ABSTRACT
During its five-year run (1992–97), Beavis and Butt-Head became the focus of a number of controversies over the effects of television on viewers: from accusations that the program caused a child to set fire to his trailer home, resulting in the death of a sibling; to rumors that frat boys were imitating some of the duo's more idiotic stunts. By and large, the mass media missed out on the fact that Beavis and Butt-Head was in many ways a protracted commentary about media effects and the role of media in late twentieth-century US society.
