h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Money for Nothing: MTV, professionalism and supreme silliness - A10535582
Author: (TonsilRevenge) Soon to be wearing an "April is Autism Awareness Month" tattoo. - U186749

An anthropological examination of an odd phenomenon that will puzzle future scientists and infuriate future aesthetes.

Off to class, will drop by tommorow, schedule permitting.

Garcias!

OK, honestly, I got a little lost in there. Structure-wise, it may be because a lot of the sentences are quite long. Content-wise, I'm completely ignorant on the topic of TV. I can see where slowing down and explaining things could ruin the 'voice' you have in there, but it would help make the entry accessible to the masses.

Also, of course, beware of opinion.

No problem. Why do you think it's parked over here?

Whose opinion?

All my entries are based on my opinion.

If you could specify which parts you find confusing?

Sure. I'm copying it offline and I'll give you details sometime soon.

Okay.

I'm still here, but RL is very busy.

>>Along with it came an odd reverberation of the old studio system of film-making where the popularity of a song and a singer might depend for a brief fifteen minutes or fifteen million dollars upon a few seconds of sound accompanied film.<<

There is too much happening in this sentence, and I suspect, more than one condition. The entire popularity of a singer could hang, in a 15 second period, on a film? What if someone missed those 15 minutes? And how does the 15 million fit in? Sorry, I’m funcused.

>>What was even stranger was that it was the remains of the movie studios and record companies that had suffered the most from the advent of television in the early fifties that reaped the benefits from the eruption of cable TV as the musical and cultural cathedral of cool.<<

Again, it’s a long sentence, and though it makes perfect sense, it took me two and a half readings to digest.


>>The iconic images of popular and unpopular music flipped from the static art of the record jacket to the tiny screen.<<

Are you talking about TV? Or is this just an alternative to movies, the big screen? VCR maybe? And how does that relate to:
>>Once upon a time, in the dimming days of 'New Wave'1, something weird happened. It was known as the mid-eighties.<<
What about the mid-eighties anyway? It must be something that happened in the mid-eighties that is the big deal, because the mid-eighties themselves are just a collection of dates.

>>And, like the old days of the Hollywood system, if it weren't for the massive technological resources and almost unlimited money2 of the monolithic mega-corporations, the pioneers of the music video revolution, however talented or visionary would have gotten nowhere near the toys needed to make their wonderful little curiosities.<<

You presume too much of the reader.
1. that they know about the old days of the Hollywood system
2. that they know which monolithic mega-corporations you are talking about
3. that they know what kind of ‘toys’ the pioneers of music video would need
4. that they know what you mean by ‘curiosities’. Now that I chopped it to bits I see that you mean the curiosities to be music videos, but honestly, isn’t there any easier way to say this?

Anyway, that’s a fair enough sampling of the dizziness that I faced.

Oh.

The use of 15 seconds and 15 million dollars is a poetic reference to Andy Warhol's 'fifteen minutes of fame'.

I see where you are coming from.

Gotcha.

RL has been a little interfering with me, also, as witness this late reply.
Thanks for your attention.

I will attempt to remedy that.

No prob. Andy Warhol - artist? I think I'm out of the loop.
Or maybe just in a different loop.

Andy Warhol, the soup can fetishist, once said,"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."

Gotcha, now. Still, explicity is necessary when your audience is anybody.

explicity?

Actually, I've had this discussion for years about cultural references, most notably when I was trying to helm a committee of scriptwriters for a coop radio program in Austin almost twenty years ago.

You cannot write "down" to your audience. If you write the truth, and it involves cultural references they don't get, then they have something to look forward to if they are willing to learn.

Besides, now they have the entire internet in addition to their local libraries.

No, I agree that the entry goes all over the place. That is a definite problem. It was basically a brain dump.

I will attempt to refine the scope in the future, but don't be surprised if there is still much that you don't comprehend. I have a tendency to be eclectic as well as pedantic.

I will probably deal with your other notes tomorrow.

Any luck getting your head around this one TR?

Is this still being worked upon? If so, what sort of help do you envisage getting by having this in the Edited Guide Writing Workshop?

Alex

I'd like to propose Flea Market as the author has ed.

<BB<

Moved from EGWW to Flea Market