MTV and the death of democracy

By Carl 

It was thirty years ago today, Robert Pittman taught the band not to play.

MTV launched on August 1, 1980, and literally changed the face of music forever, although you wouldn't know it from the first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, a band composed of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, both later joining Yes. In the video, the lighting and the costuming and set were all designed to be particularly unflattering to a band whose members were not exactly Hollywood star-material.

OK, so Downes was not ugly, but... did you know that "Video" charted at #444 years before MTV used it?

I digress.

The immediate impact of MTV's popularity was the development in earnest of the music video. Prior to the launch, artists since the 1960s created promotional films for top 40 songs, sometimes even albums. The first true "music video" was for "Surf City" by Jan & Dean in 1964. The later Beatles' albums featured several of these, which were distributed to variety shows worldwide so that "The Beatles" could make an appearance on the show.

These were mostly performance clips of the band, although with the release of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles went a little avant garde with theirs.

More and more, bands provided short films for their record companies to show in movie theatres, on television variety shows and to various conferences and conventions to promote a band's music.

The music. Not the band. MTV changed that.

I noticed this over the weekend while watching an old Journey video for the song "Seperate Ways," and realizing, damn! That band was uggggggggggleeeeee! The song was released in the MTV generation, to be sure, but the band predates it.

No longer was it enough to be able to sing or play an instrument and/or write a song. Now you had to have "it." You had to be good-looking enough to wet panties and cause wet dreams worldwide. Or, failing that, you had to hire a really expensive and really creative producer to set up your video so it featured really pretty men and women. That means money and that means your record sales and music were beholden to the suits at the label. There was corporate rock before MTV (hello, Monkees!), but the visual aspect and the brand spanking new markets it opened up to songs made corporate rock inevitable.

There weren't bands anymore. They became brands. Brands, the goal of so many people in the blogosphere and even Blogtopia (© Skippy).

Sure, there were exceptions and parodies, most notably "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits, but these were few, far between, and badly needed.

Corporate music begets a bland, pablum of ear candy designed and honed over the years to not offend but to not excite either. It's meant to not make you think: no longer did you have to ponder the lyrics to a song. All you had to do was turn on MTV and voila! Some suit had decided what the song means to you. It moderates everything. There is no radicality except in small pockets of outliers who never really gain acceptance in the mainstream.

To me, it's no surprise that we haven't had another Beatles since MTV. Nor have we had a significant new direction in music since punk, pre-1981. Sure, there was rap, but rap rose without the benefit of MTV and the moment MTV got its hands on it, that was the death knell for bands with a point, like NWA. It stopped being about the music and started being about the heavy rotation.

We all started listening to the same things. Maybe not identical, but all the same things in form. We all needed like-minded entertainment.

It gets worse. MTV created an entire new requirement for filmmakers, who had somehow to reconcile movies and TV to the new form of entertainment. No longer could the camera linger on a scene, establishing mood. Two cigarettes burning down in an ashtray meant two people making love. Now that all had to be established immediately and undeniably. You couldn't infer. You had to state. The attention span of America was quickly narrowing and no one wanted to think anymore.

Maybe you've already guessed from the headline where this is going, and maybe you've started to put the clues together. I'm tempted to stop here but like I just said...

MTV gave us reality TV, too. It started with "slice-o'-life" videos depicting the singer/band in a real-world scenario (usually lost love, or famously Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," about teen pregnancy). It moved onto the Real World programs and continues to this day with Jersey Shore. We've become conditioned to accepting, no, demanding a titillating look into people's closets from MTV. We won't accept a thick line between the public persona of someone and their private life. We *know* there's something illegal or illicit or just plain immoral going on behind the scenes that they must be hiding and we want to know, if only to celebrate the fact that, there but for the grace of God, go we.

Birthers are the logical outgrowth of this. Birthers and shrill harpies of the right who find boogeymen in little children camping on an island.

I could probably go on, from talking about how MTV made it possible for fashion to become really pretty crappy to the fulfillment of Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame" prophesy to any number of terrible impacts on society.

That's not to say MTV has been all bad. For instance, it was MTV that broadcast Live Aid to try and fight famine in Ethiopia, and it was MTV that gave Bill Clinton the youth vote (and probably Barack Obama as well.) And Jon Stewart got his start on MTV and became a nightly treasure on a spin-off of MTV's Ha! channel. I'm sure if I really sat and thought more on it, I could probably balance this post out with more positives.

But that would make this corporate blogging. :-)

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Stuff to Read (3/11/10): empathy, imagination, and gay rights

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Just one recommendation today, a piece from Monday that I've been meaning to highlight here.

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Slate: "Why Has a Divided America Taken Gay Rights Seriously?" by Dahlia Lithwick, reviewing University of Chicago philosopher and law professor Martha Nussbaum's new book, From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law. I can't speak to the book, which I haven't read, but Lithwick's review certainly makes me want to read it, and it certainly seems to be a book that ought to be taken seriously.

Nussbaum's argument, in a nutshell, is that, to quote Lithwick, "much of the political rhetoric around denying equal rights to gay Americans is rooted in the language of disgust." It is through "greater public empathy and imagination," including in the courts, that disgust, which can turn others into "subhumans," can be overcome:

In a country more polarized than ever on virtually every social issue, we have been curiously willing to take gay rights seriously.

Perhaps that's because, as Nussbaum suggests, we have been so willing to hear compelling personal narratives, ranging from the fictional Will of Will and Grace to the stories of politicians and athletes and friends. She especially credits the arts -- such as Sean Penn's exuberant portrayal of Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's film Milk -- with sentiment-shifting power. She also assigns a catalytic role to the courts. Nussbaum invokes the dawning public awareness of how black schoolchildren experienced "separate but equal" as an assault on their self-image in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. She cites the striking down of anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia as another turning point, spurring a broader recognition that the pursuit of passion, fulfillment, and happiness belongs to all couples. It has often been the judiciary that has pushed Americans to imagine a reality, and a dream of equality, larger than their own experience.

Read the review in full. Even if you don't end up reading Nussbaum's book, there's much food for thought here.

Not quite the scandal I was expecting

By non sequitur

So, with all the problems in Putin's Russia (yes, I know, technically Medvedev's Russia, but seriously), who would have seen this story coming? Though Putin's spokesman is denying it, apparently an Abba tribute band ("Bjorn Again") played a private show for Putin and about seven other guests (and the Kremlin paid for the trip and performance).

Bjorn Again's manager Rod Stephen and other band members said Mr Putin danced to Abba hits and shouted "Bravo!"

The PM's spokesman denied the claim. Mr Putin - a former KGB spy who has a black belt in judo - is known in Russia and the West for his macho image.

***

The four member-group says Mr Putin and about seven other guests, including a woman, were present at the concert, but they sat on a sofa veiled by a curtain.

Veiled by a curtain? What the hell was going on here? If Putin was visible, who were they trying to hide? Have the Russians re-animated Stalin?

And why was there only one woman? If we hear more about this "private party," will it involve the phrase "pulling a train"?

MTV takes a "shot" at bisexuality

By LindaBeth

Wow. So the other night I was just mindlessly watching "The Soup" on E! as I got ready to go out, and let me tell you, I needed a drink after that. Can I just say that I saw this coming long ago when my women's studies students informed me there'd be a new romance reality show featuring a bisexual woman, and thus, both male and female contestants. (First aside, this show could have never happened with a male bisexual, which is so unacceptable in our culture.) Yes, I'm talking about Tila Tequila's A Shot at Love.

And yes, I realize I'm actually spending time discussing the MySpace queen who stupidly takes credit for making gay marriage acceptable.

Now I didn't see the whole show in question but I looked it up later to watch the relevant snippets. The Soup reported that the final episode of A Shot at Love had Tequila choosing between a woman and a man, and during the episode the woman has some sort of breakdown. Apparently, being chosen by Tequila must be a huge commitment because she is SOO torn over... wait for it... if she "wants a man or a woman." (follow this link for the clip of the actual episode-the scene in question is at 1:05 remaining on the clip). As the host Joel McHale rightly comments, "I thought that was sort of implied when you said you were a bisexual." Of course, Tequila chooses the woman, and, on cue, the woman declines.

The Soup posits that this was done to have a 3rd season of the show, which is very likely, but it also conveniently qualms our fears about the threat of lesbian sexuality and reiterates stereotypes about bisexuality to make it less threatening, more hetero-affirmative, and indeed co-opts it for male heterosexual desire. Tequila just couldn't choose a woman and live happily ever after. The show being comprised of both guy-girl and girl-girl action was likely primarily intended to titilate the hetero male mind, not to actually show a loving caring relationship between two women external to any male pleasure. I mean, everyone knows that lesbians can only be seen if they're heterosexually-validated as "hot"...and if we can watch. And bisexuality? That's really just for bar games and threesomes. So of course, any serious attempt at an intimate relationship between two women must be thwarted.

(I do realize that I'm trying to ascribe a serious relationship to reality show couples, and how much that just seems goofy. But if they're trying to make us think this is serious love, I'm going to treat it as such.)

And what better way to thwart the potential relationship of love and desire sans men? By having the contestant question her sexuality. You see, she doesn't know if she wants to be with a man or a woman. If she dates a woman, she might "miss" men. (Don't worry fellas, no bi woman is actually satisfied with women, and the possibility of missing the ultimate almighty penis is always lingering in the back of her mind.) She just can't decide! This is the exact popular bullshit misunderstanding about bisexuality: That bi's want to be with both as opposed to being with either. They don't want to decide, they can't commit because they like both.

Sorry, wrong. Bisexuals like either. In other words, they're attracted to people, not to genitals. They don't need a penis-fix when they're dating a woman, and they don't break up with their partners because they "feel like" being with another gender. But the episode reiterates the idea that bis are basically failed straights and failed gays. And the female finalist says that throughout the show she was worried that she wasn't "good enough" because she is bi and the other contestants were lesbian. WTF?! And what does it mean that the show's producers (likely) scripted the conclusion this way? That the female Tequila chooses is the only bi out of all the women, and, surprise! She likes playing with women but doesn't want a relationship with one -- that this is how bisexuality is represented?!

Further, the woman says "this is more than a key, this is something I have to live up to." As in, playing lesbo is fun and all, but I can't live up to being a "real" woman-lover and "give up" men, even for a time. Again, this says don't worry guys, women may say they're bi and "have fun" with each other, and are fun to watch (wink wink), but don't worry, "living up" to a relationship with a woman is too scary for them. No worries, women will always come back to the almighty phallus!

On their date, the female contestant tells Tequila that she is nervous about her lack of experience--she's never been in a serious relationship with a woman although she's had relationships with women. Tequila assuages her worries, but clearly, despite her "120% certainty" of her feelings for Tequila, for some unknown reason, her certain feelings cannot seem to translate into a relationship. And as we find out, these uncertainties are less about her experience and more about her 'sexuality.'

It just seems awfully convenient that the only bi character is chosen as a finalist, and as it turns out, she doesn't really want to date women, just play around with them, in a conveniently safe and nonthreatening representation of women's bisexuality for heterosexual men.

This treatment of bisexuality also reiterates that there are "only two": women, men; hetero, homo. Sexuality isn't fluid, or changing, or multiple, or varied. Just either/or... and you have to choose. Now. For all time.

And I think that's utter crap.

Recommended Reading: Looking Both Ways: Bisexual Politics

(Cross-posted to Smart Like Me.)

Alas, Rock

By Capt. Fogg

Remember the Dave Clark Five? If you don't, you can go away now, I'm writing this for your parents.

It's not that I was ever a fan. They were, in my opinion, there only so that some of the younger Rock & Roll generation could pretend that they weren't against anything so popular as the "British invasion" which consisted mainly of the Beatles. To my way of thinking, their soulless enthusiasm, like the roar of the satanic mills of Manchester or Birmingham it came from, was certainly as fulsome and puerile in its mechanical banging and screeching as any Beatles tune I had heard to date.

I couldn't stand either group actually, or their cheap simulacra of the already moribund American genre. It was like listening to some guys in white shoes and belts at the country club, drinking martinis and trying to sing the blues like Manse Lipscomb or Son House; like seeing your grandchildren loving it.

Rock & Roll was already here when Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard. Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins were making the tubes glow in my radio and making the Juke boxes boom in road houses on two lane highways all over the midwest. I think it began to die when the peg pants pretty boys from England's industrial North were making adolescent white girls scream in sports stadiums. All ancient history to most people, sure, but when the Rock & Roll Museum decides to install the DC5 along with Madonna, perhaps it's time to bring in Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack or simply close the doors.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Porcupine Tree: "Fear of a Blank Planet"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Please excuse the lack of posting from me the past couple of days. I've been feeling under the weather, as they say.

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Call its music what you want -- prog rock, nu prog, psychedelic, metal, some undefinable combination of all of that and more -- Porcupine Tree is one of the most interesting bands in the world today. (Find out more here.) Some of its earlier work, like The Sky Moves Sideways, sounds a good deal like Pink Floyd, intentionally so, but its most recent album, Fear of a Blank Planet, based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel (Lunar Park), reveals a much harder sound, not quite metal, but with a distinct edge to it, a dark, gloomy, and deeply empathetic examination of technology, media, and youth.

Alienation may be an eternal element of the human condition, and reflections of it can be found throughout the history of pop and rock music, but with this album Porcupine Tree gives voice to today's youth in a way that understands how they perceive the world around them -- how they feel about it, how they escape from it. Pink Floyd's examination of the human condition was universal in scope; Porcupine Tree's is more contextual -- it is the specific context of the here and now, a context characterized by the seeming ubiquity of information technology, a world of narcotization and disillusionment. We are amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman put it, but for many the amusement isn't terribly amusing.

Our media talk about youth without ever really trying to understand them. Columbine or Virginia Tech or some other tragedy requires them to ask all the usual questions, but it is the sensationalism that interests them, not youth culture -- and certainly not the alienation of the narcotized and disillusioned, the condition of a generation raised on technology in what is otherwise a seemingly meaningless world, the worsening condition of generations to come. And where a brief attempt to delve into youth culture is made, where Columbine or Virginia Tech is not interpreted merely as a violent outburst of the criminally insane, there is almost invariably a condescending, dismissive arrogance to it.

Fear of a Blank Planet -- both the album and the title track (watch the awesome video below) -- captures precisely what many of us avoid, namely, the shockingly brutal nihilism that has developed in response to the deification of man and technology in the postmodern age.

This nihilism may challenge are illusions, but our illusions are very much in need of challenging.

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Sunlight coming through the haze
No gaps in the blind
To let it inside
The bed is unmade
Some music still plays

TV, yeah it's always on
A flicker of the screen
A movie actor screams
I'm basking in the shit flowing out of it

I'm stoned in the mall again
Terminally bored
Shuffling around the stores
And shoplifting is getting so last year's thing

Xbox is a god to me
A finger on the switch
My mother is a bitch
My father gave up ever trying to talk to me

Don't try engaging me
The vaguest of shrugs
The prescription drugs
You'll never find
A person inside

My face is mogadon
Curiosity
Has given up on me
I'm tuning out desires
The pills are on the rise

How can be sure I'm here?
The pills that I've been taking confuse me
I need to know that someone sees that
There's nothing left I simply am not here

I'm through with pornography
The acting is lame
The action is tame
Explicitly dull
Arousal annulled

Your mouth should be boarded up
Talking all day
With nothing to say
Your shallow proclamations
All misinformation

My friend says he wants to die
He's in a band
They sound like Pearl Jam
The clothes are all black
The music is crap

In school I don't concentrate
And sex is kinda fun
But just another one
Of all the empty ways
Of using up a day

How can be sure I'm here?
The pills that I've been taking confuse me
I need to know that someone sees that
There's nothing left I simply am not here

Bipolar disorder
Can't deal with the boredom

You don't try to be liked
You don't mind
You feel no sun
You steal a gun
To kill time

You're somewhere, you're nowhere
You don't care
You catch the breeze
You still the leaves
So now where?

Headlines of the Month (white trash pop tart edition)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Britney Spears has featured prominently in our Signs of the Apocalypse series, so much so that one might well call her a SOTA in and of herself.

And yet, as her star has faded -- that is, as her career has crashed into oblivion, her character into utter disrepute -- the justification to consider her worthy of such high acclaim, even in a negative sense, has withered. She has become a joke, or, rather, a different sort of joke -- once a successful joke, she is now a pathetic one. And she is simply no longer important enough to be, or to be involved with, a SOTA.

Still, she remains a cultural icon, of sorts, a source of much amusement, not to mention Schadenfreude -- much pleasure being taken in observing her decline. Am I too hard on her? Too cold? Is there something wrong with taking such pleasure? Perhaps, but so it is: There is something inherently satisfying here, as whenever any hyped-up celebrity falls from grace, particularly one as hollow as Britney Spears.

And so I could not help but smile -- a smile of bemused bitterness, of bitter bemusement -- when I came across these pleasure-inducing headlines at the BBC this evening, all from this month, in chronological order:

• Has Britney killed off her career?
• Britney is dropped by management
• Britney to undergo drug testing
• Spears charged with hit-and-run

And these, from earlier in the year:

• Highs and lows of Britney Spears
• Spears says she 'hit rock bottom'
• Spears sorry for 'brolly attack'
• Britney's ex wants legal expenses

And then there was the whole rehab and shaved head fiasco back in Feburary and March. Good times.

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Yes, I know -- I've just spent an entire post on Britney Spears, a pathetic joke in our celebrity-obsessed culture. I apologize. I'll get back to more serious topics soon enough.

But while Britney herself has become a pathetic joke, the phenomenon of Britney, of her manufactured stardom, of her rise and fall, is illustrative of some of our culture's more troubling qualities.

Britney is no longer important enough to be a SOTA, but that phenomenon is perhaps the SOTA par excellence.

Idiot of the Day: Madonna

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Madonna, who was in Israel for Rosh Hashanah, met with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Saturday, and referred to herself -- without irony -- as an "ambassador for Judaism".

Whether Judaism likes it or not.

(And likely: not.)

Sign of the Apocalypse #51: George and Britney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Watching Back to the Future yesterday for the millionth time -- yes, it's that good, and the two sequels aren't far behind -- I was struck once again by the scene where Marty and Dr. Brown meet for the first time back in 1955. This part, in particular:

Doc: So tell me, Future Boy, who's president of the United States in 1985?

Marty: Ronald Reagan.

Doc: Ronald Reagan, the actor? Ha! Then who's vice president? Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the first lady.

Marty: Whoa, wait Doc.

Doc: And Jack Benny is the secretary of the treasury. Ah.

Marty: Doc, you gotta listen to me.

Doc: I've had enough practical jokes for one evening. Goodnight, Future Boy.

To Dr. Brown, it is inconceivable that the president in 1985 is an actor -- particularly, one imagines, such a second-rate actor and right-wing blowhard as Reagan. He wants proof that Marty is from the future. This fact is a joke, however, not proof.

Marty soon provides ample proof. He knows how Doc bumped his head, knows about the flux capacitor. And then, of course, he shows him the De Lorean. And the video camera:

Doc: This is truly amazing, a portable television studio. No wonder your president has to be an actor, he's got to look good on television.

Doc is right, of course. Presidents, and presidential candidates, need to be telegenic, and tech-savvy. They need to look good on television -- as well as on YouTube and the campaign videos they put up on their websites. Policy, principle, and character still matter, but image matters, too, more than ever. I'm not saying anything new here. Everyone knows this.

But consider how far we've come. The line between entertainment and politics has been blurred -- by Clinton, to a great extent, but any president of the '90s would have blurred it, been required to blur it. Bush is less Hollywood than Clinton, but he is no less a product of our multimedia age, a politician-president dependent on the manufacturing of image, on how he is sold to the American people and to the world beyond. And we all know what he and his manufacturers wanted that image to be: a man of conviction, of deep religiosity, a common man, tough, determined, strong, the virtuous leader who stands firm against infidels at home and abroad.

But what a joke he has become. Are we even in a position to understand this?

Nixon was unpopular, too, a generation ago, and for good reason. He was a crook, a drunk, a paranoid, and there was Vietnam and Watergate. But my purpose here is not to compare Bush to Nixon, and certainly not to diminish the gravity of that horrible period in American history -- liberating, in the end, but horrifying, at the time. It is, rather, to remark on the appalling poverty of George W. Bush and of the Bush presidency generally.

For all that he has done wrong, for all that has gone into making him one of the worst presidents of all time, and his presidency one of the worst of all time, and without diminishing the gravity of this horrible period in American history, Bush has become a laughingstock, the butt of a perpetual political joke, an embarrassment, to himself and to his country.

His address on the Iraq War and Occupation this week was but the latest episode, predictably appalling. There was an attempt to present the manufactured image, a resolute president, but the image is transparent now, and has been for a long time. We all see through it, at least those of us who aren't trapped by delusion, and the content and substance of Bush's address could be, and was, observed and analyzed for what it was: as much of a joke as the man who delivered it.

Just how much of a joke? I wasn't quite sure until I read an intriguing post by Michael Currie Schaffer at TNR's The Plank:

On Sunday night, it seemed pretty clear that Britney Spears' performance at the MTV awards ceremony was the biggest prime-time fiasco of the week. Then came Thursday night and President Bush's Oval Office address on Iraq. At first blush, coverage of the white trash kid turned tabloid fodder and the rich kid turned good ol' boy would seem to have little in common (besides, of course, the four years of high-profile futility that followed the respective 2003 triumphs of Spears' In the Zone album and Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech). But what's astonishing is the similarities in this week's coverage of the two fallen ingenues.

Schaffer goes on to compare the coverage in juxtaposition. And it fits: Bush is Britney, Britney is Bush, they are two sides of the same coin, the same joke.

Whatever one can say in retrospect about Nixon, what is now abundantly clear is that the best comparison to Bush is a white-trash pop tart with a drug problem and possibly serious mental-health issues.

What more do you need to know about the state of America today? This is a Sign of the Apocalypse, to be sure, but it is also, if there ever was on, a Sign of America's Imminent Collapse.

Thankfully, he'll be gone by January '09. But how much more damage can he do, jokes and all, before then?