MTV rules - for a bunch of wussies - music television video's Beavis and Butt-Head

ArtForum, Feb, 1994 by Andrew Hulktrans

It is as "safe" satirists that Beavis and Butt-head take their place in the metanarrative of MTV. Their critique of the music video--the art form that MTV helped pioneer, and that drives the network (and the music industry) to this day--may seem biting, but ultimately does nothing more than establish MTV's willingness to make fun of itself, confirming the network's self-awareness credentials for a media-savvy generation. If you told an ad exec from the '50s that the best way to pump a product for young people would eventually be to denigrate it, he'd, like, have a cow, dude. But it's true. The most successful shows, ad campaigns, and networks of the '90s are those that are willing to abase themselves and traditional marketing and media conceits--those that are ready for irony. Late Night with David Letterman was a pioneer of this strategy, Beavis and Butt-head are the latest manifestation, and it's no coincidence that Letterman has signed the duo up for his own new shown.

Beavis and Butt-head's jibes are vicious enough for maximum ironic abasement, but, as cartoons, they keep the rest of MTV "safe" from the venom of their critique. The pair also perform a valuable service for the network in its difficult role as fashion arbiter. "I may be cool, Beavis, but I can't change the future," Butt-head remarks, in a rare moment of clarity. But he can change the past. Beavis and Butt-head help MTV in its constant task of reinventing itself; they are its garbage disposal. Their show is a site where MTV can safely distance itself from its "old" (even three-months-old) product, so that the rest of the network's offerings seems continually "new" and "cutting edge." Again, Beavis and Butt-head, as cartoons, can perform this function more effectively than the human vjs, who if they tried it might undermine the network's "sincerity."

A straw man Beavis and Butt-head ritually torch is the unabashedly boomeresque VH-1 cable network, which masks as a competitor of MTV's but is actually spawned by the same company. Demarcating an important demographic distinction that MTV vjs could not without, again, risking damage to the parent company's interests, Beavis and Butt-head falsely position themselves against VH-1 to further the esthetic rift between the two networks, and to make MTV seem more "happening" by contrast. Bottom line: you've got to have stuff that sucks to have stuff that's cool. These days, TV generally sucks. In order to make it cool, you must admit that you suck, or have one of your programs do it for you. Ironic abasement is paradoxically the only strategy for appearing "sincere." After failing miserably at raising its sincerity ratings last year through traditional means--the painfully earnest "Choose or Lose" coverage of the presidential campaign, a slew of well-meaning "documentaries" on the problems of today's youth--MTV found an unlikely panacea in Beavis and Butt-head. "After the . . . 'choose or lose' campaign, I think we were sick to death of being politically correct," says Judy McGrath, creative director at MTV. "Beavis and Butt-head came along at just the right time for comic rebel." Actually, they came along at a time when MTV desperately needed to change its positioning--from cloying paternalist to winking flagellant.