This article first appeared in the print journal Fall 1990.
Focus on Music – The Raunchy-Rock controversy
Everybody’s arguing about what to do with rock, rap, and heavy metal lyrics that glorify sex, violence, drugs, and other evils.
•Time did a cover story on “America’s X-Rated Pop Culture,” focusing on rap, rock, and comedians like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinnison.
•A Newsweek cover story was called “Rap Rage.”
•Everybody talked about the simulated masturbation that was a part of Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour.
•Some have done more than argue—like being arrested, including owners of record stores and members of bands.
Part of what all parents—and all youth workers—want to do is give their kids the ability and tools to navigate the rough waters of our society’s moral turbulence. The current rock-music controversy is a wonderful laboratory to explore your kids’attitudes and values about entertainment, and about what can be done concerning entertainment that is considered unacceptable.
Just the Facts, Ma’am
One thing Christians desperately need to do if they are to understand this issue (or any other) is to separate fact from conjecture and value judgment. Many evangelicals ignore the crucial distinction between “what we know” and “what we think about what we know.” In an effort to make a point (or raise a few dollars), many celebrity Christians and parachurch organizations overstate the negative or understate the positive. For example, could the movie The Last Temptation of Christ really have been that bad? Did the people commenting on it actually see it, or were they relying on second- or third-hand accounts?
Before discussing the rock-music controversy—or any other current topic—with your kids, know what’s happening. Clip stories from your local newspaper. Pull articles from magazines. Take a trip to the library. Check out The New York Times; its stories often explore issues in depth. Browse trade magazines like Billboard, a music-industry weekly; or Variety, a weekly focusing on movies and Hollywood. Or look into consumer magazines like Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, or Premiere.
Furthermore, acquire the background. Rock music has been controversial since its inception. Artists like Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon—to name just a few—have challenged Americans’ views on God, decency, race, and sexuality. One artist who generated new levels of heat in all of these areas is Prince, and it was a Prince song including references to masturbation that led Tipper Gore to found the Parents’ Music Resource Center. This music-watchdog group (jokingly nicknamed “the Washington Wives”) has been busy since 1985 when it brought rock’s raunch to the nation’s attention through a controversial congressional hearing.
You may remember the coverage of the hearing. John Denver recalled when his song “Rocky Mountain High” was banned for alleged drug references. Frank Zappa read from the U. S. Constitution, calling PMRC members “the wives of Big Brother.” Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider defended his band’s songs and videos, claiming he was a Christian and explaining the meaning of the fan club, SMF Fans of Twisted Sister (the SMF stood for “sick mother f—king”).
Following the hearings and the ensuing public outcry, PMRC reached a voluntary agreement with the Recording Industry Association of America in which twenty major RIAA-member recording labels agreed to include this warning on offensive albums: “Explicit lyrics—parental advisory.” PMRC has been monitoring the record industry’s compliance with the agreement, and the industry’s batting average is forty-two percent: PMRC says fifty-five major-label releases with “explicit lyric content” carried warning labels between 1986 and 1990, while seventy-seven offensive albums didn’t carry warnings (“Results of Record Labeling Agreement,” PMRC, March 1990).
Lawmakers Join the Act
In April 1990 PMRC announced a new voluntary agreement with the recording industry. Meanwhile, though, others were taking things into their own hands. Many retailers did not carry certain offensive albums—or asked for ID cards to make sure customers were eighteen years old.
While PMRC’s goal is voluntary assistance from the record companies, others decided that states had to take the law into their own hands. State lawmakers, concerned that rock and rap lyrics had something to do with increasing teenage pregnancies, sexual violence, drug abuse, “wilding,” and other social ills and crimes, began writing bills and pushing for their passage in order to curb rock’s raunch.
In early 1990 as many as nineteen states were debating bills mandating stickering of offensive albums. In fact, Missouri State Representative Jean Dixon, whose labeling bill was used as a model for bills in other states, is still working on legislation. She wishes it wasn’t true, she says, but she claims the recording industry cannot be trusted to monitor itself.
“We would favor voluntary stickering agreements if they were kept,” says Dixon, “but the record companies have cut corners. They have not complied. We’re merely trying to hold the record companies to what they agreed to.” Dixon and lawmakers from other states say they will reintroduce labeling legislation if the recording industry doesn’t do a better job.
Frisking Minors for CDs
While legislators watch the recording industry to see if it will clean up its act, millions of people are buying offensive albums by 2 Live Crew, Guns N’ Roses, Too Short, and N.W.A. (Niggers with Attitude) with songs about every imaginable variety of sex, violence, killing policemen, and similar topics. Some aren’t waiting on new laws specifically aimed at recordings—they’re going after raunchy rock with obscenity laws.
The first arrests were of retailers who sold albums recorded by 2 Live Crew, a rap group. An Alabama retailer was arrested in 1988—the first person to be arrested and convicted in America for selling an obscene recording (a Crew album; his case was overturned on appeal). There have been more arrests: a nineteen-year-old record clerk in Sarasota, Florida who sold an offensive Crew album to an eleven-year-old customer; an owner of a Fort Lauderdale store that carried a Crew album.
Finally, the members of 2 Live Crew themselves were arrested. Small wonder—their albums contain anatomically correct depictions of graphic sex and sexual violence. According to The New York Times, the Crew’s album As Nasty As They Wanna Be was declared obscene by a Florida federal judge. When stores sold the album—or when the group tried to perform songs from the album—arrests were in order.
While H. Richard Niebuhr’s 1951 classic Christ and Culture might inspire only snoozes from teens, this current controversy inspires animated discussion among kids as they attempt to articulate a position on how Christians should interact with the culture of this world. Unless your kids are monks-in-training or your church is located in a culture-free zone, they already know about 2 Live Crew and similar artists. They’ve heard the music, seen newspaper and magazine articles, or watched the arguments fly on TV talk shows. You can help them by exploring the explosive subject from a Christian perspective. Here’s how:
• Investigate. Know what you’re talking about. Get a 2 Live Crew album, or read some of their lyrics in an article.
• Check with your kids. Ask them, “Who’s heard of 2 Live Crew? What have you heard?” Then sit back and listen as a lot of good information (and possible misinformation) comes swirling your way.
• Isolate the facts. Separate fact from feeling and opinion. As you let your kids inform you, a lot of accusation and rumor may have been passed along as well. Now isolate the facts and list these on a board so everyone can see them and agree on them. That way when arguments heat up, everyone still knows what the cool facts of the matter are.
• Explore approaches to the issue. Ask your kids to state what they believe to be the “Christian” position on explicit sex, violence, and other topics. Get ready for answers like, “God hates sex,” as kids try to get points and stick to the party line. You may want to throw them a few zingers like these:
“I believe God is more sexually explicit than 2 Live Crew. In
“I believe God loves nudity.” For help with this one read “Naked Again,” which is chapter eight in Franky Schaeffer’s Sham Pearls for Real Swine. Among his many other complaints against the church is that it has turned nudity into a false demon. Schaeffer doesn’t endorse pornography, but he says that nudity alone is not enough to make a painting a bad work of art.
• Consider artistic purpose. What’s the difference between the sexually explicit material in Genesis 19 and that found in 2 Live Crew albums? Simply put, the difference is that in Genesis God uses a sexually explicit situation to show how depraved humans can be. For the Crew, the purpose of explicit sex is the seeming fun of funky depravity.
The whole issue brings to mind Paul’s teaching in
• Discuss and defend personal plans of action. Everyone has a position on what action they’re going to take, even if it is taking no action at all. Discuss with your kids some of the avenues for action, and ask them what they plan to do—
With themselves. What do they plan to buy, listen to, watch, consume? What is their cultural diet plan? How do they plan to live it out?
With family, friends, and associates. What if a friends listens to something offensive? Will your kids turn a deaf ear, walk away, or confront their friend?
With society at large. Should Christians fight against immorality in entertainment, or should that be left to the tastes of individual consumers? Should Christians boycott, picket, write letters—or is offensive music one of the consequences of God’s amazing gift of free will?
While you’re covering all the bases, make sure to keep these two important things in the forefront of your mind and at the center of your discussion: clarity and civility. Kids need to clarify their positions. They need to articulate what they believe, what offends them, and how they will act. They need to state and defend their positions—at least to themselves.
Kids also need to learn civility. One of the saddest themes of Christianity’s 2000-year history is the ability of Christians to inflict pain on others in the pursuit of a holy cause. Whether Crusaders converting infidels, Inquisitors torturing heretics, or modern evangelicals threatening to kill rap artists or movie producers—Christians have a way of equating their causes with God’s work. Help your kids to walk that fine line where they simultaneously act on a deeply held belief and love those who feel differently.
“Different strokes for different folks” is the operative statement in most discussions about culture. Works of art mean different things to different people. One person’s masterpiece is another’s shame and offense.
As Franky Schaeffer (a strong opponent of censorship of any form) points out, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been attacked by at least three different groups for three different reasons. When it was first published in the 1880s, the book was understood to be dangerously pro-black. More recently, some blacks have opposed the book because of its use of the now-disparaging term nigger. And some Christians are displeased with the book’s alleged irreligious, anti-church tone.
Likewise, defenders of 2 Live Crew accuse the group’s critics of racism, prudishness, and an absolute lack of humor. There’s no undisputed position when you venture into the raging waters of cultural criticism. But as popular public entertainment gets lewder and cruder, Christian kids need help in making biblically informed decisions that guide their cultural choices. And you can help them articulate and live out their positions. t
