From the moment “Video Killed the Radio
Star” hit the airwaves in 1981, MTV has been condemned
as the bane of popular culture. Indeed, just last February, the
Parents Television Council released a report in which they
tallied 2,881 verbal references to sex and 3,056 flashes of
sexual imagery in a single week of programming. It's no wonder
that critics claim the global television network (MTV was
recently launched in Africa, a continent that has one of the
lowest numbers of televisions per capita in the world) has
debased the morality of an entire generation brought up in the
glow of its music videos and sensationalistic programming. As
one reviewer from the National Review put it, MTV has made
America's youth “deaf to all higher culture and blind to
all hope or beauty.”
But the next time you settle in to watch Total Request
Live or Pimp My Ride, pay attention to the
commercial breaks. There amid the mindless plugs for hip-hop
ring-tones and pimple creams, you may catch a glimpse of a
different kind of MTV, one that is covertly using its
influential powers for a purportedly higher purpose. In January,
the music network launched what it calls “Spiritual
Windows”—individual mini-films no longer than
fifteen seconds that contain a variety of spiritual imagery
and/or philosophical messages which it seeds throughout the
day's programming. Numbering twenty-four in all, each one
depicts scenes from nature, moments of prayer, or images from
daily religious life.
Some of these “promo spots” have voice-overs,
but others use only music to accompany the images.
“Rejuvenate,” as one promo is called, simply shows a
group of Muslim men praying together at a mosque. In
“Everyone,” a Chinese dragon dances on screen while
a voice says, “We need other human beings to be human. I
am because other people are.” There's even a Spiritual
Window with Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, in
which an image of the sun sets over the pyramids while Coelho
says, “The desert will give you an understanding of the
world. How do I immerse myself in the desert? Listen to your
heart.” “Consume Mindfully” depicts a Tibetan
nun taking out the garbage at her Buddhist temple, and
“Everyday Grace” features a gondolier rowing on the
canals of Venice while a disembodied voice says, “Your
heart is where your treasure is, and you must find your treasure
to make sense of everything.”
Though beautifully produced, one has to wonder if Spiritual
Windows is more gimmick than serious attempt at injecting
spiritual awareness into mainstream culture—akin to, say,
Urban Outfitters hawking Buddha statues or Barneys selling yoga
mat bags. But the vice president of on-air promos for MTV,
thirty-seven-year-old Kevin Mackall, disputes this. “We
wanted to create little, short moments, almost breaths of peace
for the channel,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“There's a genuine appetite for spirituality these days.
And that was the mission. We're doing a great job of getting
people to watch Ashlee. Now, let's have a moment of
reflection.” A moment of reflection on the banality of The
Ashlee Simpson Show? No matter how tastefully executed, it would
be hard to take the Spiritual Windows campaign seriously if it
didn't coincide with a slate of other surprisingly smart and
inspirational programs produced by and aired on MTV.
For instance, in March 2005, a weekly series called
Trippin' was launched. This “eco-travel”
show, produced by movie actress Cameron Diaz, includes a
revolving star-studded entourage of Diaz's friends, such as
rapper DMX, Drew Barrymore, and Kid Rock, who accompany Diaz as
she trots the globe visiting nature preserves, endangered
species, and threatened ecosystems. Throughout the half-hour
show, factoids appear at the bottom of the screen with
information about the environment or useful tips on how to save
water or use less electricity in our daily lives. Although the
program can seem to pander more toward celebrity worship than
deepening environmental awareness, the evolving dynamic between
Diaz and her companions in each episode is fascinating. At the
beginning, there is a lot of predictably superficial banter
between them, but later—disheveled from traveling (there
are no make-up people allowed), having learned together about
the plight of the planet—an undeniable authenticity
emerges. By the end, they all seem genuinely moved by the
experiences they've had, and this, in turn, is inspiring for the
viewer. One example is an episode in which actress Eva Mendes,
after spending the day at a village in Nepal, turns to Diaz and
with tears streaming unselfconsciously down her face, says,
“Oh my God. We're all just human beings. We all want the
same things. I never understood before. We're all just human
beings, and it's so beautiful.”
Two months after Trippin' premiered, MTV aired an
hour-long documentary about the Holocaust called I'm Still
Here. Scheduled to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day,
I'm Still Here deals with the genocide of the Jews
through the diaries of young people alive at the time, including
some who survived and others who died in the concentration
camps. Each diary entry is read by a different celebrity, such
as Elijah Wood, Kate Hudson, Brittany Murphy, or Joaquin
Phoenix. The cumulative effect of their voices, the stories they
tell, and the documentary footage and photographs is deeply
haunting and melancholic. A New York Times reviewer
wrote that I'm Still Here was “inventive and
inspiring . . . a masterly documentary and proof that there are
still more and decent ways to remember the Holocaust.”
Ironically, MTV's efforts to air sophisticated, serious
products like Spiritual Windows, Trippin', and I'm
Still Here are highlighting just how debauched and
irrelevant its programming usually is. For example, the new
series My Super Sweet Sixteen, a reality show that
follows different rich kids around each week as they make plans
for their sixteenth birthday parties, manages to consistently
illustrate an almost pathological level of self-obsession and
materialism in our culture. MTV has also created the reality
series I Want a Famous Face, in which young people
undergo plastic surgery to make them look like their favorite
celebrity. Indeed, when a Spiritual Window featuring a Buddhist
nun is followed by an ad for Britney Spears' upcoming reality
show about her life with Chihuahua “Bit-bit” and
husband Kevin, it becomes clear just how far MTV has to go to
raise our culture above the superficiality that it is partly
responsible for creating—and that it continues to
capitalize on. Despite this, its initial efforts at providing
more conscientious, spiritual fare are commendable and, at
times, uplifting.