ORANGE COUNTY PREVIEW : VIDEO ARTIST CRITICAL OF MTV’S VIEW OF WORLD

It’s easy to assume that a video artist such as Graeme Whifler, known for his imaginative and frequently innovative videos for bands from Devo to the Residents, wouldn’t have high regard for MTV and most mainstream rock videos. And that assumption would be right--to a point.

For instance, Whifler sees a definite link between the rise in teen-age suicides and view of the world frequently shown on MTV. At the same time, as one who has worked extensively in the medium, Whifler has high praise for the amount of creativity and technical excellence that is often found in rock videos.

Those are among the topics Whifler will address at 8 tonight at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, where he’ll also screen some of his own works in the latest installment of the museum’s “Friday Night Videos” series.

Interviewed earlier this week at his residence in the Mt. Washington hills overlooking Los Angeles, Whifler, 34, wasted no time in launching his attack on MTV.

The majority of rock videos, he said, “want to present a very positive, happy view of youths who wear nice clothes. There’s nothing wrong with people being happy, but that is only one side of life.

“The reason I say MTV is responsible for the rise in teen suicide is that they are just part of a general trend that wants to show one sanitized, happy view of life, and that’s very misleading. When people see around them only those kind of realities and the gap between that and day-to-day living, that kind of gap leads to despair. And there is no alternative shown.”

Whifler started making music videos in the mid-1970s when, fresh out of a San Francisco film school, he teamed up with members of the Bay Area avant-garde cult band the Residents and their record company, Ralph Records. After widening his scope to direct more pre-MTV age videos for other Ralph Records acts like Tuxedomoon and Snakefinger, Whifler went on to work for several major labels and better-known acts, such as Devo, whose “Are You Experienced” video he directed last year.

(The tapes Whifler will show at the museum will represent a cross-section of his works, but he declined to specify which acts or videos would be included.)

Having worked with both underground and above-ground performers, Whifler has first-hand experience with the various economic and political pressures on video directors.

“People are afraid not to be commercial,” he said. “It’s like what (film critic) Pauline Kael said about the effect Steven Spielberg has had on the film business, in that everyone wants to do a Steven Spielberg-type film because they have been financially very successful. They interpret that success as being films that are pabulum-ish children’s movies, which is having a chilling effect on the making of adult-oriented movies.

“That same kind of cultural effect is happening with rock videos,” he said.

Quoting from a friend’s satirical book, “How to Become a Rock Star,” that was sitting on his coffee table, Whifler ripped off a rapid-fire recitation of rock-video cliches.

“These are the things you need to have in your video: computer animation, sex, break dancing, slow motion, breaking glass, disappearing women, freeze frame, slow-motion breaking glass, slow-motion disappearing women, slow-motion freeze frame, cropped borders, long solos in which the guitar player treats his instrument as though it were a mountain lion trying to eat him, quick shots of the drummer so he won’t feel left out, arbitrary switches from color to black and white, fog, smoke and mist, arbitrary switches from black and white to black and white, with an average shot length of .005 of a second,” he said with a laugh.

On the other hand, Whifler said he isn’t a big fan of highly experimental video art either.

“I find myself right in the middle,” he said. “I have a very populist point of view--I love watching ‘People’s Court’ and reading the National Enquirer. A lot of what they call video art . . . is like performance art. I have a hard time swallowing a lot of it.

“I do like heavy-metal videos,” he added. “I guess they appeal to my childish sense of nihilism and rebellion.”

Although he is concerned about the way video is homogenizing pop culture, Whifler maintains that it’s too early to pronounce any final judgment on long-term effects.

“Video is an extremely young medium,” he said. “That’s a real important point. It’s like trying to draw conclusions about television in 1953 or about movies in 1919. It’s a very exciting medium. Definitely videos are on the cutting edge of film language. There is a new vocabulary of film imagery emerging that affects the way people gather information.”

From a technical standpoint, Whifler remains respectful of the way the video medium has revolutionized the look of commercial television, advertisement and films.

“I admire the amount of fine craft and work put into them; some magnificent editing goes into videos. The photographers really deserve some awards--they are breaking all kinds of grounds in lighting, camera angles and they are doing much more creative photography the best features.”

“However,” he added with a chuckle,” I would never miss an opportunity to see ‘People’s Court’ because it has real people in real situations, and that’s one thing most videos don’t have.”

Yet unlike some staunch critics of video, Whifler holds out hope that there is the possibility of growth and room for creativity.

“There’s always hope,” he said. “Everything changes sooner or later. It has to. People get bored with the status quo.”