Founded 30 years ago
“You’re my Butterfly, Sugar Baby”: How the music station VIVA shaped my youth
Charlotte Roche in the show “Fast Forward” on VIVA II in 2000
© IMAGO / teutopress
30 years ago, on December 1, 1993, Viva went on air and influenced an entire generation. Our author remembers how music television shaped her. A journey through time from “Crazy Town” to “Tocotronic”.
I was eleven when I was sucked into music television. It was the same ritual every day: after school, my backpack flew into the corner and my butt onto the sagging family sofa. In search of my favorite artists, I tuned in manically Viva, MTV and Viva II back and forth while Mirácoli burned in the kitchen. I only had a few hours before my stepfather would come home and grab the remote. He found them no matter how deep I pushed them into the cracks of the sofa. My stepfather had no understanding of the desires of a teenage girl. If he tuned in to a football game out of principle, my body went into pop culture withdrawal.
It was the year 1999 and I was looking forward to the video for the real song “Because you don’t have any love in you”. Before the invention of YouTube, which condemned us to being constantly on-demand, the rule was to wait. Lots of rappers, pseudo-rockers and rhinestone-clad women flickered past. And when what you had been longing for for hours finally came, you were sitting on the toilet. What did teenagers whose parents refused private television actually do all day?
Tingling premonitions and dry sex
Later I got my own small tube television and watched Viva and Co. undisturbed in my room, often until late into the night. The mini-films portrayed something that was far from my reality but that interested me more and more in the early noughties: big city life. Cool outfit. Sex. I particularly liked music videos that showed people making out; they were a tingly premonition of what could one day be. I found the oily tattoo boys from “Crazy Town” sexy and didn’t mind lines like “You’re my butterfly, sugar baby.” In the video for the Maroon 5 hit “This Love,” Adam Levine performed dry sex with a model, which left a lot of room for interpretation. In “Are you in?” Incubus leads to an orgy, which in times without local internet almost passed for porn. I didn’t question the fact that the focus was on very young, half-naked women. I focused on the brown-eyed one lasciviousness by singer Brandon Boyd, who is seduced by a mermaid-like beauty at the end of the clip.
Through music television, I knew what guys I was into, even if they weren’t out there. I knew how I wanted to be, even if it was unattainable ideals of beauty. I wanted the bright red hair of presenter Enie van de Meiklokjes, so I secretly dyed my hair red and got bullied by my mother for it. I plucked my eyebrows into thin lines the way Gwen Stefani wore them, rehearsed her poses from the No Doubt video “Underneath It All” and took photos of myself using the self-timer. My first selfies. I took the films from the camera to “Schlecker” to be developed; I recently came across one of the photos from an old diary. Resemblance to Gwen Stefani? Oh well. Luckily, growing up in a small town in the furthest corner of East Germany doesn’t preclude dreaming big. Thank you, Music Television.
Who the fuck is Dirk?
In the years to come, I became a snob who despised mainstream music and, as a result, a very lonely teenager. Viva’s alternative little sister, Viva II, was to blame for this. I admired Charlotte Roche, who looked and spoke so differently and seemed to cleverly combine old clothes – I had no idea of ”vintage” yet. I developed a slightly belated crush on ’90s bands like Oasis and Tocotronic, even though I had no idea who “Dirk” was or what he was imagining on “Seattle.” I found the melancholic milk carton in the Blur clip for “Coffee and TV” touching and loved not only Air’s song “Playground Love” but also the idea of the talking chewing gum.
If someone bumps into me in the pedestrian zone today or if I’m in a rough mood myself, I’m reminded of Richard Ashcroft as he rages through the area in “Bittersweet Symphony”. On a trip to Helsinki, I was disappointed that no man looked anything like Ville Valo in “Join Me in Death” or at least wore a fur coat on a bare torso. When I walk past a strip joint, I think of the sexiest pole dancer of all time: Kate Moss in “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” by the White Stripes.
Everything has it’s time. Like hipsters
Music television planted images in my head that took root there forever. It relieved my boredom, opened up new worlds for me, and inspired me when it came to fashion. Nowadays, when I listen to music on Spotify, there’s no film playing, I don’t know what new artists look like unless I specifically look for them. Still, I don’t miss Viva. Everything has it’s time. Like hipsters. And my mother’s relationship with her stepfather.
On my last vacation, noughties clips played on a loop on the hotel TV. Christina, Britney and Beyoncé danced around the room with their stomachs bare; Nickelback still sounded like he had a sore throat. I had long since forgotten most of the videos. I didn’t leave the room that day.