Cult – ('k&lt): Obsessive devotion or veneration for a person or principle, or ideal. b) devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad. 
 

I have to admit for all the bashing I give MTV I rarely tune in to the channel. If I’m in the mood for music television I know better than to try and find it on MTV. I skip right on over to VH1 and hope they have a cool behind the music rerun. That being said, I finally did manage to tune in to TRL for the first time a couple weeks ago and what I witnessed was disturbing! 

First off, we know that the videos on TRL generally will not appeal to the average rock fan or most people over the age 15. That wasn’t what I found disturbing. What set off alarm bells in my head was the chorus of screaming barely pubescent girls. To the casual observer this may appear to be right out of the book of “Beatlemania”. Sure we’ve seen this before.  However, the feeling I got was a bit more sinister. Watching those girls made me flashback to old newsreels of Hitler mesmerizing the Hitler Youth. 

Wait a second antiGUY! Are you comparing TRL to Hitler?  Not directly no, but it does bring up an interesting proposition. Just how much control does TRL have over popular music and culture? Does the airing of a new band on TRL give them a much better chance of success than the bands that get ignored by MTV’s programmers?  If Carson Daly labels a new group “cool” do their CD sales jump?  So TRL may not exert the influence that Hitler did over the German people in the 30’s and 40’s but it does play a vital role in establishing what its viewers think about popular culture and music. In this way it is really a Cult. 

I know this argument is a little far fetched but stay with me here for a minute and hear me out. I’ve read dozens of books on various cults and the similarities I’ve found are stretching things a little bit but still fall within the realm of possibility. 

What is the biggest influence on popular teen culture today? Since the advent of rock and roll it has been music. You can find that music is the main dividing line between middle school and high school student cliques.  Music not only influences what is popular it helps determine fashion, vocabulary and a mindset. Look at the difference between the so-called trendies and punkers. They seem to come from totally different worlds and that division starts with the music. People will listen to music they relate to. So a cheerleader will find more in common with the slick marketing of Britney Spears “Opps I Did it Again” then they would with “Anarchy For Sale” by the Dead Kennedys. 

Now that we have established the music does play a big part in the identity of most teens let’s look at how TRL influences that identity and where the correlation with a cult come in. 

Every Cult needs a leader.  Is Carson Daly the  Charles Manson of TRL? Ok that’s pushing it a bit. Carson Daly doesn’t tell his viewers to commit crimes or murder. The interesting fact about Daly is he, like Manson is a detached father figure. He is twice the age of his average viewer and holds great influence over them. Whether he likes it or not, Carson Daly does set an example for his viewers. If Carson likes it, it must be cool.  The TRL viewer looks to Carson to set an example. As we know you don’t want to be uncool! So if Carson appeared one day on TRL wearing a Slayer t-shirt would his viewers go out and buy Slayer CD’s? Some might, if they perceived that because Carson likes them they are the next big thing. Again you don’t want to be behind the trends and thus—uncool! 
 

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