Let me give you a little taste from the website:
"Watching My Super Sweet 16 can give us a glimpse of "the good life." Amidst the demanding divas and epic meltdowns that lead up to insanely over-the-top teenage birthday bashes, we get a look at the posh lives of wealthy families. And while we take that often envious look at how the other half lives, how many of us sit there wishing that these spoiled teens could be slapped with a serious dose of reality?
Wish no more, because they're about to get Exiled! Fed up with their seemingly endless mooching, their parents have had enough of this Sweet 16 set and are ready to send them away to learn the lesson of a lifetime. They've arranged to place their children in remote parts of the world with host families who have never tasted anything close to the high society life...shipped away from their plush homes and easy lives and Exiled to foreign locations such as the jungles of the Amazon, the tundra of the Arctic Circle, the Andes mountains and remote islands in the South Pacific where they'll have to live like local commoners with none of the amenities of their normally privileged lives."
I sat stunned for so many reasons. First of all, I knew why people would watch a show like this, but that didn't make me any less angry. It's just so funny, they will say. Does satire have to be on purpose to be satire? Is MTV a modern-day Twain? I hope so, but somehow, I doubt it. The one time I turned on the television and watched My Super Sweet 16 for a few minutes was possibly a low point in my life. I almost threw a shoe at my tv. This was worse. Take those same people and unleash them on underdeveloped and remote areas with a crew of cameras and a bad attitude and "make quality television." What did the people of Kenya ever do to deserve such a fate? Yes, there is a remote possibility that the sweet sixteen-ers could learn something and be the better for it. I honestly hope that happens. But that wouldn't make very good television. Rather, I am sure there will be exploitation of stupidity, unreasonable expectations, ungratefulness, and an excess of crying over nothing. Needless to say, I was angry. I am angry.
When I say that the world hates America because of MTV, I don't really mean it. I mean that MTV seems to put on display all that I deem wrong with America. It isn't that the media has distorted the reality of who we are. Heck, I don't even know if other countries even hate us. I don't even know if it is possible to have a national identity, but we do, don't we? I do know, though, that there are times when I want to turn a giant mirror on the United States and beg for people to pay attention, not to see if their pores are visible but rather to take a moment and look at who we seem to be, who we are.
I am not pointing fingers (well, I am...a little) at everyone else in America. I am despicable in my own way, so don't hear only passing judgment. I am not the close-minded naysayer who thinks that all of America is tumbling into hell and there's nothing that can be done about it. There are so many beautiful people who try to improve the quality of life for others all the time. I just wonder sometimes if people realize how petty and selfish and spoiled and cruel and repulsive we can be...appear to be...are.
The tone of parts of American culture freaks me out. I don't have Potter's word list to know what best way to describe this tone, but I know I don't like it. I don't like it that on the whole, my students don't value what is not entertaining. I don't like it that I have been allowed to skate through much of life on the gifts I have been given, rather than on the sweat and tears of my fight to achieve. And, to be honest, I probably have more fight in me than many I know. I don't like it that family is sadly growing into one of life's appointments, rather than being one of its foundations. I don't like that we make superheroes out of spoiled, unmotivated rich kids and create countless shows to show the "world" just how well we can carelessly waste money. I don't like it that we have to shock to be heard. I don't like it that I sat behind a school bus today and watched someone throw trash out the window, as if that were no big deal. I don't like it that so many people seem to drift through the days, rather than make them matter, depending on quick fixes and identity adjustments rather than on people and conversations and learning and God. I don't like it that kindness is an exception rather than the rule. I don't like negligence. Defiance. Ignorance. I could go on.
So, when I say that MTV is the moral compass by which Americans can chart their demise, I don't mean that exactly. I guess it is my way of simplifying the fact that the moral compass of America is seemingly broken. MTV just provides a mapquest view.
Good thing I always have the choice to turn off the television.
Or, better yet, help to change the station.
