Chris Burden and Rudolph Schwartzkogler once owned the whole art world. Their explorations of extreme performance art were more than just mutilations of conceptual art. Their events blurred the distinction between artist and audience. When MTV created Jackass and The Tom Green Show, cable executives subverted Burden and Schwartzkogler's artistic legacy for darker purposes.

This is Bullet Time

On November 19, 1971, 25-year-old performance artist Chris Burden had one friend shoot him in the arm at close range, while another filmed it. Burden made a few thousand off the sale of his accomplishment, simply titled, "Shoot." His resulting medical bills surpassed $84,000.

Four years later, Bas Jan Ader died during a performance-piece in which he attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a 13-foot sailboat. He set sail from Cape Cod on July 9, 1975 with the concept of exploiting every moment of his journey. Ader never reached his destination. Six months later his boat was found half-submerged off the coast of Ireland.

Do You Know Where Your Jackasses Are?

So, it's 9 PM: do you know where your jackasses are?

Apparently bereft of artistic ancestral history, and the world before cable-TV, MTV delivers a half-hour-extreme-stunt-and-prank-fest every Sunday night, aptly named Jackass. Cupped in the innocence of behind-the-scenes segments, there's a concerted effort to promote a tone of moronic fun. In the spectacle Burden's "Shoot", Jackass is more of a one-note pussy-parade.

Rudolph Schwartzkogler, too, once owned the whole art world. Another young performance artist, Schwartzkogler died violently on June 20, 1969 as a result of his most infamous performance. Perhaps best told by famed art critic Robert Hughes, this event was more than just a mutilation of Conceptual Art:

Schwartzkogler seems to have deduced that what really counts is not the application of paint, but the removal of surplus flesh. So he proceeded, inch by inch, to amputate his own penis, while a photographer recorded the act as an art event. In 1972, the resulting prints were reverently exhibited . . . Successive acts of self-amputation finally did Schwartzkogler in.

The conclusion becomes that only a ten year old boy could be impressed by some studly skateboard-punk streaking through his own neighborhood. While Bob Flanagan, the late and enigmatic bondage performance specimen of living art, suspended dumbbells from his testicles for grown-ups, Jackass is more likely to present a variation of frat-house hazing. The more nefarious pranks are strictly controlled, even though an accidental death would skyrocket the program's popularity. Clearly it's funny until someone gets hurt-in which case, it's great videotape!

In fact, MTV/Viacom is explicit in it's effort to communicate its culpability, slotting the following disclaimer before and after commercial breaks:

The following show features stunts performed by professionals and/or total idiots under very strict control and supervision. MTV and the producers insist that neither you or anyone else attempt to recreate or perform anything you have seen on this show. We will not open or view any submissions, so don't waste your time.

If the show's host, "Johnny Knoxville" (whose given name is Philip John Clapp), decides to jump an aqueduct propelled only by inline skates, it's clearly his leg that gets broken, his problem, and not MTV's suggestion that you should try it too, just because he's laughing all the way to the hospital.

Without a line to cross, and with the promise that something really fucked-up could happen, you might think that Jackass has the potential to elicit the same meaning and dimension as Chris Burden, Bas Jan Ader or Rudolph Schwartzkogler. Instead, the show is unfailingly sickening and boring.

There are some moments which approach a sonic purity, like the stunt wherein a thong-bearing cast-member has his bare-ass stapled with the individual letters for the word "JACKASS". The strip's premiere featured a particularly difficult to watch 'stunt': a shirtless Knoxville takes pepper spray in his eyes, a stun-gun to his chest and Taiser hooks ripping-into his flesh, prodding him with convulsive bursts of electricity. However, the suffering was at his expense, giving the illusion of playful hysterics. Other bits are mercilessly uncomfortable with hit and run abusiveness. Subjecting a cast member to a seriously ugly mullet hair-cut is very-funny, having it done by a black barber in New York City and enjoying the racial tension without acknowledging it feels as shameful as phone-pranking people with fake death threats.

It's not an accident that the program is often compared to the other MTV hit, The Tom Green Show. Both shows feature actual relatives and friends of cast members as the butt of hijinks and jokes. Learning to anticipate their reactions is a giddy experience, but the similarity between the two shows fades there. Jackass bits that smell like the Tom Green Show tend to hedge on the side of just really wrong. Even when Jackass departs from exploiting friends and family, it's still missing what the Tom Green Show never goes anywhere without: helplessness and compassion.

It's impossible to wash the taste of the Tom Green Show out of your mouth. Jackass withers in originality, by comparison, as it fails to offer the opportunity to voluntarily participate in their filmed ambushes. While MTV's jackasses contort with fits of cackling, their victims are clearly abandoned with a distinct feeling of violation.

The United States of Unconsciousness

Maybe when the release forms are produced and the 'victims' realize they'll be on TV it gets funny, but we don't see that part of the show. We're weighed down with a catalogue of dreary segments, which more accurately represent the show's drive, and that recolor previously inspired amusement.

Among the most cheerless and static stunts: