Even before there was television advertising, even before there
was television itself, there was another mass media phenomenon
that preconditioned young people for the nonrational, audiovisual
experience of music videos: the cartoon features of Walt Disney,
especially his features such as {Snow White,} {Cinderella,}
{Sleeping Beauty,} {Pinocchio,} the evil {Fantasia,} and more
recently, {The Little Mermaid} and {Beauty and the Beast.}
For more than 50 years now, parents have taken millions of their
young to see Walt Disney productions, believing them to be wholesome
representations of ``American values.'' All the while, they
have been subjecting their children and themselves to some of
the most vile and effective mass brainwashing in modern history.
It was Disney who perfected the combination of music and literal
imagery, that eventually evolved into the music video of MTV;
many of his early cartoons and the various musical numbers in
his animated features should be properly considered as the first
``music videos.''
Between 1935, when {Snow White} was issued, and the present,
more than a billion children worldwide have seen {one or more}
Disney animated features in movie theaters or on television;
tens of millions more have seen them at home through purchased
or rented videos in the last decade.
Sound and Color
Disney was the first person to wed sound to cartoons, and the
first to have cartoon characters sing. These innovations took
place in a series of animated shorts, starting with the invention
of his most famous character, Mickey Mouse, and his first sound
cartoon, {Steamboat Willie.} Others had tried to coordinate
sound with animation. Disney demanded absolute synchronization:
His characters had to {be} real.
He further demanded the {rhythmic} synchronization of action,
images, and music--something that no one had ever tried before.
Picture and sound were to create a {mental image} that would
seem real, he said, to give his characters an {emotional dimension}.
I want people to relate to that mouse as if he were a relative,
he told his animators. They must cry when he is hurt and laugh
when he is happy, Disney said.
Disney was also an early advocate of the use of color to achieve
emotional effect and a hyperrealism. Color was not merely an
add-on, something to throw in as a gimmick to amuse audiences,
as some people on his own staff had claimed. It was essential
to produce a sensation that overwhelmed, where the sense of
reality is suspended. In such a {dreamlike state}, people were
more willing to accept the vivid imagery of his cartoons as
real.
Disney found a 1931 short, {Flowers and Trees,} which featured
sequences of dancing trees and daisies, ``dead'' and even ``stupid''
when he looked at the black and white rushes. He ordered color
added, for the first time in a cartoon, and ``everything came
to life.'' It was a smash box office success.
Having ``seen the light,'' he pushed for more use of intense,
bright colors, and dramatic lighting, using flashes of color.
In the making of {Pinocchio,} Disney drove for bolder and bolder
use of colors to achieve psychological ``shock effects.'' The
bolder the colors, the more intense the images, the more people
would remember the images and the longer they would retain those
memories. His view, he indicated, was that the images first
seen in early childhood should make such an impression that
they should be {retained for life}.
Central to each of the Disney animated films are carefully crafted
song sequences. Each contains highly colorful images that accompany
the song's lyrics.
As his animators have explained, the idea was not to simply
{illustrate} the words in the songs, although there is an element
of that in what they did. They were told by Disney to create
{images that conveyed the emotional content} of those words
and music. The images were a {guide} to what he wanted people
to remember about the song-idea. If the song were sad, for
example, little animals would be shown crying, so that the young
people watching would thus be effectively told to be {sad}.
If there were a happy moment, then the visual images were to
convey simple happiness. If it were a love song, animals would
be shown acting lovingly toward a mate. If it were about something
frightening, then the images were to convey terror in other
creatures in nature. All this was to be done, while flashing
back and forth between the character singing, and {emotional
representation} of his song.
In this way, through combination of the music, words, and images,
Disney sought to relate to people directly on the {emotional},
nonreasoning level. His cartoon features were not to make people
think, but to feel, something that he said would ``unify'' his
audience of parents and children at an infantile emotional level.
Disney's concepts were completely coherent with those of the
brainwashers of the Frankfurt School like Theodor Adorno, who
spoke of using the media and its power to convey emotion-laden
images to force a {retardation} of adult society.
``If all the world thought and acted like children,'' Disney
once said, expressing his lifelong credo, ``we'd never have
any trouble. The pity is that even kids have to grow up.''
Romantic Music
With a very limited training in music playing the violin, Disney,
unlike many who worked with him, recognized the similarities
between romantic classical music and the {romanticism} of the
more popular musical forms, such as the songs of Bing Crosby
or Frank Sinatra. Through much of his career, he struggled to
insert classical romantic themes into his works, because he
understood that they were a more powerful vehicle for carrying
emotional messages.
One of his first popular cartoon series was called {Silly Symphonies}
and its first installment was an eerie representation of skeletons
dancing to Saint Saens's {Dance Macabre.} Later, parts of the
series previously mentioned included the Technicolor {Flowers
and Trees}, in which classical themes were used to help bring
natural objects to humanlike forms and actions. His later {Sleeping
Beauty} used Tchaikovsky's ballet score, adding words which
are now imbedded in the memories of several generations.
Disney's most famous experiment in this ``classical-romantic''
form was his full-length feature {Fantasia,} which, in its most
famous sequence, depicted Mickey Mouse as an apprentice to an
evil sorcerer, in control of the the universe, in an apparent
pact with the devil. The film, whose music was conducted by
Leopold Stokowski, also contained a version of Stravinsky's
{Afternoon of the Faun,} which the composer praised. To Disney's
great disappointment, it was a box office failure on its release
in 1940. It did not achieve major success until its rerelease
into the middle of the 1960s counterculture, when it became
a pop-cult item.
A Sick Mind
Disney was, if nothing else, an egomaniac, who hated his fellow
human beings whom his own insecurity demanded he see as his
inferior. In his most egotistical moments, he boasted about
how he had created eternal life, through his cartoon characters.
His ego was so great, that he refused to allow anyone to take
credit for their work at his studio, to the chagrin of his staff.
All his animated pictures gave credit to him as their sole inspiration
and creator. This egoism built up his popular image, causing
him to boast that he was better known and more popular than
any other American, living or dead.
As is the case with such egomaniacs, though an outwardly self-confident
person, Disney was tremendously insecure. At least once, in
a bout of insecurity, he attempted suicide, only to have his
life saved by his wife. It is unclear whether he ever sought
psychoanalytic help, although he was fond of offering his pompous
psychoanalytic opinions, using Freudian terms, of other people.
Disney once remarked that he much preferred the company of little
animals, whom he drew and identified with, to humans. The human
race, he stated, is inherently bad, containing within itself
the seeds of its own self-destruction. Having no sense of Christian
love, Disney admitted that he found himself unable to love other
humans and had trouble relating to women.
Brought up in a fundamentalist Protestant home, by a cold and
remote father and a weak, overly emotional mother, Disney developed
a worldview which saw a simplistic battle of wills between Manichean
categories of good and evil, with a remote God having little
or no effect on its outcome. No one ever remembers him praying
to God, and although his family went to church, when he did
so, it was apparently in order to be seen in church by others.
For Disney, things happened by force of Nietzschean will, with
the intervention of fate and magic. It was in these forces,
and his own will, that Disney believed in, if he believed in
anything at all but the utter wretchedness of his fellow man.
His anthem, which he chose as theme for his popular ABC and
then, later, NBC, television series, was the smash hit from
his film {Pinocchio,} ``When You Wish Upon a Star.''
Mickey Mouse, several people have remarked, {was} Walt Disney,
and the scenario developed by him for the Sorcerer's Apprentice
sequence was a statement of Disney's own self-image. Disney
saw himself as a modern-day version of Goethe's Faust character,
who mortgages his soul to the devil to achieve his desires;
only Disney saw himself cheating fate through his guile and
will, winning his egoistic battle with his personal devils of
insecurity, guilt, and self-hatred.
In that regard, the {Fantasia} sequence involving {Night on
Bald Mountain,} with its terrifying Faustian images and Mickey's
eventual victory over the devil character, is a representation
of Disney ``beating the odds,'' something that he prided himself
in doing, even if the risk was great.
If Disney, as the modern mythology of our popular culture tells
it, was the symbol of the American dream, then that dream is
an anti-Christian nightmare.
A supporter of right-wing causes, he would have been at home
in an earlier time with the Freemasons rf the Ku Klux Klan,
who had fallen out of favor with popular opinion in most of
the country during the New Deal. Like the Klan, Disney hated
minorities. He wanted nothing to do with either Jews or Blacks;
if he had any working for him, it was only out of ``necessity''
in his movie-making business. Under pressure, he would routinely
launch into a diatribe against ``those filthy Jews.'' (And though
his anti-Semitism was common knowledge in Hollywood and would
frequently flare up in public, he was never once the target
of attack by the Anti-Defamation League).
He despised working people and trade unions, calling them ``communistic
rabble.'' He never allowed a woman to have any position of authority
and saw them only as ``baby-making machines'' to keep the affairs
of the home straight for the menfolk. And although he was celebrated
as the maker of antifascist war propaganda cartoons, before
the war he had made a special trip to Italy to receive an award
from Benito Mussolini, whose policies he admired and who was
a fan of Donald Duck.
This is the twisted man to whom America entrusted the minds
of our impressionable youth. His cartoons present the world
as a mirror of his distorted anti-Christian outlook. It was
through Disney images, often conveyed by song, that young people
in this country and around the world were first presented concepts
of morality which were most notable for their absence of a concept
of God.
The simplistic notions of good and evil presented by Disney
resonated with the general {perceptions} of American popular
culture and ideology. Americans called themselves religious,
but as Disney understood, most knew and cared little about the
profound religious ideas that had shaped Judeo-Christian civilization.
They preferred simplistic moralism to profound ideas. But though
they could see nothing different or wrong in Disney, America's
already weakened moral sense was under new attack.
In {Pinocchio} for example, children see the concept of a conscience
developed in the character of Jiminy Cricket, sitting apart
from the wooden puppet character of Pinocchio. One's conscience
has no relation to any higher Being, to God, or Judeo-Christian
teachings. God and religion are too complicated for children,
Disney, who sent his family off to church every Sunday, is said
to have remarked; adults don't even understand them.
This separation of the conscience from the self is a projection
of the Freudian antireligious outlook then being popularized.
Jiminy Cricket is an illustration of Freud's {super-ego}, with
his admonition to ``Stop! Think! Don't Do It!'' If these same
ideas had been presented as mere Freudian claptrap, they would
have been attacked by various religious institutions. Presented
to millions of young children by Disney, it was praised by various
church groups.
Throughout his animated films, there are images of young and
highly vulnerable animals, who are victimized by humans, often
with tragic consequences. Disney said that he thought that a
powerful emotional bond could be made between the child viewer
and the animal on the screen, since children will {feel} the
vulnerability. As we have explained in our discussion of Mickey
Mouse, this bond, established when very young, helps make an
adult susceptible to the brainwashing of the environmental movement.
Children are also shown as victims of scheming adults, often
relatives; when they are not being victimized, they are shown
being unfairly restrained in experiencing the joy of childhood.
This is in part projection, since Disney thought himself victimized
as a child by his overbearing father. For all his stated concern
with what he was among the first to call ``family values,''
there are few, if any, representations of a whole family unit,
and depictions of strong, loving fathers interacting with strong,
loving mothers. In fact there is very little Christian love
at all, only romantic love and love for little animals and similar
creatures.
Again, presented in a different context, in a different way,
such views might appear extreme. In Disney features, those who
might attack them are disarmed by the ``charming'' or ``cute''
presentation.
And, there are the repeated references to fairies, both good
and bad, and the intervention of their magical powers to shape
reality. A standard Disney plot has a vulnerable character,
like Snow White, caught in a battle between good and evil spirits;
in such battles, good usually won out in the end. This happy
ending (with the exception of {Bambi}, which failed to achieve
box office success) was the hallmark of Disney, and caused many
to see in his movies a ``force for good'' and a ``positive outlook.''
In discussing the effects of comic book culture, Dr. Frederic
Wertham said the creation of heroes whose powers were magical
and who had no relationship to God undermined the belief of
young people in religion and in its moral principles. It is
not enough to depict forces of ``good'' and ``evil,'' he said,
because there is no basis for moral judgment of what is good
and evil without God, because there are no Universal Truths
without Him. Why should we replace moral values of 2,000 years
of civilization with some representation in a comic book? Dr.
Wertham asked.
Or in a Disney film, for that matter.
Music Video
For Disney, music was key to creating his powerful illusions.
In each film, starting with his 1931 {Three Little Pigs} and
its ``Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'' he tried to create
one or more ``hit tune'' music video-like sequences. Even if
they don't like the movie, he said, they'll remember it because
of the song sequences.
Songs like ``Whistle While You
Work'' (sung by the dwarves in {Snow White}), ``When You Wish
Upon a Star'' (sung by Jiminy Cricket in{ Pinocchio}), and countless
others became smash hits. Disney, in his time, sold more records
than the Beatles, with the relationship between song and movie
similar to what we have described between a music video on MTV
and a CD.
I want you now to think back to when you were a child, to when
your parents took you to see your first Walt Disney animated
film. It was a big event, that first viewing of {Snow White}
or {Cinderella}, in a darkened theater, surrounded by many children
your own age. Try to recall the bursts of bright colors and
the sounds of the movies, their musical scores and songs. Without
too much effort, you may even be able to start humming one of
the tunes. As you hum, you can recall, rather vividly, the image
of the cartoon characters, or at least the colorful ambience,
in which you first heard that song. It is a seemingly pleasant
memory, taking you back to a time in your life when there were
few cares.
Now, if you are my age and have had some experience in the counterculture
of the 1960s, think back to that troubled period. Think back
to your own experiences with the drug culture or to your friend's
recounting of a ``drug trip'' on LSD or a similar hallucinogen
or even an intense experience with marijuana.
The first thing that comes to mind in such a description is
the {colors, the bright colors}. They were {cartoonlike, hyper-real}.
But where did that sensation and perception of bright color
come from? From the drugs themselves? Not really: The drugs
could only enhance the perception of those colors which were
in your memory.
{I shall suggest to you that those colors came from Disney's
animated films, that they were encoded in your memory at a very
early age, in part by their combination with emotionally charged
musical-visual imagery. They have stayed there in the recesses
of your mind. Drug experiences merely caused those sensations
to be recalled, along with the sense of infantile, emotional
pleasure associated with them.}
I am not saying that Disney, who died in 1966, was directly
involved in promoting the drug culture. I am saying that {his
nonrational, brightly colored emotional imagery helped create
the preconditions in large masses of Americans for the creation
of the drug-rock-sex counterculture, beginning in the 1960s}.
When you passed through puberty, you started to look at Disney
movies, especially the animated films, as corny and sentimental.
They were ``kid's stuff'' and you were a young adult. But,
nonetheless, buried in your memory were those images and more
importantly a way of thinking--``think with your heart'' as
Jiminy Cricket says in the song.
That emotionalism stays with you today, as your principal mode
of thinking, which is why some of you may be very uncomfortable
about what we are saying in this series.
Now as you grow into middle age, Disney and his ``heartfelt
thinking'' remains all around you, thanks in part to television.
Disney was the first major studio to use television for the
promotion of its product, starting in 1953; his ``Walt Disney
Presents'' on ABC and later the ``The Mickey Mouse Club,'' helped
``make'' then-struggling network. Disney now uses the television
to market and promote the mass distribution of videos of those
early animation features, including new animated films such
as {Beauty and the Beast.}
Americans, still mindlessly believing the myth of the ``wholesome''
Walt Disney, lap up the cassettes by the tens of millions, place
their children in front of the sets and turn them on. The children
stare blankly, dissolving their young minds into the flashes
of color and music. They often watch the same cassette hundreds
of times. Think what must be happening to their cognitive powers!
``I don't ever want to grow up,'' sings Peter Pan, as he flies
through the air. Generations of Americans cling to their childhoods,
while their children cling to their MTV.
In an appreciation of MTV on its tenth birthday in 1991, {The
New York Times} pop ``critic'' Jon Pareles wrote of successful
music videos: ``As a form, music video is closest to advertising
and cartoons, hence the brightly garbed cartoonish images of
many hard-rockers, rapper and pop singers....''
Welcome to the ``Wonderful World of Walt Disney!''
The Children of Sesame Street
In an earlier section of this report, we described the mind-damaging
effects of the popular children's show on public television,
``Sesame Street.'' For our purposes here, let's focus in on
one aspect of that show to indicate how it, like Disney, helped
prepare a generation of kids for MTV.
From its inception more than 20 years ago, a central feature
of the daily ``Sesame Street'' fare is the use of music, usually
rock music or rap, as a form of ``teaching'' mechanism. Have
you ever taken a good look at one of those sequences?
Take for example the ones that ``teach'' simple addition. There's
a shot of a ``live'' person singing; then the background changes
colors, and a number appears on the screen. The number, itself
a bright color against another bright color, starts to move
and otherwise take on some human form, with legs and arms. More
color, and another number, also in this semi-human form, appears.
The two numbers start dancing together to a pulsing rock beat,
one that you can clap your hands to. The screen flashes another
color background.
Then some live people and/or puppets appear, also dancing; they
count their numbers and start dancing, as if in a club or disco.
The number that is supposed to represent the addition of two
previous numbers now appears over the screen.
The same combination of video music, color and video-animation
are used in most so-called teaching segments. Sometimes numbers
dance; other times its letters or words.
The child sits at the set, clapping his hands to the beat of
the rock music. The colors grab his attention and keep it focussed
on the screen.
This brainwashing has received awards as an ``innovative'' educational
process. But for our purposes here, just concentrate on the
description of the video presentation. It is a {music video},
using the same forms and principles developed by Disney and
later enhanced by modern video technology, as modelled on MTV.
It is only one small step removed from the so-called ``Kid-Vid,''
music videos designed for young children, featuring rock and
kid-rock entertainers. In fact, PBS produces and distributes
a series of ``Sesame Street'' music videos, featuring rock music
and the show's characters, such as Big Bird. The numbers featured
in the videos have become part of the very successful ``Sesame
Street'' concert tours.
By the way, there really isn't anything all that innovative
about ``Sesame Street'' and its dancing numbers, accompanied
by live performers. Walt Disney, when he was first starting
out back in the 1920s, produced the first animated shorts using
numbers and letters in motion, even using them with live actors,
as advertising promos.
``Sesame Street,'' which was viewed by tens of millions of children
during the decade prior to the creation of MTV in 1981, was
a feeder to the new mass brainwashing channel, placing the music
video in front of children's eyes and establishing a mode of
thinking in video imagery in their young minds. In that way,
``Sesame Street'' was and {is} a recruiter for that one-eyed
church of Satan, MTV.
A Little Bit of History
It's just a little more than a decade since MTV was launched
on July 31, 1981, with the words of one of its originators,
John Lack, ``Ladies and Gentlemen: Rock and Roll!''
As was the case with Disney, a popular mythology has been developed
to both tell the history of MTV and explain its success. Its
common elements are that it was the brainchild of Lack, the
aforementioned Robert Pittman, and others who forced it on a
reluctant entertainment industry, including its parent company,
Warner-Amex Cable Communications. By dint of the will of these
{Wunderkinder} (most were in their twenties and thirties), the
industry was forced to stay with the bold and dangerous experiment
until it caught on towards the middle of the 1980s. Through
it all, they resisted attacks from conservatives and from competitors,
and even from reluctant cable providers, who were at first unwilling
to sign on for the 24-hour music channel.
As with the case with most mythologies, there is an element
of truth in what is being said. It is true that Lack, Pittman
and several of their cohorts made MTV happen, so to speak.
But that ``happening'' was all carefully pre-planned.
Before there was MTV, there was a target audience: teenagers.
Demographic studies had shown a marked decline in national television
watching, per capita, in the United States, and it was primarily
because teenagers weren't watching as much as in previous decades.
{We shall maintain that the creation of MTV was rooted in the
desire to ``hook'' that age group--12- to 20-year-olds--on a
television brainwashing format, using popular music to do it.}
That it cohered with the interests of record companies to rescue
themselves from financial losses was a fortunate coincidence;
it made the provision of free ``video clips'' for the new channel
possible, thereby cheapening the cost of the venture. But even
if there had been additional costs, even if the costs of the
music videos had to be paid in part by the so-called music channel,
the creation of MTV or a similar channel would have taken place
to achieve the desired effect of addicting teenagers to television.
As it was, the channel was started after significant profiling
of the target population to determine what would ``hook them.''
Even before Pittman became involved, Warner was experimenting
with a new children's cable network, Nickelodeon, which would
feature a music video show, ``Pop Clips.'' Pittman, bringing
his expertise as a veteran of radio programming and marketing,
employed ``psychographic'' research to determine what the format
of a possible new music network should be. It included using
Warner's experimental interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus,
Ohio to obtain responses to music video programming {before}
the launch of the new network.
{Prior} to MTV's introduction, its creators had sufficient test
and profile data to {prove} that the effort would ultimately
succeed. The 24-hour format was selected from the results of
this brainwasher's profile. MTV's initial mass promotion and
even the development of its famous symbol, with its large ``M''
overwhelming the smaller ``tv,'' was a product of such research
and feedback.
Pittman understood that his cable channel could not compete
with prime time television, nor was it desirable to try to do
so. More than 70 percent of all television viewing takes place
outside prime time. MTV, armed with the profile of its youthful
audience, specifically sought to reach people outside the ``7
p.m. to 11 p.m. prime time,'' especially aiming for ``after
school hours'' and late-night viewers. That is one of the reasons
that the network was launched with a 24-hour format.
An early criticism of the MTV format by some media ``experts''
was that it lacked ``coherence,'' that it was preferable to
``block'' various types of videos (punk, pop, hard rock, etc.)
into coherent segments, perhaps even shows. Those creating MTV,
with their psychographics in hand, saw this as ineffective.
MTV would be ``rotational,'' it would have a playlist, like
a radio station, but there would be no effort to ``block'' the
music into coherent groupings. Pittman argued that this would
attract {any} potential viewer, who would know that his favorite
groups were likely to be played in the course of an hour or
two, but wouldn't be sure exactly when. The young people were
to be ``hooked,'' on their expectations and kept viewing by
the brainwashing quality of the music video format.
``When you are dealing with a music culture,'' Pittman told
{The New York Times}, ``music serves as something beyond entertainment.
It is really the peg that people use to identify themselves.
It is representative of their values and culture.''
To appeal to what the psychographics indicated was the broadest
range of the target audience, MTV chose an album-oriented rock
(AOR) format. This was later to draw fire from various African-American
artists and others who saw a tinge of racism in the choice,
but Pittman argued that he was indeed going for a white, teenage,
rock-addicted audience and that the so-called forms of urban
or black music did not appeal to them, any more than country
and western did. To distinguish MTV from radio, the format was
to include a high percentage of new artists or new songs, rather
than simply ``top 40.'' All format decisions were based on poll
results.
MTV has never significantly altered that format. It has allowed
some more black music, including allowing popular rappers onto
its playlists. Its target it still mostly white teenagers; African-Americans
can get their dose of video brainwashing from the many ``black
oriented'' video music shows in syndication or on cable.
After its main channel was already well entrenched, MTV branched
out to set up a separate channel in 1986 for the 35- to 50-year-old
rockers, VH-1 (Video Hits-1), which some people call ``old folks
video.'' It keeps that generation, the older baby boomers, living
in their infantile past, featuring clips of artists from the
1960s-early 1970s, as well as ``soft rock'' songs now popular.
As one MTV spokesman said, ``we have avoided polluting the image
of our main channel. It's still young and vibrant, and full
of the wilder things.''
VH-1, like MTV itself, was set up only after extensive ``psychographic
profiling,'' which showed that it ``couldn't miss.''
Why Previous Attacks Failed
Much has been also made of how MTV ``made it,'' despite being
ignored by much of the establishment media when it started.
{The Times} for example was conspicuously absent from the ``kickoff
event,'' even though MTV was then headquartered just across
the Hudson River in New Jersey. But, if MTV were to succeed,
it had to {appear} to be antiestablishment, or at least outside
the ``mainstream.''
There is absolutely no question that MTV is about as Establishment
as you can get. It's money came first from Dope, Inc.-linked
Warner Communications and American Express, and more recently
from the international media giant Viacom and its billionaire
owner, Sumner Redstone, who has pushed MTV into a global network.
Every step of the way, its operation was subsidized by New York
and other money-center banks, who financed the operations of
these companies.
It's run as a business, and has always been so. It has never
lost money, and continues to rake in substantial profits and
returns for its investors and owners. In 1991, the last year
for which figures are available, MTV had revenues of $243 million
and an operating income of $88 million, with a rate of profit
increase of more than 20%; profits are expected to be even higher
this year, despite the depression. And, as we have said, it
has made {billions of dollars} for the record industry.
The approach of Pittman, Lack, and their successors to keep
MTV in its ``narrowcast'' mould, trying to reach the largest
demographic teenage audience and keep them hooked, has drawn
fire for ``elitism'' from within some of the more ``avant garde''
elements in the pantheon of rock.
Such criticism never concerned Pittman and his bosses; the only
``critics'' they cared about were those young people who were
being addicted to MTV. And the polls showed that the majority
of young viewers thought MTV was what they wanted.
For the first few years, MTV seemed immune to the attacks launched,
mostly by the religious right, on satanism, sex, and violence
in the youth culture and popular music. It wasn't until the
middle of the decade, after nearly four years of its continuous
broadcast of such videos, that the attacks began to coalesce
in the national media. But by that time, the various opponents
of MTV were dealing with an {established institution}.
Some of these opponents, most notably the National Coalition
on Television Violence (NCTV) and its head, Dr. Thomas Radecki,
make cogent observations about the evil teachings of the one-eyed
church of Satan. ``MTV and Warner push violent sadist and hate
programming into the American home...,'' Dr. Radecki stated
in the early 1980s. MTV's message to American youth, he said
in a newspaper interview, is ``violence is normal and okay,
that hostile sexual relations are commonplace and acceptable,
that heroes engage in torture and murder for fun.''
``I have already seen several cases of young people in my psychiatric
practice,'' said Dr. Radecki, ``with severe problems of anger
and anti-social behavior who are immersed into a subculture
of violent rock music. They each own several tee-shirts with
violent images of various heavy metal groups on them and wear
types of metal studded jewelry and barbed wire necklaces. It
is plainly obvious that they are heavily immersed in fantasies
of violence that are affecting their way of thinking and their
behavior in an anti-social direction.''
But, despite these statements, Dr. Radecki and his group see
nothing wrong MTV youth culture {in general}, restricting his
comments to only the most openly violent and Satanic of rock
forms. They never talk about the promotion of nonrational, anti-Christian
thinking by the music video form. In fact, his group has given
awards to various rock groups and their videos for promoting
``pro-social themes.'' He has called for MTV to air more of
such videos, though they promote the counterculture, and equally
anti-Christian values of environmentalism.
In the middle of the decade, as well, ``Tipper'' Gore, the wife
of the Vice President Al Gore, then the senior senator from
Tennessee, became involved in a crusade against pornographic
and violent rock lyrics. This ultimately led to an industry-accepted
system that merely labelled certain CDs and videos as containing
objectionable material, which appears to have {increased} their
sales.
But Gore and her other so-called Washington Wives, never really
attacked MTV. She once told a congressional hearing that she
found nothing wrong with most of what was on, but complained
only of some of the more lurid items, like Prince's videos.
She recently told {The Times} that she actually likes rock and
roll and was a ``big fan'' of the Rolling Stones and Greatful
Dead!
It is the moral and mental weakness of its opponents that assured
MTV that it could ultimately do as it pleased. By failing to
attack the underpinnings of the MTV ideology, the right, both
religious and otherwise, has merely helped feed the mythology
that MTV is antiestablishment. Recent polls show that American
youth are more firmly wedded to that idea now than at any time
since MTV's inception; the more it is impotently attacked, the
more converts and power it gains.
MTV, the church of Satan, is winning the fight for the minds
of America because no one has challenged the brainwashing ideology
behind the concept of the music video. Instead, one finds even
some nominal religious groups {adapting} MTV's methods to their
ends.
``Besides being the strong silent type, Jesus is a hunk in an
Armani-like jacket and tee-shirt,'' reports {The Times} style
section. ``Or at least that is how he appears in `Out of the
Tombs' a video that translates Mark 5:1-20 into liquid sights
and sounds of MTV style imagery. For nine minutes, Jesus and
man tormented by evil and bad dental work drift in and out of
a hip (and hypnotic) wash of rock tracks, gentle-as-a-breeze
narration and quick scenes of graffiti-marred urban landscapes,
sunburst skies and the bowels of a gritty tenement.
``It's all late 20th century stuff, flashy, urbane, and executed
with sophistication. The demon even wears a turned-around baseball
cap and high tops.''
``We wanted to reach teenagers and perhaps young adults with
this translation of the story,'' {The Times} quotes Fern Lee
Hageborn, the project manager for the American Bible Society's
multimedia project, which produced the video. They had reached
the conclusion that a video in the style of MTV was the most
appropriate way to do this. Satan must be laughing at us.
The Brave New World
``We made a conscious decision not to grow old with our audience,''
says Robert Pittman, now a Time-Warner, Inc. executive, ``So
we decided to change for change's sake.''
Pittman was referring to the decision this year by MTV to enter,
in a big way, the political election news fray with a multimillion
dollar coverage of the election campaign and an effort to mobilize
voters in the 18-24 year old segment of its audience with a
get out the vote campaign called ``Choose or Lose.''
MTV was not simply adding some more political news to its nightly
and weekly ``rock news show,'' that sparse political news coverage
that the network deemed of interest to its viewers--abortion
issues, censorship, racial strife, sex scandals, etc. MTV was
to try to cover the campaign {as if by a series of music videos,
posing as news coverage}. Its segments featured sound and music,
and music video-like camera angles and cuts, aimed at achieving
maximum emotional impact.
``We are trying to speak a language that our viewers understand,''
said one of the news producers. ``We are going to reach people
who speak the language of MTV.''
Interspersed with the {image} reports, were interviews with
political newsmakers, mostly done by the network's 25-year-old
political reporter Tabitha Soren, who speaks and ask questions
in a short clipped style, almost like a rapper, and who likes
to dress in men's clothes. For political ``floor'' reporters
for the staid GOP convention, MTV hired Ted Nugent of the heavy
metal band Damn Yankees and Treach, a black rapper from the
group Naughty by Nature, who roamed the floor, seeking out fundamentalists
and others who were more than willing to appear on Satan's network.
At the Democratic convention, Megadeath's Dave Mustaine could
be seen interviewing delegates from the deep South.
Soren, who had commentaries from New Jersey Senator and former
basketball star Bill Bradley at the Democratic Convention and
House Minority leader Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich at the GOP
convention, was herself the subject of enormous media attention.
All this helped build the credibility of MTV's coverage.
``We were trying to make people {feel} things,'' said one MTV
person. ``We wanted them to connect some images and faces with
some ideas, so that they could relate to those ideas. We weren't
trying to preach.'' It was best the tradition of music video.
The average viewer of MTV watches for only 16 minutes at a time.
The network's executives plan all programming with the foreknowledge
that this limited attention span is what they have to work with.
MTV says it plans to continue this type of new coverage, offering
its young audience a ``full service'' network. Meanwhile, the
major networks have already taken to producing MTV-like music
videos within local news, and even an occasional national newscast
or news magazine show to deal with political issues.
MTV doesn't change, said Pittman, but as the young MTV generation
grows older ``society is going to become more like MTV.''
On June 16, Bill Clinton became the first presidential candidate
to submit to MTV's ``Choose or Lose'' interview show. (Later
Ross Perot would do the same; President Bush refused the offer.)
It was a thoroughly stage-managed affair, with a carefully pre-selected
young audience that would make both MTV and Clinton look good.
MTV received both the praise and the promise of the man who
was then President-elect of the United States that he would
``stay in touch'' with both the network and its audience. ``I
like MTV,'' he said, praising the work it was doing in getting
young people to register and vote with its ``Choose or Lose''
campaign.
Cut to commercial for the ``Choose or Lose'' campaign, one that
aired hundreds of times on MTV: The screen explodes with a flash
of blinding light and a riff of hard rock music, with words
over-dubbed, about the Bill of Rights. The band is the rock
group Aerosmith.
``Freedom,'' declares lead guitarist Joe Perry, ``is the right
to use handcuffs for friendly purposes.'' As he speaks, he licks
whipped cream off the chest of a buxom blonde. He continues:
``Freedom to wear whipped cream as clothing.'' Two blondes,
scantily clad in American flag suits, hold up the rim of a giant
condom. As the rock music blares, a voice off camera intones:
``Freedom to wear a rubber {all day}--if necessary.''
``Hey,'' yells lead singer Steve Tyler, ``Protect your freedoms--Vote!''
``Even for the wrong person,'' adds bass player Tom Hamilton
laughing.
MTV and its VH-1 will be available in the White House in 1993,
as well as in 250 million homes worldwide. Satan is laughing
so loudly that you can hear him. Just turn down your television
set and listen.
That's all for now. When we return, we'll show you how your
brainwashers intend to put you into your own, personal ``virtual''
world, where you will no longer merely watch, but become a part
of an interactive fantasy more real and powerful than any drug
experience. Welcome to the brave new worlds of ``virtual reality.''
