In the "hot" universe, Freudian, or oedipal, narratives are useful in analyzing cinema, but in MTV's "cold" universe, a different analysis is required as the distinction between private and public space/time disappears. Such removal of borders produces schizophrenic tendencies in subjects who can no longer find a psychological shelter within objects. With new technology, a new relationship between subjects and objects emerge where humans, as subjects, are in "the position of mastery and control, and can play with various possibilities," as with televisions and computers (133). .

             Kaplan is not alone in her belief. Many scholars argue that it can be dangerous for individuals going through the process of entering an MTV-manner of existence. It suggests an unquenchable desire of plenitude that is encouraged with MTV's coming-up-next mechanism. A 24-hour, 7-day stream of short segments keeps everyone in an aroused state of expectation, promising that the next segment will fulfill personal desires. This unending flow is only segmented by various other types of advertisements and images. The question is what type of social and psychological effects these images have on a consumer/spectator enveloped in a fairytale "MTV way of life," as Van Dorston calls it.

             In "Postmodernist Music: The Culture of `Cool' Vs. Commodity," Van Dorston called this "MTV way of life" a hopeless condition of spiraling into what Fredric Jameson calls the "schizophrenic state." Viewers will alter the way they think and speak in a way similar to the words and images in texts like MTV "such that the reader/spectator cannot associate any meaning or recognize boundaries and differences, past and present." The schizophrenic state is to be fixated on a detached signifier like MTV, isolated in a present form from which there is no escape. "Videos on MTV create a grab-bag out of western cultural history to dip into at will, obliterating historical specificity.