From The Village Voice
p. 63
May 13, 1997

1-2-C Red Light

U2 on MTV, DIY on CUNY

By Tom Carson

[Deleted: long and overbearing analyis of Roger Trilling's 'Zoo TV' trilogy, which aired on MTV in April of 1997.]

Meanwhile, the pride of Bloomington, Indiana, public-access cable, has just finished up a six-episode run on CUNY's Channel 75 -- and even though a David-and-Goliath comparison would be seriously pushing things, I invite you to ponder the difference between Zoo TV's belaborings of the pomo obvious and the amiable offhandedness with which Rox's crew of twentysomething cutups treats most of the same insights and assumptions as mother's milk. Call the show a real-life Wayne's World with collegiate wiseacres instead of high school stoners -- among others main man Joe, moll-in-search-of- Flanders Christy Paxson, and "B., your editor," who deserves his credit, since to call theirs a shoestring budget would be to assume the show can lay its hands on shoes. They all know they're alienated but they've got a pretty good bead on why, and they don't think the reasons will be anyone's idea of news. They also think that alienation's got its charms, which it certainly does if you like to laugh.

Besides which, they're curious. Whenever something intrigues them, from their own caffeine addiction ("Slaves to the Bean") to what got Indianapolis' beloved Hoosier Dome renamed the RCA Dome ("The RCA State"), they bone up on it and antically relay what they've learned. But they don't give themselves airs about their own impudence; they're just trying to keep themselves sane and entertained, with no delusions about the effectiveness of their snappy comebacks to a corporate America that thev know perfectly well has them and us by the short ones. (All the same, the show did get denounced for "the overt promotion of anarchy" by the Governor's Commission for a Drug-Free Indiana, an accolade to die for.) The CUNY sampler came to us via the folks at Free Speech TV, who are said to be contemplating another seven-episode installment down the road. But I'd be happy if these "Global Village Idiots" (the title of the May 3 closer) were on the air around the clock.

Ed: Tom Carson of the Village Voice wrote, ROX “did get denounced for 'the overt promotion of anarchy' by the Governor's Commission for a Drug-Free Indiana, an accolade to die for,” apparently a reference to ROX #64. Of course, I read about it here on ROX!
http://www.rox.com/ideas/vv/