A letter regarding last night’s Video Music Awards and the MTV of my late ’20s-
Dear MTV,
First of all… I realize I sound cranky. I don’t want to be flippant about this whole thing because the truth is, I am a child of the ’80s and ’90s and, as such, you, as a network, were very important to me, developmentally speaking. As a result, this letter is harder to write than it seems. It’s kind of like going home for the holidays and seeing this teacher you used to have, this teacher who was a little rough around the edges and, now that you think about it as an adult, was probably a bad influence and therefore really cool when you were 14. And seeing him at the seedy bar on the corner, drunk out of his mind and his eyes are glassy and his hair is too long and he’s groping some twenty-year old girl and your eyes meet and you’re angry and upset but your heart is breaking a little bit too?
I think you might be too far gone to see what went wrong last night so I’m going to tell you. Putting the VMA’s in a venue that is slightly bigger than the TRL set made it seem, for lack of a better word, small. Filling said venue with industry people and rock stars made it feel more like some music convention than a concert. And not even something as hardcore as the Republican convention. They had cowboy hats and balloons. This was more like an office supplies sales convention. At a Radisson.
The problem with industry people is they don’t clap. They don’t laugh very much, unless someone just twittered something hilarious about Lil Wayne’s pants on their Blackberry. This is their job, to be here. You want to feel music at its most commercial? Stick a bunch of bored, slick hustlers in suits and pinky rings in the best seats of the house. Leave the fans outside in the cold to wonder if Pink is somewhere nearby. You wonder why Russell Brand was trying so hard? I didn’t envy his job one bit. I’ve played to disinterested crowds before- it’s impossible. When LL Cool J is the only one enjoying himself, there’s a problem.
And, I’m sorry, but this Disney spill-over into your universe makes me cringe. Yeah, Miley Cyrus makes a lot of money. So do the Jonas Brothers. But watching three pie-faced boys on a studio lot makes me think I’m hallucinating and I ended up in Orlando, Florida somehow. Is this the land of Beavis and Butthead or a commercial for Disney Radio? Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, the kids from High School Musical… Shia LaBeaouf presenting with Slash?
Even the performers seemed like pale versions of themselves. Rihanna and Kanye and Christina no longer earn the “special performances by” title- they’re music award show mainstays, old vets. Boring even. I love Christina Aguilera but even she looked tired and her poor lip-synching was a knife in my gullet. I’ll take her wailing to James Brown any day. Kanya closing the show with a song we’ve never heard before? Greeeaaat. Those new songs go over so well in concerts. Nothing like awkwardly swaying to a song you don’t know the words too. Really brings people together.
I know people are disappointed that Britney didn’t perform but to be honest, MTV? I do not blame her. I would’ve taken one look at that crowd and that lame little set and that sad crop of rarely seen videos and I would’ve just popped another Zoloft, instead of reaching for a microphone.
Those Paris Hilton commercials did not help, by the way. They also do not endear me to your VJ’s, who deem it fine to make fun of P-Hilt behind her back and in front of her too, before cutting to a commercial for her new reality show. You can’t have it both way, kiddo. You can’t screw the pooch and then give it a tiara. It’s just pathetic, for all us.
In closing, I want to offer you some sage advice. (This is the part of the evening when I haul you out of the gutter and help you to your car and try to remind you about that time you lent me your personal copy of “Franny and Zooey”, of who you once were and could be again.) Show videos. Cut your reality show programming to just The Hills, True Life and The Real World- tell those Sweet Sixteen year olds to take a hike. I’m sure Carson will take over TRL again, he doesn’t seem too busy. Start making cartoons again. In fact, Daria’s probably old enough to take over as head of programming. Be too cool for Miley Cyrus.
In short- trying seeing us instead of a buck.
Sincerely,
Me
Culture Clique 