massachusetts Institute of technology
communications forum
From: holland@pencilogic.com
Subject: From: Holland Wilde
Date: April 2, 2004 6:48:39 PM MST
To: thorburn@mit.edu
Dr. David Thorburn,
I feel the need to acknowledge, in some way, your need to publicly apologize (read: chastise me) for my opening question at Betsy Frank's presentation yesterday. Your instinctive reflex to come to some defense of your guest was honorable. No problem. My question was never meant to disrespect, hurt or embarrass her, you, or to rant like some right-wing goofball. My intention was to simply subject her to one of her own techniques. In fact, I wanted to infect the entire room with a meme...."corporate pedophilia". It worked. Few there will forget the term, especially Ms. Betsy Frank. It needed to be said. If you want to hear more of my reasoning read on. If not, cool, I said my peace. Delete this email. Thanks.
Holland Wilde
Pencilogic
911 Shirley Street
Winthrop, MA 02152
p: 617.846.5469
*********
I know a lot of the folks at MTV, past and present. I’ve worked with them. I greatly admire much of their work especially in the areas of print and on-air design. But that's really where it ends. Look, it's no secret that Viacom (in this case) is blatantly exploiting children. The reason being that 6-18yos represent an estimated $200 BILLION pile of discretionary spending. EVERYBODY wants a piece of that pie. So who’s gonna yell fire?
I believe my comment to Ms. Frank was:
"If you were a priest you'd probably be hauled outta here as a pedophile. I say this because you’re devising a Craddle-to-Grave marketing strategy by primarily micro-designing media into an aggressive consumer experience - one which borders on corporate pedophilia. I seriously doubt you would encourage your own children round-the-clock viewing of your own product. Because I’m guessing that you also have research that clearly implicates MTV in Cause-and-Effect concerns about the massive increases in: teen consumption - teen obesity - teen suicide - teen debt - teen plastic surgery... So I guess my question to you is: How would MTV change if every viewer were your 12 year old daughter?”
For the record, public speaking in not my forte....so I may have scrambled the above a bit. But I thought Ms. Frank's (non)answer spoke volumes. Listen again to the webcast when it’s posted. My question was far from inappropriate. For instance with previous speakers:
-
-Josh Bernoff stated (1:37:40) that “Ethics is not at the top of the list in the minds of media executives.”
- Jeffrey Dvorkin said to the effect that, “It’s obvious that money drives most media decisions.”
So then, why not go straight to the horse's mouth? Look, if we whisper the words gay and marriage, jew and nazi, or children and porn in the same sentence most folks go berserk. But there is very little outcry about exploiting undeveloped minds with every possible form of scientific manipulation known to man purely to turn them into consuming machines. I can offer reams of research to support this. Corporations are not being held accountable, period.
Ms. Frank managed to spend maybe 30% of the forum extolling MTV's “pro-social” virtues when in actual broadcast terms it probably represents only 1% (15min.) of an average broadcast day. And ketchup is also a vegetable, right? Lip service. But these are the easy arguments. Ms. Frank’s efforts are much more insidious. She is teaching corporations how to hook viewers for a lifetime. Consuming drones. Consumption as citizenship. Instant gratification as true health and happiness.
I don’t have to spell this out to you....we all know exactly what I’m saying. The hundreds of hours of ads seen during a child’s formative years? The huge number of “image” promos each day that foster self-loathing? The addictive brand-lust forced into every nook and cranny of every broadcast. Celebrity worship. Crack coke?
Ms. Frank is a chieftain in all this. And she needs a good dose of “reality” ethic. She appeared stunned by the term “corporate pedophilia” and claimed to have never heard it. How could this be? In all her years of deep research she never made that possible connection? If not, then we may be in even more trouble than I fear. Ms. Frank is brilliant and we need her to interpret ALL her research.
It doesn’t take a media expert to see that the recent MTV “pro-social” piece on Sen. John Kerry was broadcast once at 10:30pm...yet they run back-to-back hours of “I want a famous face”, et al, from 2:30pm on, every day, during the unsupervised after school hours. Just ask a parent. Her weak aside on MTV’s concerns about teen obesity can be summed up in one 2sec. video clip of a plastic surgeon holding up for the camera a 12 pound hunk of human fat from a teen’s tummy-tuck.....the $15,000 poorer (but ecstatic) teen-patient was intent on looking like Kate Winslet. On and on. Sit with me some day and we can watch MTV together.
Technology is not entirely agnostic. But certainly its USAGE makes a difference. And no surprise, money rules usage. Try this: After every PowerPoint bullet in Ms. Frank’s presentation say the words, “...because we want more teen money.”.....you’ll start to hear the true undercurrent. MTV is only a delivery device, the front story veneer, to the very real backstory of how to get viewers hooked on unceasing consumption. (That was even Bush’s patriotic plea of citizenship after 9/11....for the love of god don’t stop spending.) Ms. Frank pleads innocent because she only draws bomb blueprints. She could care less who makes the bombs or where they’re thrown. For that she’s totally unapologetic. Creepy.
I don’t have a 12yo daughter either. But that’s no excuse for Ms. Frank or anyone else. If her kind of PowerPoint presentation was about bombs the FBI would be over that like flies on crap. If it was found in a Priest’s briefcase the Globe headline would read, ”Stalker Found With Detailed Plans To Seduce Children”. Evil doers?
David, I like your forum. I enjoy it. But you simply can’t talk about “the emerging landscape” without discussing VISUALS. (...and I’m not just talking about pictures of hanging dead Americans from a bridge in Fallujah....that’s another discussion.) And you also can’t talk about “changing media-audiences” without a nod to how corporations are mastering the manipulation (the enslaving) of the new generation of go-go-90’s kids into their own personal, lifetime gold mines.
Now, next week, let’s see if Mr. Jack Valenti parses the word “is”.
h
From: thorburn@MIT.EDU
Subject: i'm so glad you emailed
Date: April 5, 2004 3:09:10 PM MDT
Holland!
I'm so happy you emailed and grateful you understand why i had to speak as i did. as deeply as you, i suspect and revile the commodification of the world. i deeply regretted your framing the issue in a way that made rational argument impossible and required a host's obligation to overweigh all.
I wish the root questions about the limits we need to put on commerce had been more fully articulated at that event, though I think Henry Jenkins raised many important aspects of the issue in his helpful response.
I want you to know I welcome your continued participation in the Forum, though I hope you will frame your questions in a more citizenly spirit next time.
Dr. Davis Thorburn MIT
p.s. your message delayed reaching me until today because of emails troubles.
From: henry3@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: From: Holland Wilde - re: Betsy Frank
Date: April 5, 2004 2:52:31 PM MDT
Cc: thorburn@MIT.EDU
Holland,
Thanks for sharing your response. You are raising some very important concerns about the current commercial climate, its impact on youth, and MTV's roles in it. You have to know that I was uncomfortable with the tone of her presentation and especially of the unproblematic ways that her power point glossed over many key issues. That's why I took some time afterwards to try to get her to spell out some of her assumptions and to signal some of the realities being masked over by those claims. I was hoping to have the audience join me in questioning her assumptions and challenging some of her claims. The problem is that your use of the term, "pedophilia" was excessive. Not only did it offend the speaker but I've heard others say that they were reluctant to ask hard questions because of the confrontational tone the event was developing. It is a "meme" in so far as people talked about it, but it was talked about as a verbal excess rather than a helpful way of generating thought on the topic. I think everything you say below was worth asking about -- including her use of research to more effectively target teens and what you suggest about the relative marginalization of the pro-social material in terms of the broadcast schedule. I would have loved to have seen those ideas discussed at the forum but the name-calling made most of us really uncomfortable. It is helpful to me to understand the thinking behind your comments, but you also need to understand that our goal in insuring a civil atmosphere at the event has to do with producing a climate where people do feel free to ask hard questions and where the speaker feels free to offer honest questions.
Dr. Henry Jenkins MIT
BETSY FRANK: “I don't have a 12-year-old daughter. Feel free to ask me any questions you want. I have a different opinion of what MTV Networks is providing to the various audiences that we serve.
I have no qualms about MTV programming. We provide entertainment and information. Your phrase, 'corporate pedophilia,' is certainly one I haven't heard before, but I really think your concern for the children of America is unfounded. I think you can sleep easy tonight and know they'll be okay.”
NOTE: Putting lipstick (corporate spin) on a pig (MTV) doesn’t change the fact.... it is still a pig. But then, pigs and lipstick are two very dissimilar things, as are “name-calling” and suggesting similarities between the ways MTV and catholic priests stalk children. Indeed, any sting from conflation should signal symptoms of common comparison. I did not call Betsy Frank a “corporate pedophile”. I did, however, strongly suggest her tactics could be called as much, particularly when paralleled during the almost daily, front-page, church-sex allegations sweeping New England in early 2004. My kind of verbal tact however, in open-public lecture forums, is often lost amongst the fervent requirement for (patronizingly?) respectful academic exchange... apparently we must smile even while those challenged continue to attack our children.
...more rape for corporate profit disguised as
literacy, communication and design.
An American, living
in Canada, now spending his life experimenting with new forms of critical media ethnography.
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