There is probably no greater sign of success than a brand name becoming synonymous with the product itself. For instance, almost no one ever asks for a tissue these days; what they say is "Kleenex." Likewise, plenty of people will "Xerox" papers even if the copier is made by Cannon.
So it is that for millions of Americans, MTV is music video -- a place where images of Green Day, Snoop Doggy Dogg and the like flicker across the screen in a steady stream of song and dance. It's a name, a product, a concept everyone knows and understands.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always work to the advantage of MTV, which is accused -- unfairly -- of inundating viewers with sexually provocative and violent images.
Recently, New York policeman James E. Davis, who last year successfully campaigned to have realistic-looking plastic guns removed from toy store shelves, announced he was organizing a boycott to get violent videos off MTV between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. "MTV is not being responsible," Davis said. "It is the vehicle that some rappers use for violence that is perpetuating itself in our community."
MTV executives responded by pointing out that the channel not only has standards that prohibit excessive violence (as well as drug references and explicit sexual content), but has sponsored an aggressive campaign of anti-violence ads and news specials -- dubbed "Enough Is Enough." It was also suggested that Davis had confused MTV with other video channels, since MTV had, in fact, never shown some of the videos Davis has accused them of airing.
It is true that the channel is no longer the monopoly it once was. In addition to its sister operations, VH1 and MTV Latino, there are several other full-time music video channels eager to chip away at MTV's market share -- including the Box, Country Music Television, MOR Music and Canada's Much Music -- as well as a host of part-time operations like BET and TNN. Some of these operations have looser broadcast standards than MTV does.
Still, the perception persists. Because MTV is so intimately identified with music video, the assumption is that its programming epitomizes the genre's worst excesses -- scantily clad women, malevolent heavy metal bands, gun-toting rappers. a result, it's easy for people to assume MTV's programming is sexist and exploitative, or to insist, as Davis has, that "MTV is playing violent images throughout the day."
Is MTV really as bad as all that?
Perhaps the best way to find out would be to watch it. So that's what I did, logging some 16 hours of viewing over a four-day period recently. What I saw would probably come as a shock to some of the channel's critics -- but not necessarily in the way they'd expect. Although MTV's programming isn't as wholesome say, the Disney Channel, what it airs is nowhere near as dark and disturbing as its critics claim.
The worst don't sing
The worst of what I saw on MTV actually came up in connection with its non-musical shows. At the moment, music video represents about 84 percent of MTV's weekly programming, with the rest given over to "Real World," "Sandblast," "The Week in Rock" and others. Most of these are variants on standard TV fare -- dramas, comedy and game shows -- and as such rarely stray into controversial territory.
Even so, a recent promo for the game show "Sandblast" advertised a soccer-goal competition by saying it offered "more shots than a Mac 10." Given the channel's professed sensitivity toward the issue of guns and violence, that line isn't just objectionable -- it's stupid.
Speaking of stupid, there's also "Beavis and Butt-head." This is by far the most controversial show on MTV, having been relegated to an 11 p.m. time slot after an Ohio woman claimed the show inspired her son to set fire to the family trailer, killing the boy's 2-year-old sister. Since then, MTV has taken pains to excise all references to fire from the show, and precedes each episode with a reminder that these guys are cartoons, and as such are not meant to be imitated. (Well, duh!)
That the show is often hysterically funny usually mitigates the moronic behavior of its two protagonists, either of whom would make the phrase "dumb as dirt" seem insulting to the dirt. Still, the "Tainted Meat" episode, in which Beavis parlayed a case of jock itch into a food poisoning crisis was enough to make even a dedicated fan like myself feel queasy.
By contrast, the worst that can be said of the videos on MTV is that some are just plain shown too much. (Watch before noon, and it seems as if Boyz II Men's "On Bended Knee" is aired every 45 minutes.)
In terms of visual content, most of what gets shown is inoffensive to the point of being banal. Some videos, like R.E.M.'s "Bang and Blame," Soundgarden's "Fell on Black Days" or the Eagles' "Hotel California," are straight performance videos, in which arty camera angles and editing attempt to camouflage the fact that the musicians are just standing around, playing. Others, like TLC's "Creep," Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper" or Brandy's "I Wanna Be Down," augment the usual lip-syncing with flashy choreography and something resembling (but not actually conveying) a story line.
Sex?
Sex? Well, there is some boudoir action in the Blackstreet video "Before I Let You Go," but it's no racier than the average soap opera love scene. "Take a Bow" does show Madonna lounging in her lingerie, but it's hard to imagine anyone being shocked by that. The heaviest concentration of cheesecake on MTV comes during "The Grind," MTV's afternoon dance show -- and that's no more salacious than the teen dance shows of the past.
Violence is a somewhat trickier issue. Although guns and killing can be seen daily on MTV, it's hard to find much evidence supporting Officer Davis' contention that the channel is being irresponsible. If anything, the videos depicting violence work almost as advertisements against resorting to brute force.
Take, for example, the Cranberries clip "Zombie." True, the visuals include numerous shots of assault rifles and machine guns, as well as a sequence in which a young boy is shot to death. But those images are presented within the context of the British occupation of Northern Ireland, and are meant to shock and appall. The video's message is that violence is bad, and only an unthinking zombie would contribute to such a situation.
A far more explicit anti-violence message can be found in the new Van Halen video, "Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)." There are three levels of imagery in this clip: One shows the band pantomiming the song, while another depicts the day-to-day life of a young man in jail. But it's the third level that's most disturbing, because it has actual victims of shootings, stabbings and drive-bys showing off the ugly scars they now bear. It could almost pass for a public service announcement.
Even Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Murder Was the Case" grounds its tale of gangster violence and prison reprisals with the understanding that Snoop has sold his soul to the devil. Far from glorifying violence, the clip suggests that for criminals, life in hell begins before you're buried.
None of this is accidental.
"We definitely do have a set of standards: no nudity or profanity, no glorification of drug- or alcohol-abuse, all those obvious things," explains Tina Exharos, vice president, communications, at MTV. "We don't air videos containing explicit, graphic or excessive depictions of sexual activities. Violence can't be shown in a positive light, it can't be shown as a solution to a problem."
MTV not only rejects many videos outright, but frequently requests that the material it considers for airplay be re-edited. Consequently, the most frequent complaint from musicians and record company employees about MTV policy has to do with the things the channel won't show.
For instance, the version of the Nine Inch Nails' video "Closer" shown on MTV not only drops an obscenity from the song's chorus, but includes several segments where the words "scene missing" designate shots excised at the channel's request. Among the missing is a shot of a monkey posed with its arms outstretched, as if being crucified, an image MTV found too disturbing to air.
'Killer' deletions
At the moment, the most controversial video on MTV is "Natural Born Killers," a collaboration between Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. It includes scenes in which a white couple is murdered in their home by the shotgun-wielding protagonists, and another in which the duo slash and stab figures representing Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman just as a white Ford Bronco is seen pulling up to the sidewalk.
Shocking? Sure -- except that MTV viewers see no shotgun blasts, slashing and stabbing. They also hear only about 80 percent of the rap's lyrics. Even with those deletions, "Natural Born Killers" is only shown after midnight on MTV.
Still, it's easy enough to see the uncut version of "Natural Born Killers." Just switch channels and check out the Box. This Miami-based video channel is different from MTV in two ways: One, it operates on a "viewer's choice" system that takes requests via a 900 number; and two, it has extremely lax standards when it comes to sex and violence.
As a result, the Box is everything the critics accuse MTV of being -- sexist, violent, provocative and irresponsible. During the same period I was monitoring MTV I also watched a lot of the Box and was stunned by the difference in programming. One recent Saturday afternoon, the Box not only aired the uncut "Natural Born Killers," but preceded it with Luke's "It's Your Birthday," a video consisting almost entirely of buxom, bikini-clad women shaking their breasts and gyrating their buttocks.
That's nothing, though, compared to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Put 'Em on the Glass." The gist of this song is that Mix-a-Lot likes it a lot when women in traffic show appreciation for his celebrity by pressing their bare breasts up against their car windows. Which, incredibly enough, actually occurs in the video. Granted, there's no visual nudity -- the breasts are digitally blurred in the Box version -- but we see plenty of busty, scantily clad women soaping up cars, soaping up themselves, pulling down their tops, and so on. It climaxes with a scene in which two topless women spray each other with water in a shower stall that just happens to have a picture window.
When did I catch this gem? 11:36 one weekday morning.
According to MTV's Exharos, neither "Put 'Em on the Glass" nor "It's Your Birthday" have appeared on the network. But so long as MTV is considered synonymous with the worst in music video, that sort of programming responsibility will go largely unlauded. And that's the real problem with music video these days.