I Want My MTV [Back]
Being 41 years old presents a bounteous set of advantages, if you choose to look at them that way.
For instance, I am old enough to remember when MTV went on the air, even though our shitty cable company didn't carry it then. I'm also old enough to remember when NIN started up.
Both had a certain mystique to them, both raising a counter-cultural middle-finger to Middle America. MTV had bumpers featuring Cyndi Lauper and her multivariate hair, Billy Idol bumpers and quick-cuts and special effects and the little moon man logo. Nothing quite like the feel of something new!
Trent Reznor and NIN kicked America in the nuts with its album, Pretty Hate Machine, and his version of a love song, “The Only Time”, which contained the !@#$!@# awesome lyrics: “Lay my hands on heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars, while the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car.” Nothing quite like the feel of something new.
Today? What's left of videos on MTV? What's left of MTV itself? Apparently not much: over the weekend, NIN withdrew from the MTV Movie Awards Show because MTV wouldn't allow an image of George W. Bush (which was unaltered and “straightforward”), so NIN withdrew.
MTV says: “[We were] uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement”
Trent says: “Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.”
I suppose these days, MTV's lack of interest in free speech is a better match for the American public than Trent's.
And sometimes, I suppose, having to remember when youth railed against authority instead of embracing the braces on their brains instead of just seeing it everywhere today is one of the disadvantages to being 41.
Who watches the watchdogs, if the youth won't do it?
Comments
I have often wondered what happened to all the activism of youth.. I mean look at how many young people voted for the shrub in the last election...
I am so confused
Posted by: sillynun | May 30, 2005 02:06 AM
Apparently, most of the youth in our nation has been hypnotized by the corporations into wondering which pair of sneekers is "in" this week.
I also remember those premier days of MTV with nostalgia... it was a great innovative idea then, but now it has been hijacked by the lackeys of the fascist right.
Unfortunately, the administration has become such a behemouth that everyone just turns their collective back and hopes that it just goes away. Of course it never will, but while it has become "unpatriotic" to dissent, it has also become hip to conform.
It's so far gone now, that they don't even realize it. It's really depressing to see what's transformed a great nation of original thinkers into an incorporated band of sheep. I am deeply saddened by the whole process, but at the same time, a glimmer of hope arises, thanks to Trent and company...
Peace,
=RD=
Posted by: RainbowDemon | May 31, 2005 04:44 AM
MTV?!?
Speaking as an official youth, if I could pick one thing on this earth that is not inspiring to me, it would either be MTV or those cans of peanut butter and jelly. As in, where both the peanut butter and the jelly are combined in one container. That speaks volumes about the laziness of the average American.
But MTV is roughly as uninspiring to me.
What is inspiring about corporate execs feeding us fashion and politics and celebrities, continuously bleeding us of our hard-earned youthful money? When was it ever ispiring? What did this former army of youth ever do?
I know not.
Meanwhile, my friends and I, with great help from JPII, have turned into a force to be reckoned with. No to "rail against authority" or to gain power and influence or any such rot, but to build up what is downtrodden, and fix what is broken. We're out convincing our friends to keep their unwanted pregnancies and helping them with their kids once their born. Thanks mainly to your generation of sex without consequences, and ousting of morality, we get to deal with the divorces and affairs. We're taking over, and giving the homeless a place to stay, and worrying about our fellow man, and learning from your mistakes, and going to church. Not because we're sheep, but because we finally escaped from the flock, and we want to, of our own free will.
If there is something more revolutionary and counter-cultral than that, I've never heard of it.
Posted by: The Masked Avenger | May 31, 2005 09:39 AM