Melrose Heights TV

This week, I tried to see if I could find something that likened itself to cultural commentary, and I found this amazing example of an attempt to create and define a local culture in the form of internet television. Melrose Heights TV is the television companion to the Melrose Heights Magazine, a publication that seeks to fuse the "very best in Fashion, Culture and Fine Art." The show is produced in half-hour segments, and features visuals and interviews from prominent "players" in this world of "culturally-minded" upper class LA.

I was struck immediately by the contradictions that become Melrose Heights TV. Of course, Melrose Heights is a famous, high end shopping district, but the world portrayed by Melrose Heights TV tries to counter complete materialism with human interest pieces: "people helping people." However, these remain dictated by the upper class world - the pieces aren't necessarily about the wealthy of Melrose Heights helping the more economically challenged South LA, but more about people working within the world of money. There was an interesting interview with a neurosurgeon from Cedars Sinai who is doing cancer research, but it felt disconnected. Another segment features a man working with the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program. He talks about trying to "get the word out" about diseases that affect black men, but I wondered, how many black men are watching/reading Melrose Heights? It's a world completely created and maintained through the perpetuation of this "high class" ideal that permeates throughout the show and the magazine. LA is just the backdrop for this glitzy world. The interviews seemed to capture this; that Melrose is simply the highest iteration, or realization of the Hollywood ideal - a place that is constructed to be perfect, outside reality. In a way, I felt like I was watching an ad for a Disney Theme Park when I was viewing Melrose Heights TV, just with a lower production value.

One of the other interesting pieces of this ad is that it wasn't impeccably and meticulously constructed. The opening sequence seemed like it could have been made in the early 90s - the text on the first shot didn't seem to match the shot, and a sequence of floating video and images followed - definitely a dated technique. Upon further inspection, however, one sees that it was uploaded to Vimeo earlier this year, and can not be more than a year or two old, judging by the cars and fashions in some of the street shots. So why make it look old, or at least less current. One potential reason I can come up with is that the 90s were a time of cultural renaissance for shopping and fashion in a place like Melrose Ave. Coming out of the Yuppy 80s, different groups of people had increasing amounts of money and wanted to spend it on "high culture." Fashioning Melrose Heights TV after this period helps to situate the culture within the broader framework of established taste.

The more likely reason? Melrose Heights Magazine, as far as I can tell, is relatively new and appears to have a small following (only 48 people like it on Facebook). It's an expensive magazine to produce (high gloss, high end), and there probably isn't a bunch of money leftover to produce this television program.

I'm including the link to the Vimeo page for Melrose Place TV, as well as the magazine website, for your perusal.

http://vimeo.com/19605345

Magazine