The PMRC (Parent Music Resource Center) was formed by Mary “Tipper” Gore, Susan Baker, Pam Howar, Sally Nevius, or also known as “The Washington Wife’s” due to their husband’s connections with the government in the D.C Area. They created the group due to the concern to some of the contents in musician’s lyrics. In hope of increasing control over the music children would be exposed to.
The PMRC suggested to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to voluntary develop a rating system, warnings, and lyrics on the album covers. They also wanted to have albums only available to certain age individuals if they contained anything not PG. Eventually the PMRC successfully got a Senate Hearing Some parents praised the PMRC, while others including musicians disagreed and stated it went against the first amendment.
During the Senates hearing on
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But unbeknownst to the world “The Washington Wife’s”, senate and the RIAA had made a side deal to have a modified label (Warning: Parental Advisory). But the PMRC wasn’t ending there, they also wanted content-specific labeling.
The PMRC still wouldn’t rest there they wanted more censorship, but unknown to them the Parental advisory stickers had positive and negative reactions. Soon after the stickers were put on albums huge retailers were refusing to sell them, record companies were forced to create “clean” albums to gain their profit back. But at the same time people were starting to buy more albums because of the sticker, it gave “minors” more incentive to buy albums that contained explicit content.
Most people agreed the warning did nothing but have certain stores claim to be Family Friendly. The labels are still used in today’s music including CDs, digital songs and digital albums. In 2016 its nearly impossible to stop kids from listening to explicit material. With a lot of technological advances in the recent decades there are endless ways to stream music, both legally and
This controversial book has been challenged in countless states for many years. In 1997 the Elgin, Illinois school district banned the book from middle school libraries. Catherine explained that the book was banned because “talk of masturbation, birth control, and disobedience to parents occurred”
To at least some people, however, Jack Valenti, the man responsible for devising the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, is leading the effort, as editorialist James Wall put it, "to protect children" (1227). Valenti wrote, "The voluntary Movie Rating System has one objective: to issue advance cautionary warnings to parents so they can make their own decisions about what movies their children should or should not see. No one -- appointed, anointed, or elected -- ought to insert themselves into individual parental decisions" (87). But the film classification system, designed to assist parents in making decisions about their offspring's film patronage, often thwarts that very purpose and, in the process, actually stifles the creativity and honesty of the film industry as well.
The MPAA rating system is outdated. The recent advances in technology allow children to see movies regardless of the rating. The rating system worked well for the early years, but recently “kids slip into the movies they want to see. . . . They also see them at home on widely available DVDs, on cable, and via popular streaming services like Netflix and Amazon” (Ebert 2). Even when kids go to the theater to see movies they can “theater hop” or buy a ticket to a low rated movie and slip into the R rated film of their choice. DVDs and the Internet both provide ways for kids to watch movies that contain objectionable material. Websites that offer the o...
Duin, Julia. "Warning Labels Don't Keep Kids From Shock CDs." Insight 12 Jan. 1998: 1-2.
Is it possible to talk about the good of this issue? In my opinion I find it as a way of teaching children who are soon to be teens what growing up means. It clearly explains that Lucky, the character in the book, is preparing herself to be a grown up. I personally find this as a good idea to slowly teach pre-teens of the body as they get older. So why ban the book? Ms. Patron clearly states that the book is aimed for children from nine to twelve years old. From my understanding these are about the last two years of elementary school and the start of your first year in middle school. There’s nothing bad about writing a book about growing up that is aimed at a young audience who can learn from it. One way I can relate this is with a health class in high school. The teachers in a health class will talk about and show pictures of sexually transmitted diseases. Does that mean that other teachers can go and complain about it? Well yes they can but they cannot start a petition to ban the class from schools. I understand that i...
...from the other side of this argument is the fact that profanity and sexually explicit material shouldn’t be exposed to young children without their parental permission. But telling teenagers and young adults who are mature enough to choose what they want to listen to is completely wrong and unjust. The key word here is choice. As stated earlier, the thing that makes this country truly great is the idea that we have the right to listen to whatever we choose we want to listen to, not what a censor thinks you should be exposed to, it’s ridiculous.
Obviously, parents want to do the best things they can to protect their children. However, their fears misguide their thinking when it comes to censorship. As Charles Taylor points out, censorship does not only include pornography or excess violence on television, classrooms and libraries all across America can feel its presence. (Taylor) According to the National Coalition against Censorship website Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) in 1981, which provided funds to charitable and religious organizations t...
The music industry gets a lot of criticism about the music that they put out on the market. Most of the criticism comes from the parents. There are bills passed, such as the "Parental Advisory Program," which enforce that CD's with explicit lyrics have to have a label on them that state, "Explicit Lyrics" or "Explicit Content" (Parental Advisory). This sticker cautions the person who buys the CD that there is bad language or content. The recording industry takes serious responsibility to help parents identify the music with explicit lyrics.
By 1985 some censorship groups began to form, and during that time warning labels came to exist. (History of Music Censorship) Album covers that were explicit were either changed or banned. Many retail stores began to limit the sales of music that they found to be offensive. Radio shows such as WBLS and KACE will also ban songs that have to do with violence. In the 1960's Kingsmen's songs by the Rolling Stones were banned from the radio because of the sexual behavior presented in their songs. Some other forms of music censorship include parental advisory labels, banned covers or concerts, rating systems, and banned clothing. (Forms of Music Censorship)
Video games have been on the rise for decades now. In the 80’s, the release of the gore infested Mortal Kombat sent shivers up parent’s spines forcing a rating system similar to the rating system used for movies. Technically an M-Rated game is only available to a consumer 17 or older, much like an R-rated movie. The largest difference however is that if a parent wants to bring an underage child to an R-rated movie, they must watch the movie together, but rarely does a parent know what their child is playing beyond the brief synopsis of the rating in the bottom corner of the package.
Today’s kids are growing up faster and maturing at a faster rate than ever before. Twenty years ago it would be impossible to show breasts in a PG-13 movie. Today, kids are being taught the fasts of life younger than anyone could of imagined. This is all due to older brothers, the Internet and schools teaching kids about sex at the age of twelve. If everything else is changing except the rating’s no one is going to obey the law.
Teens and the human populous have been draw to music, and the relief it gives off. As recent as the 1990’s, we’ve seen an increase in explicit and violent lyrics and deviant behavior in the music industry surrounding such genres as heavy metal, rock, rap, and gangster rap. During this past decade, lyrics are becoming more violent and sexually explicit. It is approximated that teens listen to an average of 40 hours of music a week, and somewhere along the way, a child will hear something derogatory, or cruel. Along with this, teens don’t necessarily interpret what is said through lyrics in the right manner. In one study, only 30% of those somewhat questionable lyrics by popular bands were comprehended by the teen population.
[8] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/09/the_riaa_sees_the_face/, “The RIAA sees the face of evil, and it's a 12-year-old girl”, September 2003
Censorship has always altered the lives of many people, whether they know it or not. People are constantly exposed to the censored version of entertainment. The movies they watch, the music they listen to, and the games they play have all first been screened through different rating systems to find anything in them that can be interpreted as “obscene”. Once someone finds something, the creator of the work has no choice but to delete, edit, and basically censor the offending portion, otherwise it never gets to see the light of public consumption. Censorship has been used for all different kinds of works, for all different kinds of reasons. The many examples of album covers provided at TabooTunes show different types ...
The author of "Music and the Internet" Steve Jones is himself a musician and understands and identifies incredibly with music and the internet. The article itself is written with ironic and courageous words to emulate the direct distribution of the beginnings of popular music compared to the way music was issued to the public. He describes the sheet music that was sold to people and they had to most of the times performed it within the househo...