Tuesday, 08 June 2010

• Is MTV the Real Villain?

  
  My brother mentioned last night that the MTV Movie Awards were on TV. Since I was bored and not really doing much, I decided to check out a bit of them. I haven't actually watched MTV in years and it took me some time just to find the channel.
  
  I sat down and started to flip channels between National Geographic (there was a documentary about White Sharks. Oh and something completely weird: Paul Walker, from The Fast and the Furious, was part of the boat's crew. Just an oddity I figured I'd mention) and the Movie Awards.
  
  I caught the last part of the initial monologue and it was fairly entertaining, but that is not what caught my attention. As I kept going back and forth, there was an Award for Best Villain in a movie — Tom Felton won for his portrayal of Draco Malfoy over Christoph Waltz's performance as Col. Hans Landa in "Inglourious Basterds." To me, that is incomprehensible.
  
  Let's just give some thought to the matter. Malfoy is a puppet of the real villain, he's nothing but a scared little kid. He's just as brainwashed as the kids that voted for him as Best Villain; the real Villain in that movie is Voldemort. I mean, the kid didn't even have the testicular strength and connivance to kill Dumbledore. A villain who can't pull the trigger is nothing but a second-rate character.
  
  On the other hand we have Col. Hans Landa. The dude's nickname is "The Jew Hunter", he's a Nazi, he's so focused on his own self that he's willing to sell out Hitler. He chases Jewish people without any show of remorse and constantly give you shivers throughout the film. If that's not a villain, I don't know what is.
  
  I mean, I know these selections are made possible by the overwhelming votes of a bunch of thirteen-year-old prepubescent chronic masturbators and twelve-year-old girls with platonic crushes, but come on. Why do we give them such a liberty?
  
  I mean, I don't have an overarching problem with them voting. My problem is that their voting is highly influenced by things beyond actual performances. MTV has aided in the creation of a generation that fails to ask poignant questions before making their decisions. They have shaped these feeble minds to simply focus in what is in front of their noses (usually a TV-set tuned to MTV's extensive array of exploitative reality series) and not to wonder beyond that.
  
  MTV paved a way for a new way of making TV and they were innovative in that regard. But they are stuck there, and with it they are bringing down generation after generation of kids.
  
  The mere fact that the "Twilight...whatever" movie won best flick over Avatar says a lot about this constant global lobotomy that's being performed in our own living rooms. I know these kids are young and are very prone to outside influences, but shouldn't we try to influence them in a better way? Shouldn't we focus on encouraging actual thought and try to inspire rather than simply try to sell?
  
  Accordingly, I watched "Inglourious Basterds" with my girlfriend at the time. Once the movie finished, we talked about how we both thought that maybe at some point we were going to hear some kid talk about the fictional events portrayed in the movie as being historical and real (such as Hitler's death). It was almost like for a second we were just way too cynical in our views of the new youth. Obviously, we made these comments jokingly, but I believe that, even whilst joking, a part of us believed that we weren't that far off on our observations. I think a part of us was disillusioned in the fact that we saw that as an actual possibility.
  
  Finally, I'm not saying that I have lost faith in generations to come, and that MTV is to blame for everything (we as older brothers, parents and role models are to blame as well), but those feelings of uncertainty, disillusion and disbelief I felt that day after the movie have come back to knock at my door again.
  
  On a side note, one good thing about the Awards: that kiss between SJ and Sandra.
  
  What do you think of the Awards and of MTV in general?
  
  

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