I hate Beavis and Butt-head.
No, let
me re-phrase that: I fucking loathe Beavis and Butt-head. This isn't the kind of
strong dislike I feel towards Al Pyun or Roger Corman, no. This goes deeper than that.
Like an itch I can't scratch. Beavis and Butt-head are my ethereal itch. I just want to
scratch and scratch the little bastards until I scratch them out of reality.
My idiot jock of a cousin introduced me to Beavis and Butt-head one night. God, I can't even remember when that was. What I can remember was feeling stern hatred towards the two cartoons. I just wanted to reach through the TV and kill 'um. Kill 'um dead and hope that Satan had a few pitchforks ready to shove up their stupid asses.
Why this ire towards a couple of fictional characters, you ask? Wouldn't my hate be better directed at, oh, say, living targets? The answer to the latter question is Yes. The answer to the former is a lot longer and goes into some heavy issues, some of them mine, some of them Carl Jung's.
But before we get into that, let's deal with the movie. It is just a movie, after all. And I don't hate the movie, per se. In this great, glorious land of Crap Cinema, Beavis and Butt-head Do America is a drop in the bucket compared to other, uglier faux-comedies I could name.
If everyone in the audience would please stretch their memories into the deep dark past...say, 1996? Yes? Can you remember '96? Outside of the number of "DOLE!" jokes I made, the whole damn year comes up a blank. But that's beside the point.
The important part is this: in '96, Beavis and Butt-head were doing their thing on MTV. If you'll stretch your minds back to the far away time, you'll recall the premise of the show. Basically, Beavis and Butt-head were two losers who sat on their asses watching MTV, occasionally venturing out into their pissant little town to wreak havoc with the lives of all who lived there.
Creator Mike Judge obviously knew that such "hilarious" antics just couldn't fill up 80 minutes of movie. So, after a rather nice dream sequence, Beavis and Butt-head (both voiced by Judge himself) awaken to find that someone has stolen their beloved TV.
Robbed of the only thing that gave their life meaning (or that kept them from realizing what dipshits they truly were) the disorderly duo embarks on a quest to get their TV back. Through a series of Forrest Gump-ian adventures, the two destroy the Hover Dam, meet their illegitimate fathers, go on a vision quest, see a Technicolor Dalhi painting while tripping on 'shrooms, defile a Catholic church, are hired to kill a man's wife, and become couriers of the deadliest biological weapon known to man. All while outwitting the combined might of the FBI, the ATF and every police force in America.
Quite a lot of stuff going on in this movie, huh? Probably loaded with jokes, eh?
Well, kiddies, there is exactly two jokes in this movie. The "Beavis and Butt-head are brain dead morons" shtick is played to infinity, of course. The other joke comes courtesy of FBI Agent Flemming (voiced by Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack). It has to do with prepositions. If you really have to rent this movie, watch out for that one. It's the only honest-to-God clever line in the entire flick.
Because, let's face it, "clever" is not a word you'd use to describe this kind of comedy. Beavis and Butt-head's shtick is as lowbrow and trailer trash as they are. I must be the grand freak of my generation, but I don't find this funny. I never did. I work with stupid people. I went to school with stupid people. I live in an area with more stupid people per-capita than any place in America. I do not laugh at stupid people. I want to punch stupid people. In the face. Hard.
But that's only part of Why I hate Beavis and Butt-head so much. The rest of it gets pretty deep, so before we get into that, let's finish the critique. (Yes, I'm stalling. So?)
Beavis and Butt-head Do America is a hell of a lot better than the cartoon
series, if only because the scenery changes. Variety is the spice of life and all that. If
you're a fan of the series, you'll cream your jeans over this movie. If your not, you
might enjoy this movie...once you hit yourself over the head with a hammer. Repeatedly.
The movie itself isn't bad, just really, really, really stupid.
And, if you're like me, you'll go through the full roller coaster of negative emotions: from rage, to hate, to mild annoyance, to aggravation and back again as seemingly interesting plot developments are capsized by Beavis and Butt-head's inane stupidity.
So, why do I hate this duo so much? To answer that, I'll have to get into some Jungian psychology. (Quit groaning, I'll try to make it as interesting as possible.) Carl Jung says that, once we humans being to think for ourselves, we select character traits and assimilate them into our personality. We identify these traits as our "self." But, in the process, we also reject negative traits and designate them as our "non-self" or our Shadow (Carl's term). However, these Shadow traits never truly leave us. At best, we can stamp them down into the bottom of our minds and keep them there. But, whenever we encounter a person (usually of the same sex, but not always) who possesses these Shadow-traits, we immediately become hostile and antagonistic towards that person. We hate them because they remind us of all that we are not (or that we wish we were not).
Beavis and Butt-head are my Shadow. The two of them are brain dead slackers with nary a thought in their heads. They're rancid couch jockeys who spend their days ass-scratching and watching crappy videos on MTV. MTV, for Christ sakes. They are the embodiment of every negative Gen-X stereotype ever created. I wish they could be wiped from our collective consciousness, like something out of Total Recall. They are my Jungian Shadow and I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them.
And I sincerely hope that this is the only time you'll hear Carl Jung mentioned in conjunction with Beavis and Butt-head. Lenord Maltin's got nothing on this.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go smoke bowl or two. Maybe, once I'm stoned off my ass, I'll actually find this movie amusing.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
