My favorite jackass prank was the Valentine's day card pasted to the hotel wall. The gag was simple, but incredibly well executed. The Valentine's day card was supposed to be written to Jackass stars from someone staying in the hotel, and the hand written scrawl would get progressively smaller as the "writer" ran out of room on the card, which caused the reader to lean in closer and closer to finish reading it. Then WHAM a giant boxing glove would fly out of the card, punching the reader in the face.
That one really is a gem, but what gets me about it is why it's funny. It's so darned simple, yet the video has nearly every person from the crew get punched in the face and it's funnier each time (to me at least). And it seems to be funny to a lot of different people too. I could show it to my mother and she'd be horrified, but also laugh.
I feel like Jackass, with that prank and others like it, tapped into something a little bit deeper in the psychology. That's where the genius of it lies.
Are you giving them a bit too much credit? It's essentially a pie in the face gag or flower that squirts water gag. Those aren't things you would describe at genius.
I think the difference the commenter is describing though is between any pie-in-the-face gag and this particular pie-in-the-face gag. What is the nuance that gives this particular one such extra broad appeal and replay value.
Not that pie-in-the-face gags don't generally have broad appeal, but this one is arguably on a different level.
Can you argue why this on a different level? It's the same joke but a more violent version. I'm not arguing that it's not funny but that it's not that unique and isn't genius by any definition.
A raunchy teen fan message in some random hotel with a boxing glove going through the wall. That is unique. Hell, my first thought was who was going to patch that hole they just made. Then I thought, oh they have millions of dollars. But the approach, to get them to read closer and closer then pop. Way better than any dumb pie in the face, an crusty old idea that was only funny in the 1920s.
I knew he had issues with alcohol from way back, but I looked up to see what you meant. Wow indeed, that's so incredibly sad. That he harbors such a disdain towards his old friends and all is what kills me.
This type of prank would be rotten except these guys are happily in a prank war by agreement. Like when good friends mock each other, it's mutual and funny for both sides.
I always think the required point of a prank should be all people involved are laughing almost immediately after. Otherwise it's just being nasty to people.
The genius of Jackass is that the joke is always on them. When the public is involved they are there as participants to witness something insane. The butt of the joke is always one of the crew.
This one demonstrates a key aspect too: after the prank ends, they're laughing together.
I think that was the biggest difference between Jackass and everything after. Most of the copycats just felt mean, because they didn't have the comradery.
Not the same as punching someone in the face, but in my high school yearbook I signed something to everyone that got smaller until it was illegible. It turns out some people go back and read their yearbooks 20+ years later, ask me what I wrote, and we get a laugh that it was on purpose.
Jackass hinted at the direction culture was taking with no-names getting famous over short shocking clips, but they also managed to stay relevant and draw huge crowds post-YouTube.
In reality I don’t think it was ever solely about the stunts, but the personalities and the jokes and the pranks. A random YouTuber doing the same stunts won’t compare without humor and personality.
Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy... but I don't think it was about the stunts. Somehow they made you feel like you were part of the group.
I don't know if it was the way they filmed it, or the fact that they were so casual and normal around the cameras, even the setups for the scenes were kind of goofy and "home video" style.
Jackass came out of CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) which started off as a bunch of friends who rode skateboards making homemade skate videos with a bunch of bloopers/excerpts.
They quickly realized that people liked the filler as much as the actual content and capitalized on that interest with Jackass.
It felt authentic because it was. The people making the videos had a genuine connection / were actually friends, and were really just doing it for fun in the beginning and that makes it feel different than a lot of the manufactured content that people are exposed to today.
This is it. I'm a huge fan of Impractical Jokers for this same reason: they really make you feel you're part of them, they let you into the inside jokes, etc.
It's really just a group of people making funny content. They feel genuine and that draws people in.
I'm a fan too, but as the seasons roll on it's hard to believe the guys are shocked or embarrassed about anything they do at this point. It's starting to feel like the scripted reaction vids from instagram
They're definitely no longer as scared of doing things anymore, but it is still hilarious to see the off-the-cuff stuff they come up with in the later seasons.
I find now they're more mature and aware of their influence. I watch mostly because it's just fun to watch them have a great time (you can tell they really enjoy their job and that makes it for me).
Don't forget (as the article mentions) Big Brother. In some ways, it was very similar, but also, very different, being a print magazine. Video really changed things.
I was going to post this. Big Brother was a good-ass magazine, the peak of skate magazines, and also launched the career of Spike Jonze.
Videowise, there was another skate vid during that period called "Whisky: The Movie" that was in the same hilarious vein as the Jackass stuff. Looks like it might have been DMCA'd off of youtube.
Such a good magazine, I (finally) threw a bunch of them out when I moved house maybe 10 years ago… I should have least kept the issue that introduced Johnny Knoxville to the world - who knew it would go so far!
> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy
There was a while there where it was genuinely upsetting to see some of those people. They really didn't understand the difference between pranking a friend that's opted in to the behavior and random people in public, and what's acceptable as a prank in both instances.
I'm sure Jackass had a few misses in this department too, but at least by the time they were famous the public stuff seemed more along the lines that might leave public people that saw it or were unwittingly involved thinking "WTF did I just see" or a story that later they would start with "You wouldn't believe the stupid person I saw today" and if the person realized it was a prank would generally think it was rather funny since it didn't affect them.
Contrast that with youtube "pranksters" of the time when they first started being popular physically assaulting people, or stealing things, or tricking someone into thinking they had lucked out and then making them feel the loss of that when it was shown to be fake as well as humiliating them in front of the world. "Haha you thought that $100 bill was real? Psyche! It's fake, you didn't find anything! Hey everybody, look how sad he looks now. Why are you sad, bro? It's a prank, be happy, the whole world is watching!"
I remember having to very carefully counsel my young son who kept stumbling on them and watching them on why these people weren't being funny, they were being mean, and this wasn't how people should be treated.
It really is that, most Jackass pranks the joke is the jackass people themselves, with other people's reactions being part of the humour but usually not at their expense. The central source of the humour is the jackass people acting silly or humiliating themselves somehow.
CKY had a few bad ones though (throwing a life-sized doll off a motorway in front of cars is a good example of a bad one...) but they seemed to grow out of it.
Meh, a few were funny when they only pranked each other but * taking a dump in a hardware store was not funny to me or to the people in the store * their antics in Japan were horrible. Snorting wasabi and throwing up might be funny if you do it in your own apartment but it's not funny when you ruin every other diner's night. They even put people in harms way like when they blocked the escalators at train stations. If you ever seen someone get mutilated by an escalator you'd know how irresponsible it was of them to block it.
I laughed at some of the jokes on each other but the ones involving innocent bystanders were almost all just horrible.
Totally agree - just watched a bit on Youtube out of nostalgia, and was taken aback by the charm of it for sure. There's a restraint that I don't think I appreciated when I was watching it as a young teenager - it's defined as much by the the places that it doesn't go (that other shows did, as you say) than the places that it does
Indeed, even with edgy "out there" content it is important to have "restraint" like you said...someone with a vision of what the product will be.
This can also be seen in the Trailer Park Boys TV show. Seasons 1-7 under the direction of Mike Clattenburg do have a lot of swearing and dirty jokes, but it is always genuinely good humor, or serving plot and character development maybe. I'm sure I don't describe it well, but "I know it when I see it."[0] The following seasons with other directing/production have lost that tact and restraint; like they just call someone 5-6 dirty words in a row, funny only for the shock value of the words. Not funny.
It also helped seeing the movies with the same group of friends, or talking about the show at school with the same friends. Did you watch viva la bam last night? Or wildboyz? Just hearing the name Johnny Knoxville makes me feel nostalgic for skateboarding with friends.
The scene where he’s holding a snapping turtle and goes “I wonder why they call it a snapping turtle, let’s go in for a closer look” and it clamps down right on his nose. Pure genius.
> Somehow they made you feel like you were part of the group
This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media.
> This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media.
Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but I'm pretty sure political AM radio show hosts beat them to that. Casual, conversational, "unlike those morons, you and I both know..." style, tons of in-jokes. Extensive call-in segments.
I don't really buy this whole "parasocial relationship" theory. If there's any science on it, I'd love to see it, but people have had obsessions for ages: that doesn't necessarily excuse them or make them healthy, but also don't see how the information age changes that in any way.
I think an essential part was that the cast had the perfect combination of masochism and drug intoxication so they'd laugh riotously immediately after being injured. If they didn't laugh so hard right after being injured, a lot of their videos would be horrifying.
> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy...
Makes me think of Filthy Frank, he was one of the worst. But it had some great fourth wall breaking moments, when they crack up themselves after idk, a neighbour yells at them for screaming from the roofs in the middle of the day.
yeah I remember the CKY guys had similar premise. But they were more 'dark' or extreme or something. Definitely not as entertaining as Jackass, and never really got as popular either, probably for that reason.
Maybe that's why I didn't really like the Jackass films compared to the show - especially in some moments it was too staged, too acted and well-produced.
Yea, I felt the magic of the movies was the honest comradery between the guys.
They looked like they really cared about eachother.
I didn't know the torn urethra was that bad. Ouch!
Until now, I wasen't sure if he was acting when Butterbean knocked him out in that retail store. It was real. I remember thinking, he's a great actor with the tremors, or it was real? Never forget his first words after the knockout, "Is Butterbean ok?". Priceless.
My favorite clip of him is when they did an intervention for Steveo. Knoxville went into the room, and told Stevo to stop taking drugs. Stevo wanted the intervention filmed. I guess he thought it would be a good footage. Knoxvile told the cameraman No. I gained a lot of respect for him that day.
I hope Bam gets sober, or at least cut way back on the alcohol.
(Off topic, but to guys interested in fashion. I have a sister who made her huge wad selling shoes. She told me, in LA the higher the price, the more desirable people think your product is. Crazy? (Shirt, his own. Hoodie, $268, by Odessa 1919. Pants, $375, by Connor McKnight. Sneakers, $50, by Vans Authentic. Glasses, his own by Ray-Ban.))
> in LA the higher the price, the more desirable people think your product is
Many luxury items are 'Veblen goods' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good) - the high price is a feature, it keeps the riffraff from having the same things you have, which makes your things better status symbols.
Brought to mind Yeti coolers. Unnecessarily expensive, but that's why you have/want them.
> Well, the price, for one thing. Yetis work like a Veblen good, which are luxury items that turn the laws of supply and demand upside down. Take Swiss watches: “A guy who buys Rolex watches doesn’t want a cheap Rolex,” Williams says. “Part of the prestige of that brand is when you wear it, everyone knows they cost at least $8,000 and up. If Rolex brought out a low-end model, it would kill their brand.” It’s why the iPhone 5C — a low-priced iPhone — flopped. [0]
Yes, Yeti coolers are generally the most expensive coolers. But if that was the only reason for their high price point, we would see alternative rotomolded coolers of similar quality that are significantly cheaper, not just the 10-33% we tend to see in the market.
Yeti 45: $300
Engel 45: $275
RTIC 45: $200
Sure, $300 is quite a bit more expensive than $200, but they're also not the same:
- Yet 3 years vs RTIC 1 year warranty
- Yeti performs better
- Yeti has better design (form & function)
- You can pick up a Yeti at your local REI vs RTIC is only available DTC
- Yeti is a household, lifestyle brand, that's done the work to create this market (alternatives would most likely not exist without Yeti doing this work)
The difference between a Rolex and another watch that has the same capability is a couple orders of magnitude apart in price. $200 vs $300 on a cooler isn't that big of a difference.
I'd wager it's because it wasn't nice, not because it wasn't expensive. Low end phones aren't nice to use, and people who buy Apple buy it for the polished user experience.
If they sold their flagship phone at entry-level prices then I'd expect it to do as you suggest, selling like hotcakes but devaluing the brand. Even then it wouldn't do half as much damage to the iPhone brand as a $100 Rolex would do to the Rolex brand, because iPhones have a lot of utility that makes them worth having whereas a watch is, these days, almost entirely a vanity item.
There’s also a complementary strategy followed by many larger luxury brands, where the clothes are the halo product, but they make most of their profit selling accessories (sunglasses, perfume, etc.) that are affordable to many more customers (including those outside of LA!). The latter are often produced by other companies under a license.
This is an outside perspective from a European but I do remember some of those contestants being in the spotlight for a while but none of them ever milked it like the Jackass guys did.
The Jackass guys got managers and actively sought to stay in the business. At most the AFV contestants might have made an appearance somewhere on a talk show.
> Jackass revealed that the very nature of fame was changing in early-aughts America—that you could become famous by doing whatever it took to hold an audience's attention.
Another good example of this is Mystery Science Theater 3000. They've had the reaction video patented and perfected since the 1990s, and it still feels like nobody can quite hold a candle to how well-presented MST3K is. They also have a great (official!) YouTube channel[0] that uploads their best episodes. Go check it out if you've never heard of them, or just want to come back for the laughs.
This has always seemed like the weirdest thing to me. I was super into the SciFi channel and I’d always change the channel when this came on. I hate when people talk during movies. Is it just like, because the movie they’re watching is bad and they say funny stuff making fun of it that people like?
It's a really, really bad movie. But the director's choices are captivating in how bizarre and wrongheaded they are.
If you like this kind of thing (and not everybody does), it's natural to want to have that be a social experience. Partly because it's always more fun to laugh in a group, but also to sort of look at each other and say, "Did something that bad actually happen on screen?"
MST really clicked for me and a lot of people, because Joel/Mike and the bots on screen clued me in to this whole way of watching movies that I'd otherwise have only been able to pick up on in a live theater. And, realistically, it was the only way these gems of entertainingly bad cinema were going to get airtime: without the jokes, many would've been much too boring otherwise.
To be honest I always associate Knoxville and Jackass with the happiest period of my life - one specific winter in my early teenage years - my parents were working around the clock and were never home so my best friend was skipping his volleyball practices and was coming ofer to our place and we'd watch jackass all day long. Just recently it struck me that Knoxville was younger than I am now.
I feel the same. It was a period where I was also deep into the Tony Hawk games, skater culture in general, (pop) punk music. It all had a good vibe: have fun, be who you want to be, don't take everything too seriously.
Jackass thrived in an era when TV networks had the power to decide what was cool and who was famous. By 2008, thanks in part due to smart phones, all of that began to change in favor of decentralized, a la carte entertainment such as youtube, live streaming, twitter, vine, etc. This meant faster careers and more lucrative payoffs, but also much more competition. AFIK, none of the Jackass stuntmen made much money, rather Viacom did, but YouTube and Instagram stars of today are reaping tons of ad and product placement revenue.
> Jackass thrived in an era when TV networks had the power to decide what was cool and who was famous.
Most TV network content fails. TV networks (just like digital networks) can guarantee some level of distribution and marketing support, but they could no more guarantee the kind of virality that Jackass experienced anymore than YouTube can.
I think the lack of entertainment options in years before YouTube and broadband internet would have improved the odds for the limited content that made it into TV channels to become popular and on a national scale.
I think it already declined before that, when instead of Jackass they started to show a lot more teenage drama "reality" shows starring what would now be considered mid-tier instagram influencers.
It's not weird (and it's lightly addressed in the piece).
Bam is (apparently) struggling with substance abuse and related behavioural issues, and he was supposed to seek ongoing treatment for it as a condition of working on the film (per a signed contract).
He didn't do that, so he was fired from the film.
Johnny basically said they want him to get help and get better and did what they could.
Reminds me a bit of Devin Townsend who, when younger, was diagnosed with bipolar and the like, but later in life he shrugs at it and says it was all the substance abuse. He's a jolly awkward dad nowadays that makes great music.
I saw one of Bam's recent videos discussing the bad blood. Seems like he has some serious alcohol/substance abuse issues, he looked to be in really rough shape.
Time has not treated him well. Hope he gets some help that takes.
After his best friend an co-star, Ryan Dunn, died in a gnarly drunk driving accident, Bam spun into a deep and dark depression. He’s never fully recovered.
Being someone in their 40's, it's hard to watch so many people of my younger years have resulting physical injuries. Like many others my age, all those crashes and endless skating has a toll on our knees plus other joints. I hope Knoxville stays active, I've been enjoying Steve-O's short Youtube stories even if he's slowing down in terms of crazy stunts.
Some of the stuff on Jackass was truly avant garde at the time. I specifically remember the coffin falling out of the hearse skit. So simple yet so brilliant.
Tom green was even ahead of them. Who can forget the air brushed lesbians on his dads car, his dad deciding to take the bus to his government job, and then Tom trying to pick his dad up at the bus stop in the car.
My favorite was undercutters pizza, where he would follow pizza delivery guys, then beat them to the door and offer a lower price. He carried the toppings around in a tackle box to be added.
Yup, one can even argue that he was one of the progenitors of podcasts with his Internet show in the late 2000s. It's where Joe Rogan got his inspiration.
Seeing Knoxville with grey hair makes me feel pretty old!
My friends and I did some seriously dumb stuff after seeing Jackass. I snorted vodka up my nose...don't recommend it, and my buddy put a 21mg nicotine patch on his (hairy) scrotum. he didn't smoke...seriously don't recommend it. It's the removal that's the problem
"Johnny Knoxville was 29 when Jackass hit MTV in 2000, and by then he'd already been dyeing his graying hair brown for a few years. His father had been 19 when his own head turned white, so Knoxville was prepared."
The catheter thing: I remember watching him be interviewed, and they brought up that event and the catheter. He literally took the bag of piss that was strapped to his leg and started squirting it around in response. Yeah, he’s the real deal lol
I think Jackass managed to capture the zeitgeist at the time perfectly. It hasn't aged too gracefully, but that's only because it was a full decade early. Not to mention the genuine rapport from all the members of the crew, you truly felt they were just a bunch of friends having fun. They were getting hurt, but they were having a heck of a time doing it, and at the end of the day, it was well worth the laughs.
The GQ photo shoot says the sunglasses Knoxville is wearing are RayBans. But they have no logo on them (all RayBans produced by Luxottica have the logo plastered on the lens and the temple). Strange...
I get such a wave of nostalgia and warm fuzziness watching Jackass again now. It represented a time before any real responsibility, skateboarding 10 hours a day, trying to emulate them with dumb pranks and shopping trolley 'stunts'.
I've found most people my age have a similar reaction. It's like the Jackass era was a bit of a sweet spot for millennials. We were the last generation growing up before social media, where we had nothing better to do than to hang around skateparks all day. And things were undeniably simpler in that sense. I think for me Jackass represents the last days of young people being allowed to be bored, making up their own entertainment, dicking around, throwing mud bombs at cars, whatever. A joyful aimlessness. I'll stop before I reach boomer level nostalgia.
Also, he is 50. Not like he's elderly and dying. For his own sake I think everyone hopes he will never do more stunts of course. But not sure how realistic that is.
The local movie theatres was checking IDs when it was released, so we couldn't watch it there. So I just pirated it a week later and my friends and I watched on a 15" CRT. Fun times!
The term "toxic masculinity" gets used a lot these days, and I think it applies pretty solidly to a lot of what goes on in Jackass - both on-camera with the reckless stunts and violence, and off-camera with the reckless drug usage. I loved watching the show growing up, but I don't think I would ever want to be friends with those guys, and it's definitely not something I would ever want my sons to emulate.
That being said, there is something so relatable with the way those guys interact with each other. All of my closest friendships have looked kind of like that, but on a much smaller scale. Teasing, pranking, competing, etc. seems to be a pretty universal way for males to show affection for one-another. The more terrible things I can say to a person and get a laugh in response, the better the friend.
The amount of openness and vulnerability that those guys share with one-another is actually pretty endearing.
Completely disagree. IMHO, toxic implies negativity toward others, e.g. chauvinism, domination, aggression, etc, which the jackass members don't really match.
Fair enough - I actually dislike the term "toxic masculinity" and tend to never use it because it is too vague. But Jackass felt to me like a case of "I know it when I see it". That's an extremely nebulous argument, though, and I'm happy to concede that it was a poor choice of words.
To be more specific, my biggest issue with Jackass is that they glamorize excessive risk taking. Lots of broken bones, concussions, drug addictions, drug overdoses, etc. came from that show - and IMO they are lucky that it wasn't much worse. [1]
I'm not sure I see the stuff here as toxic. In particular, there is heavy consent and a bit of looking in the mirror to these pranks that seems missing from the toxic side.
Is it to ridiculous extremes such that I am glad it isn't me? Yes. Absolutely. Do I feel these folks needed reining in? I mean, for their sake.
> Do I feel these folks needed reining in? I mean, for their sake.
Yup when I called their behavior "toxic" before, I was mostly thinking from a self-harm perspective. Actions that harm others are worse, of course, but self harm falls under the umbrella of "toxic" too.
There's also the issue of millions of kids watching the show and in some cases trying to emulate it. I'm an ardent supporter of free speech, so I'm definitely not calling for censorship here. But I wouldn't call the enormous cultural impact of Jackass a good thing, either.
> The more terrible things I can say to a person and get a laugh in response, the better the friend.
This sums up my closest friendships as well.
The true mark for when someone has traveled from acquaintance, through friendship, and kept going much further beyond, is when you say the most idiotically, obscenely, insensitive comment to them, and, after a laugh, get something even stronger thrown back at you.
You've got it backwards. Toxic masculinity is exactly the avoidance of vulnerability and emotional openness you praise, not horsing around with your buds.
You don't have to guess on the definition by the way, as academic terms tend to be well explicated.
> You don't have to guess on the definition by the way, as academic terms tend to be well explicated.
I disagree that the meaning of "toxic masculinity" is as clearly defined as you claim, or that it is even an academic term [1]:
> The term ‘toxic masculinity’ is not an academic term. It has little currency in academic scholarship on men and masculinities, although this may be changing. Common terms in scholarship for dominant forms of masculinity include ‘hegemonic masculinity’, pioneered by influential theorist Raewyn Connell, and simply ‘masculinity’. There is of course academic debate over how to understand these terms.
If you can cite a clear, concise, and universally accepted definition of toxic masculinity, though, I would be interested to read it.
I cannot cite a universally accepted definition of anything. That is an impossible standard and I'm sure nothing I say will satisfy you. The only help I can offer you here is to question the neutrality of that link.
You watched folks drop out here and there after not surviving the hardcore guy ridicule. And the truly awful stuff they pulled in their early days. I always imagined, everyone parties, someone comes up with something horrible or dangerous, then the cameraman waves hundred dollar bills around to drunk twenty year olds to get it on tape.
Long live Johnny Knoxville, American hero.