Maybe I’m too old to still be watching the MTV Video Music Awards, but I couldn’t help but watch this Sunday as the VMAs took over the Palms Casino in Las Vegas -a grave mistake. I think I can unequivocally say that it was one of the worst things I’ve seen on television in a long time.
I spent the first hour (yes, I actually watched more than an hour of it) trying to figure out who the host was, what happened to the podiums, and why they kept cutting to random hotel rooms for 30 seconds at a time.
I wasn’t the only one having trouble; I don’t think anyone really understood it. There was a main room with a main stage and lit up tables that served as dance floors for the so-called performers, and the celebrity audience was kept almost completely in the dark. All I could make out was a grill or two. At times chosen for no apparent reason during the show, they cut to various “party suites” where bands were shown mid-song for about 30 second periods before cutting away. I’m still trying to understand the logic behind doing this. I guess they took the brilliant format from TRL-have a show completely about music, but allow each song a chorus and half of a verse of air time.
The only theme I could discern from the show was some kind of strange, ’80s, robotic technology motif. The graphics were made to look like they came from old VCRs or TVs, I think. (I had a lot of trouble figuring this one out too). Hasn’t this ’80s resurgence fad gone far enough? It started with the Aviator glasses, then came the pink popped collars and now T-Pain’s enormous success ought to signal the end. (I actually heard Sway, the Walter Cronkite of MTV, make the statement that “T-Pain has monopolized the robotic-sounding-singing-voice-in-hip-hop market.” I hear he’s in contention for a Pulitzer Prize this year.)
The show did have a few high points though: Kanye West and Soulja Boy doing the Superman, Sarah Silverman’s vicious rip on Britney and Paris, and Miss Teen South Carolina’s 15 minutes ending. In a perfect example of MTV’s incompetence, the most entertaining event was completely missed by their cameras: Kid Rock and Tommy Lee’s fight. The show was so bad that seeing two washed-up former rock stars slapping each other around over a hot blonde from 10 years ago would’ve been interesting.
But it wasn’t that the show was extremely boring as much as that it was extremely bad. It was confusing, odd, poorly produced and poorly directed. There wasn’t a host-which took me a while to figure out, and the performances were absolutely awful. Are Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco and Gym Class Heroes really the best rock ‘n’ roll has to offer these days? And should I even mention the Britney Spears performance? All I’ll say is that Kanye West had it right when he said the other day that she was exploited by MTV. It’s obvious that she wasn’t in the physical or mental shape to make her so-called comeback, and MTV probably wouldn’t have gotten half of their ratings, or the press coverage, without her opening the show.
It wasn’t the only questionable tactic MTV used. George Maloof Jr., who runs the Maloof family-owned Palms Casino, told the Associated Press that the people seen gambling in the casino during the show were actors cast by MTV who were “gambling” with fake chips. It’s also been reported by some sources that the “party suite” performances were not only carefully directed and not as impromptu as they appeared but that they were pre-recorded days prior to the award show.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise though. This year’s Video Music Awards were just the latest example of what has happened to MTV. MTV was once a form of alternative media where music videos were played constantly. It was once the safe haven for artistic expression from the corporatization of the music world.
Now, MTV has become that world. It has become more concerned with the industry of music than the music itself. Music videos have virtually disappeared from the channel and have instead been replaced by mindless reality shows, most of which have no relation to music.
Here’s just a sampling of Music Television’s current programming: “Engaged and Underage,” “My Super Sweet 16,” “The Hills,” “Newport Harbor: The Real OC” (because we really needed two different spin-offs of a reality show based on a horrific FOX drama), “The Life of Ryan,” “Date My Mom,” “Wanna Come In?” and “Parental Control.”
What’s next? Ladue: The Real West County? How do shows consisting of rich kids staring at each other in awkward silences for minutes at a time air on a channel originally dedicated toward music videos?
The truth is that it isn’t just the VMAs that have become absolutely unwatchable; it is the entire channel. It’s time to face the music: MTV is dead.
Altin Sila is senior in Arts & Sciences and a senior staff columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].