Episode 33: Intentionally Stupid

"We can dance if we want to/we can leave your friends behind/because your friends don't dance/and if they don't dance/well, they're no friends of mine."
                       -Men Without Hats, "The Safety Dance"

    Oh, to be stupid. There are some times I feel like I'm stupid and sometimes I feel like smart. Sometimes when I'm feeling like I'm smart, I feel like the people around me are stupid. 
   What I don't like about some smart people is their extreme desire to avoid anything stupid. Stupidity can be, and often is, a bad thing, but it is also often a welcome escape and an avenue for humor and adventure.
   What I'm gonna do with this blog is highlight how stupidity can be used as a creative device, and provide examples of works that utilize stupidity as its main form of being entertaining. 

Scene 1: Four (Three) Lifelong Friends Who Compete To Embarrass Each Other
   One of my all-time favorite tv shows is Impractical Jokers. It's about four (now three, after one left the show) middle-aged men who have been friends since high school, who do weird stuff and pranks in public. 
   Once, in high school, I asked Alex, my best friend at the time, if he liked Impractical Jokers. He said he didn't because he thought it was stupid. My response was something along the lines of "yeah, it's supposed to be".
   If you're going into Impractical Jokers expecting artistic, thoughtful television, you're doing it wrong. The show is made for the express purpose of being stupid. The intro even includes a warning that it contains "scenes of graphic stupidity". You watch it because it's funny to see the grown men be stupid. You shouldn't mount expectations of artistic genius onto a show centered around hidden camera hijinks.

Scene 2: He Said "Mount". Uhuhuhuhuhuh.
    A few years ago, my dad introduced me to a show called Beavis and Butt-Head. It's quite possibly the stupidest show out there, but if you have the right sense of humor, it's good. The main characters are unbelievably stupid and are two guys I would outright avoid it I knew them personally. But that doesn't mean they aren't hilarious. I don't watch Beavis and Butt-Head expecting art; I watch it because it's funny to see the dumb teenagers turn everything they can into a sexual innuendo, beat each other up, and be an annoyance to everyone around them.

Scene 3: Jackass
  I just felt like including this one because it's quite an obvious example of purposefully stupid media. You don't watch grown men hurting themselves and doing dangerous tricks because it's art.

See you next week!

  I don't know why I chose that lyric in the beginning. I just didn't know what to put and that song was in my head.

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