Beavis and Butt-head are two totally irresponsible, perverse, destructive, unintelligent "morons" created by popular cartoon creator Mike Judge. They spend most of their time watching MTV, and "The Beavis and Butthead show" which is aired on MTV has become a worldwide success. However, do these two youths represent the MTV generation?
MTV's audience is mainly young people, and the channel has been described/criticised as being a baby-sitter. Parents can leave their children watching it and the visually exciting colours and fast moving imagery, as well as the music transfix them. Very young children, or older less bright children such as Beavis and Butthead, are not able to fully understand story lines and plots of films, the comedy in sit-coms, the latest news, documentaries, or most television programs that are not aimed specifically at children. Even children's programs are difficult to for some young children to understand but it is not as important to understand MTV. Very young children can enjoy it as every age group enjoys listening to music and it is visually exciting for a young child. Furthermore, the presenters talk into the camera, which would make a very young child feel like they were the ones being talked too, no doubt Beavis and Butthead would think so too. It is therefore understandable as to how the channel has been described as a baby-sitter. Of course MTV is popular with intelligent older youths too and young adults, but it is less popular with middle aged and elderly viewers. MTV is Beavis and Buttheads baby-siter, as neither of them knows who their dads are, and their mothers are never shown, and are never there. They also insult each others mothers, claiming that they are "sluts", and that they "hang out in bars". Beavis and Butthead therefore fit the stereotype of the children that MTV baby-sits, but whether they are a fair representation of the MTV generation requires further debate.
Beavis and Butthead are a typical age for MTV viewers; they are fourteen, so they are a good representation in terms of age. They are adolescent males and have obviously become interested in sex as their non-stop sexual comments and innuendo prove. Many adolescent males act like this, however, they are an exaggeration and a parody of how adolescent males behave. They find innuendo in everything, which is the predominant type of humour in the show, and considering the pair are so dumb that they can't read properly, they can use subtle innuendo which goes way over many middle-aged and elderly viewers heads. However, despite their mind controlling libido, they try too hard to "get chicks", and consequently fail miserably. Beavis gets particularly frustrated by this and commonly goes into ultra hyper "were never gonna score!" speeches. They are equally interested in women on music videos. Every time a women is on a video Beavis yells, "Wow, it a chick!", or "Ahh, did you see that, I saw a naked chick, it's a naked chick!", Butthead normally just mutters "Wow, uhh huh huh". The pair are famous for their infectious perverted laughs. I would say from experience that it is fairly typical of adolescent males to admire the scantily dressed females on MTV and make perverse comments, so Beavis and Butthead represent adolescent males who are a large part of MTV's audience. Music videos are commonly full of attractive sexy women to entice the men to watch it. Men will happily watch a music video with such imagery when they are not interested in the song being played.
There is more female nudity than male nudity in music videos just like in most media texts. This could imply that MTV's audience is predominantly male, but I don't think that MTV is more popular with either gender. Perhaps, due to the majority of artists still being male is reason why there is a bias towards female nudity. I am not even going to lower myself to the level of discussing the Spice Girls and girl power though. The groups or artists themselves normally keep their clothes on, whilst scantily dressed females are either involved in some weak video story line, or they dance provocatively. These videos are nicknamed "tit's 'n' ass videos". The ironic thing is that most female artists also have similar videos with lots of half-naked backing dancers. It seems that MTV conforms to the "male gaze" theory, which considers women to be the image, and men to be bearer of the look. This is supposed to reflect our behavioural patterns in real life. The theory is that pleasure in looking is split between active/male and passive/female; men like to look at women, and women like to be looked at by men. The woman plays to and signifies male desire, hence Frued's famous phrase; "Woman's desire is subjugated to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound". However, I think this theory is a little extreme as I am quite sure that women enjoy to look at men, and that men like to be looked at by women, but perhaps not to the same extent. This theory can, arguably, be proved with reference to the large selection of pornographic magazines featuring nude women. There are only a few for women featuring nude men, and they have only been introduced recently for the sake of equality, they don't sell very well. I don't know any one who has ever bought one except for my grandma and that was by accident cos she thought it was an ordinary woman's magazine. The point I am trying to make is that Beavis and Butthead are representative of this "male gaze", and representative of MTV's male audience who conform to this theory when gawking at women on MTV music videos. The perverse pair are the "male gaze" in its most extreme form, as I am sure not all adolescent males are sex mad perverts, some are more interested in homework like the "nurdy" character called Stuart who tries to be friends with Beavis and Butthead.
Beavis and Butthead are fans of heavy metal music and love to head bang whilst doing devil signs with their hands. I cannot speak for MTV in America but MTV Europe features very little heavy metal. There is Superock on Monday nights for a couple of hours but that is all, and even that show is not just confined to the heavy metal genre. MTV Europe plays mainly pop music, and although the type of music played on MTV is not directly related to what type of music the audience want to hear, heavy metal fans are not in the majority when it comes to MTV viewers. Therefore, it would be fair to say that Beavis and Butthead's musical taste is not the most appropriate to represent the average MTV viewers' taste. Heavy metal is considered a rebellious music genre and Beavis and Butthead are about as rebellious as they come, so it seems like a natural correlation.
Beavis and Butthead are destructive and like to break things, set things on fire etc, they are best friends but they are extremely violent towards each other and are always fighting, they are extremely unintelligent and are do very badly at school. They do have jobs at Burger World which could be considered responsible if they didn't cook curly fries made out of worms, have food fights, and give everyone food poisoning. None of these characteristics could be considered typical of MTV viewers, and certainly not as a fair representation. Mike Judge may have been trying to parody the type of person who sits watching MTV all day by making the characters incredibly dumb, but this is an unfair exaggeration and I think the pair were made so stupid for entertainment value more than anything else.
I don't consider Beavis and Butthead to be representative of the MTV generation as a whole, and I don't think Mike Judge meant them to be. I think they are a parody, a deliberately mis-guided stereotype, an exaggeration. No one could seriously consider Beavis and Butthead to be representative of MTV viewers, that would be insulting. They may represent certain aspects of the MTV generation such as conforming to the "male gaze" theory that MTV seems to adhere, being approximately the average age group, and MTV acting as their metaphorical baby-sitter, but they only represent these aspects to a certain extent. They are more of a parody and exaggeration of the existing stereotypes of the MTV generation. The pairs irresponsible, destructive nature is by no means a fair representation but is more representative of teen rebellion, and their incredible stupidity is mainly for comedy value and entertainment. I would conclude that Beavis and Butthead represent the MTV generation to a limited degree, but are more of a parody.
