From an interview with former MTV VJ Iann Robinson

FCF: Some of your most notable reporting was on MTV News short-lived show "The Assignment." I remember an interview you did with Britney Spears, years ago, that really humanized her. You've blogged about the troubles she's having right now and the role the media, and MTV in particular, have played in all of it. It's not as though you are a fan of her music, or "performances," or anything, but the situation does seem emblematic of a lot of what is wrong with pop culture right now. Please elaborate on that, if you will.

IANN: Pop Culture in and of itself is a dead idea, a forgotten tagline given to try and pretend that anything out there is really born of an organic move by people who have discovered something new. America is a corporation now, not a country, and as we continue to act and parade around like the new Roman Empire we can’t see what’s happening right in front of us. We spend so much time worrying about the attacks from other countries, the global terrorism that could hit us from out there, it’s always out there somewhere. The funny part is that all diseases rot you from the inside. America is like the athlete that has no idea he has colon cancer. While we focus on making sure our outsides are tough and looking good, inside we’re rotting from the core.



Look at the guts of America right now, really examine it. The country is being run by a fascist dictator who’s is dangerously ignorant, taxes are out of control, gas prices are insane, the American people are the fattest bunch of fucks in the world, the American people are hated the world over, there is an immoral and illegal war raging right now, innocent men and women are being sent to die by rich powerful men, high school drop outs are at an all time high, college tuition is impossible to pay, jobs are vanishing from our shores, the environment is about to revolt against us, the country is rotting from the inside out. Usually when that happens there is a cultural shift towards rebellion that tries to counter act that which strives to kill us. Art, rebellion, music, film, that is the penicillin by which we educate people to the ills of the country and maybe make some change. The sixties had it with the hippies, the seventies had it with the punk movement, even the eighties and early nineties had independent music and film which begin to show how outraged the unheard masses were at what was going on. Things changed, it got a little better. Where is that now? The country is in worse straits than it has ever been in and there is no cultural rebellion at all. What we have now is American Idol, Reality TV and other things to placate people into not paying attention to what’s going on around them.

Look at 9/11, that was one of the most horrible days in the history of our country and yet all we got from it was “Go get ‘em.” Nobody asked why would they do this to us. Nobody wanted to educate himself or herself on what we were facing and maybe what mistakes had we made that lead to this travesty. Nope, all it meant was go buy a fucking flag asshole and start attacking anybody who might look Middle Eastern. 9/11 is a huge example of America’s inability to look at who we really are. Columbine High School, the shooting that happened there was terrible but another great chance for us as a people to examine what’s really going on. Imagine if the parents of the shooters stood up and admitted their part, the victims parents stood up and said “Perhaps I didn’t teach my children to be tolerant.”, the administration admitted they didn’t do enough and so on. We might actually make headway in changing things. But no, can’t do that. Instead we’ll blame it on Marilyn Manson and how evil music and violent movies caused them to shoot the place up. Sighhhh, ok great, now we’ve pushed away any self-examination and turned it into a quest against heavy metal. Even when we tried to face the gun control issue we were told that it’s Un-American to not arm yourself and that the actual GUNS THAT KILLED THOSE KIDS wasn’t the problem. The problem was heavy metal. Wow, are we that fucking blind?

What’s happening now to the country is a direct result of the corporatization of America. MTV and the mass media outlets are assigned to keep America too stupid to realize what’s going on. If you drive through Middle America, the South, any rural to suburban spread in our country it all looks the same. It’s mini-malls, Olive Gardens and, of course, Wal-marts. It’s scary out there; it all looks the same, all of it. If you are outside of a major city you can be anywhere in the country and you wouldn’t know where you were. Wal-mart bleeds communities dry of local shops and businesses and nobody cares. Wal-Mart does things to their workers that fray the legal branch in order to save themselves money even though they make huge yearly profits. Nobody cares, and they don’t care because the prices are so low. Nobody can argue with those prices because the American Government makes it nearly impossible to make ends meet in this country. Your wages get taxed, then you’re taxed on EVERYTHING you buy, own or even do. After that you have to fork over for Health Care and then try and support yourselves and a family. So once again we’re kept down by Big Business and Government and nobody can pay attention to the corporate ass rapings because who can really afford to?

We even know and have proof that global warming is happening, that it’s causing massive weather shifts in the world. Tsunamis, storms, we don’t even have a FUCKING SPRING anymore, and we have winters that don’t get below 45 degrees. Yet with all of that going on we’re told “Nope, no Global Warming, shut up.” And the American people buy it. Government has always lied to the people and bullied its way through things but now it does it boldly, right in front of us. Lewis Black said it best, he said they come out, pull their pants down and take a big shit in front of our eyes and we don’t do anything. Why? Because media outlets like MTV just keep pumping idiocy at us and keeping us too stupid to realize that we’re getting fucked. MTV is no different than any other media outlet, they are there to make sure people stay stupid and keep consuming. If people are worried about fake fashion, bad TV and can they afford to “Live Like A Rock Star” then nobody will look at how bad things really are. MTV is like the big stupid muscle for a mafia family. They have no idea what they’re doing, they just take orders. I went to dinner with a major MTV executive who told me straight out that MTV isn’t interested in music or music videos because you can’t sell ad space with music videos.



So as far as Britney Spears goes, she’s just a casualty of the corporate desire to keep America stupid and satiated. Britney was snatched up as a child, trained to be a responsive robot and do as she was told. Nobody can do that forever so when the cracks in her perfect armor started showing it became another chance for people to look at what was happening to America. Britney is the embodiment of Middle America and suburban life. So when she started to come apart at the seams they had to turn her into a joke, turn her into somebody who was awful and couldn’t control themselves. MTV joined right along because that’s what they do best. MTV is the master of taking something, sucking the life out of it and then laughing at it when it’s time in the spotlight is over. When MTV booked Britney for that live performance, they knew they’d either ride the coattails of her big comeback or they could milk the footage of her falling on her face and that’s what they did. Media outlets replayed that footage over and over and over and MTV’s name was attached to all of it. If MTV was so concerned for her why not keep the footage from being shown, lock it up? Why keep showing the audience laughing at her? They won’t answer those questions, will they?

MTV and the media in general have trained our children to stay stupid, say quiet and consume. Got a problem, go the mall!! All music that has any thought process to it has been marginalized to the point of being nonexistent. Punk Rock has become a fashion trend, and now if you stick the name “Punk” in front of anything that makes it punk. Hip Hop has been turned into a joke, a danceable laundry list of what these idiots have purchased this week. We went from Public Enemy, BDP, Jungle Brothers, NWA and so forth to Jay Z and 50 Cent…I think we can see the drop in quality there. MTV hawks a lifestyle, not music, that makes it easier to laugh at things that they once championed without people saying “What a minute you fucks, you LOVED this a year ago.”

So, here we are, America is rotting from the inside and nobody does anything. The kids stay plugged into shows like Gossip Girls and reality this and that, adults stay tuned to the News so they can constantly know how fucked they really are and meanwhile the Cancer eats at America undisturbed. At this point I welcome it, if there’s a massive tidal wave I’ll be on the sand with a beach chair. I’m polishing my skis for the ice age, I’m preparing an easy death for when some disease is released by accident or on purpose and we’re all stuck in The Stand. There’s no reason to even try anymore because nobody cares and nobody will. I quote Bill Hicks: “Shut up America, your Government is in control, shut up and be free America.”


Thoughts?

(Note: This interview was done about a year or so ago, so by "facist dictator" he's referring to Bush, not Obama. )

Well, I think to say "Pop Culture is a dead idea", I believe you need to have some sort of long introspective look at what's going on in America, because that's not something you can back up with a mere paragraph going "poor Britney Spears." With not so much emphasis on Bush and Iraq, the whole "America is like the star athlete that has cancer" schtick is why I posted this here.

I mean think about it, everytime so sort of disaster strikes in this country we do have the chance to change, but for whatever reason, we don't. In the particular case on 9/11, I have the answer:

I think any human being wouldn't change out of spite if anybody thought the way to make someone change was by attacking someone. I mean shit, if we did change we would be justifying that person's actions. Perhaps the reason we didn't change after 9/11 is because we thought it would give outside countries a motive to attack us more.

And for the record, I'm all for trying to make good come out of a bad situation, but there are some situations that people just have to stand up and say no.

As for my beloved Maher, its no wonder your bitter at him Syd, as last weeks New Rules pretty much repeatedly slapped the Republican partys every accusation against Obama in the face with a penis. I mean really...bad gift giving skills, who cares?

RobotGumshoe wrote:

all sorts of people called columbine on blaming heavy metal,

I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying here. Ian also points out that people chose to blame Columbine on heavy metal, or are you arguing that people called bullshit on Columbine blaming heavy metal?

Black Zarak wrote:

I'll tell you what's dead; vaudeville! And the talking pictures are the bullet that killed it! But you can still make it kid, you just need a hook. I for one am a tumbler...

SPLAT!


Barnaby play me out!