"I Want My MTV"

"If music video is art, it is art you can do your homework to. It speaks of a culture that loves gimmicks and quick fixes and noise. MTV has a mesmerizing effect, almost hypnotizing us and offering a visual counterpart to a drugged state. Like a dope peddler, the video station fosters addiction by promising total coverage: we can watch it all the time; we never have to give it up. It reflects our culture's fascination with and, more ominously, return to a more primitive state. There is no subtlety; every idea and theme is spelled out, not once but many times. (...) Music video is quintessentially modern because it's so thin: quickly replaced, dispassionate, disposable. In the nuclear age, MTV is us."

Matthew A. Munich