Jackass for President Revitalizing an American Public Life Through the Aesthetic of the Amateur

JORIE LAGERWEY Jackass For President Revitalizing an American Public Life Through the Aesthetic of the Amateur A cartful of Jackasses. Despite their officially professional status, participate in a legal system often portrayed Jackass’s purposefully amateur aesthetic, as expensive, ineffectual and unfair. including its consistent use of video and Jackass is clearly a mainstream commercial handheld digital video cameras, its ideology phenomenon. The MTV program and feature of collective production, its use of an urban film now has two spin-off series (Viva La landscape as backdrop, and its project of social Bam in which Bam Margera terrorizes his intervention, relate it tightly to an American family, and Wildboyz, in which Chris Pontius avant-garde tradition. The Jackass project is and Steve-O encounter wildlife), it has been to manipulate its perceived position outside a live touring show called Don’t Try This the mainstream to both critique the Industry at Home, and it has spawned at least five (in their feature film) and more importantly, DVDs. The Jackass partnership with MTV to create a public, democratic sphere in which and its corporate behemoth parent company, both witnesses to filming and fans of the Viacom, reeks of cooptation. Certainly MTV show are drawn to participate. Bystanders used Jackass to regain some popularity with who witness filming are forced into dialogue its more punk or rock oriented male audience with the space and people around them, and who were alienated by the TRLization1 of fans are activated by the show to participate MTV and its unabashed switch from musical in their own local public spaces (e.g. to tape outlet to marketing machine. Yet by signing themselves doing idiotic things) as well as to with MTV, the Jackass boys were given the 86 RETHINKING THE AMATEUR Broderick Fox, editor, Spectator 24:1 (Spring 2004) 86-97. JORIE LAGERWEY opportunity to intervene in mainstream culture and to subvert the uber-commercial, pop-music-pimping MTV brand. (The show’s original run was in 2000 and 2001 when *NSync and Britney Spears were at the pinnacle of their popularity.) However, before becoming Jackasses, all the cast members were rooted firmly within an alternative skateboarding culture. While they are now officially professionals, being paid by the network to tape the crazy stunts they had been doing earlier for their own purposes, they still cling to the public’s perception of them as working- or middle-class amateurs. It is the possibility of their amateur status, the possibility that they are still members of an under-heard subculture that gives their voice credibility among the show’s fans. All the cast members as well as co-creator Jeff Tremaine have skate credentials. Tremaine was editor of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother. He met Johnny Knoxville, at the time a freelance writer, when Knoxville pitched a story for the magazine in which he would test a bullet proof vest by shooting himself Chief Jackass, Johnny Knoxville with a .38 caliber handgun. Tremaine jumped at the chance for the article, and contacted to reproduce a distinctly amateur aesthetic in his friend Spike Jonze (who has his own order to position themselves as a force from off-beat reputation with directing credits the margins who have managed to infiltrate for the feature films Being John Malkovich, “the system” and disrupt it from within. Adaptation, and music videos for the Beastie Johnny Knoxville and the rest of the Jackass Boys and Fatboy Slim on his resume) with crew probably did not intend to revitalize an idea for a television show. Bam Margera the American public sphere or to motivate was a professional skateboarder who had viewers to interact with the people and been making Do It Yourself skate videos places around them in any socially relevant liberally laced with pranks, as well as making way. Indeed, their skateboarding origins music videos for his brother’s punk band, and frequent attacks on the status quo might Camp Kill Yourself (CKY). He brought indicate an anti-social project. It is precisely with him all his friends from West Chester, this marginal position and lack of authority, Pennsylvania to round out most of the rest however, which gives Jackass its social power. of the cast. Finally there came Steve-O, While other reality shows position the viewer formerly known as Stephen Glover, who in a traditional passive role in relation to a spent time making videos and doing stunts completed, authored text, Jackass uses its at the University of New Mexico’s film school amateurish appearance and its association as well as graduating from Ringling Brothers with MTV to question authorship and to put and Barnum and Bailey Clown College.2 All the job of meaning making into the hands of the Jackasses, then, have strong roots in the its viewers. Jackass uses a distinctly amateur, skate subculture and most of them in amateur everypunk style to spark response and public video production. They use this experience action in its young fans. RETHINKING THE AMATEUR 87 JACKASS FOR PRESIDENT Jackass and MTV participate in a symbiotic the background being followed by another relationship, alternative Jackass gaining an camera. And as we watch a long shot of Dunn audience via MTV and mainstream MTV jumping, taken by someone off the ice, we regaining some of its lost alternative culture see on screen another cameraman kneeling cache from Jackass. At the same time, Jackass alongside the barrels for the simultaneous can be located within MTV’s historical fisheye close-up. desire to portray itself as a mouthpiece of A final key element of Jackass’s perception anti-establishment rhetoric. MTV programs as amateur may be found in the ways it differs Ren and Stimpy (originally aired on another from seemingly similar reality shows such as Viacom network, Nickelodeon) and Beavis Candid Camera or the more recent MTV entry, and Butthead were subversive youth culture Punk’d. There is no attempt to narrativize icons in their heydays. In his essay describing or contextualize the stunts and pranks on the impact of Beavis and Butthead, Jackass’s Jackass. Letting the videos stand alone forces alienated-youth-gone-wild predecessor, the viewer to create her/his own meaning, Douglas Kellner echoes common sentiment thus reinforcing the idea of collective regarding both shows, writing, “The show production and authorlessness while creating depicts the dissolution of a rational subject a more active viewer than reality TV shows and perhaps the end of the Enlightenment which narrativize and authorize their videos in today’s media culture.”3 Jackass certainly through the dominating voice of a (usually stems from the Beavis and Butthead idiots run white male) host. amuck mold, but by virtue of being live action Many reality television shows create and not animated, the show’s cast members plotlines around competition or romance like have more authority to act in physical space the generic icons Survivor and The Bachelor. and to effect what goes on there during Even similar hijinx-centered shows like Candid and after their presence. Where Beavis and Camera or Punk’d narrativize and thereby Butthead seek destruction and anarchy, the contain their own mayhem. Both these Jackasses, more positively, seek to use their shows rely on hosts to narrate and interrupt amateur aesthetic to force a mainstream the action. Punk’d is further neutralized by awareness of an active margin. its focus mainly on young celebrities. While Visually, Jackass’s amateur aesthetic Jackass has made its cast famous, Punk’d’s host, includes the use of the fisheye lens held over Ashton Kutcher was given the opportunity from their skate videos, frequent zooms, to create the show based on his pre-existing and jerky, handheld cameras. It also relies celebrity. Focusing the show on famous specifically on unrehearsed direct address, people erects a barrier between participants both introducing segments and commenting in the show and viewers. Unlike Jackass on to the camera during the stunts, as well as which all the cast members seem more or less the way the backstage—whether planning like the average, working-class or middle- and preparation or during filming—is often class viewer, Punk’d takes place in a distant put in front of the camera. For example, in Hollywood world that is largely inimitable “The Toupee,”4 we see the meeting in which and unattainable for most viewers. Finally, the idea for the skit is hatched, as well as both Punk’d and Candid Camera set up pranks Rick Kosick shaving his head in preparation or practical jokes aimed at specific targets. for his performance. In the same vein, in Their purpose is the humiliation of those “Ice Barrel Jumping,”5 Ryan Dunn and Bam targets. If bystanders happen to walk into Margera both lean close and speak directly frame, their faces are obscured; it’s not about to the camera while action continues behind them. Jackass only humiliates its cast members, them much as one might mug for a friend or and the crew chases down all bystanders and family member recording a home video. We gets them to sign release forms. The show also see Margera and his ice skateboard in is all about the public’s reaction, and this 88 SPRING 2004 JORIE LAGERWEY is the major distinction that makes Jackass approval from the audience. Everything was more participatory and gives it the possible approved by this panel of bourgeois judges, political edge the other shows lack. When preventing the airing of anything subversive performing skits in public, the camera focuses or even controversial. Notably, the obviously on the bystanders, often zooming in to catch a constructed/performative (i.e.

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