Turn Off Your TV--Part 13

There Was Disney

by L. Wolfe

Even before there was television advertising, even before there 
was television itself, there was another mass media phenomenon 
that preconditioned young people for the nonrational, audiovisual 
experience of music videos: the cartoon features of Walt Disney, 
especially his features such as {Snow White,} {Cinderella,} 
{Sleeping Beauty,} {Pinocchio,} the evil {Fantasia,} and more 
recently, {The Little Mermaid} and {Beauty and the Beast.}

For more than 50 years now, parents have taken millions of their 
young to see Walt Disney productions, believing them to be wholesome 
representations of ``American values.'' All the while, they 
have been subjecting their children and themselves to some of 
the most vile and effective mass brainwashing in modern history. 
It was Disney who perfected the combination of music and literal 
imagery, that eventually evolved into the music video of MTV; 
many of his early cartoons and the various musical numbers in 
his animated features should be properly considered as the first 
``music videos.''

Between 1935, when {Snow White} was issued, and the present, 
more than a billion children worldwide have seen {one or more} 
Disney animated features in movie theaters or on television; 
tens of millions more have seen them at home through purchased 
or rented videos in the last decade.

Sound and Color

Disney was the first person to wed sound to cartoons, and the 
first to have cartoon characters sing. These innovations took 
place in a series of animated shorts, starting with the invention 
of his most famous character, Mickey Mouse, and his first sound 
cartoon, {Steamboat Willie.} Others had tried to coordinate 
sound with animation. Disney demanded absolute synchronization: 
His characters had to {be} real.

He further demanded the {rhythmic} synchronization of action, 
images, and music--something that no one had ever tried before. 
Picture and sound were to create a {mental image} that would 
seem real, he said, to give his characters an {emotional dimension}. 
I want people to relate to that mouse as if he were a relative, 
he told his animators. They must cry when he is hurt and laugh 
when he is happy, Disney said.

Disney was also an early advocate of the use of color to achieve 
emotional effect and a hyperrealism.  Color was not merely an 
add-on, something to throw in as a gimmick to amuse audiences, 
as some people on his own staff had claimed. It was essential 
to produce a sensation that overwhelmed, where the sense of 
reality is suspended. In such a {dreamlike state}, people were 
more willing to accept the vivid imagery of his cartoons as 
real.

Disney found a 1931 short, {Flowers and Trees,} which featured 
sequences of dancing trees and daisies, ``dead'' and even ``stupid'' 
when he looked at the black and white rushes.  He ordered color 
added, for the first time in a cartoon, and ``everything came 
to life.'' It was a smash box office success.

Having ``seen the light,'' he pushed for more use of intense, 
bright colors, and dramatic lighting, using flashes of color. 
In the making of {Pinocchio,} Disney drove for bolder and bolder 
use of colors to achieve psychological ``shock effects.'' The 
bolder the colors, the more intense the images, the more people 
would remember the images and the longer they would retain those 
memories. His view, he indicated, was that the images first 
seen in early childhood should make such an impression that 
they should be {retained for life}.

Central to each of the Disney animated films are carefully crafted 
song sequences. Each contains highly colorful images that accompany 
the song's lyrics.

As his animators have explained, the idea was not to simply 
{illustrate} the words in the songs, although there is an element 
of that in what they did.  They were told by Disney to create 
{images that conveyed the emotional content} of those words 
and music. The images were a {guide} to what he wanted people 
to remember about the song-idea.  If the song were sad, for 
example, little animals would be shown crying, so that the young 
people watching would thus be effectively told to be {sad}.  
If there were a happy moment, then the visual images were to 
convey simple happiness. If it were a love song, animals would 
be shown acting lovingly toward a mate. If it were about something 
frightening, then the images were to convey terror in other 
creatures in nature. All this was to be done, while flashing 
back and forth between the character singing, and {emotional 
representation} of his song.

In this way, through combination of the music, words, and images, 
Disney sought to relate to people directly on the {emotional}, 
nonreasoning level.  His cartoon features were not to make people 
think, but to feel, something that he said would ``unify'' his 
audience of parents and children at an infantile emotional level. 
Disney's concepts were completely coherent with those of the 
brainwashers of the Frankfurt School like Theodor Adorno, who 
spoke of using the media and its power to convey emotion-laden 
images to force a {retardation} of adult society.

``If all the world thought and acted like children,'' Disney 
once said, expressing his lifelong credo, ``we'd never have 
any trouble. The pity is that even kids have to grow up.''

Romantic Music

With a very limited training in music playing the violin, Disney, 
unlike many who worked with him, recognized the similarities 
between romantic classical music and the {romanticism} of the 
more popular musical forms, such as the songs of Bing Crosby 
or Frank Sinatra. Through much of his career, he struggled to 
insert classical romantic themes into his works, because he 
understood that they were a more powerful vehicle for carrying 
emotional messages.

One of his first popular cartoon series was called {Silly Symphonies} 
and its first installment was an eerie representation of skeletons 
dancing to Saint Saens's {Dance Macabre.} Later, parts of the 
series previously mentioned included the Technicolor {Flowers 
and Trees}, in which classical themes were used to help bring 
natural objects to humanlike forms and actions. His later {Sleeping 
Beauty} used Tchaikovsky's ballet score, adding words which 
are now imbedded in the memories of several generations.

Disney's most famous experiment in this ``classical-romantic'' 
form was his full-length feature {Fantasia,} which, in its most 
famous sequence, depicted Mickey Mouse as an apprentice to an 
evil sorcerer, in control of the the universe, in an apparent 
pact with the devil. The film, whose music was conducted by 
Leopold Stokowski, also contained a version of Stravinsky's 
{Afternoon of the Faun,} which the composer praised. To Disney's 
great disappointment, it was a box office failure on its release 
in 1940. It did not achieve major success until its rerelease 
into the middle of the 1960s counterculture, when it became 
a pop-cult item.

A Sick Mind

Disney was, if nothing else, an egomaniac, who hated his fellow 
human beings whom his own insecurity demanded he see as his 
inferior. In his most egotistical moments, he boasted about 
how he had created eternal life, through his cartoon characters. 
His ego was so great, that he refused to allow anyone to take 
credit for their work at his studio, to the chagrin of his staff. 
All his animated pictures gave credit to him as their sole inspiration 
and creator. This egoism built up his popular image, causing 
him to boast that he was better known and more popular than 
any other American, living or dead.

As is the case with such egomaniacs, though an outwardly self-confident 
person, Disney was tremendously insecure. At least once, in 
a bout of insecurity, he attempted suicide, only to have his 
life saved by his wife. It is unclear whether he ever sought 
psychoanalytic help, although he was fond of offering his pompous 
psychoanalytic opinions, using Freudian terms, of other people.

Disney once remarked that he much preferred the company of little 
animals, whom he drew and identified with, to humans. The human 
race, he stated, is inherently bad, containing within itself 
the seeds of its own self-destruction. Having no sense of Christian 
love, Disney admitted that he found himself unable to love other 
humans and had trouble relating to women.

Brought up in a fundamentalist Protestant home, by a cold and 
remote father and a weak, overly emotional mother, Disney developed 
a worldview which saw a simplistic battle of wills between Manichean 
categories of good and evil, with a remote God having little 
or no effect on its outcome. No one ever remembers him praying 
to God, and although his family went to church, when he did 
so, it was apparently in order to be seen in church by others.

For Disney, things happened by force of Nietzschean will, with 
the intervention of fate and magic. It was in these forces, 
and his own will, that Disney believed in, if he believed in 
anything at all but the utter wretchedness of his fellow man. 
His anthem, which he chose as theme for his popular ABC and 
then, later, NBC, television series, was the smash hit from 
his film {Pinocchio,} ``When You Wish Upon a Star.''

Mickey Mouse, several people have remarked, {was} Walt Disney, 
and the scenario developed by him for the Sorcerer's Apprentice 
sequence was a statement of Disney's own self-image.  Disney 
saw himself as a modern-day version of Goethe's Faust character, 
who mortgages his soul to the devil to achieve his desires; 
only Disney saw himself cheating fate through his guile and 
will, winning his egoistic battle with his personal devils of 
insecurity, guilt, and self-hatred.

In that regard, the {Fantasia} sequence involving {Night on 
Bald Mountain,} with its terrifying Faustian images and Mickey's 
eventual victory over the devil character, is a representation 
of Disney ``beating the odds,'' something that he prided himself 
in doing, even if the risk was great.

If Disney, as the modern mythology of our popular culture tells 
it, was the symbol of the American dream, then that dream is 
an anti-Christian nightmare.

A supporter of right-wing causes, he would have been at home 
in an earlier time with the Freemasons rf the Ku Klux Klan, 
who had fallen out of favor with popular opinion in most of 
the country during the New Deal. Like the Klan, Disney hated 
minorities. He wanted nothing to do with either Jews or Blacks; 
if he had any working for him, it was only out of ``necessity'' 
in his movie-making business. Under pressure, he would routinely 
launch into a diatribe against ``those filthy Jews.'' (And though 
his anti-Semitism was common knowledge in Hollywood and would 
frequently flare up in public, he was never once the target 
of attack by the Anti-Defamation League).

He despised working people and trade unions, calling them ``communistic 
rabble.'' He never allowed a woman to have any position of authority 
and saw them only as ``baby-making machines'' to keep the affairs 
of the home straight for the menfolk. And although he was celebrated 
as the maker of antifascist war propaganda cartoons, before 
the war he had made a special trip to Italy to receive an award 
from Benito Mussolini, whose policies he admired and who was 
a fan of Donald Duck.

This is the twisted man to whom America entrusted the minds 
of our impressionable youth. His cartoons present the world 
as a mirror of his distorted anti-Christian outlook. It was 
through Disney images, often conveyed by song, that young people 
in this country and around the world were first presented concepts 
of morality which were most notable for their absence of a concept 
of God.

The simplistic notions of good and evil presented by Disney 
resonated with the general {perceptions} of American popular 
culture and ideology. Americans called themselves religious, 
but as Disney understood, most knew and cared little about the 
profound religious ideas that had shaped Judeo-Christian civilization. 
They preferred simplistic moralism to profound ideas. But though 
they could see nothing different or wrong in Disney, America's 
already weakened moral sense was under new attack.

In {Pinocchio} for example, children see the concept of a conscience 
developed in the character of Jiminy Cricket, sitting apart 
from the wooden puppet character of Pinocchio. One's conscience 
has no relation to any higher Being, to God, or Judeo-Christian 
teachings. God and religion are too complicated for children, 
Disney, who sent his family off to church every Sunday, is said 
to have remarked; adults don't even understand them.

This separation of the conscience from the self is a projection 
of the Freudian antireligious outlook then being popularized. 
Jiminy Cricket is an illustration of Freud's {super-ego}, with 
his admonition to ``Stop! Think!  Don't Do It!'' If these same 
ideas had been presented as mere Freudian claptrap, they would 
have been attacked by various religious institutions.  Presented 
to millions of young children by Disney, it was praised by various 
church groups.

Throughout his animated films, there are images of young and 
highly vulnerable animals, who are victimized by humans, often 
with tragic consequences. Disney said that he thought that a 
powerful emotional bond could be made between the child viewer 
and the animal on the screen, since children will {feel} the 
vulnerability.  As we have explained in our discussion of Mickey 
Mouse, this bond, established when very young, helps make an 
adult susceptible to the brainwashing of the environmental movement.

Children are also shown as victims of scheming adults, often 
relatives; when they are not being victimized, they are shown 
being unfairly restrained in experiencing the joy of childhood. 
This is in part projection, since Disney thought himself victimized 
as a child by his overbearing father.  For all his stated concern 
with what he was among the first to call ``family values,'' 
there are few, if any, representations of a whole family unit, 
and depictions of strong, loving fathers interacting with strong, 
loving mothers. In fact there is very little Christian love 
at all, only romantic love and love for little animals and similar 
creatures.

Again, presented in a different context, in a different way, 
such views might appear extreme. In Disney features, those who 
might attack them are disarmed by the ``charming'' or ``cute'' 
presentation.

And, there are the repeated references to fairies, both good 
and bad, and the intervention of their magical powers to shape 
reality. A standard Disney plot has a vulnerable character, 
like Snow White, caught in a battle between good and evil spirits; 
in such battles, good usually won out in the end. This happy 
ending (with the exception of {Bambi}, which failed to achieve 
box office success) was the hallmark of Disney, and caused many 
to see in his movies a ``force for good'' and a ``positive outlook.''

In discussing the effects of comic book culture, Dr. Frederic 
Wertham said the creation of heroes whose powers were magical 
and who had no relationship to God undermined the belief of 
young people in religion and in its moral principles. It is 
not enough to depict forces of ``good'' and ``evil,'' he said, 
because there is no basis for moral judgment of what is good 
and evil without God, because there are no Universal Truths 
without Him. Why should we replace moral values of 2,000 years 
of civilization with some representation in a comic book? Dr.  
Wertham asked.

Or in a Disney film, for that matter.

Music Video

For Disney, music was key to creating his powerful illusions. 
In each film, starting with his 1931 {Three Little Pigs} and 
its ``Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'' he tried to create 
one or more ``hit tune'' music video-like sequences. Even if 
they don't like the movie, he said, they'll remember it because 
of the song sequences.

Songs like ``Whistle While You
Work'' (sung by the dwarves in {Snow White}), ``When You Wish 
Upon a Star'' (sung by Jiminy Cricket in{ Pinocchio}), and countless 
others became smash hits.  Disney, in his time, sold more records 
than the Beatles, with the relationship between song and movie 
similar to what we have described between a music video on MTV 
and a CD.

I want you now to think back to when you were a child, to when 
your parents took you to see your first Walt Disney animated 
film. It was a big event, that first viewing of {Snow White} 
or {Cinderella}, in a darkened theater, surrounded by many children 
your own age. Try to recall the bursts of bright colors and 
the sounds of the movies, their musical scores and songs. Without 
too much effort, you may even be able to start humming one of 
the tunes. As you hum, you can recall, rather vividly, the image 
of the cartoon characters, or at least the colorful ambience, 
in which you first heard that song. It is a seemingly pleasant 
memory, taking you back to a time in your life when there were 
few cares.

Now, if you are my age and have had some experience in the counterculture 
of the 1960s, think back to that troubled period. Think back 
to your own experiences with the drug culture or to your friend's 
recounting of a ``drug trip'' on LSD or a similar hallucinogen 
or even an intense experience with marijuana.

The first thing that comes to mind in such a description is 
the {colors, the bright colors}. They were {cartoonlike, hyper-real}. 
But where did that sensation and perception of bright color 
come from? From the drugs themselves? Not really: The drugs 
could only enhance the perception of those colors which were 
in your memory.

{I shall suggest to you that those colors came from Disney's 
animated films, that they were encoded in your memory at a very 
early age, in part by their combination with emotionally charged 
musical-visual imagery. They have stayed there in the recesses 
of your mind. Drug experiences merely caused those sensations 
to be recalled, along with the sense of infantile, emotional 
pleasure associated with them.}

I am not saying that Disney, who died in 1966, was directly 
involved in promoting the drug culture. I am saying that {his 
nonrational, brightly colored emotional imagery helped create 
the preconditions in large masses of Americans for the creation 
of the drug-rock-sex counterculture, beginning in the 1960s}.

When you passed through puberty, you started to look at Disney 
movies, especially the animated films, as corny and sentimental. 
They were ``kid's stuff'' and you were a young adult.  But, 
nonetheless, buried in your memory were those images and more 
importantly a way of thinking--``think with your heart'' as 
Jiminy Cricket says in the song.

That emotionalism stays with you today, as your principal mode 
of thinking, which is why some of you may be very uncomfortable 
about what we are saying in this series.

Now as you grow into middle age, Disney and his ``heartfelt 
thinking'' remains all around you, thanks in part to television.

Disney was the first major studio to use television for the 
promotion of its product, starting in 1953; his ``Walt Disney 
Presents'' on ABC and later the ``The Mickey Mouse Club,'' helped 
``make'' then-struggling network. Disney now uses the television 
to market and promote the mass distribution of videos of those 
early animation features, including new animated films such 
as {Beauty and the Beast.}

Americans, still mindlessly believing the myth of the ``wholesome'' 
Walt Disney, lap up the cassettes by the tens of millions, place 
their children in front of the sets and turn them on. The children 
stare blankly, dissolving their young minds into the flashes 
of color and music. They often watch the same cassette hundreds 
of times. Think what must be happening to their cognitive powers!

``I don't ever want to grow up,'' sings Peter Pan, as he flies 
through the air. Generations of Americans cling to their childhoods, 
while their children cling to their MTV.

In an appreciation of MTV on its tenth birthday in 1991, {The 
New York Times} pop ``critic'' Jon Pareles wrote of successful 
music videos: ``As a form, music video is closest to advertising 
and cartoons, hence the brightly garbed cartoonish images of 
many hard-rockers, rapper and pop singers....''

Welcome to the ``Wonderful World of Walt Disney!''

The Children of Sesame Street

In an earlier section of this report, we described the mind-damaging 
effects of the popular children's show on public television, 
``Sesame Street.'' For our purposes here, let's focus in on 
one aspect of that show to indicate how it, like Disney, helped 
prepare a generation of kids for MTV.

From its inception more than 20 years ago, a central feature 
of the daily ``Sesame Street'' fare is the use of music, usually 
rock music or rap, as a form of ``teaching'' mechanism. Have 
you ever taken a good look at one of those sequences?

Take for example the ones that ``teach'' simple addition. There's 
a shot of a ``live'' person singing; then the background changes 
colors, and a number appears on the screen. The number, itself 
a bright color against another bright color, starts to move 
and otherwise take on some human form, with legs and arms. More 
color, and another number, also in this semi-human form, appears. 
The two numbers start dancing together to a pulsing rock beat, 
one that you can clap your hands to. The screen flashes another 
color background.

Then some live people and/or puppets appear, also dancing; they 
count their numbers and start dancing, as if in a club or disco. 
The number that is supposed to represent the addition of two 
previous numbers now appears over the screen.

The same combination of video music, color and video-animation 
are used in most so-called teaching segments. Sometimes numbers 
dance; other times its letters or words.

The child sits at the set, clapping his hands to the beat of 
the rock music. The colors grab his attention and keep it focussed 
on the screen.

This brainwashing has received awards as an ``innovative'' educational 
process. But for our purposes here, just concentrate on the 
description of the video presentation. It is a {music video}, 
using the same forms and principles developed by Disney and 
later enhanced by modern video technology, as modelled on MTV. 
It is only one small step removed from the so-called ``Kid-Vid,'' 
music videos designed for young children, featuring rock and 
kid-rock entertainers. In fact, PBS produces and distributes 
a series of ``Sesame Street'' music videos, featuring rock music 
and the show's characters, such as Big Bird. The numbers featured 
in the videos have become part of the very successful ``Sesame 
Street'' concert tours.

By the way, there really isn't anything all that innovative 
about ``Sesame Street'' and its dancing numbers, accompanied 
by live performers. Walt Disney, when he was first starting 
out back in the 1920s, produced the first animated shorts using 
numbers and letters in motion, even using them with live actors, 
as advertising promos.

``Sesame Street,'' which was viewed by tens of millions of children 
during the decade prior to the creation of MTV in 1981, was 
a feeder to the new mass brainwashing channel, placing the music 
video in front of children's eyes and establishing a mode of 
thinking in video imagery in their young minds. In that way, 
``Sesame Street'' was and {is} a recruiter for that one-eyed 
church of Satan, MTV.

A Little Bit of History

It's just a little more than a decade since MTV was launched 
on July 31, 1981, with the words of one of its originators, 
John Lack, ``Ladies and Gentlemen: Rock and Roll!''

As was the case with Disney, a popular mythology has been developed 
to both tell the history of MTV and explain its success. Its 
common elements are that it was the brainchild of Lack, the 
aforementioned Robert Pittman, and others who forced it on a 
reluctant entertainment industry, including its parent company, 
Warner-Amex Cable Communications. By dint of the will of these 
{Wunderkinder} (most were in their twenties and thirties), the 
industry was forced to stay with the bold and dangerous experiment 
until it caught on towards the middle of the 1980s.  Through 
it all, they resisted attacks from conservatives and from competitors, 
and even from reluctant cable providers, who were at first unwilling 
to sign on for the 24-hour music channel.

As with the case with most mythologies, there is an element 
of truth in what is being said. It is true that Lack, Pittman 
and several of their cohorts made MTV happen, so to speak.  
But that ``happening'' was all carefully pre-planned.

Before there was MTV, there was a target audience: teenagers. 
Demographic studies had shown a marked decline in national television 
watching, per capita, in the United States, and it was primarily 
because teenagers weren't watching as much as in previous decades. 
{We shall maintain that the creation of MTV was rooted in the 
desire to ``hook'' that age group--12- to 20-year-olds--on a 
television brainwashing format, using popular music to do it.} 
That it cohered with the interests of record companies to rescue 
themselves from financial losses was a fortunate coincidence; 
it made the provision of free ``video clips'' for the new channel 
possible, thereby cheapening the cost of the venture. But even 
if there had been additional costs, even if the costs of the 
music videos had to be paid in part by the so-called music channel, 
the creation of MTV or a similar channel would have taken place 
to achieve the desired effect of addicting teenagers to television.

As it was, the channel was started after significant profiling 
of the target population to determine what would ``hook them.'' 
Even before Pittman became involved, Warner was experimenting 
with a new children's cable network, Nickelodeon, which would 
feature a music video show, ``Pop Clips.'' Pittman, bringing 
his expertise as a veteran of radio programming and marketing, 
employed ``psychographic'' research to determine what the format 
of a possible new music network should be. It included using 
Warner's experimental interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, 
Ohio to obtain responses to music video programming {before} 
the launch of the new network.

{Prior} to MTV's introduction, its creators had sufficient test 
and profile data to {prove} that the effort would ultimately 
succeed. The 24-hour format was selected from the results of 
this brainwasher's profile. MTV's initial mass promotion and 
even the development of its famous symbol, with its large ``M'' 
overwhelming the smaller ``tv,'' was a product of such research 
and feedback.

Pittman understood that his cable channel could not compete 
with prime time television, nor was it desirable to try to do 
so. More than 70 percent of all television viewing takes place 
outside prime time. MTV, armed with the profile of its youthful 
audience, specifically sought to reach people outside the ``7 
p.m. to 11 p.m. prime time,'' especially aiming for ``after 
school hours'' and late-night viewers. That is one of the reasons 
that the network was launched with a 24-hour format.

An early criticism of the MTV format by some media ``experts'' 
was that it lacked ``coherence,'' that it was preferable to 
``block'' various types of videos (punk, pop, hard rock, etc.) 
into coherent segments, perhaps even shows. Those creating MTV, 
with their psychographics in hand, saw this as ineffective. 
MTV would be ``rotational,'' it would have a playlist, like 
a radio station, but there would be no effort to ``block'' the 
music into coherent groupings.  Pittman argued that this would 
attract {any} potential viewer, who would know that his favorite 
groups were likely to be played in the course of an hour or 
two, but wouldn't be sure exactly when.  The young people were 
to be ``hooked,'' on their expectations and kept viewing by 
the brainwashing quality of the music video format.

``When you are dealing with a music culture,'' Pittman told 
{The New York Times}, ``music serves as something beyond entertainment. 
It is really the peg that people use to identify themselves. 
It is representative of their values and culture.''

To appeal to what the psychographics indicated was the broadest 
range of the target audience, MTV chose an album-oriented rock 
(AOR) format.  This was later to draw fire from various African-American 
artists and others who saw a tinge of racism in the choice, 
but Pittman argued that he was indeed going for a white, teenage, 
rock-addicted audience and that the so-called forms of urban 
or black music did not appeal to them, any more than country 
and western did. To distinguish MTV from radio, the format was 
to include a high percentage of new artists or new songs, rather 
than simply ``top 40.'' All format decisions were based on poll 
results.

MTV has never significantly altered that format. It has allowed 
some more black music, including allowing popular rappers onto 
its playlists. Its target it still mostly white teenagers; African-Americans 
can get their dose of video brainwashing from the many ``black 
oriented'' video music shows in syndication or on cable.

After its main channel was already well entrenched, MTV branched 
out to set up a separate channel in 1986 for the 35- to 50-year-old 
rockers, VH-1 (Video Hits-1), which some people call ``old folks 
video.'' It keeps that generation, the older baby boomers, living 
in their infantile past, featuring clips of artists from the 
1960s-early 1970s, as well as ``soft rock'' songs now popular. 
As one MTV spokesman said, ``we have avoided polluting the image 
of our main channel. It's still young and vibrant, and full 
of the wilder things.''

VH-1, like MTV itself, was set up only after extensive ``psychographic 
profiling,'' which showed that it ``couldn't miss.''

Why Previous Attacks Failed

Much has been also made of how MTV ``made it,'' despite being 
ignored by much of the establishment media when it started. 
{The Times} for example was conspicuously absent from the ``kickoff 
event,'' even though MTV was then headquartered just across 
the Hudson River in New Jersey. But, if MTV were to succeed, 
it had to {appear} to be antiestablishment, or at least outside 
the ``mainstream.''

There is absolutely no question that MTV is about as Establishment 
as you can get. It's money came first from Dope, Inc.-linked 
Warner Communications and American Express, and more recently 
from the international media giant Viacom and its billionaire 
owner, Sumner Redstone, who has pushed MTV into a global network. 
Every step of the way, its operation was subsidized by New York 
and other money-center banks, who financed the operations of 
these companies.

It's run as a business, and has always been so. It has never 
lost money, and continues to rake in substantial profits and 
returns for its investors and owners. In 1991, the last year 
for which figures are available, MTV had revenues of $243 million 
and an operating income of $88 million, with a rate of profit 
increase of more than 20%; profits are expected to be even higher 
this year, despite the depression. And, as we have said, it 
has made {billions of dollars} for the record industry.

The approach of Pittman, Lack, and their successors to keep 
MTV in its ``narrowcast'' mould, trying to reach the largest 
demographic teenage audience and keep them hooked, has drawn 
fire for ``elitism'' from within some of the more ``avant garde'' 
elements in the pantheon of rock.

Such criticism never concerned Pittman and his bosses; the only 
``critics'' they cared about were those young people who were 
being addicted to MTV. And the polls showed that the majority 
of young viewers thought MTV was what they wanted.

For the first few years, MTV seemed immune to the attacks launched, 
mostly by the religious right, on satanism, sex, and violence 
in the youth culture and popular music. It wasn't until the 
middle of the decade, after nearly four years of its continuous 
broadcast of such videos, that the attacks began to coalesce 
in the national media. But by that time, the various opponents 
of MTV were dealing with an {established institution}.

Some of these opponents, most notably the National Coalition 
on Television Violence (NCTV) and its head, Dr. Thomas Radecki, 
make cogent observations about the evil teachings of the one-eyed 
church of Satan. ``MTV and Warner push violent sadist and hate 
programming into the American home...,'' Dr. Radecki stated 
in the early 1980s. MTV's message to American youth, he said 
in a newspaper interview, is ``violence is normal and okay, 
that hostile sexual relations are commonplace and acceptable, 
that heroes engage in torture and murder for fun.''

``I have already seen several cases of young people in my psychiatric 
practice,'' said Dr. Radecki, ``with severe problems of anger 
and anti-social behavior who are immersed into a subculture 
of violent rock music. They each own several tee-shirts with 
violent images of various heavy metal groups on them and wear 
types of metal studded jewelry and barbed wire necklaces. It 
is plainly obvious that they are heavily immersed in fantasies 
of violence that are affecting their way of thinking and their 
behavior in an anti-social direction.''

But, despite these statements, Dr.  Radecki and his group see 
nothing wrong MTV youth culture {in general}, restricting his 
comments to only the most openly violent and Satanic of rock 
forms. They never talk about the promotion of nonrational, anti-Christian 
thinking by the music video form. In fact, his group has given 
awards to various rock groups and their videos for promoting 
``pro-social themes.'' He has called for MTV to air more of 
such videos, though they promote the counterculture, and equally 
anti-Christian values of environmentalism.

In the middle of the decade, as well, ``Tipper'' Gore, the wife 
of the Vice President Al Gore, then the senior senator from 
Tennessee, became involved in a crusade against pornographic 
and violent rock lyrics.  This ultimately led to an industry-accepted 
system that merely labelled certain CDs and videos as containing 
objectionable material, which appears to have {increased} their 
sales.

But Gore and her other so-called Washington Wives, never really 
attacked MTV. She once told a congressional hearing that she 
found nothing wrong with most of what was on, but complained 
only of some of the more lurid items, like Prince's videos. 
She recently told {The Times} that she actually likes rock and 
roll and was a ``big fan'' of the Rolling Stones and Greatful 
Dead!

It is the moral and mental weakness of its opponents that assured 
MTV that it could ultimately do as it pleased. By failing to 
attack the underpinnings of the MTV ideology, the right, both 
religious and otherwise, has merely helped feed the mythology 
that MTV is antiestablishment. Recent polls show that American 
youth are more firmly wedded to that idea now than at any time 
since MTV's inception; the more it is impotently attacked, the 
more converts and power it gains.

MTV, the church of Satan, is winning the fight for the minds 
of America because no one has challenged the brainwashing ideology 
behind the concept of the music video. Instead, one finds even 
some nominal religious groups {adapting} MTV's methods to their 
ends.

``Besides being the strong silent type, Jesus is a hunk in an 
Armani-like jacket and tee-shirt,'' reports {The Times} style 
section. ``Or at least that is how he appears in `Out of the 
Tombs' a video that translates Mark 5:1-20 into liquid sights 
and sounds of MTV style imagery. For nine minutes, Jesus and 
man tormented by evil and bad dental work drift in and out of 
a hip (and hypnotic) wash of rock tracks, gentle-as-a-breeze 
narration and quick scenes of graffiti-marred urban landscapes, 
sunburst skies and the bowels of a gritty tenement.

``It's all late 20th century stuff, flashy, urbane, and executed 
with sophistication. The demon even wears a turned-around baseball 
cap and high tops.''

``We wanted to reach teenagers and perhaps young adults with 
this translation of the story,'' {The Times} quotes Fern Lee 
Hageborn, the project manager for the American Bible Society's 
multimedia project, which produced the video. They had reached 
the conclusion that a video in the style of MTV was the most 
appropriate way to do this. Satan must be laughing at us.

The Brave New World

``We made a conscious decision not to grow old with our audience,'' 
says Robert Pittman, now a Time-Warner, Inc.  executive, ``So 
we decided to change for change's sake.''

Pittman was referring to the decision this year by MTV to enter, 
in a big way, the political election news fray with a multimillion 
dollar coverage of the election campaign and an effort to mobilize 
voters in the 18-24 year old segment of its audience with a 
get out the vote campaign called ``Choose or Lose.''

MTV was not simply adding some more political news to its nightly 
and weekly ``rock news show,'' that sparse political news coverage 
that the network deemed of interest to its viewers--abortion 
issues, censorship, racial strife, sex scandals, etc. MTV was 
to try to cover the campaign {as if by a series of music videos, 
posing as news coverage}. Its segments featured sound and music, 
and music video-like camera angles and cuts, aimed at achieving 
maximum emotional impact.

``We are trying to speak a language that our viewers understand,'' 
said one of the news producers. ``We are going to reach people 
who speak the language of MTV.''

Interspersed with the {image} reports, were interviews with 
political newsmakers, mostly done by the network's 25-year-old 
political reporter Tabitha Soren, who speaks and ask questions 
in a short clipped style, almost like a rapper, and who likes 
to dress in men's clothes. For political ``floor'' reporters 
for the staid GOP convention, MTV hired Ted Nugent of the heavy 
metal band Damn Yankees and Treach, a black rapper from the 
group Naughty by Nature, who roamed the floor, seeking out fundamentalists 
and others who were more than willing to appear on Satan's network. 
At the Democratic convention, Megadeath's Dave Mustaine could 
be seen interviewing delegates from the deep South.

Soren, who had commentaries from New Jersey Senator and former 
basketball star Bill Bradley at the Democratic Convention and 
House Minority leader Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich at the GOP 
convention, was herself the subject of enormous media attention. 
All this helped build the credibility of MTV's coverage.

``We were trying to make people {feel} things,'' said one MTV 
person.  ``We wanted them to connect some images and faces with 
some ideas, so that they could relate to those ideas. We weren't 
trying to preach.'' It was best the tradition of music video.

The average viewer of MTV watches for only 16 minutes at a time. 
The network's executives plan all programming with the foreknowledge 
that this limited attention span is what they have to work with.

MTV says it plans to continue this type of new coverage, offering 
its young audience a ``full service'' network. Meanwhile, the 
major networks have already taken to producing MTV-like music 
videos within local news, and even an occasional national newscast 
or news magazine show to deal with political issues.

MTV doesn't change, said Pittman, but as the young MTV generation 
grows older ``society is going to become more like MTV.''

On June 16, Bill Clinton became the first presidential candidate 
to submit to MTV's ``Choose or Lose'' interview show. (Later 
Ross Perot would do the same; President Bush refused the offer.) 
It was a thoroughly stage-managed affair, with a carefully pre-selected 
young audience that would make both MTV and Clinton look good.

MTV received both the praise and the promise of the man who 
was then President-elect of the United States that he would 
``stay in touch'' with both the network and its audience. ``I 
like MTV,'' he said, praising the work it was doing in getting 
young people to register and vote with its ``Choose or Lose'' 
campaign.

Cut to commercial for the ``Choose or Lose'' campaign, one that 
aired hundreds of times on MTV: The screen explodes with a flash 
of blinding light and a riff of hard rock music, with words 
over-dubbed, about the Bill of Rights. The band is the rock 
group Aerosmith.

``Freedom,'' declares lead guitarist Joe Perry, ``is the right 
to use handcuffs for friendly purposes.'' As he speaks, he licks 
whipped cream off the chest of a buxom blonde. He continues: 
``Freedom to wear whipped cream as clothing.'' Two blondes, 
scantily clad in American flag suits, hold up the rim of a giant 
condom. As the rock music blares, a voice off camera intones: 
``Freedom to wear a rubber {all day}--if necessary.''

``Hey,'' yells lead singer Steve Tyler, ``Protect your freedoms--Vote!''

``Even for the wrong person,'' adds bass player Tom Hamilton 
laughing.

MTV and its VH-1 will be available in the White House in 1993, 
as well as in 250 million homes worldwide. Satan is laughing 
so loudly that you can hear him. Just turn down your television 
set and listen.

That's all for now. When we return, we'll show you how your 
brainwashers intend to put you into your own, personal ``virtual'' 
world, where you will no longer merely watch, but become a part 
of an interactive fantasy more real and powerful than any drug 
experience.  Welcome to the brave new worlds of ``virtual reality.''