- This video is brought to you by Babbel.
(rock music)
What's up, guys, Michael here.
And today, we're gonna talk about
the best-reviewed movie in recent memory,
a real special gem in a world of duds.
- Welcome to the Dum-Dum Game.
Oh! I'm sorry, dude.
- Are you (beep) kidding me?
- Obviously, we're talking about "Jackass Forever,"
which comes twenty years on the heels
of the franchise's debut film.
And we're not exaggerating.
Almost every film critic is singing its praises;
audiences and even the Twitterati agree.
It's currently the number one movie in the country.
And while we're huge "Jackass" fans,
we've talked about it before,
so be sure to check out that video,
even we couldn't have seen this coming.
So, with the wild success of "Jackass Forever,"
we can't help but ask:
why does everyone love this movie?
How did "Jackass" go from a franchise
that former vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman
tried to personally destroy,
to the one thing that could bring America together?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack Quicktake:
Jackass Forever...
and Ever?
And spoilers ahead for all the various ways that aging men
can traumatize their own testicles.
But before we get into it,
I wanna talk about this video's sponsor: Babbel.
Now, I've dabbled in learning new languages before.
I've tried to learn French a few times
and je suis...
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And I learned some Danish in grad school,
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That's "Hi, teacher," in Danish.
Pronounced not great.
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And now, back to the show.
Before we get into it, let's be perfectly clear:
we are not going to try to convince you
that "Jackass" is secretly doing something super deep.
As Brianna Zigler of Paste puts it,
"There is little use in over-intellectualizing "Jackass."
The endeavor is futile
because what makes "Jackass" such a compelling
and uniting artistic force
is that it's so gloriously uncomplicated."
So, rather than ascribing intellectual meaning
to the film itself,
we instead want to focus on why people
are so hyped about this movie
at this particular moment in time.
Let's start out by talking about human bodies.
And namely, our obsession with controlling human bodies,
especially our own.
We've seen this on dual fronts
over the past couple of years,
with people filling their already cramped homes
with Peletons and workout gear
to keep their bodies under control,
while at the same time,
having their eyes monitored by their employers
to make sure they're spending adequate screen time
making money for their business daddy.
All while doing everything possible
not to let the scary virus into our bodies.
And, you know, like, smothering ourselves in sanitizer.
That's not to mention the broader multi-billion dollar diet
and wellness industries.
Whether it's fad diets, supplements,
or expensive workout classes,
many of these products promise us
a new level of bodily control.
And of course, for those wanting to kick it up a notch,
body-modifying surgeries
are just a doctor's appointment away.
Many of these products and services
seem to be fighting against the raw animality
of the human body.
It's as if the more we can shape
and control our human vessels,
the less susceptible we are to aging and decay.
We are lumpy, hairy animals
that piss, and puke, and fart, and (beep)
who spend most of our lives
acting as if we are not lumpy, hairy animals
that piss, and puke, and fart, and (beep).
But according to scholar Ian Burkitt,
"The body cannot be understood
simply as the materialization of prior discursive
and normative controls,
but that it is the source of our collective experiences
and a site for opposition to established power relations
and ideological hegemonies."
Which is another way of saying
that while you may spend a lot of your life
trying to control your body,
there are alternative, actively oppositional ways to use it.
So, when we watch a dude literally jump into a pile of cacti
or witness a woman quietly tongue-kissing a taser,
it reminds us that bodies
can actively transgress the societal norms
of what they should do.
Burkitt describes it as such,
"A body can be worked too hard,
placed under too much stress,
and the person may not be able to control
some of the functions of his or her body
in a way that would suit social codes.
The inappropriate sounds
or smells of the body in a public place,
or blushing at a misdemeanor
when one wants to appear cool and sophisticated,
are just some of the innumerable perils
of being a body in Western culture."
Basically, hiding your body's grossness is both mandatory
and kind of impossible.
In some workplaces, bodies are controlled so heavily
that people aren't even given the time and space
to take care of their most base needs.
Sometimes, I have to make excuses
for why I'm late for a call
when, really, I just have to poop. (farts)
But unlike most of us,
the Jackasses don't hide their bodily functions,
nor do they express shame about their bodies.
In fact, "Jackass Forever" completely ignores the perils
of being a body in Western culture
and embraces inappropriate sounds and smells
in very public places.
And so, when we're watching,
all of the bodily shame floats into thin air
as we celebrate how fun it is to do weird stuff
with our gross bodies.
This is something of a retreat
to the way bodies used to be conceived of
before the Renaissance:
as the grotesque.
This was especially realized
at the medieval carnival celebrations
where people literally flung their (beep) at each other
for fun.
As Burkitt says, "Grotesque bodies are not closed,
but are open to the world,
and emphasis is placed on the body parts
that stretch out into it,
such as the nose, pot belly, phallus, breasts,
and those open to it, such as the mouth, genitals and anus,
all of which connect us to the earth and to other people."
And it's not a huge stretch to say
that our undercarriages connect us to other people.
Think about it,
when you're watching Brad Pitt looking hot in a movie,
you're not watching him and thinking, "Wow, same."
But when Dave England plops down on an open-air toilet
with the morning's paper and a fresh load to drop,
you're more likely to think, "I do that, too!"
Well, inside and not on camera, but still.
It's the same.
And when Ehren McGehey, AKA Danger Ehren,
gets repeatedly assaulted in his testicles
by various professional athletes,
I can immediately empathize
with the horrible, horrible feeling
on a most visceral level.
But it's not just that seeing these dazzling images
on a huge silver screen is oddly relatable.
It might also be the case
that watching a grown man (beep) his pants
is a portal to what philosophers,
like Immanuel Kant and Jean-Francois Lyotard,
call the sublime.
Often described as a pleasurable anxiety,
examples of sublime experiences
might be gazing at a terrifyingly huge mountain peak
or seeing a massive tornado ripping across the plains.
And these experiences usually produce
two seemingly opposed feelings,
i.e., utter terror at the massive tornado
heading towards your team of storm chasers,
and awe at the beauty of nature.
In the case of "Jackass Forever,"
these opposing forces might be disgust and amusement,
or a childlike wonder and stomach-churning revulsion.
According to Lyotard, in these sublime moments,
our mind basically has a crisis
when it reaches the edge of what usually makes sense.
The conceptual frameworks
which usually help us understand the world hit their limits.
And the other side of these conceptual limits
is oddly enjoyable.
We think this might be one of the reasons
that folks love "Jackass Forever."
It's not a film that's asking us
to consider a set of underlying themes and concepts,
which is refreshing
because over the last couple of years,
many of us have become pretty skeptical
about the grand narratives
that dominate politics and culture.
For better or worse,
folks have grown warier of political and economic power
than they've been in decades.
And things like working from home
and increased government benefits
pulled back the curtain
on how much of the way society used to work was...
kind of made up.
Put differently, we're living through an era
in which lots of the ideas and values
that have shaped our culture
are starting to expose the meaninglessness at their core.
And this might be the secret beauty of "Jackass":
it doesn't hide from the underlying emptiness
of much of modern life,
it embraces it and has fun with it.
- Oh, no!
At a time where disaster movies
are shoddy metaphors for climate change,
slasher films are meta-commentaries on the film industry,
and every comedy is trying to be deep,
"Jackass Forever" isn't about anything.
There's no underlying theme.
They're not exploring trauma.
The stunts aren't performative metaphors for social issues.
They simply are what they are.
When we lose our minds laughing at guys
sliding down a massive, lubed-up Slip 'N Slide,
we're not reflecting on the wit, irony,
or meaning of a given stunt,
but responding to the raw and immediate absurdity
that's right in front of our eyes.
We don't need to find meaning to make it worth it.
Some people might see this as a distraction
from all the serious things going on in the world.
But, just maybe, "Jackass Forever"
is doing something much more honest
by creating entertainment
without any appeals to underlying truth or meaning.
It's like a very fun and hyperactive version of nihilism,
but a nihilism you get to do with your friends.
What could be better than that?
(rock music)
(thudding)
(people screaming)
So, are we saying that "Jackass Forever"
is an intentional philosophical treatise
on the oddity of the human body
and the sublime nature of extreme stunts
in an increasingly meaningless world?
Nah, not really.
But that doesn't mean that these ideas
can't help us understand
why this movie feels so uniquely suited
to our current cultural moment.
At the end of the day,
maybe one of the reasons we love "Jackass" so much
is that in a world
where every cultural phenomenon and media object
seems to require a reading list to fully understand it,
"Jackass" requires nothing from us.
It simply asks that we put our phones away,
stare at the screen,
and laugh at all the dumb stuff.
But what do you guys think?
Is "Jackass Forever" profoundly the right movie
for right now?
Or have we just never outgrown
our eighth-grade sense of humor?
Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat electronic music)