social darwinism, caused by a television near you!
Tuesday, April 24, 2001

Parents strongly cautioned. Don't read this. It'll just piss you off.

Two Kentucky teenagers have been injured trying to recreate a scene from MTV's outlandish Jackass. It is the second copycat incident in as many weeks and third since January. According to police, one teenager, a 17-year-old, drove a car towards his 16-year-old friend, who stood in the middle of the road. The boy in the road was supposed to jump out of the way at the last second, but... He didn't, and was hit by the car. Police say the teen had practiced the maneuver successfully prior to taping. [...] The teens, who were planning to use the tape to get on Jackass, have been charged with wanton endangerment, a felony. Their names have not been released.

A 19-year-old Stillwater man has been charged for stopping traffic on Neal Avenue near 15th Street on Sunday afternoon -- wearing a hospital gown and waving a chain saw in the rain. [...] Peterson said that he and several friends had been inspired by the cable television show ``Jackass,'' an MTV spectacle that features a young man setting himself on fire, being doused with the contents of a Porta-Pottie and performing other inane stunts. Peterson said the plan originally involved a friend tipping over a wheelchair on the road, and that he decided to add a welding mask and the chain saw to the routine.

Twelve-year-old Thomas Hitz wasn't the first boy to watch the stunt show, Jackass, then proceed to do something very dangerous — he was the second. [...] At a friend's backyard in Lake Mary, Fla., on Feb. 3, Hitz and his friends tried a similar, Jackass-inspired stunt. Hitz sprayed his hand in bug spray, lit it on fire then tried to put the fire out on his shirt. [...] his shirt burst into flames within seconds, and the boy dove into a pool as his friends watched laughing, not realizing that he was hurt. Hitz ended up with second and third-degree burns on his chest, and he needed two skin graft surgeries. Then he underwent three weeks of excruciating treatments, which entailed having the dead, burned skin removed from his chest.

From the MTV web site and stated out loud in the introduction to JACKASS itself: WARNING: The following show features stunts performed by professionals under very strict control and supervision. MTV and the producers insist that neither you or anyone else attempt to recreate or perform anything you have seen on this show. MTV insists that our viewers do not send in any home footage of themselves or others being jackasses. We will not open or view any submissions, so don’t waste your time.

It must be evolution at work.

Humanity has somehow evolved ahead of nature's schedule, and Nature has been forced to find very fast ways to weed the herd. Therefore, certain people will be allowed to stand before the herd, and, taking all precautions to ensure that they don't get badly hurt, they will then demonstrate suicidal behavior. People of insufficient brain power to be encouraged to reproduce will then emulate said behavior. If evolution is successful, they will become extinct. If evolution fails, then they will at least hopefully have learned a lesson that will be encoded into the genes and passed on down to the next generation.

Well, let's face it: can there be any other reason for MTV's Jackass to exist? Unless you're in a particularly brain-dead/damaged state in the first place, it's not very entertaining. Unless you're the type who likes to watch people thwarting evolution in the first place. Johnny Knoxville and friends ought to be extinct themselves. It's only their extensive safety precautions which betray the fact that, yes, evolution has had its way with at least some portion of their higher brain centers. Not, unfortunately, the part that says, "Hey, dipshit, setting yourself on fire isn't really the brightest thing you can do. There's no future in it. You can only set yourself on fire so many times before people stop caring. Your ability to find a future career in which self-immolation plays a large part may be somewhat limited." However, the fact remains that they have, somehow, made suicidal behavior into gainful employment.

The fact also remains that there are many many people out there whose brains have been sadly neglected by the evolutionary process. Who somehow are entirely incapable of understanding the concept that perhaps if they're not on a television show with producers who have a large fiscal investment in NOT letting their talent be killed by this idiocy, they might be killed by this idiocy. (And, really, how hard is it to understand that you might not be best served by imitating the behavior of people on a show called JACKASS, for heaven's sake?)

I mean, for cryin' out loud. How old do you have to be to understand that perhaps letting yourself get hit by a car is not exactly the brightest thing to do? That perhaps there might be an unintended result, such as broken limbs, brain damage, or, perhaps, a sudden case of death? How old should you be before you realize that just maybe standing in the street waving a chainsaw at passing traffic might get people a tad perturbed? (We'll ignore the whole "wearing a hospital gown, jumping into traffic, waving it at children" part, shall we? Let's shall.) How old do you have to be to understand that, just maybe, setting yourself on fire is not the most brain-powered thing to do? I'm pretty sure that by the time I was eleven, I understood the concept: Toasty Person, BAD and PAINFUL. Just Say No To Toasty Person.

I know there are parents out there who feel that Jackass is inciting teens to do stupid things. As if teens need more incitement at a particularly stupid phase of their lives. Do I think teens should be allowed to watch it? Well ... put it this way. I don't think the show should be on the air. This isn't because I think it incites people to acts of stupidity; I rather suspect most of them would have managed some sort of stupidity on their own -- it comes with that age. But I don't think that's why it shouldn't be on the air, and I wouldn't be particularly in favor of MTV pulling it off due to pressure. I think it shouldn't be on the air because it's a bad show; I don't think it's the sort of television that anyone needs to watch. As for parents allowing kids to watch it ... well, at some point, parents have to trust that they've done their job well, don't they? That their kid is mature enough to understand that it's just television. At some point, parents need to let the kid loose, preferably gradually and ideally nonfatally. If the kid can watch it and still can't see the difference between all the precautions they take for the dangerous stunts, and just pouring oil on yourself and torching it, then there must be something else at work. (And we'll ignore the fact that the chainsaw guy was nineteen and really should have known better, shall we? Let's shall.)

There are also those people out there who will say, "Well, it's all the parents' fault! They let their kids watch this crap!" But frankly, I don't believe that, either. No, of course kids shouldn't be watching that stuff. But by the same token, ten, twelve, fourteen year olds should be able to exercise some judgement. By the time kids are ten, eleven years old, their parents have told them, over and over, "Don't play with fire! it's hot!" The parents have discovered that, yes, maybe the kids do need to touch a small fire -- matches or candles or something that lets them know that, yes, fire is indeed hot. Most kids have seen animals hit by cars or heard about people who were hit. By that age, most kids know that playing with fire or playing in traffic is just asking for it. A television show should not be able to undo all the work that the parents have done by that time. (We're still ignoring the nineteen year old, who should be well past the age of THAT sort of impressionable idiocy.)

Hey, if you've got a better explanation than Evolution doing its best to catch up, let me know.

Posted by Saundra @ 04/25/2001 07:56 AM CST

© 2001 Iain Jackson, after-words.org

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