Johnny Knoxville, Extraordinary Man

In the decidedly non-intellectual canon of MTV prime time programming, one show stands out as not only the absolute nadir of human intellectual development, but as the possible nadir of human development in general. With its juvenile preoccupation with vomit, midget nudity, non-lethal weaponry, potentially lethal animals, shit eating, animal sex, and perverted practical jokes involving one-or in some cases, several-of these elements, Jackass is idiotic in a world where a Laguna Beach bitch-fit or a fast-cutting MTV News update passes for profound; stupid even in juxtaposition with the likes of Parental Control and I Want a Famous Face. Jackass is the comedic equivalent of a particularly creepy Facebook stalker: desperate, aggressively shameless, and willing to do almost anything.

But unlike a particularly creepy Facebook stalker, Jackass enjoys phenomenal popularity, and it's significant that the success of the unimaginably disgusting Jackass: Number Two comes four years after the show's last new episode. It's not by accident that Jackass has had such staying power, and frontman Johnny Knoxville's winsome simplicity and enthusiasm for pain belie the subtle genius of his creation. Jackass is primarily remarkable in its astounding ability to convert Knoxville's masochism into our sadism, as his enthusiasm for pain is matched only by his audience's enthusiasm for encouraging his self-destruction-encouragement manifested through laughter, enjoyment and a big opening weekend at the box office. Since Jackass fans outnumber masochists, this ability to turn human instinct and emotion on its head is especially remarkable-in the hands of the Jackass crew even the perverse spectacle of over a dozen people laughing hysterically while a friend and fellow human being is keeled over in excruciating pain is packed with almost pant-pissing hilarity. Human cruelty and indifference should never be funny, and the same dark regions that have given us war and genocide have somehow made Steve-O's wails of agony the cinematic catchphrase of the season.

But cruelty seems less cruel in a world in which most physical and moral barriers are negated and ignored-in which there's nothing preventing people from sicking a crate of angry bees on their best friends, and no self-preserving instincts telling people not to take a ride in a jet-powered shopping cart. Unbound by the limitations of common sense, Knoxville epitomizes the dark flip side of the "extraordinary man" theory even more so than Raskolnikov, the tragic antihero of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In spite of certain minor differences (Knoxville hasn't killed anybody-yet), each are studies in the self-destructive results of attempting to transcend some of life's fundamental principles.

Of course this is an imperfect comparison. While idealism motivates Raskolnikov, Knoxville is a man without ideas-philosophically he's a nihilist, and his persistent belief that the precious gift of life should be jeopardized in the name of comedy and testing one's threshold for pain works to cancel all other beliefs. Life, according to Knoxville, is for doing hilarious, violent and above all pointless things; it's a purposeless void, populated by cow turds, fart helmets and penis-shaped cattle brands. Though over an hour and a half in movie form, one gets the sense that The Tao of Knoxville would be a very short book indeed.

But there is, paradoxically, meaning in this meaninglessness. There's sociological meaning to it-the Jackass cast is white-bread and middle class, and the show's fecklessness could echo the superficiality of the suburbs, while its stunts could be the more extreme consequences of suburban malaise and boredom. If the comedic nihilism of the Dadaist movement after World War I reflected the complexities of living in a world gone mad, then the comedic nihilism of Jackass reflects the banality of middle-class life in modern America. Again, an imperfect comparison-but I've always admired Knoxville's ability to combine the philosophy of Marcel Duchamp with the maniacal charisma of Willy Wonka.

The only thing about Jackass that completely defies analysis is how anybody finds humor in anything so wantonly cruel. It could be that Jackass is funny because it's troubling, and that we laugh at it because it walks such thin lines of ethicality and good taste-and because, for whatever reason, there's nothing funnier than a naked midget walking into a crowded boardroom. Nothing.