Beavis
& Butt-Head, the hideous looking cartoon buddies who comment on music
videos, are emotionally, physically and sexually stunted. Beyond ignorant, they are literal primitives
who represent what happens when the electronic baby sitter becomes the full
time parent.
They
have neither family nor friends. They
carry as much weight as photons as they change channels and comment on the
flickering images. They are isolated,
nowhere.
Best
known for their sexual immaturity, they are presented as a limiting case of
imbecilic, male sexual
dysfunction.
They
have been accused of corrupting the morals and manners of our youth. Worse, they have been dismissed out of hand
as the latest in pointless animated flatulence.
I
find them insightful and subversive.
Stay
with me on this.
For
Beavis & Butt-Head have two very distinct lives: one watching music videos
and one in the real world.
As
video critics, they display a keen, unforgiving
aesthetic; nothing affected or effete is
tolerated. They know about art; and they know what they don't like. Hidden in their thicket of village idiocy
lurks a consistent, sophisticated guide to heavy metal rock video.
Their
parallel play—a rebellious creation of their own show—represents a stubborn refusal to accept the dominant
pablum. Even their stupid sounding confusion of celebrity names
shows tacit disrespect for the industry's pre-packaged rock star hierarchy.
Beavis
& Butt-Head sense the media's attempt to control and dominate, and they
fight back with their meager verbal tools.
They are, at heart, rebellious, alienated. As the media washes over them, they make
their own truths. They talk back in
class.
But
when they venture beyond their moldy
couch, they become amoral, cretinous buffoons, pure and simple. What we learn is that people whose only
experience is vicarious are jerks—losers, whose inability to distinguish
between the world and the televised version of it renders them absurd, even
dangerous. The fact that they are
talking back to the set is healthy, and what they say is often right on. But they have done little else their entire
lives. So their skills and rebellious
instincts are limited to a review of the medium;
it is a circular expertise that leads nowhere beyond an insatiable need for
stimulation that reflects the escalating visual excitement they were raised
on. The politically pointed;
"Burn, baby, burn!" has become the infantile; "fire!fire!fire!" They are stagnant, crippled. This
is their full message and meaning.
And
this, in the context of television's strangle hold on our youth, is revolutionary.
In
one video, Beavis asks Butt-Head why the lead singer is making so many violent,
threatening gestures. Butt-Head replies;
"I guess he keeps making a fist because he looks like a chick." A typical throw away line in the thicket of
puerile sexual humor; ambiguous, but, I suspect, deeply feminist.
Because
they are, ultimately, disconnected from the media that spawned them; because they
are struggling, however pathetically, with the process of separation from
their source of nurturance, they have something virtually absent on television;
something that makes them the subject of curiosity and excitement.
They
have potential.