While pioneers of the TV-for-people-who-are-sick-of-TV genre like Mystery Science Theater and Beavis and Butt-head took a problematically honest approach to the practice of watching crap, VH-1's Pop-Up Video skirts this flaw with a simple act of graphic elision. Instead of presenting mediocre badinage through characters who are at least as suspect as the programming they deride, Pop-Up delivers text-only commentary via smart-looking help balloons that appear on the corner of the TV screen: The removal of surrogate losers like Beavis and Butt-head and MST3K's smarmy robots means that the banal-retentives who sit transfixed by the show's steady stream of snide trivia are no longer faced with a constant reminder of who the joke's really on.
This seemingly obvious tweak has turned Pop-Up Video into VH-1's highest-rated daily show, which of course is only a roundabout way of saying it outperforms well-guarded corporate secrets like CardioVideo and Hollywood and Vinyl, but still ... Pop-Up costs just US$30,000 per episode to produce, and regularly earns a 0.5 Nielsen rating, a return on investment that is apparently so attractive that the show's two creators, Tad Low and Woody Thompson, have been able to parlay it into no less than four spin-offs for VH-1's upcoming season. If that seems like an overly optimistic medley to milk from a one-note concept, it's only the start. Other shows, like Sportscenter and The Tonight Show have already appropriated Pop-Up's annotative approach, as has the increasingly fallow MTV. And all this is happening before anyone has begun to exploit the technique for its true potential - integrating commercials with content.
So far, Low and Woodson have been remarkably reticent in regard to this obvious application of their show; in interviews, they prefer to talk about how they're taking "potshots at network culture" and "popping the pretentiousness of the celebrity myth." These, of course, are assertions that only the most docile or indifferent entertainment reporter would accept; the notion that Pop-Up Video is in any way subversive dissolves the moment one video ends, another starts, and the viewer keeps watching. Sure, the show may nip from time to time while it sucks, but like any parasite, its subversion is merely an aggressive form of supplication - if its host dies, it dies too. And even as parasite, Pop-Up Video isn't particularly debilitating. In affirming the show's rebellious nature, reviewers invariably cite its outing of Adam Duritz's fake dreadlocks - but that subverts what exactly? Did anyone not suspect that squat, mannered tunesmiths resort to distracting gimmicks to disguise their frumpiness in these days of mandatory telegenics? And besides, Duritz already admitted it all in Rolling Stone in 1994.
The real measure of Pop-Up's soft touch can be determined by how many artists have truly protested its attention so far: Prickly bimbo progeny Jakob Dylan, ever-fearful of any filial slight, is the only one in more than a year of popping. Despite claims of "ruining [artists'] infomercials," the Pop-Up duo, whose work on a variety of jump-cut TV shows has apparently left them with only a vestigial sense of continuity, also brag that artists are already hoping to be popped, because the exposure the show provides - it airs four times each weekday - can help resuscitate flagging record sales.
With a few minor adjustments, the show could do even more than that. An 800-number appended to the pop-up about Duritz, for example, could instantly turn an innocuous dreadlocks dig into an irresistible sales pitch: For only $29.95, you too can achieve the hammy angst of an authentic singerman street poet. Hit songs, with all the personal associations they conjure, have already revealed their persuasive power in car and shoe commercials; popped videos, in which the artists were primary and the products incidental, would make the sales pitches even more convincing. And in a world where attention no longer spans, Pop-Up Video offers the only click-proof blend of content and commerce: With pops happening every 10 seconds, even the most jumpy channel-surfer would catch a few ads for rock-star convertibles and Wu Tang sweatsuits.
Ideally, registered users watching interactive TVs would click on a pop-up to initiate a transaction immediately. In the meantime, an 800-number would work just fine. Royalty schemes for the artists whose videos are popped would also have to be developed, but that shouldn't be too hard to accomplish. Current sponsorships and commercials from Sprint and The Gap and Revlon suggest that there's no shortage of grizzled tambourine-shakers and materialistic divas willing to turn their hit singles into jingles; in the not-so-distant database future, one imagines artists may no longer even charge for their work at all. Instead, every album, in popped-video format, will reside in a free public-access jukebox on the Net; the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith and Salt 'n' Pepa and everyone else will make their money based on how many transactions they help generate.
So why are Low and Woodson, a pair of neo-Diller dollar-chasers with a seemingly sincere case of mogulmania, not busy capitalizing on this aspect of their show? Could it possibly be that some inner, unarticulated resistance is blinding them to the opportunity staring them in the face? Are they hoping, however subconsciously, that their show offers something more than the constrained irony of annotation, that given enough time, their pops might coalesce into something with true explosive power? Something that, if unable to actually subvert celebrity imperialism, might at least effect their own personal escape from it? Um, probably not - commerce will no doubt come to the show eventually. Because the revolution already happened, the revolution was televised, and eventually, the revolution will be rerun and it will be popped.
This article appeared originally in Suck.
