The Web Age and Our Present Appreciation For Slapstick
After an intense community bidding battle for the rights to the present, Jackass ultimately discovered itself on MTV’s common schedule starting October 1, 2000. Within the three quick seasons that adopted, Knoxville and his masochistic comedian crew redefined slapstick comedy for a brand new technology. Continuously pushing the envelope when it got here to tried-and-true actuality TV, something and every thing appeared potential when it got here to Jackass, whether or not that meant watching a person Pogo stick right into a public water fountain or getting pushed down a flight of stairs in an abnormal procuring cart.
On the floor, Jackass won’t bear a powerful resemblance to a ‘20s Chaplin movie or a ‘40s Bugs Bunny quick, however the debt it owes to those previous films and TV reveals can’t be overstated. Simply as many of those basic slapstick performers used bodily comedy to elicit laughter, so too did Knoxville and his group depend on their stunts and bodily performances to entertain viewers – albeit in a way more excessive method.
Whereas many of the jokes from a Buster Keaton movie got here from watching the comic keep away from getting maimed by a stunt, Jackass continuously veered in the other way, commonly depicting stunts destined to fail from the very-go. On this sense, Jackass appeared virtually revolutionary – a postmodern comedy that blurred the traces between TV and actuality. Whereas viewers may as soon as have laughed watching a silent comic step out of the best way of a free-falling piano, Jackass had their performers step out of the piano’s approach solely to be crushed by a bigger, even heavier aerial projectile.
The outcomes may need been shockingly brutal to observe on tv, but it surely by no means failed to go away audiences with a large, sadistic smile on their faces – even because it left Knoxville and firm moaning piles of bruised pores and skin, damaged bones, and sufficient facial accidents to make Jason Voorhees wince in discomfort.
In some ways, Jackass did one thing no different comedy film or TV collection had managed to do earlier than: it made slapstick daring once more. Not had been viewers restricted to seeing rigorously coordinated stunts performed out in movie or tv. As a result of the stakes in Jackass had been actual, every time audiences witnessed a stunt within the present, they couldn’t assist however admire the authenticity of the efficiency, permitting us to snigger that a lot tougher as every stunt was performed out. And naturally, Knoxville and his crew had been in on the joke themselves, laughing hysterically every time they had been blasted out of a cannon, fell down a flight of stairs, or hopped off a suburban rooftop.
By way of this infantile, devil-may-care perspective, audiences felt like they had been laughing alongside Knoxville, Steve-O, and Ryan Dunn, garnering the identical genuine chuckle we let loose anytime an in depth pal journeys over their shoelaces or walks by a display screen door. Apparently, whereas viewers’ starvation for slapstick has slowly eroded over the previous 20 years, audiences nonetheless appear to precise the identical avid enthusiasm for Jackass-themed content material as they did 20 years in the past, as seen by the optimistic reception of the collection’ 4 follow-up movies and the similarly-veined spinoff, Unhealthy Grandpa.
