Hey hi hello. I shopped this essay around a bit to see if anyone wanted to publish it but I think I wrote it too late and everyone told me they already had Jackass content lined up. Or maybe it just sucks and they’re being nice. Either way, here it is.
-Mike
Compared to thousands of hour-long fail compilations on YouTube and Tik Tok videos of teenagers who seem to be in the middle of a steroids cycle “pranking” one another, Jackass seems quaint and lo-fi. The twenty-five half hour episodes spread out over three seasons (along with three movies) were mostly filmed on commercially available camcorders. While the clarity of a cell phone camera bests the quality of the clips that made Jackass famous, most videos and shows that claim to be influenced by them lack the heart that the series contained.
My completely not peer-reviewed armchair sociologist theory is that the popularity of Jackass caught millennial men at the perfect time in their adolescence to influence their perception of masculinity. Teaching them that touching your friends is ok. Touching them beyond slapping each other in the nuts or a bit of grappling on the front lawn. Repression still reigned supreme but its grip may have loosened a bit.
For decades, male bonding in America was very rigid. This was in a period between the rigid and constricting John Wayne masculinity of generations past and the more fluid acceptance that’s available for 2020s teens. Kissing your guy friends could be funny and not a relationship ending action. This is, of course, viewed through a lens with heavy heterosexual male overtones. The underlying punchline is that kissing your friend is funny because it’s so outside of the realm of possibilities that you’d be attracted to one another. A relic of a mostly bygone era.
The cast members clearly had a real deep love for one another, whether they were part of a tight knit crew of friends who grew up with one another or the employees of an irreverent skateboard magazine filming themselves being shot with actual guns while wearing bulletproof vests. Their love was even apparent when they secretly planned to slap each other with a giant foam hand on a hinge that’s covered in baby powder (the glorious denouement of the activity known as “antiquing” [throwing flour into the face of your sleeping friend which makes them resemble a marble statue or an old tchotchke covered in dust] that they brought into the zeitgeist.). The stunts were everything I loved as a teenager: part skate video, part Looney Tunes gag, part gonzo journalism all backed by a soundtrack of punk and metal.
The love they exhibited makes their fracture with Bam Margera even more disappointing. Margera was fired from Jackass Forever mid-filming for breaking a contract stipulation that he would remain clean and sober while filming. For a time, they were bonded in a way that you can only achieve when a group of people go through strenuous times together. Members of championship sports teams or bandmates who endured years of sleeping on top of one another in a cargo van or men who dropped billiard balls on each other's genitals from the top of a garage. I shouldn’t have been as shocked as I was by the group’s splintering after watching dozens of sports and rock documentaries. Egos, addiction and money get in the way of everything.
It was a revelation seeing something that so closely resembled my everyday life on TV. Jackass highlighted the malaise of the 21st century suburban teen. Perpetually bored, mischievous, rebellious in a safe way. We weren’t living like we were in Kids but it also wasn’t Leave It To Beaver.
No longer did you need to have insider knowledge on where to buy your subculture indicating accessories. You could have your mom bring you to the nearest mall to grab some pyramid spiked belts, leather bracelets and high-top Chuck Taylors at Hot Topic to complete your Johnny Knoxville costume. No grocery store parking lot or Wal-Mart sporting goods section was safe from us, even if the worst we would do was hitting each other with a stray dodgeball or putting Mentos into a Diet Coke while skateboarding off of their loading dock.
I was shocked that it seemed like you could get paid to hang out with your friends and goof off, a small precursor to people vlogging every detail of their lives while shilling mail-order mattresses and subscriptions to therapy apps. “Hi, I’m Johnny Knoxville and welcome to Jackass”, a declarative introduction to entertainment has been replaced by a chorus of “Heyyy guys, welcome back to my vlog.”, a greeting used to simulate a genuine rapport between viewer and presenter.
Immediately after seeing the first episode, my friends and I began to copy the Jackass boys. We tried to produce our own show that we so brilliantly titled Dumbass, even though MTV blatantly told viewers not to send them any clips. We were convinced they’d see us and draft us to the minor leagues until we were ready for primetime. Principal shooting began with segments of us jumping off of roofs into garbage bags full of leaves; rounds of “The Bush Game”, which was us running up behind one another at full speed and shoving each other into whatever shrubbery we were near; tying our sweatshirt hoods as tight as possible while we smashed fluorescent light bulbs that we found in the garbage behind Kmart across each other’s backs.
Activities such as these stayed with me into my 20’s but mutated into roman candle jousting (four people line up in an X formation on bicycles, light their respective roman candles and ride towards a center point. The winner, so to speak, is the one who stays upright on their bike and is burned the least) and maybe or maybe not setting old CRT television sets on fire in the woods depending on the statute of limitations.
There’s a strong force inside of teenage boys to destroy. There’s an entire genre of memes dedicated to young men punching holes in drywall instead of addressing their feelings. The intriguing part of Jackass pranks and stunts is the aim was turned inward; at oneself or the friend group. This was not your “white kid pranks people in the hood” videos of today (dispicable) or your 1950’s tar and feathering the class nerd on the front steps of your high school(hilarious but I’m entirely unsure if this ever actually happened outside of movies).
Most people who showed up on screen that weren’t official members of the Jackass Cinematic Universe were passive bystanders. Merely witnesses to Preston and Wee Man running through an intersection in tighty-whiteys, Johnny dressed as an old man wearing short shorts that expose his excessively long prosthetic scrotum or Chris Pontius dressed as the devil urging you to keep god out of California. Of course, the experience of shopping carts, Bam Margera’s father, some unsuspecting golfers and rental cars notwithstanding.
The hardest I’ve ever seen my mother laugh was at two separate Jackass sketches. The first was a segment from the very first episode called Body In Trunk. Johnny Knoxville drives a beat up car into a gas station to fill up on gas and Chris Pontius pops out of the trunk, hands tied and mouth gagged, shocking all of the customers and employees. The second was entitled The Hearse which consisted of parking a hearse at the top of a hill and opening the back door, causing a casket to slide out and down the hill while someone walked past. Using gravity to its comedic end. Tears rolled down her face the first time we saw that.
I feel like I grew with the members of Jackass, as much as you can do something like that with a group of people you’ve never actually met. I’ve spent a large portion of my life watching Johnny’s hair turn from dark to salt and pepper to bright white; watching Steve-o get sober; watching Bam publicly fight his demons; watching them all mourn the loss of Ryan Dunn.
Their journeys parallel the march through time so many friend groups take. Highs and lows. Successes and failures and redemption and fissures. I’m not sure how much I want to watch a group of men pushing 50 years old throw themselves down a flight of stairs for my amusement but I’m still drawn to it. It’s not nostalgia. I’m not particularly interested in seeing people doing the same thing over and over again. The only thing I know is I'll be there opening night with all of my friends. All of us older and greyer and, hopefully, mature enough to not hit each other in the nuts while we wait for the movie to start. I might wear a cup just in case.
Jackass Forever.
Here’s a few photos I took that I like but didn’t want to put into the essay.