After reading Dieckmann's pessimistic article on MTV, i felt it necessary to further her argument. Somehow, MTV has been able to entrench itself within the youth culture as a taken-for-granted component. However, i believe the opposite is also true: youth culture has become a component of MTV. There are 2 primary reasons I believe this:
First, MTV has been able to suck in and standardise genres and niche markets. MTV began as a platform for creative music videos. However, today, clichéd dating and reality TV shows dominate the channel. The odd music video (or the same 4, on a rotate system) is played in-between these shows. These shows are routine-ish, and agonising to watch. How one is expected to watch a "marathon" (episodes of the same show back to back), I dont know. Not only this, but the music is also sucked in to the standardising machine that is MTV. For example, the rap genre used to be unique with its own codes and conventions, but now the obviously marketed, TV-friendly "gangster" almost epitomises MTV.
Secondly, the MTV viewer has become just as standardised. As the shows begin to narrow the target demographic to young, white, vaguely loserish males, they are being shaped at the same time. These teens are involuntarily forced into numbing sameness. So much so that we are extremely quick to deny that we watch (or have ever watched) an MTV show.
1 comment:
That's an interesting observation that you've made Karyn and ironically enough I just finished watching a 'mind numbing' MTV show so I thought I might add my thoughts on the matter.
First of all I must say that when I was a teenager I would hear about the wonders of MTV and wish that we had it here in NZ. When we briefly got MTV Europe back in the 90s it became the "cool" thing to discuss at school - whilst I do remember there being music videos the most popular discussion was usually about the show that had a segment on "spotting the mullet". When MTV disappeared it seemed like we had suffered some kind of a loss so the news of MTV NZ being established last year held so much potential which it sadly failed to live up to.
A couple of years ago I was in the States over the Christmas period and with nothing better to do I would watch MTV. I had an expectation that there would be music videos played at least at some point and I was sorely disappointed to find nothing but marathons of Laguna Beach and Punk'd. In fact the only time any music videos were shown was on TRL, a chart count down show, which seemed more concerned about it's celebrity guests than the music being played. Most notably Jamie Foxx appeared to promote his album and serenaded a bunch of teenage fangirls in the audience.
This was not the MTV that I had envisioned as a teenager. And I was further disillusioned when I was in New York and I visited the MTV store which only seemed to have merchandise for the numerous reality-based TV shows that are prevalent on the channel.
MTV NZ had the potential to return to the roots of what the original MTV was supposed to be- a "means to help revive a stagnant music industry" (Diekmann) - at least on a smaller scale. Instead there is nothing on MTV that appeals enough for me to want watch it over C4 - well when C4 is still acting like a music channel rather than a psuedo-MTV.
However, there are times like tonight when I feel the need to 'dumb-down' and watch something that doesn't involve thinking too much. This is what MTV has become for me and the mainstream music videos interspersed in commercial breaks only serve to annoy me after the same songs have been repeated time and again - what a sad development considering the origins of the channel.
I think that the reason MTV has become this warped and commercialized form of it's former self is directly linked to youth culture as you have pointed out. We are in the middle of an age of consumerism and superficiality and the youth are at the forefront of this. Shows like Made, Laguna Beach or My Sweet Sixteen show life as a form of wish fulfillment and they sell a type of ideal to the youth who have made icons out of people like Paris Hilton. On the other hand there are people who watch those kinds of shows in order to mock or criticize the people on them or who enjoy shows like Jackass or Punk'd - either way they still serve as a form of "light" entertainment and a way of selling that "all-encompassing lifestyle" in a way that will make MTV money more than music videos would.
The need for industrialization and market viability is what I believe has forced MTV to become what it is today and the primary target demographic is the youth - teenagers and early twenty year olds. I think that there has been a necessary symbiosis between MTV and youth culture to the point that there is no clearly defined line which can be drawn to show how far each one is shaping each other. There is no doubt that standardistion has forced a push toward the 'mainstream' and a need for stick-ability - serialized TV shows are going to create this more than music videos especially the bubble gum kind which can become addictive.
If this is what MTV has become in a relatively short period of time - 26 years - it makes me wonder what the future holds for it. It seems at this point the youth market is happy to accept light and brainless television with less of a focus on music and originality. Perhaps in another 26 years things will have changed once again, hopefully for the better, only time will tell.
Post a Comment