Great piece by Tim Arango in the New York Times Saturday about what MTV's new reality show The Buried Life - in which 4 buddies travel around the country fulfilling the wishes of the less fortunate -means about MTV and youth culture in the Age of Obama.
After years of The Hills and My Super Sweet Sixteen, is having a social conscience the hip new thing?
Four buddies set off across the country in an R.V., video camera in
tow, to knock items off their “100 things to do before I die” list:
kiss the Stanley Cup, get a tattoo, grow a mustache. With plenty of high jinks and adolescent humor, “The Buried Life” seems like the perfect MTV
reality show, except for one unexpected twist. At each stop the group
helps deserving locals with their own wishes. In Idaho, for example,
they took eight children with brain cancer on a shopping spree at Toys
“R” Us.
Meet MTV for the era of Obama. After years of celebrating
wealth, celebrity and the vapid excesses of youth, MTV is trying to
gloss its escapist entertainment with a veneer of positive social
messages...Executives looked at in-house research and the work of William
Strauss, a generational expert who gave a presentation to MTV
executives last fall, and saw that the country’s young were deeply
engaged in the election and becoming more civic-minded.
One point of discussion at the meetings was whether shows about rich young girls were still relevant.
“It
was very clear we were at one of those transformational moments, when
this new generation of millennials were demanding a new MTV,” said Stephen Friedman, MTV’s general manager, using the term for those born between 1980 and 2000.
In
the era that was passing, Mr. Friedman said, “the humor was more
cynical, the idea of community seemed earnest and not cool. It’s the
opposite now.”
Community is cool? Cool. We know MTV, the network of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, would never air a show about guys going around the country doing charity work unless they thought they could make money off it. Here's hoping they do.
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