The SRC rats amongst us can look forward to a new form of televisual white noise during our workouts. College Television Network, that maddeningly omnipresent channel piped via direct satellite feed onto almost every publicly located TV on campus, has recently been bought out by MTV. While I'm the last person on earth to mourn the demise of CTN's clearly second-rate programming, I'm wondering if the prospect of yet another youth media system bending over for MTV is really favorable.
MTV began, as everyone knows, in the early '80s for the fairly exclusive purpose of televising a new art form: the music video. At the start, they actually played said videos. With their debut video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" and further self-promotions like "Money for Nothing," they expanded the "I want my MTV" mantra.
Since then, MTV has clamped its wily tentacles onto every conceivable form of media, leading me to believe that MTV is run by a secret cadre of trolls who won't be satisfied until every moment of the life of every person ages 18-34 is somehow mediated via MTV programming.
The historical record speaks for itself. MTV practically pioneered the reality show with "The Real World." When "The Simpson's" made adult or teen themed cartoons cool, MTV unleashed "Beavis and Butthead." When geek became chic, MTV was right there with the nihilistic "Daria." Meanwhile, actually catching a music video on MTV became harder than keeping track of all members, past and present, of Menudo.
MTV's gradual divergence from its original music video format didn't occur in a vacuum. Like all TV networks, MTV must kowtow to advertiser's cash, which in turn prays at the almighty altar of ratings. MTV makes decisions about what program to televise or hype up for future viewing. These decisions are inextricably shackled to advertising dollars.
Every network follows this formula, but the implications of a cultural juggernaut like MTV acting in this way are astonishing. Essentially, any dominance exerted by MTV over youth culture is wielded simultaneously by someone attempting to peddle a consumer product.
The strongest signifier that MTV is hell-bent on nothing less than total cultural domination is its increasing use of reality shows. What began innocently and creatively enough with "The Real World," has now exploded into "Road Rules," "Dismissed," "Jackass," "Sorority Girls," etc. In the words of The Waterboy's Mama Boucher, these shows (like Vicky Vallencourt and 'foosball') are the devil.
Watch Jay-Z until his bling-bling permanently scorches your retina. Practice your X-ray vision upon the barely clothed nubile buttocks of J-Lo. But do not, under any circumstances short of masochistically wanting to scar your soul forever, tune into the abject demon-spawn MTV euphemistically calls its reality shows.
These shows, ostensibly, depict "real" individuals living "real" lives. Don't forget for one second, however, that the MTV editing crews dissect days' worth of videotape and air only those moments "real" enough to help some corporation somewhere sell us products. So that we don't catch on, the shows will often blur out corporate logos. There is something about blurs shaped suspiciously like Nike logos that strike me as a little disingenuous.
We don't see real world characters defecating or doing homework or riding the bus, but we sure as hell see them partying, arguing, making-out and living in the most fun-filled opulent manner imaginable. We certainly get, and these are my favorite, zoomed in cameo monologues of some sorority sister baring the darkest corners of her soul.
Let me tell you, she isn't talking about class-consciousness, poverty or even mainstream political issues like the war on terror. She is talking about the lack of sisterhood exhibited by a pledge. With problems like that, who needs solutions?
Beyond showing us real people festooned in all manner of sponsor-donated clothing and makeup, MTV creates an idealized picture of bourgeois youth. This is a youth totally devoid of a political, economic or social conscious outside of petty identity politics, like trying to feel comfortable with the gay guy being decadently wined and dined, just like you, on the Road Rules Winnebago.
With absolutely no apologies whatsoever to the insipid and solidly corporate fare disseminated on the current College Television Network, I think that turning over the 8.2 million strong CTN demographic, a demographic that is usually captive due to restrictions like the CTN-only rule in place at the SRC weight room, to the dehumanizing maw of MTV-filtered reality is a notion too horrible to even be considered.
Solomon Rotstein is a humanities sophomore and can be reached at solomon.rotstein@asu.edu.
