The Erotics and Politics of Masochistic Self-Abjection in Jackass
1 Within popular media circles in the 1990s, one of the recuperative strains of masculinity politics became known as 'laddism' or 'new laddism.' Central to laddism's various discursive inflections was the strategic infantilisation of males to the reductive stereotype that 'boys will be boys.' This infantilisation might well be seen as a highly manipulative discursive practice, designed to cultivate the association that laddish behaviour is innate but innocuous, and something that males will overcome with time. The term new laddism reframes laddish behaviour more definitively as a reactionary response to feminism; the prefixing 'new' implying that this behaviour pre-existed and even inspired the feminist movement. Critics that have looked upon discourses of male victimisation with suspicion have also seen in the discursive strategies of new laddism a calculated transposition of masculine norms, designed to license a whole range of negative behaviours, which are often homophobic and misogynistic. Commenting on this trend, Garry Whannel suggests that while new laddism has been defended and promoted as "a form of post-modern irony," it actually represents a reconstruction of pre-feminist masculinity, replete with "masculine fears of the female 'Other,' masquerading as desire" (257). In an equally doubting, tongue-in-cheek tone, Pat Stack reflects:
The new lad is apparently harmless. Unlike the traditional `working class lad', the new lad is not violent, nor is he racist. He is an educated, middle class, witty character who is only reclaiming parts of harmless masculinity from the horrors of feminism and the terrible wimpishness of the 'new man' era. The new lad is, according to his defenders, only reaffirming the fact that men like a pint, like their sport, and find women sexually attractive. The new lad is still 'alternative' when it comes to comedy, but is free of the sexual prudishness of the original alternative comedy scene. (no pag.)
In its variously loud, aggressive and comic manifestations, laddism or new laddism has also become a highly marketable cultural phenomenon over the past decade. In more recent years, it has found its greatest support in a range of television shows produced by MTV. At the forefront of this global mediation is the hugely successful Jackass series, which has inspired a number of offshoot productions such as Viva La Bam (USA, 2003), Dirty Sanchez (U.K., 2003) and Wildboyz (USA, 2004). All of these shows involve a large group of young, ostensibly heterosexual men — many of whom appear in a number of the shows listed — carrying out a range of laddish acts typically of a masochistic nature. In the context of these productions, masochism appears as a form of self-abjection that frequently involves revelling in scatology, submitting to physical harm and yielding to otherness.
2 This article examines the role of masochistic self-abjection in the construction and operation of heteronormative masculinity primarily through an analysis of Jackass: The Movie (2002), mindful of the fact that many of the non-linear film's scenarios, or enactments of a similar kind, feature in the Jackass series, numerous offshoot series, and the recently released Jackass: Number Two (2006).[1]<em>Jackass: Number Two</em> was released at the time of this article's writing. However, it does not explore anything conceptually different to the first film or the series that would necessitate discrete analysis here. Nonetheless, its very production marks a culmination in the popular culture's representation of troubled masculinity that I assess in the closing paragraphs of this paper. The analysis of Jackass provided here begins by analysing how masculinity is constructed in the film through masochistic acts — presented as if rites of initiation — that involve the abjection, figurative castration and penetration of the male body. It also examines how males performatively control their 'abject others' in the service of affirming a stable masculine core. The paper continues to assess the role played by comedy in the film, and questions whether Jackass, and its associated films/series, merely signifies the triumph of low culture or if it highlights a deeper problem with contemporary Western masculinity.
The Boundaries of Male Subjectivity
3 A central feature of Jackass is the exploration of the boundaries of male subjectivity through acts that involve scatological and fluidic abjection, figurative castration and the violation of the male body. While these are seemingly anti-phallic gestures; in male subjects' playful relationship to the acts and in their endurance and survival of them, the relationship between corporeal resistance (which does not necessarily rely on exertive muscularity) and an essential, inviolable male core is reinforced. Sociologist Tony Jefferson draws attention to the centrality of endurance to masculinity when he suggests that normative masculinity involves "a certain indifference to the body" as well as "hardness," manifest in willingness for endurance. He also suggests that this hardness is mental as well as physical. Inverting Freudian and Lacanian positions that suggest that masculinity is characterized by outward activity, he expands:
Muscular strength has long been associated with masculinity, as a symbol of perfection, a matter of beauty combined with strength in different ways. The muscular body offers both power and pleasure. How does this fit with hardness? The Freudian line suggests that muscular bodies are simply symbolic extensions of the penis and phallic mystique. But this is reductionist, barely saved by the Lacanian notion of the phallus as a symbol rather than an actual organ. (77-98)
In his revision of these psychoanalytic positions, Jefferson suggests that "hardness" involves not just strength but willingness "to risk the body in performance" (81). And it is through the taking of these risks that the so-called jackasses prove their masculine worth. This is also the line taken by Joyce Carol Oates in On Boxing when she reflects: "The Sweet Science of Bruising celebrates the physicality of men even as it dramatises the limitations, sometimes tragic, more often poignant, of the physical" (9). Although written specifically about professional boxing, Oates' thoughts are equally as applicable to all activities based on male-male contact and pain endurance.
Scatological and Fluidic Abjection
4 Discourses of abjection maintain that the abject emerges as that which defies borders. In Julia Kristeva's well-known contribution, faces, urine and mortification all amount to examples of the abject, as they seem to "come from an outside or an exorbitant inside" and they are "unassimilable." While the subject typically rejects the abject in the bid for a definable self, Kristeva suggests that "a pole of attraction and repulsion" (125) characterises the self-abject relationship, as it does in Jackass, which finds the self contemplating its relation to the abject in terms of "Not me. Not that. But not nothing either. A 'something' that I do not recognise as a thing" (126). Despite the feeling of attraction and repulsion that the abject excites and mobilises, the self faces annihilation when it acknowledges that the abject is actually part of the self. This recognition sparks the experience of abjection, when "the subject finds the impossible in himself: when he finds the impossible in his very being, discovering that he is nothing other than abject" (128).
5 A recurring motif in Jackass is the wilful celebration of scatology and the opening of the body to apparent vulnerability. In an extended scene of the film, for example, Dave England prepares for a task that involves defecating in a display toilet in a hardware store. In advance of entering the shop, England and his Jackass comrades sit in the crew van, where England confesses to desperately needing to use the toilet. With that, the men push him around the van and press on his intestines, forcing him to defecate in the cramped vehicle. In response, the group roll about laughing, until some of the men tumble out from the van and others vomit. Later in the day, England returns to the store and undertakes the task as planned. When reproached by staff, he pleads ignorance, and leaves the store. This occasion of public excretion mirrors a scenario from Season Two of the television series that involves Chris Raab defecating on the side of the road, provoking disturbed looks from passers-by, and laughter from his Jackass companions. These instances also resonate with scenes from Season Three, such as one involving Knoxville's nephew being recorded passing wind and defecating in the living room of his family home, while being watched by Knoxville and his grandfather, as if in some kind of male rite of (back) passage.