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If Miss Poubelle told you that she recently saw a film in which men torture each other with electric shocks, drink piss, and shove things up their asses, would you imagine that she had rented a gay SM video? If so, you'd be wrong. Instead, she just saw the movie Jackass, which is one of the top-grossing (in every sense) films currently showing in the United States.

For those who have not seen the film or the MTV series on which it is based, Jackass is organized around the stunts and exploits of a group of about eight young men, lead by stuntman Johnny Knoxville. The series, as well as the movie, is made up of a series of short segments featuring stunts, gags, and pranks pulled by the Jackass team.

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What is remarkable to the gay viewer is how many of the stunts are sexual, focussing on nudity and abusive treatment of the balls, tits, and asses of the Jackass guys. Johnny Knoxville lets a baby alligator bite his nipple; Chris Pontius applies electric shocks to his scrotum; and Chris Pontius and Steve-O shoot bottle rockets out of their asses. Ryan Dunn puts a toy car in a condom and shoves it up his ass, then goes in for an X-ray.

Jackass team is made up entirely of young (apparently) heterosexual males. A viewer cannot help but ask why they put themselves through these painful ordeals. Part of it, of course, is a desire to make money and be famous. But watching the interactions between them, it doesn't seem that this is the whole story.

More often it seems that they are eager to gain the approval of the other guys on the team, and want to gain prestige within the group for putting up with the most humiliating of the tortures. Steve-O, for example, hangs upside down over a pool of alligators with chicken skin hanging from the waistband of his thong and agrees to have an enormous and unflattering portrait of himself tattooed on his back. The reaction of the rest of the team is another surprising part of the Jackass phenomenon. They watch the tortures and laugh maniacally. And the look on the victim's face is often not the pained expression that might seem natural, but a look of thrilled triumph, happiness, and acceptance.

In trying to understand the Jackass phenomenon, Miss Poubelle has found it useful to think about the term homosociality, made prominent by the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Homosociality refers to the intense bonds of solidarity felt in all-male social groups, such as athletic teams and military units. In such groups, men form deep emotional attachments to each other, but these relationships must not become sexual. Since homosociality has as its defining ideal non-sexual bonds between men, it is necessary to constantly police the boundary between homosociality and homosexuality. Those who cross this boundary are excluded from the homosocial environment, and suffer a kind of social death.

Miss Poubelle believes that part of the thrill felt by the Jackass team comes from going as close to the boundary of homosexuality as possible without going over the line. In their non-sexual stunts, they risk injury to life and limb. But in the homosocial stunts, they flirt with the terrifying possibility of true homosexuality. And then when the torment is past, and they are no longer having electric shocks to the scrotum , there is a tremendous sense of relief at having gained the esteem of the other men. The hysterical laughter is a response to the sexual threat of these situations; the thrill comes from having survived the danger.

To those of us who crossed the line long ago, the idea of homosexuality as social death may seem remote. But gay youth, gay scouts, and gay soldiers still often live in homosocial environments where homosexuality is hated and despised as a threat to the order of society. Despite our successes in making society in general a safer and more tolerant place, the gay rights movement has made little promise in reforming the homosocial islands within it. Too many straight men still adhere to the homosocial world view and are willing to make jackasses of themselves to preserve it.