Jackass: The Movie Presented by Maggie Dunlap & Metalabel

In celebration of her recent Male Fantasies hoodie release on Metalabel, Artist Maggie Dunlap introduces Jackass: The Movie at Roxy Cinema. Transgressive not just for its scatological tendencies or occasional gushes of blood, but for the gleeful self-efface-and-defacement of oft naked men performing absurdist pranks and dangerous stunts which subvert and skewer “masculinity.” An irreverent display of masculinity and a simultaneous critique of it, Jackass is a cultural artifact that is deeply unserious but has had a formative and lasting impact on Maggie Dunlap’s approach as an artist.

Arriving in the wake of the golden age of skate videos and underground tape trading while anticipating the global explosion of reality television and YouTube Fail videos, Jackass represents a major epochal body of work, and Jeff Tremaine’s big-time motion picture is as perfect an encapsulation – or introduction – as one could ask for. Before Borat, the Jackass crew created a revealing, nuanced portrait of America by simply pointing consumer-grade cameras at themselves. Their transgressive representation of the body often earnestly recalls maverick video performance artists like Chris Burden and Vito Acconci. The whole thing remains genuinely shocking, disturbing, and hilarious – and is perhaps to date still the most radical film you could see in a shopping mall.

Dunlap presents Jackass as a joyous counterpart to the sadism, masochism, violence, and homoeroticism Klaus Theweleit writes about in his 1977 book, Male Fantasies. Maggie Dunlap’s Male Fantasies hoodies will be available in limited quantities at the screening.