Tag Archives: MTV

How watching the TV show “Cribs” affected what viewers expected from their own homes

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What did Cribs teach viewers about homes?

Photo by Hongyue Stone-Jon Lee on Pexels.com

The show’s audience of Millennials, coming of age in an era defined by consumption, learned to take their cues from celebrities. These role models accumulated traditional markers of wealth while also having fun subverting them: In their respective episodes of Cribs, the That ’70s Show actor Wilmer Valderrama highlighted red Solo cups and paper plates on display in a china cabinet, and Missy Elliott gestured to her decorative, seminude Greek statues, remarking, “Naked a-s-s all around the house.” The show featured nouveau riche celebrities who proudly referred to themselves as outsiders; the rapper Juelz Santana was still a “hood dude,” and the record producer Master P claimed that he’d come “from the ghetto.”

These scenes were designed for the average young viewer to enjoy, yet their appeal was offset by their unattainability. Even the celebrities themselves hadn’t always attained Cribs’ vision of the so-called good life. On occasion, the show constructed complete fantasies: Bow Wow and 50 Cent supplemented their car collections with luxury rental vehicles, and the singer JoJo presented her uncle’s lake house as her own. On camera, T-Pain and Missy Elliott admitted to staging their homes—with a frosted cake and a colony of goldfish, respectively—several hours before filming. These contrivances became so well known that, in 2009, the All-American Rejects guitarist Nick Wheeler spent much of his appearance mocking them. “I went down to Enterprise and picked up what they had,” he said, standing beside his Mitsubishi and Mazda sedans, before flaunting his notably sparse kitchen. “I didn’t just do this for Cribs,” he said, evoking an earlier episode in which Kim Kardashian insisted that the cookies on display in her kitchen were homemade, despite their striking resemblance to a popular prepackaged variety…

The secret of Cribs, though, was that even amid its less relatable moments, the show found a way for viewers to feel included in the fantasy: It taught the audience what to consume as well as why they should, by demonstrating how a person’s property—both its literal value and its aesthetic qualities—could define them. Viewers could seek to understand a celebrity’s personality by studying their domestic environment. “The subject of house furnishing is more important than is often realized,” said the Cribs companion book, explicitly articulating this connection:

Everyone is free to change his surroundings. Hence the furniture and the decorations of a house, and the condition of the house and grounds, are properly considered as index to the character of its occupants.

It sounds like one lesson is that the ways someone inhabits a space says a lot about them. Sure, some people have more resources to work with but decorating a home is about self-expression. The homeowner gets to narrate their choices and what they are trying to say about themselves. (Now I am wondering how often this happens when someone provides a house tour to someone visiting; is the focus on the residence or what the house says about the people living there?)

At the same time, I wonder if the size of the dwellings depicted and the amount of things within those spacious spaces affects viewers. I first read sociologist Juliet Schor’s book The Overspent American in graduate school. She argues that watching television shows helped shape what Americans expected from homes. If you watch a typical drama or sitcom, you tend to see people living in large residences with nice furnishings. With Americans watching a lot of television in the postwar era, they could consider the characters on television as a reference group. Rather than just looking at family or neighbors for what is normal or possible regarding housing and consumption, they could now turn to TV depictions of regular life. For example, how did those young adults on Friends afford those apartments and lifestyles? Did regular viewers of Cribs then envision larger homes for themselves?

I have not read any studies that look specifically at that question: did watching specific television shows directly affect choices about where to live? Broader data can look at the possible relationship between how many hours of TV people watched and their consumer choices. Did watching Cribs or HGTV or any number of shows that prominently feature well-appointed spaces change real behavior, and if so, how?

Claim: all media companies have a resident sociologist

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This is all tongue-in-cheek but MTV suggests sociologists are in demand:

While falling in love can seem complicated at times, behavior experts can break down the science behind attraction in the simplest terms, so we called upon MTV’s resident sociologist (what media company doesn’t have one?) to deconstruct last night’s “Are You The One?” premiere using her Five Factors of Love thesis.

If there are not real sociologists on TV much, perhaps we could argue many networks and stations have people who play sociologists. Aren’t many of the talking heads pontificating about social forces?

On one hand, if these sociologists were primarily tasked with analyzing the latest reality dating shows, the job may not be that exciting. On the other hand, if there was a sociologist who was able to talk about important issues on TV, areas that consistently match with their research, and was afforded the ability to interact with other experts as well as TV personalities, it could be a very interesting gig. All together, this may mean MTV would not be the best place for a TV sociologist…

Chicago suburb and school district won’t allow MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” to film on their property

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Not all suburbs want to appear on reality TV shows: the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park and the local school district don’t want MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” to film there.

MTV’s controversial show “16 and Pregnant” is unwelcome in Tinley Park, as village officials and school leaders have pushed back against possible filming in the community.

When Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki heard the show might be shooting at the 80th Avenue train station’s restaurant, he sent word to the owner of Parmesans Station that the show’s cameras would be unwelcome on Tinley property…

Officials at Andrew High School declined this summer to allow MTV’s cameras on campus, principal Bob Nolting said…

When he was approached about filming at his restaurant, Papandrea said he had the same initial reaction as Zabrocki.

But he changed his mind after giving the matter further consideration, reasoning that the show has a positive effect on teenage pregnancies, he said…

For Zabrocki, who worked for many years as a guidance counselor at Brother Rice High School, the show presents “a bad image.”

Suburbs are often conscious about their image and it sounds like the suburb and school district didn’t want to be viewed as promoting teen pregnancy. Instead, I’m sure they would rather their community and schools are viewed as having a good quality of life, meaning they are the sort of places where teen girls don’t get pregnant. Of course, not all teen pregnancies happen to low-income residents but that seems to be the perception that Tinley Park does not want to invite.

From luxury item to throwaway good: cable TV

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Following up on Joel’s post from Wednesday, Figures from the last quarter suggest the cable TV industry continues to lose customers:

The phone companies kept adding subscribers in the second quarter, but Dish lost 135,000. DirecTV gained a small number, so combined, the U.S. satellite broadcasters lost subscribers in the quarter — a first for the industry…

Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett estimates that the subscription-TV industry, including the untallied cable companies, lost 380,000 subscribers in the quarter. That’s about one out of every 300 U.S. households, and more than twice the losses in the second quarter of last year. Ian Olgeirson at SNL Kagan puts the number even higher, at 425,000 to 450,000 lost subscribers.

The second quarter is always the year’s worst for cable and satellite companies, as students cancel service at the end of the spring semester. Last year, growth came back in the fourth quarter. But looking back over the past 12 months, the industry is still down, by Moffett’s estimate. That’s also a first.

The article goes on to mention a number of reasons for this: a bad economy so consumers are cutting back, younger people don’t see the necessity of cable, and there is a lot of content available through the Internet.

More interesting to me is the idea that cable TV is no longer the luxury good that it once was. Once the industry began in the 1970s and later consolidated, cable moved from being a rarity to being a necessity. As late as mid 2009, “11% of U.S. TV homes only have the capability to receive TV reception “over the air”.” Having cable simply became part of how Americans spend their disposable income. Cable became prism through which many Americans viewed the world. Certain channels arose, such as MTV which has been getting a lot of attention recently because of its 30th anniversary or ESPN which was the subject of an interesting book, and became part of the national consciousness. These channels, for better or worse, came to represent American culture and were exported around the world. I wonder if having cable at home signaled a middle-class lifestyle even if other traits don’t match this standing.

But now the world may have moved on. (At the same time, despite all the articles suggesting people stop paying for cable, bad economic times, and more competition, the drop in subscribers was only 0.2-0.3%.) How exactly will cable companies convince people that their product is a necessity, particularly among the younger generations? What will be the new narrative regarding cable that will push people to include this in their lives?