The Screen Addict | Jackass and the Nature of Genre
In the article below, Variety and Rebecca Rubin take the box-office success of Jackass Forever (2022) as a sign that there’s still hope for theatrical Comedies.
I’m not so sure this is the right conclusion…
Although the Jackasses are undeniably hilarious, I wouldn’t immediately classify their films under the genre Comedy.
Imagine for a second you are a lowly employee in a last-century rental store responsible for stocking the shelves with new releases. Or – as would perhaps be slightly more contemporary – tasked with categorizing films at a streamer like Netflix.
Moonfall (2022): definitely SciFi. Scream (1996): no question the Horror section. No Time to Die (2021): straight to the Action department.
But Jackass?
I would argue this franchise has more elements of Documentary film than it has conventions of Comedy.
Granted – burying the lighthearted antics of the Jackass boys between the generally weighty subject matter of documentaries obviously wouldn’t be the right fit either. The simple fact that we are dealing with a non-fiction film here however, makes labeling it a Comedy – a genre that is generally highly fictionalized – feel somewhat uneasy.
The most appropriate genre for Jackass ultimately lies within a completely different medium – television. The show started out as one of the trailblazers for the Reality boom which exploded during The Nineties and revolutionized the broadcast industry. The boys then organically morphed into feature film, undoubtedly encouraged by then parent company Viacom. The media conglomerate – which has since wisely renamed itself Paramount – owns both Paramount Pictures and Jackass broadcaster MTV, and was looking to diversify their prime IP.
Cutting an overlong point short – I don’t believe the box-office success of JF should necessarily be interpreted as the renaissance of theatrical Comedy features. Jackass is obviously a completely different beast than, let’s say, the latest Kevin Hart or Amy Schumer flick.
Documentary or Reality would be a better fit, but then again – Knoxville et al. might just be in a league of their own.
Hell, perhaps even a genre of their own.
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