Beavis and Butthead: The Case for Standards in Entertainment
In October 1993, five-year-old Aaron Messner set fire to his family’s trailer in
Moraine, Ohio, killing his two-year-old sister. According to press reports and the local fire chief, the boy had been influenced by the pyro-maniacal antics of MTV’s
Beavis and Butthead. The Messner tragedy made headlines across the nation and brought Beavis and Butthead into the national limelight. However, the controversy over MTV’s most popular show surfaced much earlier.
Beavis and Butthead is the creation of a self-professed former “awkward, miserable” adolescent, Mike Judge. Judge served as producer, animator, and voice for the show in its early days. He says that the two losers depicted on the show were modeled after kids he knew in junior high, and not unlike the ones he sees today.
Judge told an interviewer for Texas Monthly magazine that he considers Beavis and Butthead to be “lowest common denominator humor.” He thought of the concept after noticing…show more content… The people who develop the product never develop a business sense because the product is that people are willing to pay any price for it. This hides all the inefficiencies of running the organization. As competition arises, the product itself becomes less important as compared to the ability to procure, produce, market, and distribute it efficiently. Individual is best redirected toward new development which is something brilliant engineers tend to have a hard time doing. The “Beavis and Butthead” cartoon was responsible. “Beavis and Butthead” is made for the teenagers and young adults who make up the overwhelming majority of its audience. It is happening every day on the media.
2. Can an advertiser reasonably expect to convince a Beavis and Butthead viewer to consume a certain beverage or buy a certain item? If so, what does that say about whether the show can alter a child’s behavior in other areas of
