“Are we regressing, and is it progress?”
— Lionel Tiger’s review of Man-child: A Study of the Infantilization of Man by David Jonas and Doris Klein, The New York Times, 27 December 1970
HE’S VULGAR; HE’S FUN; HE PLAYS pranks, loves porn, and might piss in his buddy’s cereal. He farts; he burps; he shits his pants; he strips down buck-naked and jogs through his neighborhood, and all for a laugh. He always takes the schtick a step too far. But that’s okay, he was only joking. The excess, in and of itself, is funny. He wasn’t quite a punk, he lacked that hardness, that grit, but maybe he was a “pop punk”, whose subversion was more about an immature sense of humour than anything truly political.
Maybe you recognise him as a character from a late ’90s teen movie, like . Perhaps you think of ’s Johnny Knoxville. Or maybe the first thing that comes to
