Now, I am certainly one for base humor. I am convinced that there is a funny side to everything. There is something funny to be found at every spectrum of taste, but when you go for the more taboo stuff, you must carefully evaluate the risk being taken. The potential for humor increases as the risk of absolute failure increases as well.
I guess blaring air horns at golfers is okay, especially Type-A personality golfers who chuck golf clubs at the offenders, since those people are able to sign releases and waivers. The scenes with the Panda-suits and the giant traffic cone in Japan were clever and amusing (It's odd that a crowd in Japan seems to react less freaked out by such odd behavior than one would believe Americans would). However, there are also scenes in which they fuck around with animals. Such as a man walking a rightrope over a pool of alligators with a scarp of raw chicken stuck in his undies. There is also a scene in which the Jackass crew learns that sea cucumbers, when threatened, will spurt out a stringy white fluid (actually, it's them spewing out their stomach lining.) and promptly dive, place one in front of their crotch and jack it off until it spurts out the stuff, so that it looks like the jackass is masturbating. Now, watching the film, you see that this guy is really beating the shit out of this sea cucumber. I mean, I pull the pud pretty vigorously sometimes too, but this fool must have a medical problem or something if that's how he goes about it.
I was curious as to what exactly was going on in this scene with the seac cucumber, since I figured that if they were really harming it, some authority would not have allowed the scene to be filmed. The American Humane Society's web site
reports that they were not present for the filming of this scene, which was shot in Japan, and thus presumably manages to circumvent American standards for animal treatment in films. Furthermore the site states that if they had been present, they would not have allowed this scene to be shot.
So, filmed entertainment can now consist of men torturing live animals for the sake of a masturbation sight-gag. It really makes one wonder what sort of things are not being shown in the movie. Like, do they just give those guys a camera, a six pack of Steel Reserve, and the license to go and do whatever they want, and then pick and choose what they can actually show in the film and on the show? Like, are there tapes in MTV's warehouse of this crew sticking firecrackers up cat's asses or anything like that?
You know, it would have been funnier and far more clever to rig up a sea-cucumber dick-puppet and slap it over one's penis to actually beat off on camera and make it appear as though one were faking beating off into the camera, even though one actually IS beating off into the camera. Then you could get a real "gotcha" on the MPAA who would then rate what essentially a porn film as R, and we could all have a good chuckle on that. The Jackassian humor shown though is typically too heavy-handed. Just because something is gross or dangerous or really really stupid doesn't mean there isn't room for subtlety, which is something that more refined shows such as South Park (Yeah, that's right, more refined shows such as South Park) have realized.
Don't get me wrong, I did laugh at the film and was impressed by some of the crap that they pulled, but in a sense it was just a kind of freak-you-out overload, and I lost interest and stopped watching after a while. That's just me though, If this is your sort of thing, that's great, knock yourself out. I just feel that if anyone is going to get beat in the name of humor, it should be the comedian or someone who can consent to it (such as Bam Margera'a parents, who, it was pointed out to me, live in a much larger house in the film than they did at the show's outset). There has been a lot of debate over how this show and others like it may be convincing kids to try outlandishly dangerous stunts of their own, despite the disclaimers plastered all over the film and show. I've said before that that is bunk and that if people are goign to let a few degenerates convince them to light themselves on fire, that's just fine. Same goes for anyone who takes such risks. And while I am glad that there are those among us who are willing to take risks for the sake of filming themselves doing it, but I also have little pity for people who do stupid shit and then die because of it. Maybe it's nature's way for these types of folks to come along at a time when the human race's own overpopulation is its biggest threat. I will personally be waiting for the day one of the Jackass crew snaps his neck while riding a hand-truck off a roof or in a forklift demolition derby or some such mishap. When that day comes, and that poor sea cucumber is avenged, my faith in natural selection will once again be reconfirmed.
