Response

 

What is badassery? No, really. When does one achieve the status of being “badass,” and what defines an action as being “badass?” Many would give an example like, some hugely ripped man with a full beard and a robust laugh juggling chainsaws, while riding on two bearsharks (because just a bear or a shark would not be badass enough, and the more the merrier), as they fly through flaming hoops a mile over the raging waters of the Pacific Ocean. Then, add some explosions, a couple fight scenes, fast cars, and naked women, and boom! You have yourself one pretty badass dude in one pretty badass scenario. Whenever I am playing a video game, like Halo® or Call of Duty®, I can never help but think something I did in the game was pretty badass, whether it be jumping off the roof of a building and getting a cross stage no scope, or jetpacking really high up and sticking a tank with a grenade for the win. But come on, when would that ever really happen? It is literally impossible for that scenario to come into fruition, at the moment, because science is just not there yet.

The better question would be what defines a person or action as badass in real life? I play a lot of Frisbee golf, and I would say a hole-in-one would be badass. I have been to many concerts, including The Killers, Walk the Moon, Passion Pit, and many more, and I would say these were all pretty badass because of all the lights and sounds and people. However, some people would disagree. Some of my friends crowd surfed at these concerts, what’s more badass than that? Yet, through arduous studying and many nights of questioning, I’ve come to wonder if maybe the level of badassery a certain person or action might reach is wholly dependent on the individual; although, there is the counter argument that maybe this level is dependent on a set scale of general consensus created by the standards of society via multi-media. Do movies and shows create the set standard, or does the opinion of how badass something is fall to the individual to decide?

   

Many movies seem to portray badassery in ways like my scenario in my first paragraph: essentially, something ridiculous, yet badass. Superheroes, like Thor and Iron Man; spies, like James Bond; ninjas, medieval knights, assassins, war heroes, all of these types of people are overdramatized and unrealistic, but, in a way, have they raised the bar of badassery? When you see these movies, should you strive to be as badass as these people? Tony Stark built a giant, rocket launching, flame shooting robot in a cave with scrap metal from terrorists, and is also arrogant and rich. These are all qualities that seem fairly obtainable, but are they qualities that are really worth it just to be badass? James Bond is no more than just a government spy with high-tech gadgets and more than enough charisma. Once again, reasonably obtainable qualities, but is it worth it in the end?

   

To some people, something isn’t badass unless someone is skydiving from the edge of space, or jumping 12 busses on a dirtbike, or even paragliding down a snowy mountain with a snowboard. Yet others might find just a simple party, or a painting, or maybe even a mountain top view of a valley lake at sunset to be sufficiently badass. I went to Maine over the summer and stayed in a log cabin on the side of a mountain with a lake at the base, and my friends and I all agreed that the vacation, which consisted of hiking, kayaking, and swimming, was the most badass thing we have ever done, yet it was most certainly not some adrenaline sport activity like skydiving or street racing. So, is there a limit on how much badassery people can handle? Can people build up their tolerance of badassery by increasing their daily dosage? 

Another question to be raised is whether or not badassery is primarily a guy thing, or is it shared equally amongst the sexes? When people think of something badass, the image that comes to mind tends to be manly things, like wrestling bears, or taking down entire enemy forces with nothing but a knife and your cool, calm, and collect witts. Is being badass slightly sexist? The actions of shopping for shoes, or knitting sweaters, or gossiping about people behind their backs does not usually come to mind when thinking of badass things. These tend to be be favored activities of women, but I’m not saying theses actions are exclusively for females. Could these actions be considered to be badass?

What differentiates an action from being cool and awesome and from being badass? Is it conditional with who you are, where you are, and what you are doing? It always seems that whatever a celebrity does, even something as normal as driving a car or hanging out with friends at a bar, it instantly becomes badass, just because of who they are. Let’s say someone like Johnny Depp were to shoot the same three point shot as I did, would it be more badass than mine, just because he is Johnny Depp? Any celebrity magazine would say so, yet people who hate Johnny Depp would say not. Is the level of badassery dependent on the questions who? what? and where? 

Is anyone truly able to reach the level of badass? Is it really feasible? Who truly controls the standards of badassery: the individual, or the masses? I still do things, maybe they are small, insignificant things in the long run, that I consider badass, and maybe they are only badass to me. Things like, drift around a corner in my car, or explore a cave in the forest, or even just get a pretty cool kill in a video game. These things might not happen all the time, and they may not be cool to everyone, but they still impress me and they still happen.