It’s all touching (really) and boring as hell (really). When it started out in the 1980s, MTV was railed against by the likes of Al Gore and his wife Tipper. Tipper, who started the Parents Music Resource Center and denounced raunchy rock lyrics, complained to Rolling Stone that her kids were “confused and alarmed” by Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” video, which featured a teacher stripping down to a bikini.

Maybe she had a point. Long before Madonna affected a fake British accent and started collecting orphans like so many Pokemon, she stunned fans and critics alike by rolling around the floor in ersatz wedding dresses, eroticizing statues of saints in videos, and publishing a book of graphic sexual fantasies. However misguided her SEX book might have been, such a gloriously risky act of artistic independence is unthinkable among today’s leading stars. Even shock jock Howard Stern’s stomach-turning, irreverent, and hilarious turn as “Fartman” – a bare-cheeked superhero given to flatulence – at the 1992 MTV awards is inconceivable in today’s scene. These days, Stern is more likely to talk about animal rights than mock the very idea of an awards show.

I’d argue that the taming of pop-culture creators stems from two basic sources. Part of it comes from the immense amounts of money at stake. Stars, their handlers and interlocking corporate interests are mindful that being too edgy or being way out there is often bad for business. “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose,” sang Bob Dylan, one of the few artists whose actions seem genuinely guided by his artistic vision rather than anything resembling cold calculation. The reverse is true too: When you’ve got a lot, you’ve got a lot to lose.