Music Censorship :: essays research papers

Music censorshipAlthough is clearly states in the first amendment that Congress shall make no police force respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to call for the government for a redress of grievances, censorship in America button up exists in a big way. Music censorship is the term employ to describe the act of editing, altering, or preventing the listener from hearing the music as the artist created it in vow to either deny certain entropy or to act as a moral gatekeeper of potentially harmful material (http//www.cwrl.utexas.edu/barndollar/courses/spring98/students/fabfive/index.html). The Censorship of music in the United verbalise is documented as far back as 1954, when Michigan voice Ruth Thompson introduces a bill in the House that would ban notice of whatever pornographic recording, punishable by five years manacles an d a $ 5,000 fine (http//ericnuzum.com/ outlaw/fifties.html). Even Elvis Aaron Presley, The King of rock-n-roll was at once thought of as obscene. In 1957, when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan channelise for the third time, the cameramen were told to only film him from the waist up. Elviss dancing was assureed lewd (http//ericnuzum.com/banned/fifties.html). In 1964, Indiana Governor Matthew Welsh asks the articulate Broadcasters Association to ban the song Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen because he considers it to be pornographic. (http//ericnuzum.com/banned/fifties.html). This trend has continued all the way up to the nineties, and Im sure it wont stop any time soon. In the past ten years especially, music has been under attack by many law makers, prosecutors and critics of morality and good taste. One attack on this freedom comes from parental informatory stickers. These stickers are used as a form of censorship against an artist and their lyrics. If a label will give an phonog raph album, I dont think there should be any reason that the consumer cant decide for him or herself if lyrics contained in the album are found obscene or otherwise unsuitable. In order to begin the debate on whether or not parental advisory stickers serve as a form of censorship, one must consider what the word censor implies. The word censor means the power to subvert publications or excise any matter in them thought to be immoral, seditious or otherwise undesirables(Webster Dictionary 227). The question of what constitutes proper quarrel and obscenity has been greatly forced upon the music industry.