Friday, October 13, 2006

BET on Mute

At the gym other day, trying to get my work-out on. So, I am on the exercise machine and I am watching various mute channels on the multiple TV's that are overhead of these machines. On one TV, a rerun of CSI Miami was intriguing, another TV had CNN with the daily fear-fuelled news, but what caught my eyes was the TV showing some hip-hop music video on BET. No all of these TV's were muted; no sound emitting - which is an important fact in all of this. The particular music video on BET was your derivative content for the average hip-hop song; ice-flashing, booty shaking, hood themed, and of course the new crave -- the obligatory regional dance. This one in particular was the 'snap dance'.

What was shocking was that with no sound emitting from the tube, to attempt to correlate meaning to the visual mess in the music video, the music video seemed almost comical -- even amusing. Without sound, the people gyrating, and jumping around looked so funny, and even asinine. I guess sound, at least attempts to give the viewer a sense of meaning to what is going on in the video -- and even in the presence of sound, most music videos on BET look ridiculous. So imagine, how when other cultures view BET who do not understand the language or culture .... they must be laughing and having a good time watching the perception of black culture.

Thus, try watching BET with no sound ... get the popcorn out.

Can we really be mad at BET for this? I don't know .....

Peace,
DesieB

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Hip-Hop Food for thought ... feast up.

posted by Vacant Lot @ 9:00 AM Comments: 0