Sin #80: Watching Some Jackass

Youtube has taken the cult to fame to unprecedented heights; suddenly any kid now can upload a video of himself being ridiculous and get hundreds of thousands of hits (in other words, become famous through humiliation, either intentionally or not).

This weekend I went to see “Jackass 3D”, the third movie in this famous trilogy of depravity and scatological humor. The movies derive out of the MTV program that aired in the late 90s and became an instant hit among the youth of America. Some called “Jackass” the low point of our culture citing that teenagers were responding to its vulgarity and emulating the dangerous stunts. Of course some dumb kids did and got hurt but, hey, at least they got it all on video and can now share a laugh about it, right?

To appeal to our morbid sensibilities “Jackass” plays like a cathartic experience. These guys are hurting themselves for our own amusement (there isn’t any sense of exploitation in their antics and there’s a real camaraderie between Johnny Knoxville and his friends) and while some people cringe at the thought of watching male genitalia, all forms of body secretions and general physical violence, I believe “Jackass” is mindless and harmless fun.

Not all the jackasses on Youtube, however, are looking for fame; some got it by chance. Take Jack Rebney, for example. In the late 70s and early 80s he was a respected news journalist and business man with a bit of a temper. For a while he worked in commercials and found himself advertising the Winnebago trucks (more commonly known as mobile homes). The shoot was disastrous as a rambling Rebney found himself forgetting his lines, hating their idiocy and becoming very exhausted by the terrible heat.

The outtakes for the commercials were edited and released on old videocassette tapes (of course all of this was before the arrival of the internet) and people gathered to laugh at the “Winnebago Man”. When Youtube finally arrived and became a sensation, the videos were discovered by a whole new generation who could laugh at this angry old salesman. Something strange happened afterwards as Jack Rebney practically disappeared and no one knew about his whereabouts.

In the documentary “Winnebago Man” a filmmaker named Ben Steinbauer searches for Rebney. When he discovers a recluse living in a cabin in California he expects a mad-dog lunatic and finds an angry man who rambles on politics and social issues but is mostly hurt at being dismissed as a buffoon. He becomes a fascinating subject as he refuses to speak about his personal life and despises practically everyone. The movie takes a tragic turn as Rebney loses his sights and starts to become more and more dependant; at the end he finally agrees to visit a local festival where his clips are being shown. The response surprises him (and the audience is also surprised to find an intelligent man hiding behind a façade of hate).

There’s a temptation to call “Jackass” or even the Rebney videos guilty pleasures but through their absurdity they project a mirror to society. While the “Jackass” team is well aware about how they got their call to fame, Jack Rebney became trapped in a generational divide and failed to find any sense of joy. With “Winnebago Man” at least, he no longer can be seen as only a crazy, angry man and while that won’t give him any comfort (he couldn’t care less, he says) at least it comforts his viewers.