Why be a bum when you can be an FBI agent? It would only had been a full investigation if they had to investigate surfing, beach life, and women in bikinis.
"Sir! We have reason to believe the pinko bastards are posing and infiltrating beach life! Therefore a hundred million dollars is required to interact and investigate with bikini clad women, as well as surf, and take copies amounts of drugs. All in the name of fighting pinko bastards!"
"Well Pinkos you say? Here's two hundred million! Now get in the case!"
>My daughter brought home a record of "LOUIE LOUIE", and, I, after reading that the record had been banned from being played on the air because it was obscene, proceeded to try to decipher the jumble of words,
>The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter.
When I read things like this it makes me sad, because my imagination is nowhere near as active as this.
The lyrics on the following page don't even make sense. How does "Away we go"/"We gotta go" become "crab her way down low"? What does that even mean?
>This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation what with this record, the biggest hit movies and the sex and violence exploited on T.V.
I'm surprised this letter didn't outright say the record was trying to make his daughter sleep with people of different races. What a tool.
"When I read things like this it makes me sad, because my imagination is nowhere near as active as this."
It's actually a fun exercise, and educational. Make a list of some dirty nasty words you'd like to find in Louie Louie. Or even some innocent ones. Make it 10 or 20, let's say, but try to avoid the real lyrics. (Don't look them up in advance, though, that will scramble the results.) Read it over a few times to familiarize your brain with what's in there. Now listen to the song. I virtually guarantee you will now hear at least some of those words in there. When you are actively listening for something, you tend to hear it.
The irony is in order to match those patterns you'd have to have all that info floating around in your head before listening to it, meaning the people who were offended had far dirtier minds than the casual listeners who were supposedly being affected.
Matt Parker (standupmath at youtube) does a presentation he calls "Clutching at Random Straws". It doesn't, as far as I can recall, specifically deal with Mondegreens, but about 38 minutes in he does a fun demonstration of how perception is a process of actively patternmatching for what we expect: https://youtu.be/sf5OrthVRPA?t=2297
I love Mondegreens, but I feel the Mondegreens I fall for are way more pervasive.
Try as I might, I still hear "Starbucks Lover" instead of "Star Crossed Lovers" in T. Swift's Blank Space, and "Galileo" instead of "Gotta Let Go" in Dynamite by Taio Cruz.
It's actually "Got a long list of ex-lovers." First time I heard it I was sure I was hearing "Got a lonely Starbucks lovers" or "Got a lovely Starbucks lovers" which didn't even make sense!
I'd imagine that at the time, this sort of music and the fads/styles it inspired were threatening to overly paranoid and inflexible parents, much in the way hip hop, baggy/saggy pants, and other symbols of "degraded" culture are seen more recently...
...which, of course, is a large part of the appeal to younger folks who are drawn to things that are decidedly set apart from (or contrary to) the culture and styles of their parents. I remember when I was a teenager, I really did like a lot of the music and styles of the grunge/alternative trend, but in retrospect, I'm sure a big part of it was that it was specifically not what my parents identified with so it felt more like something of "ours".
The whole cultural identifier thing works both ways when it comes to signaling in-groups and out-groups. Choosing to set yourself apart from where you originate is on some level a rejection of that origin and can be either a gesture of independence and strength or an attack on what someone else holds to be valuable.
It's deeply embarrassing to me that our government agencies are involved in regulating professional baseball and in being the morality/obscenity police.
That is what I thought upon reading the title, however if you go through the document, you can see that the FBI was responding to complaints from the public...which actually is impressive, if you think about it.
When I read the letter on page 13 sent by the parent complaining about, "lyrics so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter," - I imagine an FBI agent sitting at his desk, rubbing his forehead in frustration, scanning through this among a pile of hundreds of other similarly inane and paranoid letters from parents.
Government workers just can't win sometimes - if they address problems brought to them by the public, it's deeply embarrassing that they are addressing such insignificant problems. If they don't address problems brought to them by the public, they are flagrantly defying democratic values.
What's embarrassing is not that the government "are involved in" being morality/obscenity police, it's embarrassing that people ask them to be morality/obscenity police. It's not like they just, "got involved in it," out of no where. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
I agree that absurdities like this have their roots in the public's demand for backward things, but this is made easy by the consolidation of power at the Federal level for things like this.
Imagine a world in which a concerned citizen contacted local or state level authorities with this sort of complaint -- it would not have the same sting of morality policing, in my opinion.
Conversely, imagine a world where concerned citizens could only contact local and state authorities about, for example, racial discrimination by the local and state authorities.
While the prevailing narrative is that Federal intervention in this sort of thing is beneficial, I think that if you adopt the view that morality is largely a function of economic progress, most of the moral progress enforced top-down is largely inevitable over a 5-10 year time horizon.
The same backward idea of causality that motivates neoconservative interventions in foreign governments motivates the aggressive use of Federal power to coerce lagging states into compliance.
Driving through impoverished areas of the US is like taking a time machine back 30 to 50 years. In my opinion it is fairly arrogant to assume that an impoverished region's morality ought to be in lockstep with an affluent region, when only a few decades earlier the affluent region was unabashedly worse.
The most harmful aspect of this is the idea that the average person in the affluent area is enlightened. By definition, the average person is never enlightened, he is simply average. Yet politically, the idea of a moral crusade is irresistable.
> What's embarrassing is not that the government "are involved in" being morality/obscenity police, it's embarrassing that people ask them to be morality/obscenity police. It's not like they just, "got involved in it," out of no where. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
Strong agreement. But when you have the demos ruling, the demos want to be obeyed.
Good argument for a republican form of government in my opinion. :)
>all three government agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were, even after listening to the records at speeds ranging from 15 rpm to 75 rpm.
In 1986 the Dead Kennedys distributed a poster of H.R. Giger's "Penis Landscape" artwork inside their Frankenchrist album, and the band were charged with distribution of material harmful to minors and brought to trial. The case considered the music and lyrics as well as the artwork, but ended in a hung jury.
> The Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, but the courts still need to determine whether material in question in each case is in fact obscene.
Tipper Gore is responsible for the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" stickers, because, as everybody knows, the only way kids ever learn swear words or dirty concepts is from music, and never, ever from their Parents, Siblings, Neighbors, Friends, Classmates...
To me, the most "obscene" concept in the whole "Louie Louie" and PMRC crusades is how willingly some people want to bury their head in the sand and force everybody else to do the same. Ugh. Puritans.
I often feel like sentiment such as this assumes that these kinds of notices, movie ratings, "clean" / radio versions of media, etc are solely meant for teenagers.
Maybe that's how they relate to it - as some kind of restriction as a teen.
Keep in mind that while you will learn this stuff in your life, for very young children, there is definitely a lot that is inappropriate whether it is sex, language or violence. A 2 year old is unable to fully understand what is appropriate when. They are not ready to handle many of these concepts.
Beyond that, if an adult doesn't want to listen to something or watch something, this helps them. If they've don't want to see or hear something, why should anyone else care?
> there is definitely a lot that is inappropriate whether it is sex, language or violence
I always had a problem with this (very American, in my view) concept of "appropriate". What does it mean exactly? It seems to be hiding stuff that is either ill-defined or unlikely to withstand deep scrutiny.
I have no problem believing that depictions of sex and violence might be bad for young children in some way, but I would argue that there is a burden on people who claim this to spell out out the bad consequences could be.
Is it that it affects children psychologically? If that is the claim, in what way? And is there any research that shows this to be the case?
Or is it that they could say something that would create social embarrassment for the parents? If that is the case, one has to ask: does it make sense to place such a burden on free culture for this rather minor reason? And doesn't it just perpetuate useless social norms?
In the end, I suspect this is (at least partially) good old-fashioned puritanism. I am willing to accept that I am wrong, but I think I am right in reacting with scepticism towards vague moral proclamations such as "it is inappropriate!"
>I always had a problem with this (very American, in my view) concept of "appropriate". What does it mean exactly? It seems to be hiding stuff that is either ill-defined or unlikely to withstand deep scrutiny.
It depends on society's definition of appropriateness. For example, in your society would it be "appropriate" for you to go out right now and defecate in public in a hygienic manner? Or have sex in public? Or walk up to a store employee and expose your genitals?
Do you think it's "inappropriate" ? Can you define and spell out the bad consequences of doing so? Any research into that? Is it just because it can cause social embarrassment? Is it exclusively American?
The simple answer for your first set questions is that probably nobody would care -- I live in Berlin.
But that is not my point. What I am arguing is that using the catch-all label of "inappropriate" seems like an American phenomenon. I don't notice people talking like this in other cultures -- but maybe that's just my own ignorance.
Having lived for long periods in the USA and Nigeria and visiting other continents as well, I can assure you that each culture has an idea of what's appropriate whether they use that specific word or not. Never been to Germany (I've visited 5 of its neighbors), but no matter how open or permissive Berliners consider themselves, I feel it's likely they "don't care" about certain things - a lot of people take things for granted that everyone in their culture accepts as a norm or a line that shouldn't be crossed and I'm sure there are bound to be some of those in Berlin whether you perceive them or not.
You keep talking about how this is a uniquely American concept but I get the feeling that your only basis for comparison is Europe? Because just to take one example, Chinese parents complain even louder than American parents about anything "inappropriate" in the media and thus Westerners are often very surprised and disappointed to find that their Chinese acquaintances aren't interested in fighting government censorship.
Every culture for thousands of years has had rules about what is appropriate. Kosher laws, Halal, and so on. Modern Europe is probably the main exception.
The concept is mostly what parents want for their children. Every parent is different. Some have no problem taking a 10 year old to an "R" rated movie, others would not dream of it.
Anyone who has had young children will tell you that they can definitely get very freaked out by violent or "scary" movies and most parents do not want to expose their young children to explicit sexual content either.
I have no problem with mandatory labeling of violent or sexual content in movies or music. It helps me make decisions and it doesn't deprive adult consumers of anything.
> I have no problem with mandatory labeling of violent or sexual content in movies or music. It helps me make decisions and it doesn't deprive adult consumers of anything.
Not really true -- it affects funding and distribution of cultural artefacts, and this becomes very evident if you go to a modern cinema complex. It can be a very alienating experience if you are not a child or a parent.
I understand that rating helps you make choices, but it is not for the people who like these restrictions to decide if the burden they are placing on everyone else is justifiable or not.
I would say that a modern cinema is equally alienating to me as a parent with young children. There have been only 3 G rated movies to have a wide theatrical release in the past 5 years, compared to 18 in the 5 years before that.
Living in SoCal, everyone has an opinion on Hollywood, and the consensus I've heard is that they are targeting the 8-13 segment really hard, and a G rating is a negative signal to tweeners.
What I found with my kids was that the two year olds simply weren't interested in these things. If breast were suddenly on display on the tv screen they didn't really care. YMMV
Proper labeling can be helpful, but the music/movie content regulators go a lot further than labeling in their restriction on content. Basically teens are forced to torrent content that seems obscene to christians until they are 18. This is a form of market regulation that seems more likely about pushing christian cultural homogeneity onto a group that can't politically object, than simply labeling what the content is.
One is not explicitly barred from buying a product with too much fat or sugar due to their age however. Cigarettes and alcohol sure, those have proven societal and health implications, but the analogy falls short on the basis of the buyer not being restricted from purchasing that which contains the nutritional info
> I always had a problem with this (very American, in my view) concept of "appropriate". What does it mean exactly? It seems to be hiding stuff that is either ill-defined or unlikely to withstand deep scrutiny.
The concept of appropriate is locally culturally bound. I suggest to people pondering the matter to read anthropology texts. They are extremely illuminating and suggest that it's better to exercise a certain cultural relativism.
clearly there are things that are inappropriate for a 5 year old to watch. Your points about Puritanism would be much more amenable without your second paragraph. Do you really doubt that subjecting a chikd to nonstop violent porn would result in some psychological adverse effects? To take extreme example.
I overall agree with your sentiment on Puritanism. But let's not go to the other extreme.
> Your points about Puritanism would be much more amenable without your second paragraph. Do you really doubt that subjecting a chikd to nonstop violent porn would result in some psychological adverse effects?
Please read again. The second paragraph is precisely where I say that I have no problem believing that there might be ill effects. Our intuitions, however, are no replacement for scientific rigour. The history of science if full of cases where common sense turned out to be wrong.
More importantly: I am not proposing that a child should be subjected to "nonstop violent porn". That sound like a terrible idea and it is a straw man. Like most things in life, this is not a binary choice. It's not like we have to choose between puritanism and nonstop violence and porn. What I am saying is this: is catching a glimpse of violence or sex so damaging that our entire culture should be subjected to severe restrictions? Or is it something best left for parents to decide? Maybe some parents are more worried than others, and maybe it doesn't make sense to burden everyone with a certain standard -- unless it is supported by rigorous scientific research.
>Please read again. The second paragraph is precisely where I say that I have no problem believing that there might be ill effects. Our intuitions, however, are no replacement for scientific rigour.
They are not just out of the blue intuitions though, they are based on millennia of observations.
I take your point, but this is not entirely true in this case. Cinema is less than 150 years old, and not long before that most people could not read. Mass media is a very recent phenomenon.
I am no expert in the history of social norms, but I don't think it's clear at all the protecting children from witnessing violence and sex is a human universal. I know of several cultures (e.g. Roman Empire) where it was normal to let children witness public executions or violent fights. Again -- I am not arguing that this is good, I am arguing that one should not make laws based on vague intuitions.
>I take your point, but this is not entirely true in this case. Cinema is less than 150 years old, and not long before that most people could not read.
Most people didn't make laws and force social norms either though. The "educated" classes that did had theater and other kinds of public shows (music, etc) since at least the time of Ancient Greece, and those did have certain codes about what is to be said and what shouldn't be said.
What millennia are you taking about? None of these cultural norms are that old. We still have people living in the jungle walking around with breasts exposed and nude beaches are quite popular on posts of Germany.
None of these cultural norms are that new either. Even back in ancient Greece and Rome there were rules about what constitutes public or on stage obscenity.
What "severe restrictions" are these? Having music and movies labeled as to their general themes/content? If in reference to the subject FBI investigation, do note that was over fifty years ago. Social standards have changed a lot since then.
Rating hurts funding and distribution channels for anything that is not bland, "family-friendly" content. Go to any modern cinema complex in the western world and you will see what I mean: dozens of rooms, no real choice.
You can argue that the internet solves this, but it's not really the case: for example consider the current YouTube "demonetization crisis" or the arbitrary rules imposed in walled gardens such as app stores. The bigger danger -- and there are many examples of this -- is that "think of the children" can be used by politicians to advance more nefarious censorship agendas. For example, trying to rate content that presents non-conventional ideas.
I don't think movie ratings are the cause of bland movies. The mass market has voted and superhero/transformer movies that cater to 15 year old boys are the biggest moneymakers. All the original programming has moved to TV, which is also subject to restrictions but is not the bland wasteland it used to be.
>Keep in mind that while you will learn this stuff in your life, for very young children, there is definitely a lot that is inappropriate whether it is sex, language or violence. A 2 year old is unable to fully understand what is appropriate when. They are not ready to handle many of these concepts.
In Germany everyday people can go to the park with their 2-5 year old kids and have no issues with nudists enjoying the sun nearby.
And while you wouldn't want your kid to become a potty mouth (for social reasons), them casually hearing some swear word now and then is no big deal at all anywhere in the world.
As for violence, depends on whether it's something that will frighten the kid.
>Beyond that, if an adult doesn't want to listen to something or watch something, this helps them. If they've don't want to see or hear something, why should anyone else care?
Because some people don't want a society of puritans, even if the latter appear to keep it to themselves.
> In Germany everyday people can go to the park with their 2-5 year old kids and have no issues with nudists enjoying the sun nearby.
The parent comment mentioned sex, not nudity. Children are generally comfortable with nudity since it's something they experience themselves. Most don't know that sex even exists, so they have zero association between nudity and sex.
I think part of the reason some parents are leery of nudity around their kids is not because the kids can't handle it, but because we adults are so used to nudity being associated with sex that it's hard for us to understand that kids don't think that way.
> As for violence, depends on whether it's something that will frighten the kid.
Young children do not have a clear separation between reality and imagination. Their brains simply don't partition the two as distinctly as we do. This is why playing pretend and imaginary friends come so naturally to them, and why they are natural inveterate liars.
I absolutely don't want my young kids exposed to violent media because they aren't yet able to understand it's not real. It would be almost as if they were experiencing the violence first-hand.
I also don't get why American culture is so gung-ho about violence in the first place. My hope is that my children will never see someone get shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, burned, or assaulted. But, judging by TV and movies, these are everyday occurrences. I'm not super keen on normalizing that.
> And while you wouldn't want your kid to become a potty mouth (for social reasons), them casually hearing some swear word now and then is no big deal at all anywhere in the world.
Yeah but that's not the same thing as them listening to a song repeatedly, then singing it, and having parts of that song enter their lexicon. Music is sticky, especially with young children.
I agree with your points on nudity (it's not a big deal) and violence (it's a very big deal).
I worked at an Indie Film Theater, and we had the Gaspar Noe film "Irreversible" - it was Unrated. As in, the Distribution company didn't even bother submitting it to the MPAA, knowing it would get the dreaded X Rating in the US. So we got a copy and it was Unrated.
We had at least 3 signs posted in the window at the box office with the same text on all of them: Unrated is not "open for all ages" - we will not sell tickets to this film to anyone under age of 18. Unrated is because the material is extremely disturbing by even artistic standards. No refunds.
I watched "Irreversible" in the theater, and it completely ranks up with "Stevie" as one of the most visceral and deep and dark things I've ever seen in a cinema. So I was completely equipped to tell people "Do not buy tickets to this movie. You will not like it."
One couple was on a date. Late-20s, white, good mood. No other films were showing / starting in a time they liked, so they picked "Irreversible" and I warned them. Then warned them again. They got defensive, telling me off basically that they were adults and would watch whatever they wanted.
When they came back to the box office about 30 minutes later, I knew which scene they'd just witnessed, and they were scarred for life, but like zombies, came back to try and get a refund. I let my manager take care of it.
Point being, sometimes adults think they're mature, but it's a lot more complicated than that. I'm not advocating showing a 5 year old "Saving Private Ryan" intro on a loop for a weekend, but some of these "protections" have mission creep of responsibility - who is really accountable in family development when it comes to Art (rationally speaking), Free Individuals or Federal Regulations?
Perhaps that's because the people campaigning for them are explicitly referencing protection of children as their motivation. The label on CDs says "parental advisory" and the MPAA film ratings system is explicitly indexed on age and parental guidance.
> Beyond that, if an adult doesn't want to listen to something or watch something, this helps them
So does the "stop" or "off" button. That's how I deal with most modern music which is indeed in many cases grossly inappropriate for my tastes -- but I guess actually I should lobby for a labelling scheme so I can be "helped".
If you get down to the root of it, those labels are there so Parents don't actually have to watch / listen to / referee the material before allowing their children to see it. Or, they don't watch / listen to the material with their children to be there to provide context and guidance like an Adult.
They're a way to shift responsibility. "Oh this should be okay, it's PG!" is what happened with "Gremlins" and then it scared the shit out of kids. Now we have PG-13 because of that movie. True story.
It's a social norm that we don't sit 5 year olds down in front of a YouPorn stream. Nobody waits for some peer reviewed study before making that decision - it's simply just not done. It's considered weird, perverse, crass, inappropriate.
If you feel that norm needs to change, and that children should in fact watch hardcore pornography without anyone batting an eye, you may certainly work towards those changes. But you should expect resistance because that norm is powerful.
>Nobody waits for some peer reviewed study before making that decision - it's simply just not done.
Actually, Alfred Kinsey did some stuff as bad or worse with children, and yet his work has become the basis for an entire field of study. (It was so bad that a movie had to be made defending him.)
Well right now the average age of virginity loss is ~17 now compared to ~21 in 1950[0]. it is not particularly uncommon for middle schoolers to be having sex these days. There's also a lot more readily available sexual content for all ages now than in 1950. (yes correlation not causation, but there's clearly some connection here)
there are plenty of full grown adults who are irresponsible with sexual activity (spreading stds, unwanted pregnancies) so can we just agree that MAYBE middle schoolers shouldnt be exposed to so much sexuality? that maybe a 14 year old has no chance of grasping the consequences and responsibility of sex?
I think you are missing the point of the case. The obscene lyrics did not actually exist in the song. The various versions of obscene lyrics were most likely created by kids themselves for fun. This was at a time when obscenity was scrubbed from public media, but this didn't mean the kids didn't know about dirty words and sex.
You are assuming exposure to sexuality in media is what causes young people to have sex? I think sex have existed longer than mass media.
The definition of "dirty" is arbitrary. Your "right" to not hear something abridges some else's right to publish it. You have to pick a side, and live with the consequences.
Actually, it does. Wal-Mart won't sell music that has a parental advisory sticker, so at the very least, an artist has to compromise their music in order to be put in the largest retail chain in the world.
Having your artistic creation 'scarlet lettered' like this is something we condemn when applied to other forms of media. Think of the outrage surrounding Facebook and Google implementing labels for news they deem fake or unreliable. Though such companies are within their rights to do such a thing, many consumers recognize the chilling effect this can have on distributing information and also adds a layer of needless obscurity to the process of reading the news.
The music industry does not employ a 'rating system' like the film, TV, and video game industries. Rather, it's a catch-all for any and all content that arbitrarily may be viewed as offensive to a broad demographic of potential customers. This takes the label from a mere rating system to more of a form of soft censorship.
I've seen albums that are largely instrumental labeled with the parental advisory sticker, because the sounds are intense and experimental. I've seen the sticker on albums whose only crime was being critical towards a religious institution. The label does a lot of harm, while I am not so sure how helpful it truly is for parents.
The caloric content of food isn't arbitrary, it's measured by a process that can be independently performed by anyone with the right equipment and get the same result. There's no similar process for deciding if artistic content is appropriate.
Regarding Tipper Gore, this (PMRC) hearing discussing labeling contains some of Zappa's best work, a lot of it directed at her. I have usually found Zappa to be both entertaining and insighful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0w
I wonder how the process of gathering information in such hearings has changed since the 80s.
The Real Frank Zappa Book is definitely a must read for everybody. He talks about this issue in the latter chapters and writes about stuff like a streaming music service where you don't need physical media anymore to deliver the music. And it is a VERY funny book.
Can you explain more about how the explicit content warnings force people to do anything?
I guess they make it easier for parents to control some of the circumstances where their children listen to music but I don't see how it affects others.
Worse than government laws about little notifications are things like Walmart demanding watered down versions of the music.
Actually, the point of organizations like PMRC and MADD are for outright bans. As in, MADD espouses prohibition now as a goal (nobody can have alcohol because some people make bad decisions). PMRC wanted / wants all obscene material to simply not exist in music, and if they can't get that, then burnish them with a SCARLET LETTER (or sticker) so those who wish to live the Pure, Unstained Life of High Virtue should never have to engage with Low Class Expressions like Rap or Comic Books.
I agree that trying to force a change in the actual music is worse than requiring the parental advisory sticker, but they are both forms of censorship.
One problem is that the interpretation of lyrics is subjective, as this FBI investigation so well illustrates. Albums that sound sufficiently pop/clean/bubblegum go without the sticker when there are clearly songs explicitly about sex/drugs/etc.
For an example, look at Third Eye Blind's self-titled, debut album. Semi-Charmed Life is clearly about meth and sex, but it is sufficiently clean sounding that it gets by without a sticker.
Meanwhile, albums that sounds a little edgier, but are actually about clean, mundane subject matter have the sticker forced upon them.
IMO, the movies and games industries have much better, more objective rating systems.
> IMO, the movies and games industries have much better, more objective rating systems.
Honestly, the music industry is way better than the movie industry. The MPAA rating system is a literal censorship board, complete with an actual member of the clergy serving in an advisory role on all appeals. But if you don't get your film rated, it's almost impossible to distribute it to anyone but the very small independent movie theaters.
The MPAA results in an immensely chilling effect, which influences the movies people produce in the first place.
Contrast that with music, where the distribution mechanisms are much more varied than for film, and there's nothing preventing people from releasing music with incredibly explicit lyrics, as long as they don't expect the uncensored versions to be played on the radio - a medium which, while still popular, is by no means thr primary distribution channel anymore.
ESRB (games rating system) is the same way. Almost no physical retailers will carry NR (Not Rated) or AO (Adults Only) rated games as a matter of corporate policy. ESRB DOES clearly list whatever content caused the game to receive it's rating though. If you're a dev who wants to make a game and distribute physical copies, you can still do so online through Amazon or some other distributor, and Steam hosts digital distributions without ESRB ratings of any kind simply because there are too many indie games for ESRB to rate (if they all applied for ratings that is).
Indeed, it seems like its principal purpose is to sell CDs to teenagers. Admittedly, the sticker doesn't seem to do very much of anything anymore, possibly due to the dearth of CDs to attach it to.
The original use case was "Darling Nikki" by Prince which, I have to say, isn't a song I'm going to be playing to my daughter anytime soon. (And believe me, I think the whole of Purple Rain is genius.) But the tone? That's hugely damaging. It's all "these musicians are corrupting our kids" and not enough "some people make art for adults and that's OK".
Of course, if the debate had been more reasonable, Eminem would have had to come up with a different marketing angle.
I don't have a problem with Walmart. They are a private company, they can pick and choose what items they want to sell in their stores. They can ask a manufacturer to make changes, which the manufacturer is free to decline. Walmart is a big retailer, but hardly the only place to buy music, even when people still bought music in stores.
Oh, I don't think Walmart should be legally stopped from putting pressure on artists, I just think it is likely to be more culturally corrosive than a content warning.
They destroy artistic presentation, artistic value, and artistic message. Its impossible to see a piece of art as art, if they state stands in between the art and the observer and forces acknowledgement of its righteous dictations and moral superiority.
The state forces you to acknowledge its authority before you are allowed to observe and ponder an artistic message - additionally, compromising the display of said artistic message with a big nasty horribly designed stamp of disapproval covering a significant portion of the work.
Its is parents' responsibility to police content their children are exposed to. Its parents' responsibility to read the lyrics of "Louie Louie" and determine if that is safe for their children or not. Requiring the state to burden itself with this role is not only no route to security in such a situation, but tremendously irresponsible of this so-called league of concerned parents.
Some might say that the album cover is just as much a piece of art as the actual music. Would it be okay to put a parental advisory sticker on any other piece of art?
There's a big difference between refusing to comply with a distributor and losing access to their network, vs standing up to one of the largest trade groups in the country. In practice the RIAA probably has more clout with their record label than the artists themselves.
Unless a movie trailer is intentionally deceptive regarding content, would ratings really be necessary after watching a preview? I'm of the opinion many trailers are not honest - they cut out the dirty stuff - but there are Red Band trailers that do basically show uncensored material.
Should every trailer be the Red Band version so you can get a good look instead of wondering if PG or PG-13 or R is really just right? There's not a lot of real critical thinking that can come from "Brief Nudity. Light Drug Use. Violence." hashtags to go with MPAA or videogame ratings I think...
The issue isn't whether a children can (or often do) learn "swear words or dirty concepts" from sources other than music. The issue is whether I, as a parent, want my children learning those concepts at all at their age. I appreciate the advisory sticker, because it allows me to make an informed decision.
Moreover, especially at a young, impressionable age, the real problem is not whether they learn about swearing or immorality, but whether they learn to participate in it. I know about murder, rape, slavery, etc., but I don't participate in them. Now, I'm not equating dropping the f-bomb with murder, I'm merely pointing out that when participation is purely mental, it's very rare that children (and many adults) have the maturity to know about vulgar thoughts without participating in them. Given that background knowledge, I exercise discretion regarding what concepts I allow my children to take in, to the extent that I'm able.
No it doesn't allow you to make an informed decision. It only indicates the presence of offensive words from a list you do not know, but trust anyway.
To keep an eye on my son, we just mirrored the TV and stereo signals from the living room to the kitchen. We actually see and hear everything he does. THAT'S how you stay informed!
> No it doesn't allow you to make an informed decision. It only indicates the presence of offensive words from a list you do not know, but trust anyway.
This seems overly skeptical to me. Not having the list memorized doesn't translate to me not gaining any information from reading the label. I imagine there are additional terms I'd probably want to see on the advisory list, and possibly terms I don't think merit parental advisory. Still, the label does inform me that reasonably responsible people believe other reasonably responsible people may find the content inappropriate for young children. Surely that counts as at least some information!
> To keep an eye on my son, we just mirrored the TV and stereo signals from the living room to the kitchen. We actually see and hear everything he does. THAT'S how you stay informed!
I think you inferred that I was saying a parental advisory label was the only way to stay informed, and that's certainly not my view. For example, in my house, nobody turns on the TV (not even me) except for on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons. I have 5 kids; I can't possibly monitor everything they watch all the time -- so we turn it off, they play during the week, and we watch 1-2 hours of TV a week as a family.
There it is! Truth! Being aware means being able to participate, to grow together. Entertainment and arts are for bonding, I think. My compliments, and I will note this as a Best Practice for reference later. I know things may change, etc, but hey you're trying.
The Gore family turned off many liberal Democrats. Tipper with her BS about music lyrics. And Al with his support for the Clipper chip. That arguably helped him lose the 2000 election.
Oh wow the Clipper chip. Almost forgot that one. Quite a bit of baggage in those arenas. Nice mention, thanks for your perspective, I can see the context very well.
I feel a little guilty about it -- I lived in Poulsbo for about 10 years, but moved to eastern Washington a few years ago. No idea what I would use instead though.
The song is about the singer taking a ship to Jamaica to return to the girl they can't stop thinking about. Spending the whole trip dreaming about her and wanting to get there sooner.
Who Louie Louie is is never clarified. It could be the girl, but could also be the ship or the captain being urged to go faster.
I really want to go back in time and and tell tales about the the 21th century. About our music, movies, the internet, smartphones, how porn is now common place and available to everyone, even children. And then watch them struggle to comprehend the situation.
Edit: Why the downvote? It would be so awesome to see the jaws drop.
> I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything.
> I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
Not sure what your point is; language appears in virtually every context of human life and parents will have to teach their children what they consider appropriate
Or perhaps we just live in a crass, violent, rude culture, and like all of the other stupid things adults do to tell themselves children don't marinate in it, it simply doesn't work.
"Sorry, Becky, but President-talk is just too grown up for your pretty little head! Just go read your abstinence lessons. You can learn about civics when you're 18."
Reality: you're soaking in it. So are your kids. Slapping stickers on things just serves to make selecting the "good" stuff easier for those seeking it.
Reference: I was 16 when Tipper Gore threw her clown show, and remember our reactions. We mocked it - I co-sponsored a Model U.N. resolution demanding warning labels for politicians' speech due to the harms to human rights, and (in violation of protocol) played part of "Sex Junkie" by the Plasmatics[1] at the end of my presentation.
[1] Wendy O'Williams was a lesser-known speaker at the PMRC show trial, but for my money the most eloquent. Plus I just really liked her - teenage crush. She is missed.
Sounds like you're pretty emotionally invested in this argument, so this may be flame-bait, though it's not intended to be.
You were 16 when the laws were enacted. Of course you'd mock them. It even clearly shaped you as an adult: you're still angry about what you see as nanny-statism.
Still, it's just your natural growth as a person. As a child you're protected from crassness, then in your adolescence you revel in it, then you have children and shun it, then once your kids are too old for you to control what they see you throw your hands up at it and declare the world lost to corruption.
At any rate, there is a point in life where you personally need to protect someone else and your ability to do that in the "information age" is harder than it has ever been. So a silly sticker that makes teenagers scoff and parents happy fills every cup to the brim.
No. It's that you can't throw a sticker on everything. Parents can determine whether they want to limit what they want kids to see AND if so what limits to put on them.
Or I guess put a sticker on everything; but that's not a world I want to live in.
It's like when Saturday Night Live was devoting a large portion of their show to attacking Trump but they were using an actor who called his daughter a "little pig" and their musical guest got up and started singing about "bad bitches and their ugly ass friends".
We certainly don't hold ourselves or the actors and musicians we look to on the TV for political satire and entertainment to any kind of "moral standard". But when one of us runs for president, it's paramount.
TL;DR Holding people to different standards is not hypocritical and their context, position and intent is typically the basis of this discrimination
i was using a well known quote from an arena outside production music. I am pro free speech-- vehemently and with very little exception.
That said; words are important and so is context and intent. Of course I hold the leader of America to a different standard; as I do many others to varying degrees.
I don't think it's hypocritical to be in favor of free speech; nor to hold people accountable for that speech (Westboro baptist church, KKK) or to expect a different "moral standard" from different people (a CEO representing a company; politician representing a constituency). I think "parental advisory" is more silly than problematic. 1) this stuff exists everywhere. 2) probably cost a lot to enact. 3) morals fluctuate, some things are arbitrary. There was a time "pregnant" was a dirty word. 3 "fucks" and 1 "shit" is maybe ok but add another "bitch" and you are over the limit? I just think it's stupid
Isn't one intended for public consumption primarily among youth and the other a private conversation? There is probably a better example to prove your point.
There's some foul music out there that a 7-year-old needn't be introduced to and you'd like to be able to buy something on a whim when your kid says "Hey, I know this band, Suzie has this album, can I have it?"
Point is, there's grey area, which is why the sticker has value.
Some people want to know, some don't, and some people are offended that people want to know.
Heck, as a teenager it was a point of pride to buy an album w/ that sticker, so IMO it works entirely as intended. Those with autonomy (older kids and adults) get to make their own choices, those without (younger kids) don't.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/22075130880/fbi-s...