Free Speech And Music
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Free Speech And Music
Paging Mr. Zappa
Where's Frank Zappa when you need him? The
last time U.S. senators took to wagging their
fingers at media executives and threatening
legal restrictions if pop culture didn't get just a
bit less ... well ... popular, Zappa shook his
finger right back. He unleashed a torrent of
righteous outrage at the assembled politicos
and their busybody wives -- and he even looked
cool doing it.
One of the political wives to feel Zappa's wrath
was Tipper Gore, whose hubby, Al, is currently
laying into media executives as the Democratic
candidate for president. Along with
running-mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore
threatened restrictive legislation within six
months if the entertainment industry didn't stop
marketing violent films, recordings and
videogames to America's youth.
Lord knows, sixteen-year-old boys need
powerful inducement to lure them away from
chick flicks at the multiplex.
Lieberman himself has been described by
Wired as being as strident as the most
right-wing Republican when it comes to calling
for restrictions on sex and violence in music,
TV, and videogames.
As Wired implied, this isn't a purely Democratic
show by any means. Republican Sen. Sam
Brownback has done his best to make bashing
directors, musicians and software programmers
a cross-aisle affair. Earlier this year,
Brownback called a press conference to
announce a joint statement by an alphabet
soup of medical organizations claiming that
[w]ell over 1,000 studies point overwhelmingly
to a causal connection between media violence
and aggressive behavior in some children.
Touting a study of its own, the mushy middle of
the finger-wagging tag-team is occupied by the
bureaucrats of the Federal Trade Commission.
Just in time for the climax of the 2000
campaign season, they released Marketing
Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review of
Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the
Motion Picture, Music Recording & Electronic
Game Industries. The hefty tome is a potboiler
of a study suggesting that (gasp!) youth culture
is in fact sold to youth.
That's quite a line-up of would-be saviors of
America's young innocents (if you can find
any). And Frank Zappa is no longer among us
to out-outrage the culture warriors. With no
champion, are the foes of censorship doomed?
Well, they may not be as stylish as Zappa, but
free speech still has its friends. Among them is
Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum, who turned
a curious eye to Sen. Brownback's assertion
that medical ...
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