When I was a kid, there were fewer celebrities than there are today.
And for a few years, Evel Knievel was at or near the top of the pyramid of living gods.
Sure, I am older and it is funny to look at the pictures of him in his glory and roll my eyes at the redneck irony, but when you are a kid and there is this guy riding his motorcycle thru the air, the simplicity of his supreme leadership of the species to go beyond the ordinary – it is just the most easily apparent thing in the world and all-consuming in its simplicity: Ride your motorcycle and jump over some busses = perfection of why we are put on the earth.
If they called it performance art, Evel could have gotten his MFA from an art school. But in the society of the spectacle, he had a greater calling.