Reviews

Inter Press Service Feature on Eric Nuzum speech and Parental Advisory
(May 22, 2001)

Copyright 2001 Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service

May 22, 2001, Tuesday

LENGTH: 897 words

HEADLINE: MUSIC-U.S.: WARNING: THIS CD COULD MAKE YOU WORSHIP THE DEVIL

BYLINE: By Katherine Stapp

DATELINE: NEW YORK, May 22

BODY:
First, a few "facts." Disco music causes homosexuality in mice and deafness in pigs. Ninety-eight percent of teenage pregnancies are a result of listening to rock 'n' roll. White children who play black music are contributing to the "mongrelization" of America. Oh yeah, and the Captain and Tennille worship Satan.

"Are these things true?" muses Eric Nuzum, at age 34 probably the foremost expert on music censorship in the United States today. "Of course not. Have people believed in them? Absolutely."

Welcome to the Orwellian world of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC, which lobbied successfully for the "parental advisory" warning sticker), the Federal Trade Commission and the giant Wal-Mart chain store, which sells one of every 10 CDs in the United States. Not to mention Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition.

Speaking at New York's Freedom Forum First Amendment Center to promote his new book, "Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America," Nuzum gave a crash course on the long, sorry history of record burnings, bannings and bashings -- which he said often were less about content and more about race, class and, politics.

The recent massacre of 13 people at Columbine High School, for example, was widely blamed on the lyrics of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson -- even though it later emerged that the two teenage killers didn't even like the artist.

"Parental Advisory" argues that although the United States projects an image of hardy individualism and unfettered free speech, a long list of artists -- from the Beatles and Elvis Presley to Ozzie Osbourne and 2 Live Crew -- have run into trouble with the self-appointed guardians of public morality.

In 1990, six states -- Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin -- banned 2 Live Crew's album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" on the grounds of obscenity, primarily over a song titled "Me So Horny." Anyone who broke the ban by selling the record faced $ 10,000 to $ 100,000 fines in Tennessee, and felony charges in Florida.

Nuzum stresses that despite what many people may believe about the First Amendment, there is no absolute right to artistic expression in the United States. The government can't ban a song outright unless it meets specific obscenity criteria -- but Wal-Mart can, and frequently does, if for no other reason than that the lyrics, or just the video, have been deemed somehow offensive.

Wal-Mart refuses to sell any CD or tape with a parental warning sticker, even if it has been slapped on by mistake, as in the case of rapper Bizzy Bone, who was mistakenly accused of condoning school violence. Even after the error was explained -- Bizzy raps so fast that the words are hard to make out -- the store would not carry the CD. "Perception is reality," a Wal-Mart spokesperson said.

If you live in an urban area, this may not be such a big deal. But if you live someplace like suburban Ohio, as Nuzum does, you may have to drive for miles to find an alternative record store that sells the music you want.

One result is that there is tremendous pressure on musicians and record companies to get their CDs onto the shelves of mainstream music stores like Wal-Mart, leading to varying degrees of self-censorship.

"When your business is to sell CDs, you're quickly going to compromise your artists' standards," Nuzum says, adding that the rules governing what is acceptable often are arbitrary. The title of rock band Nirvana's song "Rape Me" had to be changed to "Waif Me" on the album cover, but not in the song itself, where the phrase was clearly audible.

And it is no coincidence, Nuzum says, that three in five rap albums carry a black-and-white "explicit content" sticker, compared to one out of every five rock albums.

The ingrained racism of U.S. society naturally comes into play in the determination of what is offensive and what is not. With the rise of rap the 1990s, Nuzum notes, white people and groups like the PMRC became less interested in heavy metal and punk and began to target inner-city music.

"They thought that rap music themes were misogynistic, pro-drug, pro-gang, pro-violence, and they were unable to accept a distinction between singing about an issue and endorsing that issue," he says.

"The media, in their attempts to show the American public a 'magic bullet' to inner city problems, offered rap as a culprit. As a result, Americans became very sensitive to the themes of hard-core rap, and people often subjected rap to a scrutiny that was absent for similar themes in other musical genres," Nuzum explains. However, "once you get past the language and violence, you're basically talking about political protest songs."

The Federal Trade Commission recently held hearings on whether the entertainment industry, including record labels, should be held accountable for allegedly marketing violent material to children. Thirty of the 35 artists listed by the FTC as offensive or too violent were African-American.

Much of the exhaustive research included in "Parental Advisory" is posted on Nuzum's personal website, ericnuzum.com, along with information on his career as a free-lance pop culture journalist and program director of KSU-FM, Kent State University's National Public Radio affiliate for Akron and Cleveland, Ohio.

LOAD-DATE: May 23, 2001