30.5.00

Pop Culture, Minus The Culture

Since I've found myself on some kind of extended vacation thanks to the immigration department (short version: came here to get married and live happily ever after, didn't have the right type of visa, if Nathan and I marry now I could risk being barred from this country altogether, tra la la, la la), I've been in the priviliged position of being able to examine the ins and outs of American pop culture from the comfort of the livingroom couch - i.e., I can basically watch as much MTV as I can stomach. I know that a cable music channel aimed at the 12 - 20 set isn't exactly the most accurate measure of what passes for mainstream entertainment culture these days, but it certainly gives me plenty to ponder and complain about, so it's a big game of "whatever goes".

Let's start with MTV. Clearly, this is a channel catering to the lowest common denominator - the shallow end of the gene pool, those who wouldn't know anything about actual music if it bit them in the ass of their low-slung capri pants, the folk who find Sisqo and those of his thong-loving ilk to have some merit, the ones who think that higher education only requires membership in a sorority or fraternity and a knowledge of beer and fellatio techniques. The boys and girls that punctuate each phrase with a healthy helping of "like", "wooo!", and "you know what I'm sayin'?" (And no, incidentally, I don't know what you're saying. Perhaps if you try learning some basic literary skills, I just might.) Were MTV to show some videos by (or interviews with/features on) The Tea Party, Dream Theater, Jamiroquai, Jeff Buckley, pre-lawsuit Metallica, Soundgarden, Ben Folds Five, Massive Attack, Garbage, The Eels - you know, bands and artists whose lyrics amount to more than those of the "show me your thong/shake it baby/let's go in the back and shag" variety, and actually show more than a passing resemblance to music - well, then I guess it wouldn't be MTV then, would it? Their target audience, after all, is teenagers who manage to manipulate mommy and daddy into dropping everything and giving them pocket money to spend at The Gap and cd stores that only carry albums by boy bands and slutty girl singers. Maybe I'm just wasting my time being concerned with the lack of intelligence going on here, and should just let MTV go along its merry way. But I can't do that. I'm always going to worry about anything promoting stupidity.

(But I'll watch "The Real World", because sometimes it's entertaining to poke fun at the intellectually ill-equipped.)

Anyway, since MTV tends to repeat its chosen programming over and over and over and over again until you don't think you can stand it anymore, I managed to watch fragments of an episode of "Making The Video" featuring Metallica about five or six times. They were filming a video for "I Disappear", a song for the "Mission: Impossible 2" soundtrack (a song so crucial to said film and soundtrack that it played during the end credits, during which a cinema will typically be emptied of patrons as fast as their little legs can carry them), and it was really all about the stunts. I would say this is to cover up mediocre fare as far as the music is concerned, but what would a flautist know? Anyway, the main feature is the end, where Lars, the drummer (hands up who could name him before the whole Napster controversy? Ha, I thought so) runs through a building about to be swallowed by the shockwave of a large explosion. He jumps out of the window to escape said shockwave, and a stuntman does a great job of flailing around like a frog in a blender as he plummets towards the ground. What, I'd like to know, happened to the rest of the scene? If he was fleeing an explosion that seemed to be right on his tail, why does that one eighth of the building stand? It should, according to the simple laws of continuity, still blow up and swallow him in the aftermath. But we can't have everything, I suppose.

I think if I'm going to try to understand MTV any further, I'm going to give myself a huge headache. Lets move along to advertising, where I've discovered something I actually like... but still have a problem with.

I love those Sprite commercials. Where they tell you straight up that even though their ads might contain extreme sports and athletic heroes, drinking their beverage isn't going to make you any better than what you are now. (Not that I can really believe that anyone would think that, but I guess they're making fun of typical ad campaigns.) My favourite is the one that features a snowboarder colliding with a Sprite vending machine to prove the point that just because he drinks Sprite, it won't stop him from sucking at his chosen sport. The one that makes me wonder about the ad executives in charge of the Sprite account actually sticking to their first concept is the most recent, where an NBA star is show in a few situations - "Would you want an NBA player operating on you?" "Would you want an NBA player flying your plane?", etc, and in the final shot where this NBA guy asks, "Then why do you want one telling you what to drink?" It seems to me that this ad would have been more effective had they not shown him mentioning Sprite, drinking Sprite, or at all - because it just ends up being another celebrity endorsement, even if they're trying to psych out the dumb people by being all anti-establishment about it.

The above paragraph was not, in fact, product placement for Sprite. Even if I do like the beverage. Only because it's the closest thing to Australian-defined lemonade as I can get in this godforsaken country.

Great, now I'm thirsty.

While I go and sate that thirst (probably not with Sprite), stay tuned for more stating-the-obvious type discussion and dissection of American-type-pop-culture, or go and read about it at Hissyfit (look under "Popcult").