Thank you so much, dear Defamer.com, for encapsulating every 20-something's lament for the MTV of yesteryear. Featuring such 90's zeitgeist superstars as Pedro Zamora, Tabitha Soren, Kurt Cobain... and oh, music videos, the article is a eulogy for the once groundbreaking network that was so near and dear to our insubordinate teenage hearts. The network who sprung to popularity by being the first channel dedicated to music videos went from being an incendiary messenger and purveyor of alternative youth culture to a caterer of mainstream jock-culture and glorifier of the spoiled brat.
I refuse to believe that I am just stuck in a time that I liked better by thinking that showing vapid programming that is based on jacuzzi hookups and your average adolescent civilian who isn't famous desperately try to do so is actually cool. I truly believe, deep in my heart, that the post-millennium, reality-TV era teens who are the demographic viewers of today's MTV have been weaned on such crap, and now value it as entertainment. They never saw the days of Headbanger's Ball and Yo! MTV Raps. They were but young cherubs when music videos, the very salt of MTV's vast earth, still occupied a respectable amount of time slots on the network's roster. The experience now is the fruit of the marketing generation, the spring break generation, and the celebrity-as-god's children.
Here are my disclaimers: I'm not saying Bevis and Butthead were the svengalis of intellect. I'm not saying I don't watch The Hills. I'm 25 years old, so speaking in a "kids these days..." framework is probably a fresh stamp on my license. But, being 25, I managed to escape being a teenager in the days of internet everything and paparazzi pop culture, and watched it spill out in front of me since the start of my second decade. Being at the bulls-eye age of the pop culture target, those in their 20's and 30's have seen a more drastic and rapid change in a short period of time than the more gradual climb of trend experienced by those of Gen. X and their predecessors, and from that, we have all been left a little bruised and confused. The values of the institutions that existed in our lives 10 years ago have drastically changed.
MTV markets by doing direct "ethnographic studies" of their prototypical viewer, by visiting the homes of whom they consider to be a typical suburban American teen and closely monitoring what "cool" means to them. From these studies they have determined two archetypes to base their shows and the characters in them around; the female "midriff" and her male counterpart, the "mook". These are the characters whom reflect the teens of MTV and are mirrored back to them in all aspects; from TV shows to music selection, or lack thereof. The names speak for themselves, saying "Spring Break" and "Jackass". PBS' Frontline, the TV special which featured a section on MTV's marketing technique described the "mook" as such; "Characterized mainly by his infantile, boorish behavior, the "mook" is a perpetual adolescent: crude, misogynistic--and very, very, angry." The mook and the midriff preserve the infantile alpha-male and his Jane as the leaders of the mainstream teen dream, and forever annihilate the reign of anti-heroes such as Daria in favor of Heidi Montag. It's a sad reality for those who hail from the cutting-edge content of end-of-the-century MTV. So, to answer the question for Defamer... no, I don't want my MTV anymore. But thanks for the memories.
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