Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 27, 1994 TAG: 9401260069
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: For our older readers, who may not be aware that Beavis and Butt-head are the heroes of an entire generation of American adolescents, or who may simply be confused by the big fuss over a cartoon on MTV, we will summarize as briefly as possible what it is about B-n-B that is so captivating for viewers: They suck.
That's the whole gimmick: They are repulsive, inarticulate, stupid, nihilistic losers. Finally, a couple of characters on TV that most adolescents can relate to!
That's not a criticism of teen-agers but rather of television, which traditionally has depicted teen-agers as these beautiful, glib, athletic, convertible-driving, Beverly Hills 90210 rich kids (played, of course, by 24-year-old actors and actresses). Real kids usually can't meet that standard.
Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles child psychologist, says, "These are harmless characters that teen-agers relate to in part because they are on the outside looking in. They're lame. I'm not sure what the cool word for lame is now - dork?"
Besides which, Beavis and Butt-head do things that are wrong. That's neat when you are of an age where people are always insisting that you do things right. Beavis and Butt-head like to light things on fire. Of course real kids don't want to light things on fire. But they love the freedom that represents.
"You can look at them and it's, like, all the things you wanted to say and you never said. Because you had feelings for other people," says Dave Garrett, editor in chief of National Lampoon, a magazine that trucks in juvenile humor.
As for the laugh - the pathological "heh heh heh heh" - that's just a code. A thing to latch onto. A badge.
Of course, real kids aren't as bad as Beavis and Butt-head, who are vile in every way. But most kids worry that they are vile. They find it hard to get dates. They are sexually insecure. They worry about hygiene. Naturally they get the joke when Beavis and Butt-head suggest that a good pickup line on a woman would be, "I can make you feel like I've never had sex before."
\ The Mailbag:
We are way behind in the mail and apologize to those of you who have written in with a question and heard no response. We also apologize to those of you who were objects of snarky comments in the column. And finally we apologize to those of you whose houses we egged.
Susan M. of Washington asks, "Have the floating cushions (on an airplane) ever been successfully used in event of water landing?"
Dear Susan: Possibly by certain species of marine life. Whether humans have used them in any meaningful way is unclear.
That's partly because, as we've noted before, jet engines are simple and reliable and in the jet age there aren't many plane crashes. But perhaps more importantly, when a plane flies across the ocean it is equipped with life vests. Thus when a chartered DC-9 ditched in the Caribbean in the early 1970s, the survivors used life vests.
Michael Benson, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, says that seat cushions were used when a USAir Boeing 737 crashed on takeoff at LaGuardia Airport in New York City in September 1989. We checked the clips and found only a description of passengers clinging to a wing that hadn't submerged and floating in a life raft (the emergency exit slide can be used as a raft).
by CNB