AS, 10/3

Hello my lovely classmates. There will be a study group at my house on Sunday (10/8) @ 2pm. Check your Rollins email for details and directions. Now back to the regularly scheduled broadcast....


I’ve been thinking about a remark made during class last week, a remark about the film Jackass. I don’t know who brought it up, or why, but there was a comment questioning why these boy-men would voluntarily film their self-inflicted abuse. Is it stupidity in the form of boys being boys? Or is it art? Well, yes. I think it goes back to the theory of the sublime. There is pleasure in pain. What is the difference between gore-fest Saw and gross-out Jackass? One is fictional torture in the name of all-might profit, the other is intentional torture in the name of painful hilarity plus all-mighty profit. We laugh at men getting beer enemas because there is enjoyment in pain, especially if that pain happens to someone else. The biggest reason pain is pleasure is that, in order to feel pain, you must be alive. Jackass and its sequel do nothing so much as prove humanity’s need to feel alive through extreme, visceral pain. We are so numbed to everything else, only the extreme gets through. Hollywood picked up on it years ago, hence disaster films of epic proportions. Jackass doesn’t use special effects or simulated feelings of hurt and anguish. A hot brand on the ass is a hot brand on the ass, and the girlish screaming is authentic. There is no illusion about pain, no pretense. In a world where reality is debated, the black and white of pain is a comfort. So, yes, Jackass is more art than the machine produced line drawings sold for hundreds of dollars at chain furniture stores. Art made real by the verisimilitude of pain, and the discomfort of a beer enema.