I am venturing into Reynolds territory, so I’ll keep this brief and hope he brings some clarity to the role that comedy plays in rendering certain kinds of social relationship visible. A few years ago I went with a few friends to see ‘Jackass’ and it generated a discussion of the difference between being a jackass and being an asshole. That first ‘Jackass’ movie, for all the incredibly stupid stunts, did a good job of illustrating the difference. There was a scene in which the crew race golf carts, and they are jackasses, while the golfers are clearly assholes. Several of the bits were also just hilariously funny.
So the same group of friends went to see ‘Jackass 2’ last night and — surprise! — they are now mostly assholes. There are still some mind-blowingly funny sequences, of which the penis sock puppet and the snake, drinking horse semen, and “the gauntlet” are the best. But the real joy of the stunts has been replaced with a mildly sadistic desire to hurt each other. The key line in the movie is: “was the dick hair really necessary?” It addresses what, ultimately, makes a stunt funny. In that case, the dick hair was actually necessary.
Fuck. I just lost a beautiful post on this.
Okay–
In a nutshell, I read the gags in these films much like you do. My gut instinct is that I often find them outrageously funny, when it seems there’s this collective spirit of let’s-degrade-ourselves, and it’s all for one one for all. I also love when their pranks reveal a viciousness on the part of those pranked, as with the golfers. But I get anxious when someone seems to be at the butt-end (literally) of a joke, with the prankers aggressively, frat-boyishly urging the weak one on. So I tend to buy your continuum at some gut level.
But then I stop and try to push myself. What if every prank–*every* prank, even the most brutish and seemingly isolating–is really an invitation? Come, be one of us–by degrading yourself (with the promise that we, too, will be degraded in the future) and/or by not taking offense. You become an asshole when you resist joining in… but if you’re game, you’re a jackass, too. We’re all jackasses.
I realize this becomes problematic. I realize that a whole fertile range of counter-examples might expose how dangerous and risky such a reading of comedy could be — if I get everyone on the site to call Jeff “Nancy-Boy Fancy-Pants” for ever and ever amen, is this really a significant invitation to inclusivity? But I think that’s kind of the dangerous fun of Jackass… it takes such “invitations” to a grotesque extreme. Yet it also–and every even faintly-positive reviewer notes this–rarely seems flat cruel. I think the reason for its seeming “generosity” is that sense of community spirit.
He says, not having seen the new one. But I think these films push on my willingness to accept the invitation–and that’s pretty rare; I tend to find comedy’s generous inclusivity almost everywhere I look, so to feel discomforted by a film is a pretty impressive accomplishment….
so, are we agreed on the “nancy-boy fancy-pants” thing?
i don’t watch these films because i am squeamish about blood. just having the paper cuts gag from the first one described to me was enough. from what i remember about the original show, however, i buy mike’s inclusivity/community thing. there is no object of this humour, only participants. i think this is partly why there is so much serious critical suspicion of this kind of thing: it makes no claim to value.
No, these pranks aren’t cruel in a Herman Goebbels sort of way or even in a middle-school gym teacher sort of way, but isn’t this sort of hyper-masculine display of excessive bodily degredation (however meta) just another take on the old adage “boys will boys”? And, if so, don’t these films work to reinforce “traditional” yet outmoded notions of manhood in America (Johnny Knoxville’s personal rebellion against the metrosexual, yuppie ideal). Take it like a man, the pranks seem to be suggesting. Indeed, taking it like a man is what makes men men, right (a return to neo-primitive chic that defined the commodified behaviors of college kids during the 1990s)? If I thought there was some kind of socio-political context at work here (as in Chris Burden’s far more subversive acts of self-degredation as a performance artist in NYC during much of the 1970s), I might be more inclined to give the kids a break. Personally, I’d rather be a “nancy-boy fancy-pants”, and something tells me Arnab’s squeamishness at the bodily fluids on display (or at least the way he imagines such excretions) appears to place him in the same category (welcome).
I think you make an interesting point, Jeff, but I think you miss another. What are they taking when they are taking it like a man? How does a “man” take horse semen? Don’t the acts themselves reveal the ridiculousness of “taking it like a man”? In The Breakfast Club, when Andy tapes some kid’s buttocks together in the gym room to prove to his old man that he’s tough, that’s one thing. And it’s stupid, we all agree. Andy hated doing it, and he repents. The film punishes parents for turning their kids into hateful (and self-hating) mini-adults, and Andy’s dad is singled out for demanding his son take it like a man (“I fucking hate him…” says Andy). It’s a safe film compared to Jackass Number Two. Drinking horse semen is altogether different. And I don’t think Jackass has the effect of reinforcing outmoded notions of manhood in America except to the extent that it makes us run to them for cover. What one decides to do (like allow a fighting bull to charge right into your balls) is obviously gendered, but rather than take it like a man (which is impossible, anyway), you take it like a comic. I’m more inclined to think that the acts in this film are inconsequential, and the fun is that you are allowed to do the most outrageous things when they are of no consequence. There’s a great feeling of comraderie, of shared good humor, when all agree that there will be no consequences except the physical ones. The real assholes are the ones who insist on consequences, and they are men playing golf, outside the paradigm of comedy.
John has beaten me to it, indeed said it far better than I could, so there is not much more to add. At no point in either movie do the jackasses say, in effect, “look at us, we’re real men. This is what it means to be a man.” There is almost no taunting, either of each other or of those who don’t participate. Of course it is “about” masculinity, in the sense that everything is about masculinity. And there are no female jackasses (not even any jackasses of color and who can tell about GBTQ jackasses?). But fundamentally inclusivity and camaraderie beat out most of the uglier traits that we associate with masculinity.
How might such acts be received by its audience(s)? I’m not going to disagree with John or Chris at all (in fact I appreciate these responses and am mostly in agreement). I thought the first Jackass film was hilarious though I didn’t watch the MTV show much (it was a little too hyper-something for me). Does a thirteen year old boy watching this at home receive the film the way we might? If a film both privileges something (say a world in which outrageous actions have no consequences); it probably also contains proto-deconstructive elements to undermine that which it privileges, yes? (I ask cause I’m not entirely sure but this is the cultural studies perspective, right?). I might argue that the Jackass boys are not so inclusive, or at least they will include you if you’re willing to drink horse semen (I also have to confess I haven’t seen version 2 . . . was Spike Jonez involved)?
I haven’t seen the film but I’ll ignorantly relate it to punk….punk is all about rebellious degradation but at some point, with certain bands, certain figures and certain acts, the degradation meets the roots of brutality…in the sense that the degraded degrade themselves more so and before the “powerful” can do so. I put powerful in quotation marks to indicate that often those degraded misidentify the nature of their oppression(it’s the jews, the blacks, etc.)
I imagine white supremacist men get up to all sorts of bonding antics that involve bodily degradation–they embrace degradation in order to counter to some small degree the degradation they face everyday, and their politics are merely a resentful will to reverse what they perceive as the order of things. I feel somewhat suspicious of MTV’s calculated hijacking of this dynamic.–MTV embraces on one hand a kind of bullying humor (is this too much for you? what are you some kind of prick, that you don’t find drinking horse semen funny? what are you, a pussy?) and on the other a straightfaced ideology of naked consumerism. The one serves as the apology for the other in the context of MTV, I think. In the same way MTV sponsors reverent explorations of the phenomenon of “cutting” and then exploits the same forces that inform the disorder. Maybe if I could forget its connection to MTV, I could give something like Jackass a chance. but somehow big-screen comic degradation seems like a bit of an oxymoron. And I just don’t know that I care enough. I don’t think I want to be a jackass or an asshole….isn’t the dichotomy a little, uh, sad at best, paralyzing at worst (which brings me back to punk…The Ramones didn’t pose a simple-minded choice though they played with the notion of degradation, but GG Allin does). I mean, look guys, I know there’s shit in the world, but I don’t have to eat it.
You know, you make some fine points, Michael (after Jeff’s effective critique gave us more to wrangle with). I appreciate your rejection of the dichotomy, and love the tie to punk and the Ramones (although these are the guys who, rather famously right?, often hated and bullied one another and the people around them). You’re right to be skeptical of anything coming so forcefully and gleefully out of corporate media giants like MTV, although Alexander Payne’s Election was also MTV-funded and -distributed, so… there is at least some precedent for big$-corporate “hip” leading somehow to a text that might ferociously gnaw at the hands providing the moolah. We could pile up other examples of “Jackass”-like activity–from fraternity hazing to Marine Corps “bonding”–where the degradation stems from anxious attempts to preserve authority and privilege, and usually correlate with a projection of such “internal” ritual bullying onto the bodies of others who really deserve it (women, homosexuals, non-whites, etc.).
But wouldn’t those guys be assholes? The dichotomy Chris poses echoes so nicely off a potential attitude in and to “Jackass” that it seems a shame to set its overly-simple but intriguing structuralism aside. And in some way being a Jackass undermines the other kinds of oppositions we might set up–the first film opens with the “boys” riding in a giant shopping cart, and crashing into a wall, a fairly explicit nod to their own status as commodities, as well as gluttonous American consumers. The act of consumption is, in so many ways, taken to its extremes–an overindulgence that both mirrors and mocks the buying public. The jackass isn’t outside the system; the jackass is inside, and often exaggeratedly reproducing the system in ways that destabilize *and* stabilize. The comic trap: to be irresponsible is to invite both subversion and reproduction of norms, which may or may not unravel the existing dynamics of power. Yet to be an asshole is to posit an order (to be anal, as we say) that clarifies and rigidifies power.
And so on. We could exploit the utility of such a dichotomy without falling prey to the binary logic which would have us stuck on only the ‘object’ of the [white] boys’ degradations (and unreflective on the systems in which [white] boys, both jackasses and assholes, retain significant control over definitions of order).
I would just add a word of defense for Chris’s dichotomy–although I think reynolds has already defended it well, and defended it by showing how it isn’t a dichotomoy with strict binary logic. In fact, as reynolds says (and I agree with this) the jackass undermines the very notion of binary logic that would see the jackass as opposed to assholes (power). The discourse of power is one of cause and effect. But in jackass, there is no cause and effect, or rather the cause and effect is mere physics and not metaphysics.
Or how about this: jackass isn’t the opposite of asshole in the way that “yes” is the opposite of “no.” The dichotomy of jackass/assholes is more like “maybe”/”no,” in that the former contains the latter, as well as its opposite. I think that is the “intriguing structuralism” of the film that reynolds is talking about, the “may or may not”-ness of its politics. Anyway, that is my theory of comedy. That which it is, my theory of comedy, is mine and belongs to me.
OK, this intrigues me as I am discussing Aristophanes with my students today. Your theory of comedy–the may or may not-ness of its politics is intriguing and, putting my student cap on, I want to try and unpack it. If I read this correctly then the “maybe” is defined by a binary opposition. On one side is the gleeful, carnivalesque display of bodily excess (in conjunction with polyvocal utterances) as a liberating gesture that points toward the multiple possibilities of human agency and, perhaps, social change. On the other is the notion that such excess is licensed as a sort of social release valve, yet, ultimately, the subversiveness works to maintain the status quo (my take on Lysistrata but I’m reviewing the situation even as I write). So that’s the oppositional tension at work in the “maybe.” The “no,” however, suggests that social order is an absolute, some kind of Foucaultian affirmation (nihilistic as it may be) in which the assholes of this world control the institutions and apparati of the state with their surveilling gaze. So we have this kind of tripartite tension, yes. If I were to reduce this to an algebraic equation, more often than not the status quo would triumph, yes? Still, I like this maybe/no theory of comedy–its openness and its celebration of indeterminancy, and, therefore, the freedoms and pleasures of human agency taken to the extremes. I see how it works with Jackass or “South Park,” “Beavis and Butthead,” Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Borat, Ace Ventura, Sarah Silverman, and, of course, Jerry Lewis (who is guesting on an ep of “Law and Order: CVU” tonight). But what about comedies that are a bit more sophisticated and/or subtle–nostalgic reveries or autumnal elegies. Let’s say anything by Chekhov or Rushmore, I Heart Huckabees, The Philadelphia Story, Groundhog Day, Broadcast News, Network? Where do they fit in to this theoretical paradigmn?
Jeff, you might want to look at Bakhtin’s stuff on Dostoevsky–especially his idea of “reduced laughter.” And, if that weren’t enough, check out Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2005. You might find something right up your alley.
For The Philadelphia Story, I’d read Stanley Cavell. He’s got a chapter devoted to it in Pursuits of Happiness.
Henry James? I’m curious and will Project Muse it tomorrow in my office. Thanks.
Jackass 2 made me laugh a lot. I’ve read Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness, and Jackass 2 was funnier.
I wandered around some old posts, wondering where to stick this brief recommendation of a Rickles documentary (Mr. Warmth) that I enjoyed the hell out of. And, while some of our debates about Sarah Silverman and the new hip deployment of racism seem to fit, this very smart (ahem) debate about the difference between jackasses and assholes seemed pertinent.
‘Cause Rickles fucks it up. He seems to be an asshole. And a very funny asshole.
This doc is a little fuzzy in its central focus:
–it’s got boatloads of admiring talking heads, often quite funny, and including Sarah Silverman–who claims that, since she grew up in mostly-white and -WASPy New Hampshire, she had to learn about blacks and Asians from Don Rickles… a very funny, brief bit. Sometimes just rambling and personal. (‘Though Harry Dean Stanton is kind of a kick, seems half-drunk, and appears to have a knot on his head so it might be a concussion.) Is the film a testimonial? Sure, but…
–it’s got lots of clips, including a ton from Carson, very retro… but also a healthy, and pretty damn funny, dose of stuff from pretty recent concerts. So maybe it’s a retrospective of the career…
–but at many a point someone stops to try and make sense of Rickles’ work, and stumbles over the varied but all cliched answers. He’s an asshole on stage but an essential sweetness shines through. He’s an all-inclusive, everybody’s-in-it-together asshole, so you can’t really get mad. He’s totally committed, and that’s what sells it. He’s absolutely crazy, and…
…so on.
I was okay with the fuzziness: the film made me laugh, often, and I enjoyed–unnostalgically, just plain enjoyed–the schlocky aggression of his shtick.
But it is a fascinating question: what makes Rickles tick? It’s tempting to say that it’s wrong, despite the continuity of content/style in his act, to say that his stand-up in 1965 is the same as his stand-up now. That there’s something perhaps “innocent” about the obvious canned-stereotyping of his act which allows it to seem playful now. And maybe (“then”) there used to be more of a sense of aggression as the key element. He used to be an asshole, but now he’s an “asshole.”
But I’m not sure that’s the case… it almost seems like aggression is the key. Rickles is deploying racism and sexism, but his central tool is unboxed aggression. Maybe my opening was wrong… maybe Rickles’ aggression is exactly Jackassian–it’s inviting. You *want* him to rip into you; you do not feel ‘safe’ and yet, paradoxically, because it’s so scattershot, you don’t feel any real threat. Hm.
Regardless, it’s funny.
“reeeckles! meester bangs the showgirls! meester opens for seenaatra! what a treat for the crowd, yes? ‘folks, we got some premium alpo coming up, but first you got to drink out of the toilet'”.
I keed.
reynolds, I think even in the sixties Rickles was an “asshole” not an asshole. Or “was” an asshole, or an “ass” hole. I’m “confused.”
I read that the Beatles went to see his act when they played in Vegas in 1964. George Harrison said he was in stitches throughout the show, but that Rickles “blew it all at the very end because he started apologizing for everything he’d been saying instead of just going off and leaving the buzz in the room.”
I saw Mr. Warmth and had the same reaction reynolds had, not the one Triumph had.
Dayna and I trekked to Vegas a few years ago to see Rickles play live. We were the youngest people in the room by 20 years (and we’re not exactly kids).
It was fantastic. And he still ends the show with his… well, it’s not an apology, it’s important to note that he’s not apologizing. But he does say that people should all just try to get along and be kind to one another. It’s as “innocent” and naive a disclaimer as his racist jokes frankly, so in a weird way, it fits.
Also just watched the 2nd series of Extras on DVD, and I liked it maybe more than the first series. The guests stars never meant that much to me within the context of the show. Frankly, I thought DeNiro’s was the best of the bunch.
Am looking forward to seeing the capper episode.
I saw this on HBO a few months ago and laughed out loud throughout. Rickles does come across as a bit of a softy (thus, the fuzziness), but maybe that’s simply a matter of age and lower levels of testosterone. His interactions with the Vegas audience felt pretty safe to me (even at his most “dangerous”).