Exploring Whether or not Profanity in Music is Corrupting our Youth

Profanity in music, is it a problem that must be addressed now or is it even a problem that we as a society have the power to fix. There have been many different arguments on the topic of profanity in music, however the question remains should music be censored. In Robert T. M. Phillips’ address to congress he insists that we must act now to protect our society from the damaging effects of explicit music. Becky L. Tatum argues in her article “The Link Between Rap Music and Youth Crime and Violence” that the effects of rap music are basically unknown and extensive research must be conducted before causal assumptions are made. Martha Bayles suggest in her article “The Perverse in the Popular, that society is attracted to evils or negatives and therefore would not allow music censorship to be successful .Therefore the problem is that we have no adequate answer to the problem.

Bayles suggest that many of our ideas about popular culture come from three sources Communication Theory, Cultural Studies, and Traditional philosophy. Communication Theory begins with the perception of a helpless society. Many Communication Theorist believe that the media has the power to transform human consciousness. However, as Bayles points out, after surveying the available evidence W. Russell Newman observed that most human beings are resistant toward any message that dose not fit the cognitive makeup of the mind receiving it.

Cultural Studies focuses on the political and social impacts of media. Cultural Studies assumes that all cultural products are ultimately about power and possess value only to the degree that they attack established social order. Traditional Philosophy emphasizes the perennial difficulty of sustaining excellence in a culture seemi...

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...ences attitudes and behaviors. There is almost an even split between studies that music has antisocial effects and studies that suggest that the effects are minor or nonexistent. Tatum suggests that extensive research must be conducted before casual inferences are made.

What we have here are three vastly different points of view. There is Phillips’ who insists that we must act now to protect our society from the damaging effects of explicit music. Then there is Tatum who argues that the effects of rap music are basically unknown and that more research needs to be done before we can say for sure that there is a problem. Last but not least we have Bayles who uses the ideal of perverse modernism to show her readers that perhaps this is a problem that does not have an acceptable answer. It may be that by trying to solve the problem we create a bigger problem.