MTV Killed the Video Star

I am no longer a part of MTV’s continually shrinking target audience. I am neither 15-and a-half years old, nor am I a brain damaged monkey. Thus, I do not enjoy their programming.

When people talk about things they used to like or used to be a part of, they are prone to remember things fondly, even if it wasn’t always rainbows and kittens; likewise, I seem to remember MTV providing me with the entertainment I wanted in the six scant months between late puberty and my driver’s license. Before that I was too young to understand it, and after that I was too old to care about it.

And now, as I observe from the sideline, occasionally flipping past the channel, or stopping and yelling, “Damn! Who’s this hottie?” I’ve noticed that MTV has gone completely down the crapper.

But it’s not just my old age that has changed the quality of the channel. The powers that be have taken every opportunity to poop on the music that was once their backbone and bury it in the dirt of MTV original programming.

I could rant all day about the mind blowing idiocy of all their shows, but I’ll just drop one example for now:

I was flipping through channels the other day and I stopped on MTV; not because I wanted to, but because I dropped the remote. As I scurried out of my chair and reached into the dusty darkness beneath, into which the remote had bounced, I was subjected to a show called, “Next.” In “Next,” beautiful women who were emotionally hollow inside (essentially, blank human billboards for name brand clothing and cell phones), gathered together and began a competition to win the affection of one man, let’s call him, “Mr. Douchebag.” Mr. Douchebag himself was just as emotionally hollow as the women who followed him around, he wore unbuttoned designer clothes, construction-grade hair gel, and so much cologne that I could smell it through the television. To make matters worse, Mr. Douchebag was given the ability to decide that he wasn’t having fun trying to get into the pants of one girl, dismiss her, and replace her almost instantly with another girl who may not have buckled her belt so tightly.

In the time it took me to find the remote, dust it off, shove the batteries back in, and change the channel, he had dismissed one woman because of her choice in seafood, and one woman before they even spoke to each other.

This man, who was burning through the women like rolling paper, did not strike me as a man who had trouble finding a date. He did, however, strike me as a man who had trouble avoiding sexually transmitted diseases. I had no sympathy for him, or the breast-zombies following behind him.

Watching as much of the show as I did made me angry and nauseous. Unfortunately, that is the most favorable thing I can say about a show I’ve seen on MTV in the past six years.

I’ve just watched the Japanese horror film, “Dark Water.” I think it’s a testament to the movie’s mediocrity that five minutes after taking the DVD out of the player, the plot, characters, and details of the film had completely escaped my mind. This is also an indication of the similarities between all Japanese ghost movies that I’ve seen in the last four years.

Let’s see, Dark Water is about a dead girl with long hair in a well. No, wait, wrong movie. It’s about a dead girl with long hair in a house. No, a dead girl with long hair with a cell phone. Oh, I remember, a dead girl with long hair in an apartment. That’s it.

A desperate mother must save her child by confronting the menace. Wait, scratch that. A desperate girlfriend must save her boyfriend by confronting the menace. Crap, that’s not it. A desperate woman must save her friend’s daughter by confronting- Oh, wait, I was right the first time. It is a desperate mother who must save her child by confronting the menace. Mother, child, menace. Got it.

Seriously people! Are they, like, playing Mad Libs with one script?

How many times is long black hair going to come out of your faucet before you say, “Screw this, we’re moving to America!” How many times is some invisible phantom going to grab your hand before you decide to just pack up your shit and move?

Like all J-horror, there at least a few striking visuals and scares; but of the genre films I’ve seen lately (Ringu, Ju-On, Phone, etc.) Dark Water contains the fewest scares and the least interesting buildup. It is predictable (even without being a j-horror clone), unengaging, and slow. Do yourself a favor and ignore it.

I’ve heard that there’s an American remake. I might be curious to find out if America’s formula for remaking a foreign film (by adding explosions and titties), does anything to salvage this boring story.