Soul Selling: A Look Into Music Censorship
In today’s society, music censorship is an issue that plagues not only the music industry, but television, radio stations, department store chains, and the average American. Music censorship is the term used to describe the act of editing, altering, or preventing the listener from hearing the music as the artist created it in order to deny certain information or to act as a moral gatekeeper of potentially harmful material. The argument for music censorship is not so much an argument against censoring the actual music; it is a battle over the themes, lyrics, and imagery that are being presented by the artist. It is a fight to keep moral standards and decency alive, and to fight against obscenity and indecency. When music is censored, more often than not, only the words that are deemed as “dirty” by our society are taken out. That should not be the case. All lyrics promoting sexual immorality, degradation of women, drug use, racial content, violent behavior, and all that justify as well as promote immorality should be censored.The Bible provides help when look ing at the issue of music censorship. The Bible does not come right out and say that music should be censored, but a few verses can be related to music censorship. Ephes . . .
Another department store chain that pulled parental advisory albums is K-Mart. Wal-Mart is exercising what Bennett and Tucker call “quality control—which it does everyday for every product” (_). It is hard to find a middle ground when it comes to censorship. The process of having a radio edit version of the song is a very productive process because the artist does not feel as if their creativity is being stifled, if anything they feel that it is being doubled. It is an issue that deals with the general public hearing uncensored music whether they want to or not. The Communications Decency Act was not unconstitutional, it merely put a boundary on what we the public could hear on our radios and see on our TV’s. In his song “My Name Is…”, a line of the song says, “I just drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?” In his radio edit, he substituted the word Kool-Aid for vodka. That is not the case, by censoring music and providing “clean” versions of the music, it is giving the public a choice, either way, the artists will make money. This is an even better process than what the radio industry does because if the video is not appropriate then the video is not played at all, therefore limiting exposure to the song. Strauss states that “CD’s are doctored with sound effect CD’s” (__). K-Mart did so in the early 1990’s due to a successful boycott of the stores by the American Family Association. They may not be true in all cases, but in some it is very possible. That is not the case, Wal-Mart is not forcing anything, they are just setting standards (and examples for other retailers), and these standards must be met if a record company wants their CD’s sold in Wal-Mart. In the song, Janie felt she had no other choice but to kill her father.
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Acceptance Essays
