The Steve-O Files: Celebrity narcissism is seducing America

Youth Gone Wild: Steve-O as a kid, before he stapled his balls to his inner thigh, and went on to countless other painful/bone crushing exploits on film.

After a suicidal freefall that landed him in the Cedars-Sinai psych ward last year (following an eight-person intervention that included Johnny Knoxville), post-millennial stuntman Steve-O is attempting to put his life back together. I only learned of Steve-O’s addiction-fueled meltdown after flipping through the current issue of Spin magazine and stumbling across this article — “The Last Temptation of Steve-O” — by David Peisner (I just don’t keep up with Jackass like I used to I suppose). Anyhow, as a fan of human redemption stories, Peisner’s article pulled me in. Here’s a quick and dirty recap on where Steve-O is today, with some fairly insightful commentary from TV’s Dr. Drew:

Two months from now, MTV will air a one-hour special, Steve-O: Demise and Rise, chronicling his drug-fueled breakdown and celebrating his grand achievement of not dying. The footage is car-wreck compelling, but the story, familiar though it may seem at first blush, is incomplete. Glover isn’t just a guy who did an obscene amount of drugs, became a flaming asshole, and then lurched back from the brink to try to regain his career.

“Steve was doing an amplified version of what young people are doing throughout this country, using the Internet, using available media to try to create fame,” says Dr. Drew Pinsky, the addiction specialist who hosts VH1’s Celebrity Rehab and its spin-off, Sober House, and is the co-author of The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America. “That’s a new phenomenon.” (via Spin.com)

What makes Steve-O’s story interesting is just what Pinsky has pointed out, his insatiable desire to be in the public eye — and doing whatever it takes to stay there. Pinsky is only stating the obvious in terms of celebrity narcissism, but I think it is something that needs to be said, or perhaps, repeated ad nauseum until it isn’t true anymore (wishful thinking, I know). As Peisner reveals in the article, Steve-O views his exploits on film as religion. Growing up, Steve-O admits he was obsessed with the notion of dying. So when he began filming his stunts as a teen, before Big Brother gave birth to Jackass and launched his career, he did so with the intent of becoming immortal. With thousands of hours of his footage constantly played on MTV, streamed online, and released via Steve-O’s official website, his immortality through film is no doubt cemented. But his personal survival is another question altogether.

“If anybody asked me then what the meaning of life is, I’d answer that the meaning of life is to get off your ass and pick a meaning,” Steve-O told Peisner. “This pursuit of fame was what I picked. I wanted to be the tree in the woods everybody could hear falling.”