| Cathleen Falsani

MTV’s ‘Spiritual Windows’ mix faith with rock ‘n’ roll

Has MTV found some religion? Last weekend, while I was spending quality time with Ashlee and/or Jessica Simpson on the music cable channel, a bunch of commercials flipped by, and I thought I saw something. Something strange. Out of place.

It looked like a few seconds of footage taken in a room of Muslim men, bowing in prayer, with some funky Eastern-type music playing in the background.

And then words appeared in the middle of the screen: “Rejuvenate: MTV.”

Maybe I was seeing things. It was late. I was tired.

But then, at the next commercial break, another one of these dealies appeared.

It was about 10 seconds long and showed gondoliers rowing in the canals of Venice, Italy, while a Latin-sounding man’s voice said: “Your heart is where your treasure is, and you must find your treasure in order to make sense of everything.”

And then more words appeared on the screen: “Everyday grace: MTV.”

OK, apparently I wasn’t seeing things.

But maybe I was being Punk’d.

So the other day, when I was in New York City, I decided to stop by MTV headquarters in Times Square to get to the bottom of things.

It turns out that in late January, MTV, the arbiter of all things hip, quietly launched a campaign of 24 of these little films, known in the biz as “promo spots.”

They call the campaign “Spiritual Windows.”

“We wanted to create little, short moments, almost breaths of peace, for the channel,” Kevin Mackall, the ponytailed 37-year-old senior vice president of on-air promos for MTV, explained as we sat in his 24th-floor corner office, a pair of electric bass guitars standing at attention near his cluttered desk. “There’s a genuine appetite for spirituality these days. And that was the mission.”

Were viewers calling in to “Total Request Live” and asking for more sacred and less sacrilege?

“There was no Web site call-in, like, ‘We want more spiritual content,’ but really just keeping an ear to the ground and trying to be tuned in to the world,” said Mackall, who moonlights playing bass in three bands. “We’re doing a great job getting people to watch Ashlee. Now, let’s have a moment of reflection.”

He was serious.

I couldn’t have been more surprised. But I guess I shouldn’t have been.

I consider myself a fairly spiritual person, and I’ve been a dedicated consumer of MTV since its first broadcast when I was in junior high. I’m part of the audience Mackall’s appealing to, even if I’m a little longer in the tooth than his average viewer.

When it comes to liking some God with my rock ‘n’ roll — or hip-hop, or gangsta rap — I’m not alone.

According to a little-known poll that MTV (in conjunction with CBS News) took of MTV viewers during the presidential election last fall, 53 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds said “religion” was “extremely important” or “very important” to their daily lives. Another 31 percent said it was “somewhat important,” and only 14 percent said religion wasn’t important to them at all.

(Only 23 percent of those MTV viewers said they would describe themselves as “evangelicals” or “born again,” but 46 percent said they attended religious services once a month or more.)

“I don’t belong to any organized religion, but I consider myself an incredibly spiritual person,” said Mackall, who grew up in a “very Catholic” community in Pittsburgh, but he says the most spiritually influential person in his childhood was his grandmother, who was Protestant. “A lot of my own spirituality relates directly to her. And she used to say to me, ‘To thine own self be true.’

“I sort of need to feel that call-and-response in my life, whether it be art, or music, or doing the marketing and promo work for MTV. You have to help hold the thread. That’s kind of my spirituality,” he said.

Together, the “Spiritual Windows” spots Mackall created paint a picture of modern religiosity that reflects something of his own spirituality and, I would argue, that of many other people his age and younger.

They’re finding genuine spiritual guidance and expression inside and out of institutionalized religion. In traditional and unexpected places. It can be subtle, or in your face.

One spot, with the tag line “Consume mindfully,” shows a Tibetan nun hauling two plastic garbage bags to the curb in front of her Buddhist temple.

One of my favorite spots, tagged “Meditate,” has a barber in what could be Anytown, U.S.A., carefully shaving the neck of a customer with a straight razor.

Then there’s “Everyone,” with a Chinese dragon dancing in the foreground accompanied by a voice-over that says, “We need other human beings to be human. I am because other people are.”

And one of the longer spots — it lasts 13 seconds — shows the sun setting over a pyramid in Egypt as the Brazilian magical realist author Paulo Coelho’s voice announces, “The desert will give you an understanding of the world. How do I immerse myself in the desert? Listen to your heart.”

(Coelho, author of the multimillion-selling novel/fable The Alchemist, also did the voice-over for the spot shot in Venice. Mackall traveled to the author’s home in Paris to record his voice.)

What’s missing from the “Spiritual Windows” are explicitly Judeo-Christian images. Producers did shoot some footage inside a church with a Catholic nun, but it ended up on the cutting-room floor. Something about the expression on her face being too . . . something.

“That’s, I think, one of the things that is like a turning point, a next step for us,” Mackall said.

He insists the “Spiritual Windows” are no gimmick.

I tend to believe him.

“It really, truly is answering a call from our audience,” he said. “Hopefully it’s a first step into some other content like this.”

MTV could start by giving Ashlee and Jessica’s father/manager/ executive-producer, Joe Simpson, his own show. He used to be a Baptist minister.

They could call it “Pre-Ordained.”