Jackass 3D Movie Clip "Duck Hunting" Official (HD)

Jackass vs The Young

The Young...The Screen...And The Jackass

    What do you think of when you watch a man get hit in the face by a giant hand with bags of flour taped to it? I start to laugh and think of Jackass 3, a TV and film franchise featuring dangerously extreme and stupid stunts. Johnny Knoxville and the guys are all trained stuntmen stars and occasionally pull pranks of the man walking down the street. Many people with positions of authority over youth in America, like teachers and law enforcement officials feel that the movies are dangerous and don’t approve of them but the audience--”60 percent of Jackass 3-D's audience was male and 67 percent was under 25 years old” (Gray)  loves it. I find it to be good fun but inappropriate for preteen audiences.  Even to my teenage mind, some arguments against the franchise are valid. Still I think they should be permitted.
    Critics suggest that these movies are dangerous because they encourage fans to try stunts they see in the films. This has actually happened in some cases. In the article “Jackass' Imitators Are New Menace,” Rasheed Oluwa talks about how the Jackass crew should be held responsible for the “stupid” behaviors of adolescent youth. Other writers uses examples of people losing their jobs and severely injuring themselves in attempting the stunts seen in Jackass. “For example, a teacher in Charlotte County, Florida let her students videotape themselves kickboxing in the classroom”(Young). Lt. Gary Bashor of the Dutchess County Sheriff's Office said, ''There's no law against being stupid...The problem comes when you're stupid and you cause harm to someone else''(Oluwa).  So, there is evidence that this franchise has influenced real-life negative behaviors.
    Media experts, however, say that you can’t blame movies such as these for the behaviors of individuals,  There are many other factors that may come into play in a viewer choosing to try a stunt.

Lynn Spangler, a media criticism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, thinks it's too simple to blame the media for other people's bad behavior. Although some studies show the media can cause changes in a person's personality, it's not going to completely alter a person's psychological make up.''There are more influences on a person's life than the media,'' she said. ''If you look at who we are, there are a number of things that influence our personalities.''(Oluwa)

So, this suggests that people who try Jackass stunts could try other dangerous things, even if the movie franchise didn’t exist. I agree with this point, because it doesn’t take media to make an impulsive kid do something without thinking of the consequences.
    Opponents would say, though, that movies should be more responsible about what they might encourage viewers to do. Even though they have disclaimers that professionals are doing the stunts, the filmmakers appear to make the stuntmen look like ordinary doofuses: “Judging by what you see, you'd think they were trying very hard to convince you that no "professionals" were involved in the making of Jackass: The Movie, either in front of or behind the camera (Horning). Another argument about disclaimers is that consumers have been trained to ignore disclaimers. On commercials, they are in extremely small print and scroll by faster than any human could ever read them. On web-based agreements, students and adults move the cursor right down past the disclaimer. So, disclaimers may not be taken that seriously, especially by younger viewers who don’t have to make legal decisions.
    I would join the film industry in defending the actions that filmmakers take to direct the right audiences to their movies. First, there is the movie ratings system. The Jackass movies are rated R, which means that viewers under the age of 17 are not permitted without a parent. So, if parents choose to allow their kids to see it, it should not be the responsibility of others to make moral decisions for their kids. Secondly, there are big, bold disclaimers --different then the tiny scrolling ones, at the beginning and end of the movies to remind viewers that the stunts in the films are done by stuntmen, under supervision, and that the stunts should not be attempted. Plus, the disclaimers are repeated over and over again. On the MTV version of the show, there are disclaimers after each commercial break: "the stunts in this movie were performed by professionals, so neither you nor your dumb buddies should attempt anything from this movie " (Horning).
    Another argument that opponents have about the Jackass series is that it has taken entertainment for the masses to a new low.

In the film you'll find things such as people being willingly trampled by bulls, a husband and son allowing their wife and mother to be groped by a stranger in her sleep, body parts bitten by various dangerous animals (in particular snakes), and of course the ingesting of urine, feces, and other bodily waste products whether they be animal or human ingested both anally and orally.(Tyler)

So, there is a question of taste in these movies, and opponents are offended.

My response to this would be that opponents are taking it way too seriously.  It is obviously entertainment and the huge audiences confirm the public interest in it.  The Jackass movies are hilarious. I go with my friends and laugh and groan, but we would never try the stunts ourselves.  A movie critic agrees: “It's an escape for us. It makes us feel better to know that somebody is either having a better time than us, or is having a worse time than us”(Koltnow). The original MTV series aired late in the evening to appeal to older teenagers and adults. It never was meant for younger viewers. The humor may be off-color at times, but that is no different than humor teenagers have shared over the ages.  That is why, while I have concerns about younger children watching “Jackass,” I don’t think it’s a big deal for older viewers, by older, I mean, older than 15 years old.

    In conclusion, there may be issues with highly impulsive viewers trying stunts seen on “Jackass” and elsewhere, and an issue with under-age audiences watching them, and an issue with the vulgar content in them. However, there are movie ratings and disclaimers to address the audience issue. As far as impulsively goes, I would quote Forrest Gump, who said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Stupid (impulsive) people will do stupid things, regardless of the inspiration. Finally, freedom of speech and expression in our country allows these movies to exist, and, if people find them offensive, they can walk out of the movie theater and take their children with them.

Work Cited

Gray, Brandon. "Weekend Report: 'Jackass' Crashes Into Fall Record." Box Office Mojo. 18 Oct. 2010. IMDb.com, Inc. 17 Nov. 2010 <http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2951>.

Horning, Rob. "The Warning in Jackass: The Movie." Bad Subjects: Political Education for

Everyday Life. Bad Subject, 2004. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.

<http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2004/66/horning.html>

Koltnow, Barry. "How low will we go?." Orange County Register, The (Santa Ana, CA) 09 Oct.         2006: Points of View Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 3 Nov. 2010.
Oluwa, Rasheed. "'Jackass' Imitators Are New Menace." Poughkeepsiejournal.com |

Poughkeepsie Journal | Poughkeepsie News, Community, Entertainment, Yellow Pages

and Classifieds. Serving Poughkeepsie, NY. 01 Sept. 2003. Web. 02 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/projects/crimebeat/po090103s1.shtml>.

Tyler, Josh. "Jackass: Number Two Movie Review." Entertainment News, Movie Trailers, Movie

Reviews, and Opinions from Cinema Blend. 2006. Web. 30 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Jackass-Number-Two-1822.html>.

Young, Gretel C. Kovach and Michael E. "Teen pranks no longer seen as child's play." Dallas

Morning News, The (TX) (2006): Points of View Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 2 Nov.2010.