eZine 06.02.2009

TheSource4YM.com
	Jonathan’s Resource Ezine

• Featured Article: A Glimpse of MTV’s “Junk” ? The 2009 “MTV Movie Awards” Recap

Every year I watch the MTV Movie Awards for a glimpse of our youth culture, understanding that this show not only represents the content teenagers are already absorbing, but also knowing how much marketers use this show to advertise their junk to the millions of teenagers watching. And this year, we saw more literal “junk” (slang intended) than ever before: Andy Samberg’s “junk,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s “junk,” random skaters’ “junk”… let’s just say that male anatomy was at the forefront of the awards this year.

Yesterday morning, approximately 7 hours before the show, I stood in front of about 50 parents at my home church and shared a three minute “youth culture minute,” as I often do for the class, giving these parents of teens just a peek into the porthole of the teenage world. As I shared with this particular group, I encouraged them to put the kids to bed and turn on the MTV Movie Awards that evening, watching the first 15 minutes or so. Usually the first 15 minutes paints a pretty accurate picture of what to expect for the rest of the evening. Given the fact that Andy Samberg would be hosting, I told them to expect raunchy content.

My predictions were far from alarmist.

“Junk”
The show, and the male nudity, began with host Andy Samberg taking the audience on a pre-recorded voyage through a parody of the top flicks of 2008 and 2009. Even though he started off in a third world outhouse (Slumdog Millionaire), his clothes were removed by the naked (parts pixilated) Kate Winslet (The Reader), and he was eventually beamed (Star Trek), minus clothes, into Justin Timberlake’s limo that was en route to the awards show. After awkwardly crawling across JT trying to get out of the limo, giving everyone a pixilated view of his posterior, Samberg took the stage live, and the show was off to a telling start.

Samberg’s butt wouldn’t be the last guys’ booty viewers would see that night. Without a doubt, the most talked about moment from the entire show was when a mostly naked Br?no landed on top of Eminem.

When Br?no, played by Sacha Baron Cohen (most popular for his role as Borat), “flew” in to award “Best Male Performance” during the show, instead of landing on the stage, he landed upside down on Eminem in true pornographic pose, much to Em’s dissatisfaction. Br?no’s bare butt was about 2 inches from Eminem’s face. In the incredibly awkward and muted moments to follow (because of Eminem’s vulgar-laden disdain for the antics) the winner, Zac Efron, was announced. Meanwhile, Eminem’s body guards…um dealt with…Cohen. Eminem promptly left the audience pouting.

However, this wasn’t the first time in the show that Eminem had to be bleeped. He had just taken his seat after performing a couple songs off his new album, Relapse, where several phrases in his songs had to be muted because of the language he used. I can’t even begin to describe some of the lyrics heard in this little medley.

It’s amazing that parents actually let their kids watch this show.

But let’s not stray from the evening’s theme of male nudity. Viewers were in for more male privates with the constant barrage of “balls out comedy” ads for MTV’s upcoming programming…