Don't Cry for Me, Appalachia

Today's column for the Daily Banter has to do with MTV's new show Buckwild and the reaction to it.

Here's the opening shot:

"A couple of years back, when I worked almost entirely from home and my schedule never involved meetings, lunches and so on, I used to make it a point to try to carve out an hour of my day to watch Maury. Yes, Maury. If you’re somebody who’s paid to be a snotty little shit online, Maury is required viewing and therefore I considered my daily dose of the show to be something akin to research. There’s no better barometer for how depthlessly fucked-up we are a society than watching a cavalcade of gold-toothed illiterate black caricatures and white trash guys clad in wife-beaters and plaid shirts with Caesar haircuts and goatees stomp onto a TV studio set in Stamford, Connecticut — arms raised, proudly basking in the ire of the studio audience — to find out whether they are the father of little Nevaeh (cleverly, “Heaven” spelled backward) or if one of the 27 others guys who apparently slept with her grossly overweight mother gets the honor.

Is it cruel to laugh at the kind of human zoological experiment regularly on display on a show like Maury? Maybe. But as callous as this may sound, I’ve always believed that you can’t save everybody. Sometimes you just have to shake your head and use it to sharpen your mockery skills, MST3K-style, because there’s really nothing else you can do — and this, my friends, is the essence of one very specific genre of reality TV."

Read the Rest Here

Choose and Lose

Today's column for the Daily Banter takes a look at MTV's get-out-the-vote initiative, circa 2012 -- and how relentlessly stupid it is.

Here's the opening shot:

"I’m probably going to sound like the stereotypical old guy in the room here, but bear with me.

The first time I voted for president was in 1992 and, like many my age at the time, I voted for Bill Clinton. The reason should be obvious to anyone who lived through the presidential election of 1992: Clinton and his optimistic vision for America spoke to me as a young adult; he was the first president in my lifetime to truly reach out to the youth in a meaningful way and value their involvement in the political process and in building the country’s future. Later, of course, we’d find out that the hand he was extending to the female youth of America was aimed mostly at their breasts, but it’s not like I knew that at the time..."

Read the Rest Here

Bored This Way

Lucas Kavner at the Huffington Post dissects the breathtaking silliness of last night's first ever "Best Video with a Message" award at the MTV Video Music Awards:

"Certainly there's nothing wrong with rewarding artists who release music based on personal convictions, but isn't that kind of par for the course? If, as MTV president (Stephen) Friedman said, he wanted to 'reward' these artists for digging into their personal experiences to create powerful songs, did we really need to point out exactly what message they were trying to get across?

The most powerful songs in history come from 'deeply personal' experiences. In fact, every original song is personal. The lyrics come from somebody's brain and are based around either specific or universal experiences and then, in turn, inspire personal feelings in the listener. That's... what a song is.

There's something oddly icky about MTV assigning more 'meaning' to a song, as if Katy Perry's pop anthem about personal empowerment, which netted her millions of dollars, contains as powerful a "message" as a song from a rock band whose lead singer lost his close friend. Do we need MTV telling us we shouldn't be 'mean' to other people? Does this even make sense anymore?

Somehow this category rivals even the lamest of MTV decisions in recent years, a strange pander to the most common denominator of superfluousness."

As Kavner points out, almost every video nominated for this great honor featured a "message" that was as comically trite as it was predictable, particularly in a year that saw the publicity surrounding the suicides of several supposedly bullied-to-desperation kids reach cacophonous levels. From Katy Perry to P!nk to Rise Against, the theme was the same: you're somebody, loser; please don't kill yourself; it gets better. In the end, of course, the song and video with the absolute least subtlety in its point won out: Lady GaGa's insipid and shamelessly derivative gay anthem Born This Way took the prize.

If I sound especially caustic, it's because I can't help but see this kind of thing as perfectly illustrative of the fact that we're now apparently trying to raise a generation without the ability to think for itself. When an engine of pop culture pabulum as egregious as MTV actually begins translating the meaning of songs for viewers and rewarding the ones that are the most obvious and not the least bit daring, you know that Generation Y -- or whatever the hell is following in its wake -- has one more reason to shut down its collective imagination. Personal inspiration gets trampled in the name of whatever democratized, prepackaged and Wiki-approved form of supposed creativity appeals to the largest and lowest common denominator.

Then again, does anybody really give a shit about the VMAs anymore? The irony of MTV continuing to hand out awards for music videos is pretty laughable; I play more videos on this site than MTV does these days. Somebody wake me when the YouTube/Vevo Awards become a reality.

Spreading the Disease

I don't know, I'm pretty sure most of these countries can legitimately consider this a declaration of war.

The New York Times: MTV To Begin Marketing Jersey Shore to 30 Countries/3.22.10

Quote of the Day

"We're slaves to our different audiences, for MTV that's millennials, who are vastly different than Generation X. They're definitely less cynical -- they're more civic minded. Millennials are really about authentic reality and family. (That's why MTV) played up the camaraderie and family elements in Jersey Shore to appeal to them."

-- MTV Networks President Van Toffler

So I'm too cynical to appreciate the authenticity, sense of family, and general civic-mindedness of Jersey Shore.

Man, this quote is great on so many different levels.

Guinea Pigs

I kind of figured that the throwaway post on Jersey Shore would draw a certain amount of fire, given that the incident it was based on certainly has. To some it probably seemed as if I -- or really anyone who laughed at Snooki the gruesome Jersey stereotype getting tagged in the face by the Guido Terminator -- was condoning violence against women. Needless to say, at least as far as my own beliefs are concerned, that's just not the case.

What makes the most repugnant parts of Jersey Shore -- including and especially that moment of guy-on-girl violence -- so oddly enthralling is that it's almost impossible to fathom how creatures who appear at first glance to be actual human beings behave in ways that prove that, really, they aren't. And that's what makes Snooki getting clocked in the head so oddly amusing: Contrary to what your brain wants to make you believe, the women on Jersey Shore aren't women at all -- the same way the men aren't men. They're all nothing more than monkeys -- fucking Neanderthals who don't deserve the kind of deference or consideration you'd give to normal, decent people. Why do I chuckle at Snooki getting her clock cleaned? Because as far as I'm concerned, she's subhuman -- and so is the drunken 'roided out clown who hits her. Watching her go off on him and unwisely get in his face after they've both had far too many drinks at some Guido bar on the Jersey Shore -- and then seeing his inability to respond the way any normal human being would, any normal member of polite society -- I honestly can't help but think that I may as well be looking at apes throwing their crap at each other at the zoo. These aren't people -- they're reprehensible douchebags on a bad reality show. They're so far removed from the world you and I inhabit that it's almost impossible to classify them as the same species as the rest of us.

Is this a sickening way of thinking? Maybe. But there's simply no way that MTV -- like VH1, Bravo and every other network that traffics in shameless Schadenfreudian reality TV -- didn't understand that it's the trainwreck factor that makes people want to watch. Think about it: The only reason MTV would possibly air the image of a woman getting punched in the face is if the network knew full well that we'd be entertained by it.

One more thing: I'm of Italian descent. My family, at least one side of it, is about as Italian as you can get -- and nowhere, I mean nowhere in that family will you find anyone who behaves as consistently despicably as the low-lifes on Jersey Shore. So does that mean that I'm offended by the show and its depiction of largely Italian-American culture? No, of course not. First of all, despite the fact that there's no denying that the idiots on Jersey Shore are being told to amp up their inherent ridiculousness for the sake of making good TV, these fuck-wads do actually exist, otherwise MTV wouldn't have decided to create a reality show based around them in the first place. And that leads me to point number two: Stereotypes exist for a reason. Nobody pulls a preconceived notion about a specific group of people out of thin air. In the case of the Italian stereotype, although there aren't any in my particular family, I have met enough embarrassing Guidos and Guidettes in my time to know that they're not an uncommon phenomenon in hyper-Italian culture. Hell, hit the Feast of San Gennaro festival in New York's Little Italy sometime and you'll see how Italian stereotypes aren't simply on display -- they're damn well glorified. Which makes an attempt by some in the Italian-American community to vilify MTV for running a show like Jersey Shore seem slightly disingenuous. It's almost as if they're making the tired argument, "Well, we can make fun of our own people, but you can't."

The fact is that the easiest way to stop others from portraying you as buffoonish caricatures is to discourage those within your ranks from actually behaving that way.

Shit to Shore

I could watch this all day. Like, seriously, every minute of the day. I'm trying to get the GPS on my Blackberry to run this in a loop so that even while getting directions in my car I'll never miss a second of Snooki, the "Princess of Poughkeepsie," getting clocked in the face by some 'roid raged Guido who goes off on her like he was the Manchurian Candidate and there's a big Queen of Diamonds on her Ed Hardy hat.

As much as I hate reality TV, there's just no denying that MTV's Jersey Shore is special. It honest-to-God represents the final mile marker on the road to the end of Western civilization -- the nadir of the American empire and maybe the darkest hour of humanity itself. If this were Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons would nuke us all tomorrow morning just because of what Jersey Shore proves we've become: an irredeemably corrupt and immoral species that no longer deserves to live.

So, hey, kudos to you, MTV. You actually managed to somehow up the ante and find a group of people to build a show around even more subhumanly reprehensible than the cast of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

The Cynicist Manifesto: Addendum

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but I think it's time to once again add to the list of random thoughts and observations that don't necessarily merit a full post.


Prole Food

When did Wendy's restaurants get brought under the control of the Ministry of Truth? The TV commercials for their new garden fresh salads feature a perky female announcer asking the following question: "If warm chicken is good, and cold, crunchy veggies are good -- then wouldn't a warm chicken and cold, crunchy veggies salad be good-good?"

So it's official: Wendy's is the first fast food chain to translate its menu into Orwellian Newspeak.

The next time you stop in, try ordering a doubleplusgood salad, a potatofry and a big-big Victory Coke.


One Is a Relic from the Past, Rendered Obsolete by Changing Times -- The Other Is an Old Cell Phone

I can't get enough of this picture. It unintentionally sums up the essence of John McCain's campaign in just about every way.

Somewhere David Spade is saying (to himself), "Hey John, 1984 called -- they want the phone they called you on back."


Berkley Students

Speaking of ancient history: Remember not when MTV played music videos (because that was just too long ago) but when the worst complaint you could level at MTV was that it didn't play videos anymore? You know -- the days before it began airing nothing but toxic crap like The Hills 24/7? Well, apparently Tila Tequila and that dunce Heidi Montag haven't done enough to prepare America's next generation of young women for regret-stained futures in the prostitution industry, because the network is now bringing out the big guns. Elizabeth Berkley, star of 1995's rape-tastic film classic Showgirls, is in talks with MTV to develop a show aimed at empowering adolescent girls. Berkley wants to base the show on a series of workshops she currently hosts which addresses self-esteem and body issues in young women -- because, as you know, these days no one's more qualified to convince girls that they're attractive just the way they are than a goddamned living Barbie doll who hosts a reality show and once pretended to go down on Gina Gershon.

If I might suggest a title for the show, how about Stupid is the New Smart?


Ferris Bueller's Lay Off

If you believe what you read in the tabloids, there's major trouble in the marriage of New York's homeliest celebrity couple. According to this week's Star Magazine (motto: "Fuck It, We Can Retract Later") Matthew Broderick has been cheating on Sarah Jessica Parker. The magazine says Broderick met someone at a bar a few months ago and that the two of them have been slyly tooling around town together ever since. The most entertaining thing about this story, however, is the specific angle that the Star has wisely decided to play up for shock value. The magazine's cover points out that Broderick's affair is, surprisingly, "with a 25 year old woman."

For the record, the tabloid could just as easily have said that Broderick is sleeping with someone who doesn't look like the business end of a Tijuana donkey show, and the effect would've been the same.

(The Cynicist Manifesto: American Idol Edition/3.6.08)