Effective Biblical Discipline
The Influence of MTV
MTV not only admits they are trying to manipulate the young and immature; they spend big bucks bragging about it.
What is the common bond that links young people together? It is the worldwide pop culture, which knows no geographical boundaries. MTV, the most watched television cable network in the world, is the primary vehicle driving this conformity. Its wretched 24–hour programming is seen now in more than 377 million households every day, mostly by impressionable teens or young adults.1 The corporate conglomerate makes billions of dollars marketing pop culture — and rebellion — to a generation. Its executives are not only keenly aware of the influence they are having around the world — that is precisely what they are striving for.
One of their corporate ads pictures the back of a teenager's head with MTV shaved in his hair. The copy reads, "MTV is not a channel. It's a cultural force. People don't watch it, they love it. MTV has affected the way an entire generation thinks, talks, dresses and buys."2The amazing thing about this ad is that MTV not only admits they are trying to manipulate the young and immature; they spend big bucks bragging about it.
MTV is not the only degrading cultural force that is operating on the international scene. The American entertainment industry also shapes the worldwide community negatively through its distribution of movies, television, videos and the Internet. This is why the kids in Kenya and Fiji and Santiago and Budapest tend to pant after the same Hollywood starlets, dance with the same rock musicians and model themselves, unfortunately, after the same immoral antiheroes such as Madonna and Britney Spears and Eminem. It is why tattooing, body piercing, strange multicolored hairstyles and scantily clad girls have a similar look wherever one goes.
One of the most disgusting and disturbing examples of debauchery within the pop culture was seen at Super Bowl XXXVIII, held in February 2004. It included a halftime show that was pure filth, complete with crotch-grabbing antics, explicit sexual and violent lyrics, bumping and grinding movements, and girls who looked like prostitutes wearing garter belts and little else. The show, if it can be called that, featured pop singers Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. At the concluding moment of the performance, Timberlake pulled off the top of Jackson's outfit, revealing a bare breast. Millions of people around the world, many of them wide-eyed children and impressionable teens, were watching this disgraceful performance.3 The program was produced and sponsored by — who else? — MTV and its co-conspirators at CBS and the NFL.
With this program these money-grubbing executives contributed once more to the degenerate morals of a generation of young people in every country on earth. No wonder decent people in other nations hate the United States and consider it a wicked influence for their children. At least with regard to Hollywood and the pop culture industry, they are absolutely right!
Even more disturbing is that MTV airs this kind of immorality day after day on cable television, though most parents are too busy doing their own thing to notice.
What this means is that the job of raising kids, especially those seething with rebellion, has become much more difficult. A hundred years ago, when 14-year-old Billy Bob Brown, the strong-willed son of Farmer Brown, began to get snippy around the house, his dad could take him out to the back 40 acres and "get his mind straight." There they were, just the two of them, working through their conflict. And usually, Billy Bob quickly figured out that he had better shape up — or else. Now, teen pop culture imposes on parent-child relationships a vast and enormously influential network of ideas, enticements, sexuality, profanity, support and, mostly, an articulation of anger that compounds the difficulties of growing up.
According to environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, "If you had set out to create a culture purposefully damaging to children, you couldn't do better than America at the end of the twentieth century [and well into the next]."4 Columnist, author and radio talk-show host Michael Medved put it this way: "There has been a shift from a supportive culture . . . to a deliberately assaultive culture."5 Western culture is increasingly radical, sexual and revolutionary. It is determined to take your kids to hell, and your greatest wisdom and experience will be required to stop it.
This material is excerpted from Dr. Dobson's book The New Strong-Willed Child (copyright © 1978, 2004 by James Dobson, Inc.), published by Tyndale House Publishers, and is used by permission.