[HN Gopher] How Beavis, Butt-Head and Daria disrupted cable
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How Beavis, Butt-Head and Daria disrupted cable
Author : hhs
Score : 35 points
Date : 2021-07-30 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| The tragedy of Beavis & Butt-Head is that you can't legally get
| the actual complete-with-music-videos episodes due to licensing
| issues. I thought maybe YouTube would make this possible given
| their deals with all the labels, but nothing to date.
|
| Fortunately you can torrent pretty solid TV rips. I was both too
| young to watch as a kid and didn't have cable, but I watched the
| whole series with my wife almost 10 years ago now and it was so
| good. It's hard to believe that show was so controversial. In
| many ways it was one of the friendliest, nicest shows. I wonder
| if younger generations would appreciate it.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I had the same problem with a show I liked from back in the day
| called Northern Exposure. Fortunately I got my hands on a very
| rare copy with the original music.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| I had no idea Northern Exposure had a music thing like this.
| I'll have to look that up...
| Rhinobird wrote:
| It might be because the radio DJ in the town and the songs
| he plays after waxing philosophic.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Ah yes, of course.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Here's some info: https://www.moosechick.com/SubMusic.html
|
| If you look at the reviews on Amazon for the NE DVD's tons
| are music complaints.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > It's hard to believe that show was so controversial.
|
| I guess you don't know about the kids who set their houses on
| fire (allegedly) because Beavis was burning stuff and saying
| "Fire!, Fire!" on air, or the accompanying congressional
| hearings on the state of the media. The show was on at 7pm when
| it first came out I think; after that shit it went to a 11pm
| "adult-only" show with lots of disclaimers about how you
| shouldn't do what the characters do. No more fire references,
| no huffing glue, etc. MTV was seriously worried they'd lose
| their license I think.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| I heard about those (probably-not-so-alleged) incidents at
| the time. The overpass rock throwing was a particularly bad
| one, too. I have a friend, a person who's far from your
| typical "square" who's a bit older than me and absolutely
| hates B&B because he knew lots of kids who emulated them and
| did stupid things, and it really bothered him at the time.
| That would probably be me if that had been my experience.
|
| That said, I don't think it's fair to judge something by how
| some tiny cohort responds to it, especially when we're
| dealing with extremes like setting your house on fire or
| throwing rocks from an overpass. There may be an argument to
| be made that if you're setting your house on fire, maybe a
| television show wasn't the root problem?
| deelowe wrote:
| And yet, where I live, we had our own "overpass rock
| throwing" incident just a few years ago. No Bevis or Butt-
| Head involved.
|
| Who's to say the people who do these things wouldn't have
| found another equally horrifying outlet for their
| frustrations if Bevis and Butt-Head weren't a thing?
| [deleted]
| johtso wrote:
| Ah yes, the glorious "King Turd" collection. Where there's a
| will there's a way.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Amazing. Never knew it had a name. Thanks.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| When I get my NAS set up that's the first thing I'm
| transferring onto it. With RAID 1 of course! uhhhhh losing
| those files would suck uhuhuhhuhh
| beauHD wrote:
| > It's hard to believe that show was so controversial
|
| It was controversial because of the potty-humour and the
| chaotic puerile antics of the characters. They had a certain
| irreverence for authority and many conservative do-gooder types
| didn't like that.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| No mention of The Maxx, which is a shame. That was another
| supremely well-done animated show from MTV's heyday that
| gorgeously adapted an Image Comics series. It was closer in tone
| to Aeon Flux than Beavis and Butt-Head, which is probably why
| it's not remembered.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maxx
| euroderf wrote:
| Let us not forget that MTV ran without commercials for two or
| three years.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Very excited to hear about the second _Beavis and Butthead_
| reboot! If you were a young fan, the episodes from the first one
| are definitely worth checking out.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Would love to see Beavis and butthead flip through
| streamers/YouTube/TikTok content and roast it as heartily as
| they did when music videos were a thing.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Everyone forgets it was mostly MST3K with music videos, aside
| from the odd short story.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd love to see that too. If you like to see people roasting
| narcissist streamers and "influencers", you might like
| joeybtoonz[1]. Not for everyone, and there are probably
| others out there with similar content.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/c/joeybtoonz/videos
| technothrasher wrote:
| I was as big a fan of B and B as anybody back in the day, but
| it's been so long I can't imagine a reboot can capture the
| zeitgeist. It'll be another in a long line of disappointing
| grave digging, I suspect.
| saturdaysaint wrote:
| I wouldn't bet against Mike Judge - he went on from B&B to
| create Office Space, King of the Hill, Idiocracy (painfully
| underrated), and most recently Silicon Valley.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This article gives me no idea how they disrupted cable. This
| reads like a thirty something forced to write about the fortieth
| anniversary of MTV, which a quick search of the author shows is
| (probably) accurate.
| hhs wrote:
| This may help - seems like the author tried to in some places:
|
| > For animators who wanted to work outside of TV conventions at
| the time, MTV became a destination and a laboratory. According
| to Maureen Furniss, who is an animation historian at the
| California Institute of the Arts, "[MTV] showed people in the
| public things they had never seen before in animation and gave
| opportunities to a lot of independent animators and
| experimental animators."
|
| > "MTV animation was truly an outgrowth and extension of MTV
| on-air promotion and MTV on-air promotion was incredible. It
| was a creative laboratory, " Terkuhle says. "We were not only
| allowed to take risks, but encouraged to take risks and the
| executives had our back."
|
| > That ethos of a creative laboratory that took risks drew show
| creators to pitch and push for ideas that wouldn't end up
| elsewhere on television.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Calling slightly edgier cartoons "disrupting cable" seems
| like a stretch.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Not even slightly edgier. There was stuff on the 90s that's
| so weird it wouldn't even get a Netflix / Disney / ATT
| meeting these days.
|
| Ren & Stimpy, Powerpuff Girls, Pinky & the Brain, Magic
| School Bus, Johnny Bravo, I Am Weasel, Freakazoid!, Eek!
| the Cat, Earthworm Jim, Dexter's Lab, Courage the Cowardly
| Dog, Captain Planet, Rocko's Modern Life, Talespin, Tiny
| Toon Adventures, VeggieTales, Captain Planet, Cadillacs and
| Dinosaurs, Bonkers, Animaniacs.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I don't watch a ton of current kids shows, but the little
| I've seen still look pretty weird. It's a different weird
| but that's more just due to general trends.
|
| Plus, like half of those have had/will have reboots.
| jdofaz wrote:
| Disney via Hulu has an Animaniacs revival that includes
| Pinky & the Brain
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I've seen it. It's a decent effort, but doesn't live up
| to the original.
|
| But then again, I'm not sure our current times even allow
| that kind of humor anymore.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Amusing that Captain Planet is on there twice. For what
| it's worth, Rick and Morty just did a gender-swapped
| Captain Planet tribute episode a few weeks ago, and they
| run on AT&T-owned HBO Max.
| grawprog wrote:
| It might be easy these days with the amount of edgy
| cartoons that exist now to forget back then, there really
| wasn't any. Shows like The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, Beavis
| and Butthead, and even Daria I suppose were not really like
| any other cartoons out there.
|
| They subverted the tropes everyone had taken for granted
| since the 50's or so that TV was expected to have. They
| outraged parents and the extreme conservative groups that
| wielded fairly significant power at the time.
|
| Shortly before that we had 'the Dungeons and Dragons'
| scares and it was the time of the violent video game and
| explicit music crackdowns. Those cartoons became targets
| for those same kinds of people.
|
| Without those shows, we probably wouldn't have the kinds of
| cartoons we have today.
|
| I would definitely include more than just the two cartoons
| in the article and MTV as the sole disruptors of cable.
|
| But, the cartoons of that era were definitely disruptive in
| a way that's hard to appreciate without experiencing.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Some shows even did this explicitly -- Space Ghost, Coast
| to Coast!, for example, was a remix of a 60s era show
| into an absurdist late-night talk show, using the same
| animation assets and everything.
|
| And it spawned a whole genre of similar shows in the
| 90s/early 2000s that formed most of the original Adult
| Swim lineup.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >It might be easy these days with the amount of edgy
| cartoons that exist now to forget back then, there really
| wasn't any.
|
| You're talking about shows up to twenty years removed
| from Bakshi cartoons like Fritz the Cat or his eighties
| Mighty Mouse show. The Simpsons and such definitely
| popularized the medium, but it didn't create it.
|
| >Shortly before that we had 'the Dungeons and Dragons'
| scares and it was the time of the violent video game and
| explicit music crackdowns.
|
| There is always content that is slightly edgier that
| conservatives freak out over. Some outraged people didn't
| disrupt cable, cable embraced the cartoons and pushed
| things further with things like the creation of Adult
| Swim.
| grawprog wrote:
| Fritz the cat was a feature film not a TV show. Mighty
| Mouse was an actual kids show cancelled over a reference
| to a character supposedly snorting a line of something
| and Bakshi's reputation.
|
| There was a bit of separation between TV cartoons and
| feature length ones back then. You're correct, the
| precedent for adult oriented animation had been set years
| before, but I wouldn't really compare movies like that,
| or even the more adult oriented anime shows and films in
| Japan at the time to that era of western TV cartoons.
|
| As far as western TV cartoons went, prior to those late
| 80's, early 90's shows, there wasn't really any like
| them.
| beamatronic wrote:
| I recall Aeon Flux from around this era
| bredren wrote:
| Aeon flux is mentioned and the creator is quoted in this
| article.
|
| AF was very influential on me. We did not have cable when I
| was a kid, but my grandparents did.
|
| I saw aeon flux there and I think it sent me toward sci-fi
| / horror. Many of the shirts had frightening or bad endings
| for the hero.
|
| Beavis and Butthead got cut down some when Beavis was no
| longer allowed to say "Fire!"
|
| I also think Beavis and Butthead paved the way for Ren and
| Stimpy.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| "Ren and Stimpy" predates "Beavis and Butthead" by a
| couple of years (at least the full "Beavis and Butthead"
| show-- the shorts may well be older).
|
| The original "Aeon Flux" shorts on Liquid Television had
| an aesthetic that was just creepy to me. Definitely a
| horror aspect.
| mlok wrote:
| The show for these experimental animations was called "MTV's
| oddities" [1] and my favorite one was The Maxx [2]. I've
| never seen anything better actually.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/JlkzHSDoMpc
|
| [2] https://vimeo.com/40704262
| progmetaldev wrote:
| This was great, along with The Head which was on right
| before The Maxx. An average Joe wakes up with a giant head,
| and out pops a weird alien named Roy. Of course everyone
| says it, but MTV was so much better back then (I was also a
| huge fan of Headbanger's Ball on Saturday nights).
| addingnumbers wrote:
| The author seems to have forgotten to include any mention of how
| these shows "disrupted cable".
|
| Expanding the boundaries of acceptable taste in broadcasting
| wasn't a disruption, it was the linear continuation of a trend,
| following the footsteps of All in the Family, Married With
| Children, the Simpsons, and dozens of other shows that slightly
| broadened the goalposts for acceptable themes in broadcast
| comedy.
| dkarl wrote:
| Odds are the author didn't write the headline, and the author
| mentions MTV's willingness to push the boundaries of acceptable
| taste as an enabling factor that brought innovative shows to
| MTV, not as an innovation in itself.
| iddan wrote:
| I didn't grew up in the 90s but I started watching Daria during
| high school and it quickly became my favourite show at the time.
| It was smart, beautifully drawn and said things that even twenty
| years after the show ended were relevant
| kazinator wrote:
| I was late 20's in the Daria time frame. Yet, as I noted in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28011399, I liked that
| enough that years later I torrented all the episodes and binge-
| watched a good bunch of it. The concept and the characters are
| good. It's an "artifact of cultural significance".
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I love daria.
|
| I didn't really watch it on MTV - just an episode here and there,
| but ended up sitting through all the DVD's one summer.
|
| It's a really great show, and I don't understand why people get
| their panties in a twist over the original music being cut out of
| the DVDs. It was never a part of the story (except for the R:E:M
| song, but I think they kept it in), which together with its
| characters can more than stand on their own.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| B&B does stand on its own away from the videos. But the videos
| are also part of where they really shined. So you can buy the 4
| box sets. But you are really getting about 1/3rd of the content
| from that show. Some of the videos are on the extras discs in
| the packs. Watching Mike Judge comment on MTV culture through
| the eyes of B&B was part of the fun. The last season they put
| the segments in. Watching them riff on Jersey Shore was most
| amusing.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I was talking about daria, not because and butthead.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I heard this report on the radio version of The Morning Edition,
| and it was roughly the same as this article... but then Chris
| Boyd's (sp?) _Think_ came on after, with a follow up about MTV
| during the same period, and it was almost entirely white
| flagellation. For every subject brought up about MTV 's history
| and decision making process, there were two or more references to
| race as an unsubstantiated, assumed reason for what MTV did. I am
| so very, very tired of this near constant race baiting from NPR
| and affiliates, but I don't know how to make a difference. And
| yes, I do know all the arguments assuming that I'm only feeling
| uncomfortable because of my own privilege or whiteness or
| whatever, and all I can say without laughing too hard is that
| these arguments are extremely wrong.
| kazinator wrote:
| I like Daria; I have all the episodes somewhere on some hard
| drive thanks to Bittorrent.
|
| Regarding Beavis and Butt-Head, I made a script in the early
| 1990's that produced randomized B&B laughter, using samples.
|
| hhehhh hehh huh .. hhe eheh ...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| This made me think of "Liquid Television", where Beavis and
| Butthead made their first appearances on MTV. There's probably an
| interesting rabbit-hole to go down re: finding copies of those
| old shows. There are definitely some pieces that I'd like to see
| again. (I still find myself saying "You love to bowl"
| monotonously from time-to-time.)
| Zelphyr wrote:
| My best friend of many years and I were talking yesterday,
| reminiscing about the job we both had right after high school
| when _Beevis and Butt-Head_ first came out. He remembered me
| cracking him up with a weird laugh that I randomly started doing.
| "You sound like Beevis and Butthead!" to which I replied, "Who?!"
| Not having cable I hadn't heard of them yet.
|
| So I was Butt-Head incarnate, apparently. Explains some things...
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