Sunday. 10pm. I'm flipping up the cable spectrum to find that forbidding WARNING screen, silently posted before another clamourous episode of MTV's Jackass. Through this program I can watch males in their natural habitat, unaware of my presence (or any other woman's) and can watch these stupid ape-men ram into bushes with shopping carts. Jackass is really the main artery in my new research on male behavior because the show provides me plenty of opportunities to spy on boys, and in fact it inspired this column.But for all my half-hours logged, I still can't fathom why a guy would shoot himself with a taser gun and then barbeque himself.
At first I hypothesized that Johnny Knoxville et. al's actions were quasi-heroic. Something along the lines of: "Boys bored with suburban complacency wreak havoc on public streets with 'urban kyacking.'" These boys are tired of being scolded to fit into the norm. Tired of being told to get a job (you lazy punk!). How fortunate that they found an excellent way to make money and not wake up before noon with their Jackass career. There's something in this society of men that values not living up to expectations. And instead of becoming another cubicle drone (ie. adult), these young men are using their twentysomething years to revert to a youth lacking in responibility and consequence.
Or maybe: "Emotionally numb guys perform crazy stunts to feel pain ... to feel alive." I've nicknames this my Fight Club hypothesis which, if you've seen the movie, you pretty much understand. Violence to others (but mostly upon themselves) unlocks a primitive satisfaction that has been lost in our civilized world. The culture's material obsession is symbolized by the shopping carts which the men on Jackass so fervently carom into bushes, to lash out at a society they don't want to belong to.
Whoa. I think I turned into an English teacher for a second there.
But I haven't come to a definative conclusion yet. I don't really think it's either of these. It may be something my female mind can never grasp. And that's why I continue to watch, searching for answers in the gleaming eye of a boy about to proudly dive into a kiddie pool of elephant dung. Seeking some sort of profound answer in the 50/50 mix of laughter and agony a boy emits after he lets his friend kick him in the balls ...