.
Hurt, annoyance, disgust, and many more of life’s uglier emotions as exposure therapy. Their nerve endings are on fire and so are mine, I just happen to benefit from not having to be hospitalized from it. I’ve envied them even when they get the short end of the health and safety stick because the euphoria from getting blasted out of a cannon or testing a bulletproof vest by shooting yourself is something that I’ll never experience. I can only share their triumph on the sidelines. So I’ve settled on smaller and more careful ways of mimicking them. I’m on my phone less, I’m going out more, I’m meeting up with friends often, I’m creating art that I like and I challenge myself to be more carefree with each day that passes. Because my biggest takeaway from this odyssey of filth is a reminder to live to the fullest. Once I can confidently say that I have, I know I’ve become the person I’ve always wanted to be.
A huge Jackass.
