Op-Ed
Something About How MTV Sucks
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The Absurdity Exhibition
As someone who owns pretty much everything Radiohead has ever recorded and reads a lot of David Foster Wallace and owns an unnecessary number of plain black t-shirts I feel obligated to roll my eyes at MTV with that same hipster condescension that makes the disinterested smokers outside Rand Hall so insufferable. This column should be 900 words of such eye rolling at the cable giant. The words “shallow,” “superficial,” and “lacking substance” should figure prominently. There should be a significant amount of whining. A healthy helping of nostalgia for the good ol’ days when the network was anti-establishment and cutting-edge and all those attractive little fictions associated with the golden age of MTV. And finally it should end on a somber note, preferably with apocalyptic implications.
But those sorts of articles always struck me as sort of lame. I find the narrative of the cool bad-assed outlaw who became the square corporate patsy uninteresting and annoyingly overplayed. The fact that we so despise the sell-out is painfully hypocritical considering that the vast majority of us are completely financial creatures who never cared or created enough to become the outlaw, much less return to the herd. Plus this story always ends with the outlaw returning to his roots (see Rick Vaughn dusting off the Wild Thing glasses at the end of Major League II … or most bad early ’90s movies), so to lament to transformation of MTV into an INSERT ALARMIST ADJECTIVE-NOUN CLAUSE HERE would be a little premature.
Additionally the modern-culture-is-destroying-everything mindset employed by crotchety pre-1980s intellectuals and the sub-culture of arrogant modernity-haters they spawned always seemed overwrought and ironically conservative to me. I may choose to not have a Facebook but that’s because I find it kind of creepy not because I think it’s contributing to the downfall of western civilization like some commentators contend. I’m sure if I expanded my discomfort with Facebook in that confidently wise, academic-y way I’d come to some sort of alarming conclusion about our world; but that seems to take it way to seriously. There’s nothing wrong with thinking Facebook offers an uncomfortable level of voyeurism and leaving it at that.
That’s a stupidly long introduction, but it basically explains why the following observations on MTV aren’t crafted in hipster-blowhard, “all’s lost” type of way that makes reading Pitchfork so irritating.
Almost all programs on MTV (the “almost” modifier is necessary due to the existence of True Life, which is MTV’s lone claim to legitimacy, and which complicates my argument and potentially places this article in the category of Complete Bullshit) are not TV shows but rather prods to get you to watch commercials. They are exclusively entertainment, lacking any point or purpose or message other than to massage the viewer into a trance powerful enough to last through commercial breaks and impressive enough to make the viewer come back for more at the same time next week. The shows are constructed to induce involuntary pleasure. Imagine a sort of mad scientist with a switchboard of sliding levers in front of him. He knows the characteristics of the ideal viewer and must simply match the sliders to those predispositions. Blonde hair: level 8. Music with acoustic guitar: level 3.5. Men with tattoos: level 5.6. Amount of gossiping by three girls in pajamas: level 7. Etcetera. Properly setting these hundreds of sliders produces the maximum amount of possible entertainment.
You’re going to be entertained by these programs, no matter what. And this is the element that troubles me. While I believe that TV’s megaphone is so unimaginably massive that to use it for strictly financial ends without informing or enlightening or anything is neglectful, I get that that’s the way things work. And while I think it’s disappointing that MTV’s programs say and do absolutely nothing, I accept that’s to be expected in a strictly material society. But there’s something violating about programming so pointless yet so entertaining that you have no control over whether or not it entertains you. It echoes the movie in Wallace’s Infinite Jest that is so entertaining that the viewers disconnect from the real world and die happily watching the film over and over again. I’m not saying that’s the evolutionary end of what’s going on at MTV, but there’s an element of forced pleasure in the programming that is at least concerning and at most debilitating.
But the beauty of TV, especially TV in its current state (with its 700 channels), lies in the free agency of the viewer. Discomfort with MTV lasts only as long as it takes to change the channel. You can transport yourself, shifting the object of your consumption to something a little meatier than the entrancing synthetics of Paris Hilton’s New BFF. And while you could certainly argue that 60 Minutes or Mad Men or Lost are simply more complicated, posturing pure entertainment programs constructed using a larger group of sliders, it’s my opinion that there’s a great deal of informing and enlightening going on on TV. While all TV shows have that financially necessary shameless entertainment tinge, enough of them are either artistic or informative enough to maintain the medium’s legitimacy. MTV may have descended into pointless shamelessness, but all is not lost.
Tony Manfred is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Wednesdays.