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Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject: Fire 'prank' shows jackasses are everywhere |
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Fire 'prank' shows jackasses everywhere
Oct. 6, 2006. 05:44 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
Prank: A playful or mildly mischievous act, as defined by Webster's dictionary.
Aggravated assault, mischief endangering life and assault with a weapon: The Criminal Code definition for what a couple of local 15-year-olds got up to this week when their alleged "prank'' resulted in a teenage girl very nearly going up in flames. The girl is now at home, recovering from serious burns to her breasts. The boys will return to court this morning for a bail hearing.
In their brief up-and-down appearance yesterday, neither of the youths looked particularly contrite or ashamed of themselves. The Mutt `n' Jeff tag team � one a foot taller than the other � might have been facing murder charges instead, had things gone just a little bit more wrong on Tuesday night.
"If the T-shirt the girl was wearing had been nylon or polyester, we may have been going to an autopsy today,'' observed Det. Ron Thorne, who arrested one of the boys on Wednesday at his school. Shame � with a yuk-yuk twist � is at the dark heart of a current pop fad phenomenon known as punking or stunting, where the objective is to demean and ridicule for the purpose of entertainment. Sometimes the "stunts'' � whether victimizing others or self-administered � are posted on Internet sites that function as download exchanges that celebrate Survival of the Stupidest.
A video camera was purportedly an accessory to the crime that occurred under a bridge in Toronto, near Eglinton Ave. W., close to Black Creek Dr. Evidence in the case against the two adolescents includes images retrieved from computers. Although police won't confirm it, speculation has those images either appearing on or intended for one of the many reality-bite online sensations � possibly Youtube.com � where bloggers, mostly teens, share bits of their (largely) unremarkable lives with an audience of millions.
Such exhibitionistic haunts � originally the purview of nothing-much-happening video diaries � increasingly feature adventures and misadventures of daredevilry, a craze popularized by such extremist TV fare as Jackass and Punk'd. Monkey see, monkey do: Anything you can stunt I can stunt better.
From what investigators have been able to determine so far � the 13-year-old Toronto girl has been interviewed, but only after she reluctantly explained the cause of her burns to her mother, who subsequently called police � this near-tragedy started as a lark, as is so often the case. A trio of guys and a gal-pal were horsing around in an apartment with a video camera, everything quite jolly if foolish. "The boys were squirting lighter fluid on their own pant legs and setting each other on fire,'' says Thorne. "The girl was filming it.''
How setting fire to oneself can be considered fun defies explanation, except kids have been doing it � flirting with disaster � probably since our pelt-clad homo erectus ancestors first rubbed a couple of sticks together and produced a whiff of smoke. In this particular case, the girl � who may have been the owner of the camera � had to go home. She left and for reasons undetermined the boys took themselves to the underpass, `round about 7.30 p.m. Another girl then entered the scene, even as one of the boys removed himself from the equation, apparently wanting no part of what happened next.
The new girl, police say, was encouraged to participate in the self-immolating goofing about. "She didn't want to do it,'' says Thorne. "So the boys grabbed her from behind, wrestled her pretty violently to the ground, doused her shirt with flammable liquid and then lit her up.''
What did those boys think was going to happen? Real life isn't a video game. Skin burns, acrylic materials melt into flesh � the victim was likely saved from more severe injury thanks to the fabric of her T-shirt � and catastrophe can ensue in a hurry.
The boys immediately, according to police, tried to douse their enflamed friend. It was not their intention, presumably, to cause such harm. And the girl emerged from the incident at least able to get herself home. "This could have turned out so much worse,'' says Thorne, who has seen photos of the girl's second degree burns, patches of them across her chest. "The proximity to her face alone ... ''
People die from burns and they die from smoke inhalation. There's nothing merely juvenile or delinquent about pranks like this. Yet cause-and-effect seem every day less appreciated, especially by teenagers video-deadened to the potential outcome of their "goofing around''. It's not necessarily nihilism � culturally induced nullification of the senses, such that another person's pain simply doesn't register. But there is a palpable disconnectedness, a moral slackness, particularly for a generation simultaneously bombarded with faux-reality contrivances and reality-numbing imagery. Everything is trivial and nothing has consequences.
Recently, in Mississauga, a 12-year-old girl suffered possibly permanent eye damage when four teenagers chucked eggs from a passing van. In Edmonton, two teenagers were convicted of manslaughter after a school bus driver was killed by the 14-kilogram rock they threw off a bridge. (This was not just a passing whim of mischief; the boys used wire-cutters to pierce the fence and scouted around for a heftier projectile after the paving stones they originally lofted proved insufficiently lethal.)
In Guelph, a while back, a 16-year-old boy rigged a cigarette lighter to explode in a locker, causing significant injury to a teacher. And much worse from across the continent, around the world: Eighteen teachers hospitalized in Dallas after students arranged for marijuana-spiced muffins to be delivered to their lounge. Three teens killed in an automobile accident in Tampa caused by other teenagers removing an intersection stop sign. An English youth who set fire to an elderly woman's hair because a friend had accusing him of "being boring''.
You laughing yet?
Oh, they're sorry. They're always sorry.
And now arrives this newest wrinkle of punking-for-dummies, tricksters of the Internet, lured to ever more perilous escapades. Jackass, the TV show, made entertainment pulp out of Johnny Knoxville tasering, macing and ultimately shooting himself while wearing a bulletproof vest. It was a hit.
Although the program included warnings and disclaimers that the stunts should not be imitated at home, its producers were blamed for a number of deaths and injuries involving teens and children who did just that. MTV finally pulled the plug. But Jackass, the movie, grossed more than $60 million in the U.S. alone. And Jackass: Number Two, just released, is now booming at the box-office.
Jackass see, jackass do.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160085010990&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:35 am Post subject: |
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| What would you say are the causes for this behaviour among so man North American children? It is easy to blame the television, of course. I would put it several factors: one is corporate irresponsibilty of pushing so little educational programming and focusing on having the public interested in things that cause an adrenaline rush (creating an addictive society), parents who are working so much to keep up with the Joneses (partially because real wages have gone down for so long), so that they cannot properly teach their kids the difference between right and wrong, and I would say many public school officials and their political allies who cover up drop out rates, true academic scores etc.... I have seen so much of this behaviour. It is sad. Some would say there is a lack of Biblical education, but there is not tons of that say in Germany. But it is important to have some kind of concept of ethics, social responsibility, and cause-and-effect. But look at the adults, and you can understand. |
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| Some would say there is a lack of Biblical education, but there is not tons of that say in Germany. But it is important to have some kind of concept of ethics, social responsibility, and cause-and-effect. But look at the adults, and you can understand. |
Yeah, let's have the kids read about using a slingshot, beating people with the jawbone of an ass, child sacrifice, beheading, stoning, and crucifixtion. That'll quell their impetuous desires. |
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