Satanic Lyrics Killed My Teenage Son!!
Aug 30 '00
People have been murdering, raping, killing, kidnapping and torturing each other for centuries. Yet rock and roll has only existed for about 50 years, and rap for about 20. The dark side of human nature can be very dark, indeed. And now the dark side has its own soundtrack. We can't fix our social and societal problems by ensuring the sterility of the music we listen to. We won't improve our situation by labelling, restricting, or prohibiting music with "offensive lyrics" (whatever that might mean).
Art is Art, and has existed for about as long as humankind. Bad Art and Offensive Art surely must have been around just as long. Yet somehow the human race has soldiered on. I believe that the fear of "offensive" music and lyrics is a crutch used by manipulators who use it to achieve their political and social goals. It's true, there is some utterly offensive music out there, but trying to limit it by stifling the artist, or asking that the artists censor themselves, is just plain unworkable.
Let's consider the obvious question: "What is offensive?" My definition of offensive has changed over the years. I'm offended by trite lyrics. I'm offended by music that reflects a closed mind. I'm offended by performers whose products are obvious and cliched. "My Heart Will Go On?" Please. Yet this music isn't what would generally be called offensive. There aren't any guidelines as to what makes something offensive, and I'm reasonably sure that it would be close to impossible to come up with a satisfactory set. The people who make the most hay of the "offensive lyrics" problem generally rail against profanity, references to sex and violence. But where would we draw the line? Would a song referring to domestic violence be off-limits? Or is it a tolerable subject, just as long as it's phrased using the appropriate words?
So we've had some trouble defining "offensive". Now, how would an artist manage not to offend the public with their music or lyrics? This one's tricky. Some people are offended by allusions to sex. Some are even offended by allusions to romance before marriage. Consider Randy Newman's "Short People". Randy didn't have a long-standing hatred of the less-tall. He was making a point by creating an absurd point of view, and turning it into a song. By pointing out the idiocy of labelling and hating arbitrary groups of people, Randy managed to... alienate large segments of the listening public who Just Didn't Get It. Is that song offensive? I don't think so. Did he mean to offend with it? No. Yet somehow he ended up stirring the hornet's nest. It seems that creating music that doesn't offend may be much harder than it seems.
Let's say that we managed (somehow) to define "offensive", and even managed to get buy-in from the artists, who were willing to go along with trying not to offend the public (keeping in mind that an offended public generally doesn't want to purchase music that offends them). Well, who would we get to enforce this state of affairs? I'm sure that there would be plenty of people who would love to have this type of power over the music industry, but pragmatically speaking, who would decide if music were offensive or not? And if it were found to be offensive, what would be a reasonable remedy?
Sometimes Art has to offend to work. Pictures of the Holocaust are offensive. The image of the atomic bomb exploding over Hiroshima is offensive. Starving children, beaten wives, cancer, loneliness, Sport-Utility Vehicles are all offensive. To me. You might have a differing viewpoint. And that's where the crusade falls apart.
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musicinsight
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