Research into Music censorship

 

There is a massive argument for and against censorship, which arises when discussing music artist and their videos of today. This divides society and it is a very controversial subject. The censorship law made by Ofcom is often scrutinised and put under a lot of pressure from different parties in the music industry and in the public.

An example of an artist who is often under scrutiny, due to their controversial verbal lyrics and videos is Eminem. These lyrics involve stories about domestic violence, drug taking and gang culture. A parent of a young child would argue that at such a young age, children are vulnerable to being persuaded and influenced. Glamorising gun culture could result in children copying them. "Smoking weed, taking pills, drop outta school, kill people and drink". Also due to these lyrics being based on real life experiences it makes the songs more persuasive to younger children. These experiences include insults to his mother in his songs, who is now sewing him for £10m and frequent fights with his wife, Kim. He also talks of arrests, including a recent charge of pistol-whipping someone, which could have resulted in a nine-year sentence. Eminem argues that he should be allowed a freedom of speech and that if parents raise their children properly they wouldn't take his lyrics literally. His song, Stan addresses the issue of people taking his lyrics literally and it tries to set these people straight and show them that a lot of his lyrics are comical and harmless. The record company of Eminem also agrees that with his freedom of speech as they say that he exposes people to issues in the world that is good for society. Also they say that strong language is common and therefore Eminem swearing in his songs is justified. Radio stations also argue for and against censoring Eminem's lyrics. BBC radio censored the swearing out of Stan when it was most successful. Stations such as kiss say that it's hard to censor his lyrics.

Music videos are also often censored. MTV argue that their channel is a universal youth channel and so they allow minor swearing when broadcasting their artist's videos. But then you can come across music video channels such as AKA who support music, which comes under the crude category, and therefore allow swearing and potential controversial and offensive scenery. Youtube also have to deal with these issues. Only recently, they banned the uncensored version of Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines'.  This because of the excess amount of nudity shown and sexual references.

To conclude, I believe that each music video and song should be assessed and the record company or radio station should take into account the target audience. They should then make in available to those, uncensored but censored for those younger children who should be steered away from overly violent videos or lyrics. I also think that it is the parents responsibility for how their child is raised. They should know the difference between right and wrong and the music artists should not be blamed for this. However, I also think that overly excessive violence in inappropriate and it is therefore also the artists responsibility to create videos which can be of no harm.