eZine 06.08.2010

I don’t think anyone could have said it more true than New Moon star Peter Facinelli at the close of the MTV Movie Awards last night when he joked, “I’ve never heard the word ‘f**k’ used so many times in one evening.”

He wasn’t kidding. Joe Pesci was covering his ears! The poor guy hitting the sensor button probably developed a callus in the first half hour!

The sad fact is, the rampant use of f-bombs was probably one of the least worrisome elements of the evening. MTV provided girl-on-girl action, oral sex gestures, penis jokes, testicle jokes… and probably the icing on the cake, Christina Aguilera singing a song about receiving oral sex, complete with a close up of a little red heart-light lit up on her crotch at the end of the performance.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. MTV has put themselves in a bind. Each year they try to trump the previous year, and the easiest way to do that is to push the limits even further. It’s difficult to even imagine the show 10 years from today.

Second Guessing My Own Recommendation
For years I’ve been recommending that parents and youth workers watch this show to harness just a glimpse at youth culture. I’ve said it year after year, “I only watch three of these shows a year: The MTV Movie Awards, The Teen Choice Awards, and the MTV Video Music Awards.” Those three shows alone give anyone an accurate picture of exactly what our entertainment world is marketing to today’s teenagers.

Unfortunately, that little “taste” is starting to make me a little bit ill.

Last night my wife and I were driving home when I remembered that I had to watch the show so I could write this article. I dreaded the chore. I could think of a hundred things I’d rather do. But more than that, I am just getting tired of MTV, and the CW, and ABC trying desperately to target teenagers to watch their trash. It’s heartbreaking to me that adults are pimping this kind of content to our kids for one simple reason: ratings and money. Yes… it sounds like two reasons. But I assure you, they are one and the same.

Jersey Shore and Katy Perry
The show really began an hour before the show with the red carpet interviews. This year’s red carpet interview was basically a giant infomercial for MTV’s new reality show Jersey Shore, with Shore character Snooki on the mike helping MTV regulars interview the stars. In this pre-show, we got to hear Katy Perry joke about everything from doing a threesome to rumors of her performing naked. “I’m a tease,” she offered. (Hmmmmm…. I hadn’t noticed. Maybe next time she’ll admit that she’s a sellout too.)

The pre-show showed us glimpses of Katy’s racy music video with Snoop Dog, and then an exclusive, the first 10 minutes of Jersey Shore-Season Two.

Wow! I’m going to sound like my grandpa here, but, “I can’t believe they call that entertainment.” One of the characters of the show described it like this: (imagine a thick jersey accent) “Lot’s of fights, lot’s of hookups, lots of drama. One minute you got three girls in a Jucuzzi, the next minute someone’s in jail and you have to bail them out.”

The dialogue was unbelievable. Snookie is making meatballs with her new boyfriend Emilio. “How many balls do you want?” Emilio asks with a smirk.

Snookie pauses, then smiles. “Two, in my face.”

Then we’re blessed with Snookies keen insight about relationships.

“Me and Emilio have been together for two and a half months. I really don’t want to cheat. Like seriously, I don’t want to. But you know, if you’re going to hand me a bottle of freaking (she named a drink), something just comes over me. Like I just go crazy!”

At this point, I couldn’t wait for the actual award show to begin.

The Lowlights
The show opened with Tom Cruise reprising his role from the R-rated 2008 movie Tropic Thunder.

Uh… did I miss something? It’s 2010, isn’t it?

The fat, bald, and harry Tom Cruise character Les Grossman gave the sensor guy a run for his money in the first 60 seconds. His speech was probably summarized in these three sentences:

Unfortunately that wasn’t the last we saw of Cruises “Grossman” character that evening. Grossman joined us again later to dance in a traditional crotch-grabbing and hip thrusting fashion to a Ludacris song. (Yes, that’s the name of the artist, and yes, pun intended!) The opening words of the song:

Then “Grossman” began dancing with J-lo, holding a walking cane up to his crotch like a penis pointed at J-lo.

The host of the evening, Aziz Ansari, is a talented comedian. Unfortunately, like many talented comedians today, Aziz constantly grabs for the low hanging fruit of sexual humor and vulgarity. It was hard to watch Aziz cracking jokes about Taylor Lautner’s “nuts” when the cameraman was showing us 11-year-old Jaden Smith in the audience cracking up.

Think about that visual for a second-adults telling raunchy jokes and showing explicit material to 11-year-olds. If Jaden was walking through a park and a stranger approached him joking about testicles, erections and vaginas… my guess is that Jaden’s dad, Will Smith, might have a thing or two to say to this individual.

I wonder in the same situation if a lady came up to Jaden and started singing a song about people licking her vagina (as Christina Aguilera would do to the crowd later that evening)… I wonder how long Will would allow that to happen.

But as long as Jaden is sitting in the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, CA, and our kids are sitting in the popcorn-grease-saturated theatre seats, or on couches in front of big screen TVs… then it must be okay.

It’s obvious that MTV and parents all over the world just don’t mind this kind of content. Because if they did, they probably wouldn’t let kids watch the show. They probably wouldn’t allow their kids to vote whether the R-rated movie The Hangover is the best movie of the year…