Smells Like Teen Rebellion

So, as an assignment for class, Amy wanted us to visit mtv.com and watch any of the top videos from 2007 and explain how we could use that video as a text in a media class, especially to focus on gender representations. So I went to watch videos, and as the My Chemical Romance video for "Teenagers" started, I could not focus on gender representations. I sat thinking, "Dimly lit, curtain draped school stage, dancing cheerleaders, a passive audience the erupts into a frenzy and storms the performing space of the band. Smells like an homage, or lack or originality."

As I searched for the Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video to make sure the similarities between the two texts was not just the result of an idle imagination, I thought that a more interesting way for me to include this video in a class is as a comparison. Both videos use similar motifs and the songs lyrically discuss teenage isolation, celebrates being misunderstood, and has an underlying anger and drive. The songs and videos were made for different generations (todays teens were in diapers or in utero when Nirvana's video appeared) and I think an interesting activity would be to explore how each video envisions teen rebellion.

We can start with the cheerleaders. In both videos, we see shots of suggetive dancing, but the sexuality is counteracted by the appearance of the girls. Anarchy symbols, stringy hair and tattoos on the Nirvana crew, gas masks for My Chemical Romance. The student audience in Nirvana's video was made up of hair thrashing, flannel-clad slackers. The audience in the "Teenagers" video are students that look like those that could be seen in mainstream magazine clothing advertisements. The band and music spoke for itself in the 1990s; today, heavy-handed moments like images of mushroom clouds and batons used as machine guns leadenly drive home the message. The lighting in Nirvana's videos obscures the action, Kurt Cobain's face is not really seen. The lighting in My Chemical Romance's world is less extreme, the face of the lead singer is a selling point of the appeal of the band. It seems that rebellion has been mainstreamed in the last 15 years.

But is that just me? I think it would be interesting to show the two videos to see if the students noticed the differences and similarities I did. Why is the 2007 video cast, directed, and designed the way it is? Which is more effective in appealing to teen audiences today? Which is more effective in embracing rebellion? What was My Chemical Romance hoping to achieve by taking Nirvana's ideas? What did they add to it? Where are they less successful?

I fear that today's audiences may look at Nirvana's work and squirm at the thought of sweaty, smelly grungers slamming into and crawling on top of each other. They would rather share a stage with My Chemical Romance, I expect. What has changed? The teen or the spirit?

Oh, and we could examine the gender representations.