MTV Recreates the Holocaust -- for Teens
A recent series of commercials produced by MTV's youth networking website, Think MTV, poses an interesting conundrum to the modern television viewer. Using the Holocaust as the backdrop for what could befall America if we are "not careful," the 30-second spots questions the integrity of the network for using an example that remains fresh in the memories and minds of a culture. Which seems to be exactly their point, if they have one.
The first, Subway Roundup, starts off on a NY underground car that buckles along shakily. The lights go out; the faces of riders are nervous, or disinterested; the car rocks side to side, apparently mimicking concentration camp railways. When the car stops, fierce officers gaze in, machine guns cocked. They lead the riders out in a single line fashion, sometimes pushing, forming an orderly line. The final image dissolves into Nazi Germany.
The second, Home Raid, uses the same motif. A family is at home, relaxing, until being brutishly handled by the same thug cops. They come in, guns drawn, and put them into an open truck, where they will be shipped off to ... dissolve: Hitlerian times. Both use minimal dialogue (gruff commands from cops, barely audible); I suspect the silence is meant to represent part shock/part Paxil sedentary. The victims never fight, allowing themselves to be escorted into what I guess to be a sort of penitentiary system or, worse, some futuristic concoction of oppression that the MTV marketing staff has dreamed up.
When MTV first launched in the early '80s, they described their station as leading a revolution. To the music industry, and arguably the entire entertainment business, videos were certainly an evolutionary aspect. Artists had another vehicle for creativity, and record labels had an expansively new audience to sell to. Since that time MTV has stayed relevant, in certain regards. Considering today that playing music videos would again be revolutionary (since so little of actual content includes them), it's hard to say to exactly whom they've been relevant to.
Youth culture, for sure -- and that's exactly who these commercials are geared toward. It's an insider's joke, a "hey, heads up kids" PSA from your ol' pal; it's the updated version of the mid-'90s slogan/chant, "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me." The difference, of course, is that Zack de la Rocha had little corporate support when that song was recorded, and ended up using the system he raged against to bullhorn his words around the world. In this case, MTV is taking the initiative to say ... well, I'm not quite sure what they're saying.
That's part of the power of media: it's mystical. And I don't mean that in the sense of a religious epiphany. I could say that it's ambiguous, and that too would be true, though in this sense the ads are serving the purpose of fulfilling the inner desires of teens that have grown disenchanted by corporate-controlled media, provided to you by -- corporate-controlled media. The only more blatantly exploitational media machine is News Corp, which would never place commercials like these on Fox. The wounds of the Holocaust are too important an image to misuse in the conservative sect. MTV has a different market altogether.
Why this particular image, though? I would be moved if MTV used footage from Tibet, Somalia or the Middle East to reflect upon what happens when a government uses national media to control the flow and distribution of information. This would make the message palpable to modern eyes. But America has a tendency of living in its past. While the Holocaust was a terrible chapter in human history, to constantly refer to it keeps us believing we're still the victims of some unstoppable force, while those forces actually do exist, and there are victims today being murdered in like fashion.
The less specific a media is, the more mystical it can appear. Plus, being ambiguous has its benefits -- you don't have to be held accountable for anything, because there's always another angle you can claim when confronted. The medium is still the message, yet when that medium will not take responsibility for the messages they put forth, we're only left to wonder why they bothered speaking in the first place.
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"it's hard to say to exactly whom they've been relevant to."
I think that might be
"to whom they've been relevant."
or be casual about it,
"who they've been relevant to"
but not both. I couldn't take the rest of the article seriously. my loss, I guess.
"Using the Holocaust as the backdrop for what could befall America if we are "not careful," the 30-second spots questions the integrity of the network for using an example that remains fresh in the memories and minds of a culture. "
Really? How many of your contemporaries have fresh memories of the Holocaust? The majority of Holocaust survivors are dead.... which might be why these spots are targeting a younger generation.
Dexx, can you please list the liberties that you have lost?
I'm just not hearing about those who vocally oppose this administration being rounded up and sent to camps, so could you please provide me some evidence of that? Also, can you provide evidence that peaceful protestors are under government surveillence?
Dexx, could you please let me know what particular liberties you have lost??
Thank you, Desiderata, for making the point ... "Then why the images of mass surrender to the police state? " May it never come to this.
Perhaps the crowds in Moscow and elsewhere offering flowers to the tank crews as the soviet empire collapsed might be better examples where the people were showing that there was a better way.
They can't be too direct at their audience (youth) as youth might take a critical look at corporate media itself (MTV and Sumner Redstone that's you) and say phuc it, we're gonna elect officials who will change and reform media forcing it to break up the media consolidation that' been taking place in the last few years.
Nazi Germany had become a dictatorhip under Adolph 'Schickelgruber' which controlled the populus and eliminated the disentersby shipping those poor souls to concentration camps. As far as the government communicating with the public, that was left up to the master of propaganda, Goebbels, who coined the phrase: The more often a lie is told, the more people will believe it. WW2 was sold to the Germans as a war for "Lebensraum" - living space.
Here at home those disenting, like the peaceful protesters who oppose the war, are spied upon by the government aparatrus called Homeland Security. The propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq was preceded by lies which are still repeated by the obidient mass media today. Lebensraum was replaced by war on terrorism, the lie still perpetuated by the media, when in effect it is for oil.
While I will not compare this great Nation to the Nazis, the methodology applied here seems eerily similar.
While the Nazis committed the worst massmurder in history, we are victims of massmurder on our freedoms and liberties.
Currently HBO is showing the mini series "John Adams" which should remind us all on how our freedoms were won. Then we divorced ourselves from a tyrannical 16th century government, what are we going to do to sever ourselves from a 21st century regime such as we have today? Maybe the ads MTV are tough to watch, but then so is watching the loss of our rights at the hands of Herr
ooops.. should read:
but then so is watching the loss of our rights at the hands of Herr bush!
Take it from someone who is old enough to remember the Second World War. Your knowledge of World War II is apparently very limited. To cite the bogus Goebbels "Big Lie" quote and assert Hitler's musing about Lebensraum in "Mein Kamp" was how the war was sold shows an almost childlike naivety and ignorance of actual history.
The Germans all knew they were fighting Communism and Stalin who any one living during this period and any knowledgeable historian will tell you was the one who "committed the worst massmurder in history".
Actually, the Germans were not far from wrong. Who actually set up more Concentration Camps in Poland than the Germans after 1945 to murder and torture German women and children? Who killed more than 2.2 million Germans of the 12 million Germans who were forcible expelled from their lands after 1945? Who occupied Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, East Germany, Austria Poland, Czech Republic, Moldavia, Bulgaria, Romania under the worst dictatorship in recent history until Gorbachev lost control of the USSR?. It was not Hitler.
To my mind. being a veteran who fought in two wars for this country, Bush is far worse than Hitler or Stalin because he has set the stage for MY COUNTRY the USA for ultimate complete economic, military and social destruction and invited decades of terrorism on our shores.
So fascism is fine, if it's done in the noble name of stopping those damn Communists.
That's the excuse of every fascist regime I've ever heard of, except our current one. But the terrorism of today is the communism of yesteryear: a label that we can attach to people we wish to destroy in order to dehumanize them.
I won't even go into the reasons the U.S.S.R. was not actually a communist country, as it's beside the point. (Hint: You can call yourself a communist without actually being one, just like you can call yourself a Christian without actually behaving like one.)
Those detention centers built by kellogg/Root (Haliburton) throughout the USA: Do not ask for whom these interment camps are for__they are for us.
Is this the second or third MTV generation? In spite of what brutal suppression is happening now in Tibet (who could not cry for Tibet?) the railroad cars of human cattle in route to concentration camps and mass extermination is not of the distant past, but only 65 years ago. Babies born then are likely to be living today, grandparents of the MTV audience.
Is the point of the MTV messages to be alert and prepared to fight the goonsquads? Then why the images of mass surrender to the police state? If the spots are not meant to condition the young to embrace and surrender to the fascist state, then, surely, the next series will show rebellion: on the streets of Chicago 1968, Kent State 1970, Tannemann Square, etc.
Unless MTV balances the apathy and mass surrender with the historical tipping points of resistance, the the messages are a monsterous propaganda for acceptance of the Corporate/Fascist New World Order . If just the foreshadowing of the eventual push to resist a darkage on the horizon, MTV will launch a missle against the very Corporalist conglomerate that bought it's young soul, stripped it's identity, fenced it in, and starved it nearly to death.
You're missing the point.
You can't condition people to rebel. Conditioning and rebellion are opposites. You can't use one to get the other. Humans are not machines who need to be programmed in order to function. The corporate media tries to do that, and it's one reason why the corporate media sucks. Nevertheless, sometimes a good message manages to wiggle its way through - if only because the corporations want to discredit it.
These clips show what future awaits us if we continue to submit without resistance to the ever-expanding fascist state.
I think it could have been done completely in the present, without the archival footage, and been stronger for it. But it's a minor quibble.
I don't think anything needs to be "balanced" here. Showing historic images of resistance may actually weaken the effect, by implying that resistance is something only done by other people. At best, that would appeal to the herd instinct of human beings: join our resistance fighters' club! But rebellion runs contrary to herd instincts.
Nobody needs to be told how to rebel. Figuring that out for oneself is part of the process.
The best stories are not the ones that tell us what to think or what to do, but challenge us to find our own solutions.
What is to be done about it is left to the viewer. As it should be.
i think its fairly obvious what they're saying. and its about time. does the writer of this article not have eyes and ears? "homeland security" industry is already bigger than hollywood. torture is jokes about and bush/cheney/rove still havent been brought to trial, let alone put in prison. corporations (bad ones, not all) are contiually pushing towards the exact scenarios depicted in those ads.
and even now, when it is becoming obvious to more and more people, mtv STILL has to come at it sideways. for our elected officials are more concerned with steriods in baseball, janet jackson's breast and the next election than they are about our increasingly dwindling liberties.
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