Thursday, January 12, 2006
How MTV Lost and Then Regained a Pair of Eyes
We've all heard it out there or even said it ourselves. Music Television should be renamed Real World Television, in honor of the endless hours of repeats of the quickly deteriorating reality television grandfather, and the subsequent hours of repeats of the painfully immature MTV shows The Real World has inspired.
Between Room Raiders, The Real World (since the Las Vegas season), the memories-of-junior-high inducing TRL and even the award show turned Festival Concert MTV Video Music Awards, I have since realized that once you're too old to apply for The Real World, then you're just too old to watch MTV.
Does that stop me from catching the bi-annual battle between all of the "stars" of The Real World and its since-cancelled sister Road Rules? Hell no. Admittedlly so. It's fun seeing how much better or worse some of my favorite people have started to look than what they did back in my college years.
But MTV has held a soft spot in my heart for at least one fleeting hour of decent television programming per week. I'm telling you now, catch True Life. While MTV "reality" shows celebrate and ironically laugh at jacuzzi three-somes, daily drunken hookups and knife-wealding roomates, True Life celebrates, well, true life, while taking a hard look at how real young adults deal with household brand name products. Steroids, Plastic Surgery, Fat Camp, OCD, Becoming a Pro-Wrestler have all been some of the most interesting hours I've spent in front of the TV. A couple of episodes tend to hit harder for me personally than other (looking forward to the Steroid episode tonight - as I battle with my own coming-to-terms with my up and down "juice" use, and subsequent up and down body image) but they all have some very important lessons to communicate. All of them about how diverse youth in America truly are, even when some may think they're all MTV clones. In an ironic turn, the same network that causes some serious strife for some about how to look, act, drink, puke and screw, is the same network that's turning the picture tube into a mirror.
Between Room Raiders, The Real World (since the Las Vegas season), the memories-of-junior-high inducing TRL and even the award show turned Festival Concert MTV Video Music Awards, I have since realized that once you're too old to apply for The Real World, then you're just too old to watch MTV.
Does that stop me from catching the bi-annual battle between all of the "stars" of The Real World and its since-cancelled sister Road Rules? Hell no. Admittedlly so. It's fun seeing how much better or worse some of my favorite people have started to look than what they did back in my college years.
But MTV has held a soft spot in my heart for at least one fleeting hour of decent television programming per week. I'm telling you now, catch True Life. While MTV "reality" shows celebrate and ironically laugh at jacuzzi three-somes, daily drunken hookups and knife-wealding roomates, True Life celebrates, well, true life, while taking a hard look at how real young adults deal with household brand name products. Steroids, Plastic Surgery, Fat Camp, OCD, Becoming a Pro-Wrestler have all been some of the most interesting hours I've spent in front of the TV. A couple of episodes tend to hit harder for me personally than other (looking forward to the Steroid episode tonight - as I battle with my own coming-to-terms with my up and down "juice" use, and subsequent up and down body image) but they all have some very important lessons to communicate. All of them about how diverse youth in America truly are, even when some may think they're all MTV clones. In an ironic turn, the same network that causes some serious strife for some about how to look, act, drink, puke and screw, is the same network that's turning the picture tube into a mirror.
// posted by ProudJock Matt @ 9:31 PM 
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