Watch any tweenager, teenager or young adult watching TV today and he/she will sooner or later turn to MTV or some similar station. MTV has succeeded in catering to the whims of new generations of youths in the 25 years since it launched, and it is continuing to grow. MTV Networks has kicked off 20 new channels in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa this year, alone, pushing its global tally to 112. In addition, with its new parent, MTV Networks is readying for a more visible role with plans to leverage its influential brands in new ways. The cable side, most of which comprises MTV Networks, accounted for about $5.6 billion, or about 70%, of what will become the new Viacom's $8.1 billion of revenue last year.
Not everyone, however, is enthusiastic about the impact of MTV on today's culture. E.Ann Kaplan included. In 1987, she said MTV is a postmodernist phenomenon that is here to stay, and was not happy about it. Director of the Humanities Institute of Stonybrook Institute, Kaplan has mounted a negative campaign against the music clips, which produce a result drastically different from prior organizations of rock. MTV is a commercial, popular institution, and a specifically televisual apparatus (1).
By "televisual apparatus" Kaplan means "the technological features of the machine itself (the way it produces and presents images); the various "texts," including ads, commentaries and displays; the central relationship of programming to the sponsors, whose own texts -- the ads -- are arguably the 'real' texts; and, finally, the reception sites -- which may be anywhere from the living room to the bathroom" (3).
The French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard has had a major influence on Kaplan's work. She cites his model of the "hot" and "cold" universe as an example of how television has altered communication and the ways of translating images. It also acts as a distinction between the era of classic Hollywood film and that of MTV. In the "hot" universe, Freudian, or oedipal, narratives are useful in analyzing cinema, but in MTV's "cold" universe, a different analysis is required as the distinction between private and public space/time disappears. Such removal of borders produces schizophrenic tendencies in subjects who can no longer find a psychological shelter within objects. With new technology, a new relationship between subjects and objects emerge where humans, as subjects, are in "the position of mastery and control, and can play with various possibilities," as with televisions and computers (133).
Kaplan is not alone in her belief. Many scholars argue that it can be dangerous for individuals going through the process of entering an MTV-manner of existence. It suggests an unquenchable desire of plenitude that is encouraged with MTV's coming-up-next mechanism. A 24-hour, 7-day stream of short segments keeps everyone in an aroused state of expectation, promising that the next segment will fulfill personal desires. This unending flow is only segmented by various other types of advertisements and images. The question is what type of social and psychological effects these images have on a consumer/spectator enveloped in a fairytale "MTV way of life," as Van Dorston calls it.
In "Postmodernist Music: The Culture of 'Cool' Vs. Commodity," Van Dorston called this "MTV way of life" a hopeless condition of spiraling into what Fredric Jameson calls the "schizophrenic state." Viewers will alter the way they think and speak in a way similar to the words and images in texts like MTV "such that the reader/spectator cannot associate any meaning or recognize boundaries and differences, past and present." The schizophrenic state is to be fixated on a detached signifier like MTV, isolated in a present form from which there is no escape. "Videos on MTV create a grab-bag out of western cultural history to dip into at will, obliterating historical specificity. Kids will grow up with the 'televisual apparatus' with a consciousness that no longer thinks in terms of a historical frame" (4).
Likewise, Wollen interprets techno-musicianship as a postmodern practice that carries out what Walter Benjamin terms the breakdown of the aura, the technological deconstruction of authenticity (169).
According to Kaplan, MTV continues to be a major player in the total commodification of youth culture. It symbolizes what it means to be a young person in today's world, presenting itself as the chief of the youth culture tribe, providing answers to problems that somehow all seem to define an individual's identity. The message is by using this product or wearing these clothes, etc., you will transform...
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