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That insidious evil, MTV
Dwight Lindley
Reclining on a cool patch of green in front of Central Hall, I tried to read Henry James. I was supposed to be wrapping myself in the cultural decline of James' early 20th century, but I simply couldn't stop thinking about our own decline in this, the 21st century. Our forebears certainly had their cultural problems in the early 20th century: foolish decadence, utopian ideologies and naïveté in international affairs. They had all those evils working against them, but they didn't have MTV.
Over the past three or four years, I've become convinced that MTV is the insidious evil of our day. Insidious because most folks don't seem to understand just how much it's undermining society, but for myriad other reasons too.
Let me first say that I have no essential problem with music videos. I'm a musician and a lover of music and I appreciate the conjunction of good music with well done visual art. Music videos aren't the problem. In fact, they have nothing to do with the problem because MTV is, contrary to its deceptive name, not about music. MTV is about cheap sex, cheaper gossip, glittery stardom, and the self-important crusading of confused, leftist, pseudo-political interest groups.
Am I being too harsh? I don't think so. Think for a moment about MTV's treatment of women and minorities. Out of one side of its cacophonous mouth come the words of the human rights lobbyists, calling for equality in every sense, the liberation of tradition-bound women, affirmative action and all the rest. Out of the other side of the same mouth MTV promotes just the opposite: Women are rarely given a position higher than that of sex object and blacks are constantly portrayed as mindless thugs whose lives are governed by desire, anger and an all-important sense of the macho. Proudly trumpeting the lobby of human rights, they turn around and degrade them in an even louder voice.
This outrageous treatment is rendered not only to women and blacks; men are made to look like fools as well. Every man is the same, no matter the skin color, sexual “preference,” or musical style—the MTV man is a well-toned bag of hormones who can't wait to shack up with the next silicon-enhanced floozy.
And every MTV woman is a newly empowered sex tease who has no shame and spits upon modesty. The humans of The Real World and MTV's other ridiculously unreal shows are not like us; we—by “we” I mean all thinking people in the real world—are men and women who make choices based on our belief in fundamental truths about the world and other people. MTV's humans are merely bipedal animals who have evolved enough to boast and sass before copulating.
OK, I know I'm going a little over the top; it's just that violent words seem like the only proper response to a force as bombastic as MTV. With no apologies, it reduces us to much less than we are and then it asks us to behave responsibly. Not only is it undermining the morals of its viewers, it's teaching us to accept obvious contradictions.
“Yes,” the mentally anesthetized MTV teenager thinks upon his couch, “I can treat women like animals and still be a self-righteous champion of their rights. This rules!”
MTV asks us to “rock the vote” whenever election time comes around, airing specials on the issues and generally encouraging voter responsibility and conscientiousness. We're told to vote, but on what principles? The only guidelines MTV has to offer are usually contradicted and made laughable by the substance of its own programming.
In reality, voting requires honest thought, and honest thought requires a logical consideration of the issues at hand. We must face logical contradictions and call their sources into question. Any person who takes time to reflect on the actions of MTV and applies even the feeblest logic will surely realize how ridiculous all of this is. We must not go on taking our cues from a source that doesn't bother to explain itself. The straight-faced contradictions and depraved morals of MTV must convince every thinking person to cast it aside for the refuse it is.
All this time I've written of MTV as an “it,” when in reality we are dealing with real people. MTV is made up of fellow humans making choices—bad choices—and we are no different. We must make the right choices daily, doing all we can to counteract this great evil of our time. The first choice we can make is to change the channel or turn it off.
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