I saw “Varsity Blues” yesterday on TV. It’s one of the first movies made by MTV’s movie production company. In the movie it attempted to show a real picture of high school football in a small Texas town. The story was predictable at times. I’m not sure if the movie makers were trying to be Hoosiers of football. In the movie adults were shown stereotypically as bumbling idiots, or as a corrupt football coach. The only supposedly “cool” adult in the movie was a female teacher who was a part time dancer at an adult club.
What was slightly disturbing about the movie was that it showed several scenes of underage drinking in it. MTV will argue that it was portraying real life. I would argue that MTV has a lot of influence on America’s youth and to show underage drinking somehow in some cases could promote it among youth. Sure, there have been plenty of movies that show teens doing illegal acts. The movies that come to mind are “Stand By Me” (smoking by 12 year olds); “The Breakfast Club” (illegal drug use); and “Teen Wolf” (underage drinking). However I would say that it is pretty hypocritical of MTV to try to appear saintly by not showing beer commercials on their station, yet at the same time financing a movie that shows underage drinking. Since this movie was a MTV production, it was promoted heavily on MTV at the time it came out.
Just out of curiosity I did a search for various words having to do with drinking at mtv.com. MTV is usually good about archiving its news items and MTV new specials on the web. The results of this unscientific study are as follows. Matches for “DUI” only popped up for handful of items (41). “Alcohol” showed a bit more matches (201), some having to with songs that had alcohol in the title. Many were about celebrities and musicians going to alcohol rehab. A search for “Underage Drinking” showed no matches. MTV did attempt to address the issue of alcohol abuse during the Hawaii season of Real World. During this season a roommate is sent to a rehab program after her drinking got out of hand.
On the other hand searching for AIDS at mtv.com showed 554 matches.
The bottom line is that while MTV is in the habit of promoting “cool” causes like AIDS, they have notoriously overlooked the problem of underage drinking, and in some cases promoted it.