July 8, 2009

When Bullshit Smells Best - by Bill Kunkel

I'm not the kind of person who owns TV DVD collections

But there's one show on TV that I have watched since Day One and I still own a complete set of every episode from every previous season. And that show is Penn & Teller's Bullshit on Showtime.

Bullshit is total iconoclasm at its sharpest, with the two veteran Vegas showmen making TV magic by harpooning sacred cows and taking subjects we thought we understood—from organic food to orgasms—and holding them up to the light of reason and common sense. This season, for example, two episodes demonstrate the show's primary tropes. In "Astrology," the duo dismantle the "logic" behind this ancient shell game; while in my personal favorite episode ever, "Videogames," they not only verbally bitch slap Jack Thompson so many times that his virtual cheeks must shine like apples, but also provide an (admittedly anecdotal) object lesson in fantasy violence versus real violence you'll never forget.

Each episode invariably features a group of "experts" supporting both ends of the argument. In "Videogames," there's the academic couple who wrote a book on videogame violence in which they found that most of the "evidence" used by frauds like Thompson are agenda-driven bunk. JT, for example, claims that when they gave kids who'd played videogames MRIs "the area of the brain that indicates copycat behavior lit up like a Christmas tree." Of course, not only is there no such "copycat" region of the brain, the Academic Couple report that the area lighting up indicates an array of emotions so vast they can not be relied upon as indicators of any emotion or behavior.

Then there's the short, fat, bald guy with the ponytail who was at E for All handing out pamphlets warning against the dangers of FPS software. Of course it turns out he's a rabid gun collector, who specializes in firing off the BFGs most popular in videogames.

But the most compelling demo in the entire show focused on a seemingly normal 9-year old who plays all the Call of Duty-type shooters. The show takes him and his mom to meet another gamer—an ex-Marine who has his own shooting range and is willing to let the kid shoot an actual AR-15. Does the boy want to take a shot? Sure! Suddenly we see this little kid—Jack's so-called pre-programmed killing machine—trying to balance a gun that's almost as big as he is in order to fire at a picture of Ron Jeremy wrapping a chokehold on Macaulay Culkin. He fires one of the three rounds he's been supplied with and stumbles backward from the recoil and shockingly loud report. It's almost like he's suffering from PTSD for a minute or so and when asked if he'd like to take a second shot, he shakes his head in the negatory.

The show ends with footage of the boy in his mom's arms, sobbing from the shock of an encounter with real world ordinance.

P&T's basic point? Kids understand the difference between fantasy and reality and they always have, whether, like me, they grew up armed with hyper-realistic guns from companies like Mattel (give me a shout out if you remember the Fanner '50 or the Mattel Snub Nose .38 w/ shoulder holster) or came of age playing POSTAL 2 and Grand Theft Auto.

In any case, in its multi-season run, Bullshit has provided anything but, and if you only catch one episode, look for a rerun (networks like Showtime rerun everything to death) of "Videogames."

So, what are YOU watching?

--Bill Kunkel

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