Hassling David Hasslehoff

It is easy to mock David Hasselhoff. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. So let us examine the profound philosophical conundrum with which his masterwork, Knight Rider, habitually confounds the careful viewer. Namely, which came first - the ego or the car?

For while we all now accept that the Hasselhoff ego is an entity of gargantuan, indeed almost limitless, proportions, it behoves us as sentient beings to ask - where did it all begin? When plucked from The Young and the Restless to star as Michael Knight in what would turn out to be one of the finest series ever to star a facially reconstructed cop and talking vehicle covered in Molecular Bonded Shell (™ billionaire philanthropist Wilton Knight), was David already an embryonic egomaniac, secure in the knowledge that he could pull focus from KITT, the best special effect the pre-Terminator world had ever seen? Or was it the very experience of acting with a scene-stealing talking automobile that first created and unleashed the ravening beast within?

Whatever the reason, by the end of four seasons of running across car lots and ejecting from passenger seats in a variety of leather jackets and ball-crushingly tight jeans, our David was a very self-assured young man indeed. Subsequent pop superstardom did nothing to dent this confidence, despite the fact that his fanbase comprised mostly desperately deprived denizens of East Germany and citizens of Austria.

By the time he was offered Baywatch, even the prospect of starring with another artificially moulded - albeit markedly less animate - co-star Pamela Anderson could not faze him. The series may not have held a mirror up to nature, but it held one up to Hasselhoff - and he has remained mesmerised by the reflection ever since. Alcoholism and YouTube clips of him slobbering drunkenly on the floor have failed to cow the man. But still, we must ask - who is to blame? Nature or vehicular nurture? Because when we understand, perhaps we can cure.

via TheGuardian blog