The best treat I got this Halloween wasn’t my very own cigarette holder, a fun size milky way or my abortive trip to West Hollywood. It was Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.’s video for his newest single “Mrs. Officer.”
Weezy did exactly the two things that I hoped and predicted he’d do with the song: Make it a single and make the video completely literal. “Mrs. Officer” is by far the breeziest song on “Tha Carter III,” with its dulcet hook courtesy of Bobby Valentino and easygoing beat from Deezle, and naturally one of the most enjoyable, if not at all challenging. The lyrical content of the song has already become somewhat infamous, with Lil Wayne humorously detailing a torrid affair with a female police officer, which, come to think of it, may be autobiographical, considering how easily he’s delayed his hearings for his drugs and gun arrest in Arizona back in January. But with a story like that already in the lyrics, why try to make some “artistic statement” with a music video when you can just act out the words? Accordingly, Wayne’s video falls in the grand tradition of literal videos that can be traced back to the oft-maligned-by-VH1-talking-heads video for “Land Down Under” by Men At Work and the video for Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina.”
But how are impressionable young preteen minds going to see Lil Wayne caress a girl in a sexy cop Halloween costume if TRL is cancelled?
As you may have heard, “Total Request Live” will be no longer on the air as of Nov. 15, after just a shade over 10 years of programming. It would seem appropriate to declare this the end of an era. TRL, for screaming fans, was a tastemaking godsend; for scowling critics, was the decline of western civilization; and for wide-eyed 10-year-olds, forbidden fruit. To have that absent seems strange after 10 years as a pop-cultural signpost.
However, it can’t be denied that TRL’s cultural cachet had been declining for the past couple of years, which is probably the reason for the cancellation. Back when TRL started, Carson Daly was a household name, now most people would be hard pressed to name one of the hosts for TRL’s current incarnation. This certainly says something about TRL’s hegemony since the chief criticism of Carson Daly at the time was that he lacked a personality.
But I digress. The factor that underpins the decline of TRL (and pretty much everything else media-related) is of course, the Internet.
This news of TRL’s implosion comes as no surprise if you’re anything like me and sank into a Virginia Woolfian depression when BET announced the cancellation of “Rap City,” the exclusively hip-hop video block, back in September. For me to satisfy my Top 40 cravings, the only viable option was “Rap City,” because TRL was too clogged with stupid contests and awkward interviews. “Rap City” got the job done in an hour, had a fairly unobtrusive host (at least when I started watching) that allowed Young Buck to bellow at the camera like a lunatic about “exposing” Lil Wayne, and even had a freestyle segment. When “Rap City” was 86’d by the BET brass, that was the first nail in the coffin for music video shows.
Now with TRL biting the dust, it seems like it might be only a matter of time until music videos vanish from television altogether. When two flagship video blocks on leading cable channels are no longer viable, it only seems inevitable that either music videos will continue to be relegated to the graveyard shift or be stricken from the airwaves completely, only to have the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. time slot filled with Magic Bullet infomercials.
The true culprit, as I said before, is the Internet. Why wait for your favorite video on the countdown when you can just search for it on YouTube right away? For better or for worse, we live in an on-demand culture, where through DVR, On Demand cable and most importantly, the Internet, we can consume anything we want instantly. In this day and age, waiting and hoping for a video to be screened seems antiquated. And why wait if some programming director at MTV is going to cut off the first and last minute of the song anyway? Rick Ross’ “Speedin'” isn’t half as good without the prologue and epilogue.
With music video shows going the way of the dinosaur and music channels diversifying their programming away from music videos, it’s at least comforting to know that music videos as an idiom are still phenomenally successful, albeit chiefly online. Out of the 20 top viewed YouTube videos of all time, 11 of them are music videos, including the number one most viewed, Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend,” with an absolutely flabbergasting 106 million views.
Clearly, music videos are here to stay, maybe just not on our televisions. If music networks can figure out a way to fold our on-demand culture into a TV show, music video broadcasts during daylight hours may have a chance. Until then, I’ll just keep clicking on the Lil Wayne videos YouTube recommends for me and waiting for the “Dirty South” video playlist on Music Choice to update.
If you also watch the “Hungry Like the Wolf” video for tips on dramatic table overturning, e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.