Enough time has passed for the 1990's to have become a nostalgic decade with its own recognizable cultural and social movements. It's hard to look back upon an immediately preceding decade with the same deep insight. Generally speaking, society becomes nostalgic about an era about twenty years after it's passed.
One of the the most iconic cultural touchstones of the 1990's was MTV's Beavis and Butthead. As a cable show, it didn't endure the same lasting influence as the Fox network monolith The Simpsons, but it did attain a similarly controversial notoriety for a short while. Mike Judge's on-the-nose commentary on the purported "degradation of morality" in America's youth raised as many eyebrows as the comparably childish antics of Bart Simpson, a character who similarly stirred up trouble with social conservatives. Many passed off Beavis and Butthead as crude, immoral and anarchistic pop culture garbage which glorified stupidity and anti-social behavior.
To be fair, early episodes proved these allegations to a certain degree. In its first few seasons, the show was undoubtedly crude in both its writing and animation. That's the case for most animated series. In the first season, the series' protagonists could be seen engaging in vandalism on hapless victims and randomly uttering such non-sequiturs as "I don't like stuff that sucks!" Watching those episodes now, it makes sense that viewers weren't able to see the social commentary in all the mindless mayhem.
As the show progressed, Judge subtly tweaked the show to focus more on the duo's stupidity, neutralizing their malicious tendencies to a certain degree. Three or four seasons into the show, Beavis and Butthead were not so much destructive thugs as they were clueless losers. At times, they even appeared to be well meaning, yet they would still unwittingly cause the same amount of pain due to their idiocy. Make no mistake, their victims suffered just as much, but Judge shifted the malice of the protagonists away from other people and towards each other. Of course with this maturity, the show itself also reached a new peak in terms of writing. It was still stupid, but the stupidity was well-crafted and brilliantly applied.
I may lack the authority to write this article, because I mainly experienced Beavis and Butthead through videotapes. Growing up without cable, I was only able to see the story segments and mostly missed the duo's commentaries on music videos interspersed throughout the show. Mike Judge essentially improvises a conversation as two characters while a music video plays, which is no easy feat. I have seen a few of them, and while they obviously lack the same quality of animation and writing seen in the stories, they do have a certain off-the-cuff charm.
Unlike The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead ended before the millennium and is forever tied to '90s culture and society. Everything from the show's take on a run down San Fernando-like suburb (most likely set in Texas) to the very notion of two teenagers being obsessed with heavy metal screams early '90s. This was made clear when Judge revived the show for a short while in 2011. It was an awkward shock to see B&B taking it somewhat easy on easy targets like MTV's Jersey Shore and attempting to become vampires after watching Twilight.
While Beavis & Butthead is distinctly a '90s creation, I love it in spite of that fact. Like many other subversive '90s shows, it stood in stark contrast to the tradition of shows like Home Improvement, The Cosby Show and Friends. Beavis and Butthead glorified depraved, moronic losers and gave them character in the tradition of Homer Simpson or Al Bundy. One of my favorite elements about the show are the unwritten rules that Beavis and Butthead can never win, nor can they ever learn. This gave the characters an "everyman" quality that was as hilarious as it was relatable.
Since the 1990's, comedy has shifted between empty shock value, intentional awkwardness and witless sarcastic deadpan. I really miss shows that weren't afraid to be silly, random or self-deprecating. They were more subversive of mainstream culture (before they ended up defining it) and made us all feel a little better in our humble lives in a way you won't see in a Seth Rogen movie. The message then was that life sucks, but you've got to learn to be okay with it. Huh huh huh huh....
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