In the 1980s, during the era of headbands and record stores, a new form of broadcasting music was introduced: Music Television (aka MTV). MTV added an extra dimension to music because there was now a visual element other than newspaper images of popular musicians. Artists began to make music videos for their popular songs. The people in charge of choosing which music videos were played were called VJs—adapted from the radio DJ or disk jockey. Duran Duran was a band that made popular music videos on MTV who made their music videos into "mini-movies" that featured provocative lyrics and alluring women. One of their music videos "Girls on Film" was banned by MTV as it was "too suggestive," according to one VJ.
MTV also did not feature the music of African American artists. This could have been more many reasons. The producers themselves might have secretly harbored some prejudice and forbid the VJs from showing African American artists. Even Michael Jackson, who was selling one million records a year was not invited. In an interview, we saw in class on Friday, MTV was asked why there were not any African American artists featured on their channel. Not only did they admit, African American artists had not yet been featured because of their race, but it was also said that they were doing this because they had many viewers in the South and the Midwest. Regardless, MTV's popularity didn't budge. The first African American artists to be featured on MTV was Michael Jackson, after which many more popular African American artists followed.
MTV was afraid that they would lose a lot of their popularity in the South and Midwest if they showed black artists, put once they finally did MTV became even more popular. Now people were introduced to new artists that they might not have heard before, thus boosting the popularity of artists and bands.
ReplyDeleteMTV's initial argument about not wanting to lose a certain demographic was a thinly eiled attempt to protect discriminatory attitudes and as mentioned the personal bias many may have held in the company. As Joshua points out they actually benefited once African American artists were featured because of the diversity in their music. Many of the most popular artists of the time were African American like Prince, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Huston so it was clearly the better business option and contributed largely to the success of the company.
ReplyDeleteBecause MTV emphasized the visual aspect of music so much, bands and artists began to focus on how they presented themselves more than the actual quality of their music.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of racial discrimination, MTV was seriously missing out, as what Joshua and Tino stated. Although MTV has made some progress, there has recently been some controversy over a certain video that MTV released, titled "2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys", which received severe backlash from the internet because it was "racist" towards white males. MTV later took it down because of identity politics issues amongst conservatives regarding the video.
Just like Jia said, MTV had an vision that MTV was a channel that people had used it for racial discrimination. It seemed that when they realized that the African American artists really had great music and idea on it, it changed the way they had thought of them. It seemed that MTV said that they didn't want to loose their reputation if they were to protect the attitudes of discrimination. Later they seemed to change with just having the white people on television and not discriminating them.
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