I Want MyTV – The Top 10 Things MTV Gave Us That Have NOTHING To Do With Music
“Why doesn’t MTV play music videos anymore?” is the battle cry for a few generations whose adolescence occurred as a precursor to Y2K, September 11th, and the boy band resurgences of ’99 and ‘012, respectively. But rather than jump on the whiny bitch-wagon and yearn for the simpler times of day-glo, skinny ties and songs with drum machines (wait a minute…), let’s look at what exactly MTV has accomplished and influenced in our culture while completely ignoring the meaning of the “M” in their station’s moniker (for better or worse…):
10. House of Style
I didn’t care about fashion. I don’t know that anyone I was acquainted with did. But everyone I know watched “House of Style.” Why? Cindy Crawford. Cindy embodied the corn-fed, All-American female from her almost-Brick House measurements, to her playful attitude, up to her trademark beauty mark. While Daisy Fuentes, Rebecca Romijn and Molly Sims were all suitable replacements, House of Style was all about Cindy (and sometimes Pat Smear, guitarist of the Germs, Nirvana and Foo Fighters). My cousin even bought her workout video and brought it over one late night to watch it with me. Being an idiot, I thought we were supposed to actually do the exercises she was instructing, until I looked back mid-leg lift and saw his hand in his… Well, that’s for my therapist. Denis Leary sums up the programming shift from 24/7 music videos to original programming better than I can:
9. MTV Sports
I’m convinced there’d be no X Games without this show. While the extreme sports market was already in place in certain areas of the country (probably mainly So-Cal), MTV Sports really brought it into the living rooms of people who normally would be stuck with football, baseball and basketball as their only three options for physical activity. MTV Sports, hosted by Dan Cortese, really embodied the alternative spirit (eventually even using the Descendents’ “Coffee Mug” as their theme) for active adolescents who couldn’t give two fly balls about traditional organized sport. Two words: Freestyle. Frisbee.
8. The State
Sketch comedy wasn’t new in 1993, but “The State”’s style of comedy was. From satire to absurdism, Nazi war criminals to Nancy Spungen, the show remains funny to this day, unlike many sketch comedy shows like “In Living Color” and “Saturday Night Live,” where most of the material becomes dated after just a few months. Without this show, there would have been no “Reno 911!,” no “Wet Hot American Summer,” no “Night at the Museums”, and no one to yell “GIVE IT ALL YOU GOT!” in a crackly voice in “I Love You, Man.” Now, I have to go dip my balls in something…
7. Remote Control
This was MTV’s first original program. A game show hosted by Ken Ober that put people like Colin Quinn, Adam Sandler and Denis Leary in our faces every week. It was basically Jeopardy! for couch potatoes and slackers, but with categories like Six Feet Under, Boy Were They Stupid and Celebrity Flesh it was perfect for the demographic.
6. Jackass
Skateboarding. That’s the major theme to how two groups of people from opposite ends of the country got together to make a show that not only sped up Darwinian natural selection across the country, it also made huge stars out of Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Wee-Man and Bam Margera (plus his entire family and most of my hometown of West Chester, PA). While the CKY videos Bam and friends were doing were all the rage with the skaters in my little neck of the woods, it wasn’t until I saw these guys flying in shopping carts across the parking lots on national television that I sat back and went, “This is gonna be huge.” And it was. Two years on TV, three movies and quite a few Bam spin-offs later, these skaters-turned-superstars were cultural icons and movie stars. R.I.P. Ryan Dunn.
5. Choose or Lose
The youth were mostly ignored in politics. Maybe we couldn’t vote this time around, but MTV understood that it’s never too early to get involved. The Choose or Lose campaign was aimed at getting young people interested and age-appropriate people registered. But what endeared President William Jefferson Clinton to an entire generation (and what kept people on his side through most of his mishaps with mistresses) was his appearances on MTV. Whether he was playing the saxophone, meeting with Pearl Jam or answering questions about his underwear preferences, he ushered in a whole new era of young people being politically active that hadn’t necessarily been the case for a few decades. The Vietnam War, Watergate, Reagan’s “Morning in America” nostalgia and the first Iraq war made generations of citizens feel isolated, apathetic and disgusted with our system. Putting candidates on MTV changed the face of politics in a way that hadn’t occurred since JFK debated Nixon on live television.
4. True Life: I Have a Summer Share
Literally the precursor to “Jersey Shore,” this installment of MTV’s “True Life” series showed a group of North Jersey cheeseballs (you are what you eat…) clubbing, drinking, fighting and actually looking for love in Seaside Heights. This was more genuine than the later manufactured “Jersey Shore,” (which, we can have a whole debate about another time), and it showed a lifestyle that was very appealing. This one episode is responsible for ushering in the EDM revival in music, the stock prices of creatine and hair gel rising over the past few years and one of the greatest YouTube videos of all-time, “My New Haircut”.
3. MTV Films
While they started off terribly with a feature length film based on the quirky promo shorts “Joe’s Apartment,” MTV films really hit a few out of the park. “Beavis and Butt-head Do America” is obvious, but “Varsity Blues,” “Election,” “Save the Last Dance,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Blades of Glory” and the Jackass films were definitely highlights. While none of these are Oscar-worthy revelations into the majestic art of cinema, they are perfect extensions of the MTV brand: entertainment for a certain-aged demographic. Dawson yelling “I don’t want your life” at his father is just the next generation’s “What do you wanna do with your life?” “I WANNA ROCK!” And they’re both perfect. (Also, have to mention MTV Books here, without which, who knows if we’d have the coming-of-age classic “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”?)
2. Beavis and Butt-head
While they did spend an inordinate amount of time making fun of the very videos that MTV used to get famous (isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?), Beavis and Butt-head broke new ground in animation, programming and influence. Remember that kid who dropped the bowling ball off the overpass? What about the people who actually went couch fishing? The entire controversy over “Fire!”? I’m sure a few people actually played frog baseball. There would very possibly be no South Park, Family Guy, Jackass, Daria, King of the Hill, Office Space, Idiocracy or Clone High had it not been for the success of Beavis and Butt-head. It was originally a sketch for Liquid Television, an MTV animated show that also launched Aeon Flux, and blew up from there. Thank you, drive thru.
1. The Real World
Chuck Klosterman already wrote an entire diatribe on why “The Real World” was so engrossing in “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” (which will be turning 10 this year), so all I’m going to say is – reality TV would very possibly not exist had this show not worked. The spin-offs (Road Rules, Real World vs. Road Rules challenge) and every single reality program on MTV and every network and cable channel imaginable became must-see-TV. We wouldn’t have rich housewives, moonshiners and honey boo boos turning into overnight celebrities without the success of this franchise. The confessional was coined here where the participants would talk into the camera and narrate their own lives. You didn’t need writers, you didn’t need a plot, you didn’t need actors, you didn’t need to pay anyone but camera people, editors and a landlord who owned the building and you had a hit TV show that voyeuristic gen-Xers could not stop watching ad nauseum (especially on marathon weekends). It was simply a revenue machine. “That could be me” was all it took to make the screenwriter’s guild almost a non-entity in telelvision. It’s responsible for YouTube and Instagram and Vine. It is the precursor to the entire way we now live. For better or worse…
A.J. Santini has been an audiophile since pre-natal care. Having 15+ years DJ experience, a brief stint in terrestrial radio and an extensively diverse collection of books, vinyl, cassettes, VHSs CDs, DVDs and MP3s (plus one Led Zeppelin 8-track) qualifies him to rant nonsensically and wax poetically about popular culture. He also hosts QUIZZO trivia nights to feel superior to the masses of the population. Check out some of his DJ mixes.
