Let’s Learn About: Max Headroom WTTW Hijacking Incident!
(***Dig Down Inspiration/Speculation Post***)
Ever since the very first views (and as in the pic, more complete views) of Matt donning the suit and tie, slicked back hair and trippy glasses, I immediately thought back to this video. As it’s an OLD late 80′s event, I remember hearing about this in my childhood days and figured some of my fellow Muser’s may not have been in the know about this.
From the video description:
After a brief intrusion during the sports report on WGN’s 9:00 news, a later broadcast on channel 11 - PBS affiliate: WTTW - of the Doctor Who episode “Horror of Fang Rock” was interrupted by a man wearing a Max Headroom mask. The crazed person uttered mostly gibberish, crudely slammed the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries (WGN being one of them), and finally dropped his pants and was spanked by what appears to be a child with a flyswatter. 90-seconds later, the program returned to normal. To this day, he has never been caught.
The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two broadcast television stations within the course of three hours. After a brief and only partially successful attempt to break into the signal of intended target of WGN-TV, the signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW during an episode of the Doctor Who serial “Horror of Fang Rock.” The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 seconds and was pre-recorded on videotape, featured an individual disguised as television character Max Headroom parodying WGN and television in general. The incident made national headlines[1] and the people responsible have never been identified.
The video itself is disturbing to most (for good reason), I find that for the most part, it’s perfect inspiration for a Muse song: it’s a thinly veiled political (or anti political), middle finger to the mainstream, and let’s not forget how Muse as of the past few albums has been about Resistance and fighting back. This incident was a hijacking/hacking into a mainstream, metropolitan television channel that was viewed by MILLIONS.
As the song Dig Down has yet to be released in full, this is all pure speculation on my part just for shits and gigs; it’s something I always like doing with Muse songs because there is SO much story and subtle cues to take away from ANY single.
What I -do- know for a fact is that we Musers are all creative, nuts (in the good perfectly neurotic way), and are wide open to whatever Muse throws at us.
Finally, for those who can’t view the video right now, I threw together some neato comparison gifs of Matt Bellamy and the Max Headroom hacker.
muse-ception: matt bellamy was the original actor and dom and chris help film/act in it
