THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

MTV is the cable network that so many grown-ups love to hate, yet its long-lasting effects since its 1981 premiere are multitudinous and not necessarily all signs of cancerous moral decay. MTV has almost single-handedly made the short-form film viable again, even if its main function now is to advertise singles. The proof of this “success” is in the record sales that some of the hotter videos generated.

These days, the typical rock video may have as many edits as an entire feature film and, combined with obtuse symbolism that may or may not mean anything, the editing is often bafflingly elliptical. TV commercials have, of course, borrowed this frenetic style till sometimes viewers don’t know whether they’ve tuned in to MTV or just a commercial break during the nightly news.

The result, says Long Beach Museum of Art media arts curator Michael Nash, is that this generation of kids can “speed-read visuals.” Says Nash, “They’re getting an education in how dialectical montage works. In this vast commercial junkpile of record advertisement that most music video is, what’s also going on is a groundbreaking work to establish a whole new kind of tele-visual language.”

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.