HUMILI-TAINMENT Freak-show fascination

Gross-out humor, reality shows and 'Jackass' culture have led to a bizarre trend.
By TOM MAURSTAD
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
On prime-time television, contestants take turns stuffing as many wriggly, slime-covered worms as they can fit into their mouths and spitting them into a bucket. In last week's No. 1 movie, a young man douses a snow cone with his own urine and then eats it. Both scenes end with vomiting.
Welcome to the age of humili-tainment. In the current craze of gross-out humor, reality television and "Jackass" culture, humiliation is the central appeal of more and more entertainment. It's a trend that's turning pop culture into a Coliseum, viewers into a cheering-jeering throng and participants into freak-show stars.
To sum it up
In humili-tainment, people either perform humiliating acts or are placed in humiliating situations for the purpose of eliciting guffaws or fascination from the audience. That just happens to be a summation of most programs categorized as "reality television" -- everything from competitors on "Fear Factor" asked to consume a sheep's uterus to stars-in-waiting being disclaimed as talentless losers during the judgment sessions of "American Idol." And MTV's "Jackass" has carried the humili-tainment trend into movie theaters, with fans coughing up more than $20 million two weekends ago to watch the "Jackass" crew and their atavistic antics.
"This kind of entertainment is nothing new," says Lester Friedman, a film scholar at Northwestern University. "There were the Romans and the Coliseum. In the Elizabethan period, hangings and various other forms of execution were public spectacles. And there's a long tradition of carnivals and sideshows showcasing unfortunate people performing bizarre acts."
Part of the difference between now and then is that the participation in the past was largely involuntary. These days, humili-tainment is big business and people are lining up for their chance at cashing in. Yet even the shift to voluntary humiliation isn't entirely new. From "Candid Camera" to "The Gong Show" to "The Jerry Springer Show," everyday folks have proven their willingness to be made fools of or to make fools of themselves for public sport on national television.
"Today's current infatuation with humiliation verges on a voyeuristic version of sado-masochism," says Tina Tessina, a psychotherapist whose newest book is "It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction."
The whys
The obvious question -- why? -- cuts in several directions. The easiest to answer is why this type of entertainment is so popular, especially on television, right now. Two words: "cheap" and "easy." At a time of splintering and shrinking audiences -- thanks to the cable revolution, not to mention satellites and DVD and electronic games and the Internet -- networks have found a reliable source of attention-grabbing and affordable programming.
And in humili-tainment, we see the merging of two formerly separate trends -- gross-out entertainment and "reality" shows -- into a new hybrid.
"That's what network execs love to do -- take two known quantities and mush them together," says Stephen Cannell, TV producer and creator of a long line of hit shows such as "The Rockford Files" and "The A-Team." "There's no originality.
"That's one of the reasons for all this freak-show television. That, and desperation in the face of dropping audience share. Smart and hip are out; extreme and outrageous are in."
Why do people watch?
Of course, if people weren't watching, the networks wouldn't keep producing these shows, no matter how cheap and easy. So why are so many people watching, why do so many of us find the humiliation of others to be such irresistible entertainment? Once again, this is neither a new nor novel development. After all, such behavior has been around long enough for the Germans to have coined a word to describe it -- schadenfreude, which Webster's defines as "glee at another's misfortune."
"Obviously, there's the drama of something like 'American Idol' or 'Survivor,' and there's the comedy of something like 'Jackass,"' says Tim Burke, cultural history professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. "But this kind of entertainment also makes you feel better about your life. It allows you to feel a moral superiority to someone willing to put themselves in such demeaning or abusive situations.
"And then there's the kick of watching such intimate acts," Burke continues, "of getting so intimately involved with people you don't know and something you have nothing to do with. I think it's a reflection of how cut-off and not-in-control we feel in our own lives. We're becoming a nation of Chauncey Gardners (the simpleton played by Peter Sellers in "Being There") -- we like to watch."
Why be humiliated?
The final "why" must be directed at those who throw themselves on the altar of humili-tainment, those who volunteer to eat bugs and brains on "Fear Factor," who camp out on the sidewalk for a chance to be skewered under "American Idol's" international spotlight. Why would 25 women go on "The Bachelor" and parade like cattle at an auction for the chance to "marry" a man they barely know? What drives a member of the "Jackass" gang to relieve himself in the floor-model toilet of a plumbing store?
"Most of these people seem to be motivated by two things -- greed and exhibitionism," says film scholar Lester Friedman.
It may be greed for more than money. As this trend has progressed, these shows have evolved into a celebrity lottery -- a one-in-a-million shot for ordinary people to achieve that "Entertainment Tonight" lifestyle.
"I definitely think a chance at fame motivates a lot of the people who get involved," says Burke. "There's a complicated consensual agreement at work in which the participants agree to let the show exploit them, but they in turn are exploiting the show for a chance to unleash their inner celebrity."
New kind of fame
The result has been the emergence of a new kind of fame -- democratized celebrity. In an extension of Andy Warhol's quip about everybody's getting their 15 minutes of fame, shows like "Survivor," "The Real World" and especially "American Idol" create the possibility that the next celebrity-lottery winner could be anyone willing to try. The next fame-game winner could be you.
Also, amid the comforts and convenience of our remote-control, conveyor-belt, e-mail society, many of these "Survivor"-type shows -- in the way they test players' physical, emotional and psychological limits -- act as a kind of pop-culture "Outward Bound."
Self-perceptions
"These people can see themselves as brave, as taking control of their lives and handling extreme situations better than those who would never dare go on one of these shows," says Cathleen Kaveny, who teaches courses in both law and theology at Notre Dame University.
"Then again, when you consider the bravery that it took in recent weeks for people living in Washington, D.C., just to go to the store or fill up the car with gas, then these shows seem less an act of bravery than escapism. Things may seem superficially scary on a show like 'Survivor,' but you know no one's going to die."
It's in the cartoon-crazy chaos of "Jackass: The Movie" that another dimension of humili-tainment is opening up.
Rebellious and attention-getting behavior may be timeless hallmarks of adolescence, but young people must go to ever-escalating extremes to achieve the desired effect. One generation's pompadour becomes another's Mohawk becomes another's shaved and tattooed scalp. In this context, the outlandishly dangerous spoofery of "Jackass" can be seen as the cutting edge of dividing-line, identity-establishing behavior.
Enter 'Jackass'
When tattoos and body piercings and employment-defying hairstyles are commonplace fashion statements, rebellion can be tricky, not to mention painful, business. And that's where "Jackass" comes in. Johnny Rotten may be long gone, but Johnny Knoxville ("Jackass"' leader) is ready to get beat up, shot or sliced in the name of anything-goes abandon.
"Like any rebellion-based entertainment, 'Jackass' is meant to divide people into those who get it and those who don't," says cultural historian Tim Burke. "For the guys on the show, it's all about doing things that most people wouldn't dream of doing.
"And fans, by extension, connect themselves by cheering and laughing at what most people are disgusted by."
In the end, it's the question that comes after "why" that induces the deepest shudder -- "what's next?"