Censorship

In my essay I am going to talk about music and censorship. I will focus on pop and rock in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, and America. I think the music culture of those two countries provides a good example to explain the reasons and impacts of censorship.

To start off, I am going to give some explanations of what censorship exactly is and who has the main role of power in deciding what is going to be censored. I will talk about various reasons of censorship, such as violence, sex or drugs, and give examples of why it is closely related to culture, society and politics.

I chose to write about music because it also raises deeper questions about the freedom of expression that is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

‘Censorship is based on fear. It is conservative and wants to preserve a particular set of values.’ said South African musician Johnny Clegg. Is it really true that this form of state control is a simple way of oppression or can it also be seen as productive and helpful?

According to Cloonan, censorship can be defined as ‘the process by which an agent (or agents) attempt to, and/or succeeds in, significantly altering, and/or curtailing, the freedom of expression of another agent with a view to limiting the likely audience for that expression.’ (Cloonan, Martin and Garofalo, Reebee (2003) Policing Pop Philadelphia: Temple University Press)

If we have a look at freemuse.com (‘independent international organisation which advocates freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide’), we can see that censorship can be traced back to the era of Henry V in Britain and until the beginning of the 18th century in Europe and South Africa but it only started to become a regular phenomenon from the Second World War on and is still omnipresent nowadays.

The main actor of censorship is the state, influenced by religious institutions, educational systems, parents and politicians.

There are a lot of different reasons of censorship but the most common one is probably politics.

In the USA, MTV banned for example songs by bands such as NOFX, System of a Down or Moby because they were protesting against the Iraq War. In Israel, Wagner and Beethoven were banned for many years because they were associated to the Nazi era. Many political messages were expressed through music, especially in the 1960’s and 70’s and songs by famous artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys or Crass were banned or censored by several radio stations. The BBC refused to play Paul McCartney’s ‘Give Ireland back to the Irish’ because they feared it could influence people’s opinion too much.

As we can see, censorship of music for political reasons has always been present. In Islam, during apartheid, capitalism or communism, music can easily represent a danger because it questions political systems and is oppositional to established values.

Whether this reason for censorship is valid or not is a question that cannot be answered. People in favour of censorship of music say that it is a necessary way of social control. Critics argue that songs with political messages are a response to values that threaten people’s established interests and that those songs are productive and useful because singers can come up with ideas for change.

In my opinion, political censorship can be either helpful or oppressive; it always depends on the social, political and historical context.

For example, I totally agree with the German government’s decision to ban the neo-Nazi rock band Landser’s songs because they speak against homosexuals, jews, blacks and glorify SS officers. I think it is necessary to censor songs that contain strong political messages that offend a lot of people but I also think it is somehow ridiculous to censor a word like ‘gun’, for example in ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus’, because it seems inappropriate.

This topic also raises the question about lyric misinterpretation and if state intervention can turn a work of art, in this context, a song, into a political gesture. Because there is no definite answer to this question, and as I said earlier on, it always depends on the circumstances, I will move on to another political matter that is often object of censorship.

Sex and violence in music have always been related to politics because courts and the police are involved.

Especially in the USA, a lot of songs by rappers like Eminem (‘The Way I am’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’, ‘Stan’), Ice T (‘Cop Killer’) or NWA (‘Fuck The Police’) were censored because they were said to convey decadent values and the videos contained violent imagery.

Other examples of songs