money for nothin' and your chicks for free...so there I was watching the 2021 VMAs last night...I am certainly not the target audience...although any one of my contemporaries from NYU TV days...before it was Tisch...when equipment looked like it fell off a truck on 10th avenue...can tell you that we were tinkering with music videos before that launch in August 1981...and so I did kind of watch with amazement...that a show celebrating the medium of video would expect such amnesia from the audience...oh, let's look at Doja Cat dangling from a wire...ooo....ahhh...Pink, anyone?...lots of black dominatrix attire clinging to flesh...wow...except you had the queen open the show...Madonna...and so it went on...for several hours in Brooklyn as everyone put Covid in the rear mirror and celebrated 40 years of MTV...totally forgetting that the medium itself...video...is there for posterity...a permanent mirror capturing society at a moment in time...so if you want to writhe...crawl...bump...grind...you'd better bring something new...because it's been done...and MTV has the tape to show you...don't get me wrong...there were some good moments...and for the target audience...I suppose great moments...if that audience looked up from cell phones long enough to watch...as for MTV...it will go on...how do I know?...sadly, in the pearly white smiles of new video heroines Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish...angst and disdain never looked so pretty...but as the great Peter Allen once sang...everything old is new again...
