Posted on 02/03/2004 10:13:26 AM PST by NorCoGOP
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- We are the MTV generation. It's a cliche, but it's true. The influence of the network that brought us "Beavis and Butthead," Britney Spears, "The Real World" and "Undressed" seems near ubiquitous among just about everyone under 30.
It‚s been the babysitter, the teacher, the parent and the preacher for an increasingly secular and jaded youth. It has helped homogenize the culture of an entire nation of young Americans.
And the only thing that beats MTV's destructive pervasiveness is its hypocrisy.
It preaches safe sex while airing soft porn. It promotes gender equality while celebrating rappers who refer to women as "hos." It tells us not to obsess about our looks while showing us all the beautiful people we should try to be like. It preaches tolerance for homosexuals while making gay bashers like Eminem a star.
If this is a joke, none of us should be laughing.
Consider MTV‚s "Undressed." The show has much in common with movies you might see late at night on Cinemax. The thin plots, frequent nudity (within legal limits) and sexual promiscuity remind one of the latest Shannon Tweed straight-to-video hit.
But while those naughty late-night movies are made for adults, this show is for kids. Maybe the young and invariably beautiful stars should be credited for frequently reminding each other to use condoms. Unfortunately, the only reason safe sex is preached so frequently on this show is because the kids are always busy having sex.
MTV‚s message to women is particularly sickening. It has aired videos in which sexy female performers, physically beautiful themselves, tell girls not to obsess about their physical appearances in songs like Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" and TLC's "Unpretty."
Yet, MTV constantly bombards young girls with images of beautiful, voluptuous, scantily clad women like Spears and Jessica Simpson. Many girls learn through these images what they should strive to look like. The goal is, of course, unattainable, but they can nevertheless starve trying for it.
It would be outrageous enough for MTV to tell us, after helping to promote so many other kinds of self-destructive behavior, that we shouldn‚t smoke cigarettes. The one-two punch of irony here is MTV contradicts itself on this count as well.
Last year a friend of mine got me to watch MTV's Real World for the first time. One season's worth of watching beautiful 20-somethings party, get plastered and have lots of promiscuous and unsafe sex was enough for me.
But the show provided one of the clearest cases yet of MTV's uncanny ability to glamorize unhealthy behavior while simultaneously railing against it.
During commercial breaks for the Real World, MTV aired ads showing nauseatingly self-righteous teenagers warn against the dangers of cigarette smoking. Annoying, yes, but hey, it‚s a good cause.
Now back to the show. Of the seven hip, buff and beautiful cast members of "The Real World: Las Vegas," six were regularly seen smoking cigarettes. Anti-smoking advocates argue showing glamorous people smoking cigarettes on television may entice impressionable young people to smoke. MTV apparently thinks otherwise.
To its credit, there is one idea MTV appears to truly believe in: materialism. Music videos are commercials themselves, and within these commercials are advertisements for the kinds of clothes we should wear, the kinds of cars we should drive and even the kinds of jewelry we should wear on our hands and around our necks. MTV cannot be called hypocritical on this count. In its effort to crassly commercialize every facet of young people‚s lives, the network has never faltered.
I can‚t help but imagine that MTV's executives, in some boardroom far away, are laughing hysterically.
It seems that networks make end-runs around standards by unveiling a litany of (not-so-subtle) double entendres.
Not in my house. I watched MTV myself in its very early days. Even sent in a pathetic entry to BASEMENT VIDEOS. By the time my kids were watching TV, however, MTV had turned to pure trash and it was banned in our home. Perhaps others here handled it similarly. But in the population at large, the above statement is true. I encounter so many parents who have no clue on what it means to be a parent. Many are so confused, believing their primary job is to be FRIEND to, to be LIKED by their kids 100% of the day. And many just don't give a rip at all.
MM
I don't have that option, unless I want to give up my Biography Channel, History Channel, etc. It's all in one package with my cable provider (Adelphia).
Check with your cable provider. You are given a code that you can use to block ANY channel you need unsuitable. We blocked MTV, Comedy Central, Bravo and Spike TV from our TV downstairs. We can get them on our tv in our bedroom upstairs, but our kids don't go in their to watch unless they're watching something with us.
You can take any of these channels off block if YOU want to watch something. It takes just a minute to either block a channel or take it off.
Years ago, Garry Marshall, the co-creator of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, illustrated how he got by ABC's censor: In one Laverne script, Laverne accused Shirley of plotting alone time with a man for "voh-dee-oh-doe!" Shirley protested that she had never "voh-dee-oh-doed," and then added, "Well...I've voh-dee-ohed..."
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