MTV and the end of the CORPORATION!

I feel like this is totally necessary, so get ready to take it in the butt MTV!

Dear MTV -

One, let’s just face the basics; you are a music television channel that hardly plays music at all. However, since you do some play music, let’s discuss it. I recently went through your music videos to find various displays of half naked girls and enough diamonds hanging off the rappers to probably feed all the homeless people in the world. Way to go MTV. I have been reading this book, culture jam, that actually discusses just what it is that you are doing - ruining self image. You are making young girls and boys buy what you’re selling, and you are selling sex on every corner. Your music is not music, it is sex.

I think that you could take some advice from this book, for example, you’re corporation is a prime example of the reason “cool” is changing from something unique to something mainstream. “Now you’re cool if you are not unique - if you have the look and feel that bears the unmistakable stamp of America. Hair by Paul Mitchell. Khakis by the Gap.” Maybe you should consider what you are doing. You’re convincing impressionable kids that cool is sex and alcohol and that the reality of their life should be the reality that you’re selling them - that drinking is cool, by expensive clothes is in and that having sex is what all the normal cool kids are doing.

You also can’t claim that you don’t know that this is what you are doing to the young minds of America. According to this book, again, it costs $4,100 dollars just to get a 30 second time slot on your channel, so I’m almost certain you have looked over and looked over again to every detail of every second of programming that airs on your channel - therefore, you know exactly what you are showing the minds of young children. There is no way, for that price, that you don’t know what you’re feeding America. Why are you doing this? Why are you continually showing images of half naked girls on spring break, reality shows that depict nothing but swearing and drinking and music videos with girls that have been so photo-shopped that no girl could like that if they tried? I understand that you have freedom of speech but don’t you also think you should have a sense of responsibility too? Don’t you think that it is the right thing to do?

Culture Jam ask a very poignant question, that I would like you to answer as well, “why do nine out of ten women feel dissatisfied with some aspect of their own bodies?” I know you’re just a television station and you don’t have all the answers, but I think you should look at yourselves when trying to answer this question. Look at every character on every show that you put out, look at every message you are sending - pretty soon you will have no young girls to watch your shows because they will all either be in mental hospitals or vomiting away in their bathrooms. The girls that are watching your shows have not even gone through puberty yet and you’re expecting them to just understand and handle very adult concepts. The bad news is, they can’t! I know behind MTV there are bunch of CEO’s, and I’m sure at least one of you has a daughter - how would you like it if I exploited your daughter, taught her about sex when she was ten, taught her that drugs/alcohol were a normal part of life at eleven, and by the time she got her first period she pretty much knew that she was meant to have sex with boys and go shopping all day and party all night.

I suppose all I’m really trying to say here is that I want you to do something about all of this. It’s kind of like alcoholics anonymous, I want you to admit you have a problem first and then work to fix it. What you are doing is wrong; this is okay for you to admit. You should then try a new strategy. Let’s not focus on any illegal substances, anything that you can’t do before 18 or 21, anything you can’t do with someone 6 years older than you etc. etc. Why don’t you focus on playing the music, the real music without all the sex and whatnot. Why don’t you focus on art - isn’t that what you’re supposed to be about in the first place; a creative channel that plays music and talks about art. Go for it! I say let MTV be the station that breaks all of this nonsense and starts something new, you already have a captive audience and I don’t think that they are going anywhere…just give them something new - I promise they’ll think it is cool because it is coming from you. You could start something really great here - how about talking to real artists, promoting world change, and no more reality television - let people make their own reality. Deal or no deal?

CORPORATION!

One of the biggest surprises that I found after watching the corporation, is that many of the corporations that I’ve always thought were good companies such as Odwala and Sears, have paid millions of dollars for fraud and ignoring health standard!! I was astounded at how many companies I bought things from my whole life, were actually shady liars!!!

An agitation was to find out that many owners of various corporations don’t even realize that they are hurting the environment and when they do know they feel like they can’t go anything about it. It was weird to hear CEO’s say that fixing their environmental footstep is harder than one might think. Why should it be so hard? It shouldn’t!

One significant item of new learning would be that I had no idea that corporations were legally people!!! WOAH!!! Even further was learning that corporations are psychopaths. Crazy! I had never thought of corporations as more than the bare minimum as a place that sells things until now. It was definitely an eye opener - I will continue to think about the businesses in my life differently from now on.

One question I had after the second half was why is falsifying the news not against the law? It’s not even the corporations that are lying to us anymore, it’s the news too?!?!?! I don’t understand how this can happen, how on earth can the news I’m being presented be a lie? I never even once thought it would be legal for the national news to lie to me or to cover up the through about a story and only tell the parts that they want too. What is this world coming too? This definitely taught me that I should research the articles I read a little more.

I find the end of the film helpful - I really want to change the world we live in, and I know step by step over a lot of time I can! Woo hoo!

I will use the information I have experienced in this film to educate other about what is happening in our world that many people do not know about. I want people to join me in culture jamming and stopping all these crazy things that are happening to us!

Culture Jam part 2

Book Observations

1. Our Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare topped of in terms of progress in 1975! Holy shit! How is this happening? I suppose it is most likely from people who think that it is “easy to substitute other factors for natural resources.” We are depleting our resources and the economy is only benefiting from things that are hurting us. How is this okay? That is one of the scariest statistics I’ve heard in a long time.

2. This quote through me for a loop…”many times a day, each of us comes to a fork in the path. We can do one of two things: act the way we normally, reflexively act, or do something a little risky and wild.” In fact I just had a conversation with my boyfriend the other day about this. We were talking about what we do to relax, and how we could just sit and watch television or we could go outside and try to explore and exercise our brains. More people need to be having this conversation and thinking about what they should do with their lives, for real!!

3. Cool is not consumer America!!!! Is it? I want cool to be someone who makes a difference and not someone who drives a BMW. Our landlord drives an Escalade, common!!! There is no reason why people can’t be cool by riding bikes and helping the world and drinking more tea! America is an outrage.

4. I love that some culture jammers are making a difference. Seeing the victory in the tobacco industry and then seeing how jammers are moving on to new global issues is so exciting! I’m so happy to hear how the jammers are getting more organized and are growing in numbers. Rock on culture jammers!

5. I seriously want to create a gripe site… but then when I think about it, will it do any good? Will it do good to create publicity for a company we don’t like, isn’t any publicity good publicity? After thinking about this it makes me nervous because I want to start some culture jamming of my own but I don’t want to inadvertently help the company that I want to hurt. What can we do that is full proof?

Movie Observations:

Every single component of this film stood out to me, however most of all, I kept thinking about all the companies I have no idea about. I had no idea that some of the companies I thought were good companies are just as shady and evil as Monsanto and Nike. I feel like most of America does not know about these issues because these companies are in control of everything, including what the public knows and wants to know. People don’t want to hear about the companies that they ‘love,’ they just want to keep shopping and shopping because the companies that they should be hearing about have created these horrid opinions in their minds. I feel like there are larger institutional forces at hand here. It is not that we are dumb, we just suffer from corporation mind control, SCARY! I don’t think we are distracted either because somehow America is able to watch somewhere around 4 hours of television per day; we could spare some time to learn something new. I think we are just swept up in this devotion to the psychopathic corporation. This movie is terrifying to me. Where should I shop? Where do I get the things I need without giving into this horrible corporation run society.

the beginning of the Culture Jam

The honest truth is that this book is making me scared of who I am. I’m blogging right now because I’m only 23 pages into the book and have stopped reading and started thinking about other things probably about 100 times. It’s true what he says…”our minds become a theater of the absurd, and we become shockproof.” I’ve been reading this book so far and it is reminding me of those people who stand up on the big stones outside the UVM library and preach about their ideals. I tune those people out. I have become shock proof to hearing about the crimes against the world. Today, it is like everything is killing us and I have been able to tune it out as just more “noise.” One can get cancer from everything, and I have been desensitized to this just as I have been desensitized to seeing starving children and rape scenes on the television.

I also concur that I have a general malaise about life. I would rather watch something on television that I don’t really want to watch than sit with my own thoughts in silence. Maybe I do tune out the noise but I seem to need the noise to function. The sad thing is that it seems irreversible. I think this because while reading the short 23 pages that I have read so far, I have malaise about this book. I tune out and then have to re-read whole paragraphs and feel like it is all the same - media is rotting our brains and our worlds (well no shit) and then I have this period where I want to watch television instead of reading more about how my life is incomplete because I fit the consumer this book is talking about completely.

Made it to page 39. I did not drift off as much because this section read like a story. I can picture the author reading letters from big corporations rejecting his ideas, (his sitting at a table) and then a cut out and a fade in to a scene of him as a child remembering what it was like to not be able to speak out against the government and then another cut/fade back in to him at the table, growing increasingly angry and then flying off the office to make more flyers about saving the environment to send all over America…or something like that.

The point is that the injustices that are being put on people that want to do something good for people and the environment are real, but unless they are presented to me like a story that I can envision like a movie, I don’t really think about it.

Now on page 50. I did not get distracted at all by reading about the people whose lives were so consumed with media that they didn’t shower for four days. Earlier I was having the general malaise about how our world is coming to an end (en d of the mind that is), but now I’m reading about how other people’s individual lives are coming to an end and I’m interested and judgmental. I’m critiquing how I think they should live their lives in my head even though I was dying to stop reading and start watching television only 20 minutes ago.

I realize now that I have learned to drone out people who are telling me that there is something wrong with me and that I need to either change or buy a product to help me change. However, if I’m reading about how media is ruining someone else’s life, I can instantly make connections to my own life and realize what I need to change. I’ve droned out the advice of others to the point where I have to make all the connections “myself” or I at least need to think that I’m making them myself.

When the book tells you all the things that are bad about the media it’s like hearing the same old crap about the media and life and blah blah blah. However, when it tells you the story about someone who will literally drift away from anything that is bad including websites, television shows, colleagues and marriages, it makes you stop and wonder how you should change your life so that you don’t end up like that.

Finally finished. I am feeling a little detached from the messages presented. I feel as though I feel happy for most of the time, so I feel that the book is portraying a world that I don’t live in. Is most of the world living in a state of never ending spending and unhappiness? Am I actually unhappy and I don’t even realize it? Is this book just like an ad, convincing you that something is wrong with you?