78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



go, go, gadget conglomeration
2005-03-03   4:31 p.m.

I don't know quite what to make of MTV Africa. Viacom is doing what it does best: finding a new cash cow and, well, cashing in. I'm surprised it took them so long, what with MTV Lebanon et al having already been in existence for quite a few years at this point. I think it's very nice that MTV's PR person said the network's decision to launch MTV Africa "will carry African artists' voices farther" around the continent. Nice indeed, considering another press release I just read stated that African artists will account for one third of programming content. Wow, a whole third!. But worry not: they have plans to move that number to 50%. Eventually. So it's gonna take them a while to marginally represent the market that they're pitching to? It's hard to imagine American artists only accounting for 50% of MTV's content here in the states.

Concerns are obvious, and are much like the ones that I was voicing here a few weeks ago: the propagation of music and culture full of bland homogenization, the kind that MTV is so infamously connected to here in the West, the kind that doesn't "take risks" on innovative (read: "local") bands, preferring instead to go with the more efficient and safer market economy model of presenting music. But now added to that are fears of cultural imperialism, and the often not so subtle suggestion that what is Western, whether it be music, political structure, or body type, is just more glamorous, more civilized, more advanced than everything else.

The Globalization of music is nothing new - I can assure you that when I was experiencing Moroccan, Ghanaian, South African and Zambian night life, western music was prevalent enough. It doesn't take MTV to let the world know who Beyonce is or generate enough interest in Eminem to hear his voice coming out of a passing cab in West Africa. But the larger issue becomes what, along-side the music itself, MTV will spread in Africa, and whether or not anyone is even conscious of the power MTV might have to be an agent of dissemination.

If, as many claim, MTV encourages mediocrity, rewarding do-nothing reality TV stars and so-so, copy cat bands with so much air time and promotion, will the same hold true for the network in Africa? Will the focus of MTV Africa remain, as MTV Networks International president Bill Roedy insists, "committed to the music and culture of Africa"? Or, after two years, will the network move African artists and culture out of the way to make room for reality shows that detail the contents of Jessica Simpson's closet?

Another issue that seems to plague Western MTV is the encouraging of ethnocentric and impossibly perfect beauty standards. Will this also become a part of MTV Africa? With so many women in countries like Nigeria and Botswana already going to extreme measures to look "whiter" - using skin bleaching creams, diet pills, etc. - will plastering Brittney Spears' beautiful and sought-after face all over television screens make the problem worse? It could, if American images proliferate, and are presented as superior to those of local singers'. African people have already suffered from centuries of “West is Best” impositions – will the prominence that MTV wants to take (“Our aim is to be very aggressive, creative, even relentless in getting our channel out to as many households as possible in Africa”, Roedy told BBC news) in Africa repeat the imperialist tendencies of the past?

Or will they offer a solution? Will they stick with their self-defined “grass-roots structure”, and work to promote local artists, globalizing their work, offering fascinating cultures some much deserved global recognition? This, obviously, remains to be seen. What we can hope is that MTV Africa will follow through with its promise to put the interests of Africans first. What we can fear, though, is that MTV might re-create the same problems that plague their Western networks – and that, without even realizing it, the network will be spreading more than just American music.

xo