On some level, Johnny Knoxville (legal name Philip Clapp), creator and star of the “Jackass” movies, TV shows, and YouTube episodes for 25 years, has to be considered “crazy.” His stunts have cost him dozens of broken bones, brain injuries, and other assorted internal and external lacerations, punctures, and separations, including one eyeball partially popping out. “Crazy like a fox” might be a better description since the six movies alone have grossed about $600 million, and his personal fortune is estimated at $50 million.
But it’s hard to dismiss Knoxville’s efforts as simply driven by money, since a recent “New Yorker” article notes that he’s been dreaming up and executing preposterous and dangerous practical jokes and pranks since he was a child. His career has been a profound case of serendipity: his personal passion (some call it compulsion, masochism, or insanity; others see courage or simple foolishness) found a worldwide audience who pay top dollar to watch people injure, or nearly injure, themselves in a contrived challenge.
The world has always had “daredevils,” including the 1859 Niagara Falls tightrope walker, others riding over them in a barrel, and Harry Houdini and Evel Knievel performing death-defying stunts. But what makes them do it?
George Mallory offered a simplistic answer in 1923 to the question after multiple attempts to climb Mount Everest: “Because it’s there,” he explained, before permanently disappearing on Everest the next year. Knoxville found the best description of his own impulses in a 1950s Air Force researcher’s report on how much force a pilot could withstand in a plane ejection. After a test crash at 600 mph, the researcher was recovering from injuries in a hospital when he experienced “survival euphoria,” something Knoxville felt after childhood adrenaline shots to combat acute asthma attacks. “I’ve done a lot of drugs in my life,” he reports, “and I’ve never had a rush like that.”
I can just stretch my imagination to see a few MAGA members embracing a daredevil’s approach to politics — like an adolescent’s experiment combining multiple, unknown chemicals — or planning an elaborate prank “just to see what happens.” They can’t be surprised by Trump’s chaotic and catastrophic administration after he’s proven himself a charlatan in multiple bankruptcies and criminal proceedings. They may have supported him as suitable entertainment after they were so woefully abandoned by the recent Democratic move toward supporting upper-class coastal elites and harrowing litmus tests on everything from abortion rights to transgender story hour.
After Tuesday’s elections, I believe it’s too soon for millions of Democrats to be experiencing survival euphoria. There are too many tests ahead before we can honestly declare that our democracy has survived. Hate, social divisions, economic disparities, and corruption won’t disappear overnight.
Democrats should be especially mindful of the researcher’s epiphany about the exhilaration of surviving a near-death experience. It did not produce “joy or relief.” Instead, it “drenched him in a hunger for greater risk,” as proven by Knoxville’s extended career.
The “New Yorker” article notes that the “boyosphere” embraced by “Jackass” culture has been alive for decades, with some males unwilling to move on from a society where men feel constantly compelled to protect their genitals from sneak attacks by Knoxville or his followers, or think beyond the addictive rush of performing senseless and dangerous stunts. They are examples of a strong, guiltless, “boys will be boys” mentality, although most of the “Jackass” crew are in their 50s.
Some debate a chicken-and-egg sequence for the “boyosphere” and the toxic “manosphere” embodied by Trump celebrating the ability to commit sexual assaults without consequences (if “you’re a star”), as well as the “incels” who believe it’s their right to have sex with women, even if none are willing. Their attitudes clearly reinforce one another, with Trump and MAGA leading the way with a UFC event on the White House lawn, and the freedom to rant endlessly on social media without regard for facts or social norms.
I hope that we’ll soon find our way out of the swamp inherited by Trump and made unfathomably worse by ultra-wealthy men and women who lust for even more money and power. It may take generations to repair what’s been broken, but some of those supporting a benevolent democracy will experience “survival euphoria.” I just hope Democrats can resist the elitist and exclusionary behavior that threatens their survival. They’ve already proven susceptible to a political righteousness that could drive them to repeat, or top, the thrill of a near-death experience.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.