It was 1979 (that's Nineteen Seventy-Frickin' Nine) when Buggles wafted across the screen on MTV announcing for all the see and hear that 'Video Killed The Radio Star'. Well it wasn't that fast, but by
the time we got to Live Aid in 1985, the idea of 'music television' had replaced 'music radio' as the primary medium to market rising and established recording artists to the masses. As the technology moved from the TV to the PC, we saw the rise of first CD's and mp3's and then Napster, iTunes and the iPod. Now that cycle is spinning so fast from ringtones to satellite radio that places like Tower Records are no more. We went from Pete Townshend smashing his guitar in the 60's, to him screaming that he wanted his MTV in the 80's, to tinnitus patient Pete Townsend touring for Boomer crowd twenty summers later because while the technology changed, the songs remained the same.
Now it seems that YouTube is doing the same thing to TV. The recent news that network TV viewing was down 2.5 million people this Spring -- and the theories range as to why that has happened.
The one that hasn't changed is that what is popular in this culture - or given popularity - carries an image, one that can be very dehumanizing and destructive to a generation of overweight, stim-dependant, technology adled teenagers. As this EXO video demonstrates, the sad hollowness of the Doll Face mentality has become the 'mask' many of us judge beauty through in society. One of the ironies of the EXO domain is that while they aspire for a Utopian structure, they remain suspicious of the very species they seek to advance. It's that implicit distrust that the PHYLO faced TV viewer in the video wrestles with as it tries to re-establish an intimate position to bond with the Doll Face image on the TV. That approach-avoid dynamic is a classic psychological tactic EXO's employ when 'de facts' enter into 'da fiction' of their own life story. Have we gone full circle here and can we now openly say that TV's image of cultural beauty has failed us collectively or are we busy TiVo-ing it all?
IOW, to go back to Pete Townsend, have we smashed the mirror (neurons)?
Riff on This! and we'll talk about WED here...
Time: WED 8-9pm EDT
Show Blog: http://www.nakedsoma.blogspot.com/
5 comments:
That video really makes me uncomfortable. Not only is the visual a bit disconcerting but the music is eerie.
Your analysis of the history of radio music->MTV and TV->Cable/Satellite->You Tube was right on the mark. What's more convenient than watching what you want when you want FREE?
It's extremely entertaining AND extremely EXO to sit at the computer and entertain oneself with individual videos on an individual screen.
Think back to the days of the family TV-everyone sat around with their TV Dinners and waited for the TV to warm up and they all enjoyed Uncle Miltie or Leave it to Beaver together. Who watches TV together anymore?
We've got 5 TVs here at home and there are only two of us... "Indvidual, Immediate Entertainment" is where it's at in 2007...
Exit Beaver, Enter Charlie at Candy Mountain and Alexyss Tyler.... EXO Powerrrrrrrrrrr
This video was very odd and disturbing. I felt a little bit uncomfortable watching it to be honest. But it does hold a valuable point about our society: tv doesn't imitate life, life imitates tv (I think Ani DiFranco said that). Something that I personally wish that would be promoted more in our media and entertainment is the importance of individuality and striving to be the best "you" and not someone else. The most upsetting part of this video was as the tv moved higher and farther away, the machine girl tried rising up towards it, almost as if it was struggling to "rise up to its level." The fact that the machine ends up "dying" in the end, symbolizes that some people, particularly teens, really "kill" themselves to live up to the media's expectations of what beauty is.
What's the message of this video?
The robot was fine before it met the image on the screen.
The closer "she" got to attaining the goal, the more unattainable it became.
Finally, Doll Face stretched herself beyond her capacity and met an uncomfortable looking end.
With our tv culture today, and so many trying to become carbon copies of the perfect images on the screen, it's a good message.
The video itself demonstrates something that is so true to our society today no matter what the mainstream form of visual communication is. The Doll Face machine demonstrated the strive within so many people of our society to become something that they are not. As the video showed, keep on striving and eventually for the most part destruction will occur. Instead of accepting who we were born as, as a society we seem to strive to become something that we see as "more", as we begin to malfunction we wish to have more, more and more in order to correct what went wrong; or to attempt to reach some kind of "perfection" point until we realize that sometimes there is the thresh hold point that can be exceeded and we will crash.
EXOting ONTO
As I watch this video, I do my best to stay objective(EXO) and not feel for(ECO) and feel the pain (PHYLO) of the "whirl-i-gig Dollface being", at the end of the video, I am sitting there with a lump in my throat as the little PHYLO creature lays broken on the floor, it's hopes and dreams smashed to bits. It brings out the ECO in my PHYLO, as I feel it's pain and I feel sad as well.
As far as the metophor for how f-ed up our society is re: chasing the perfect face and body goes, maybe I am numb to that at this point...I mean how obvious does it have to get...
Just PHYLOing along here in NH.
Post a Comment