{"id":19554,"date":"2018-03-27T13:29:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T18:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=19554"},"modified":"2018-03-28T13:25:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T18:25:52","slug":"dwyns-den-censorship-vs-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/03\/27\/dwyns-den-censorship-vs-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwyn’s Den: Censorship vs. Expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0In 1934 congress established the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) to monitor content on the radio, television and other media outlets. Rules and regulations set by the FCC, regulate public radio\u2019s ability to play content that can be viewed as explicit or inappropriate to an average listener. But what justifies the average listener, and how do these censorship laws potentially hinder artistic expression through lyrics? <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0So, let’s start with what justifies banning a song. Supposedly, according to the FCC website, \u201c<\/span>Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This content is defined as anything that can be viewed as grossly offensive, overly sexual or explicit by the average person. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"41DPW5HTF9L.jpg\" \u00a0In the early 1960\u2019s Van Morrison wrote the song \u201cBrown Eyed Girl,\u201d you may have heard of it. However, what you may not have heard is that the song was originally titled \u201cBrown <\/span>Skinned<\/span><\/i> Girl.\u201d Morrison wrote the song about an interracial couple, and had to re-title it to what we know today, in order to make it more \u201cradio-friendly.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The banning of Morrison\u2019s song is an example of two things; what our culture views as indecent changes over time, and, more related to my point, censorship regulations ban and\/or censor songs for more than just it\u2019s lyrical content. The original meaning Morrison set for \u201cBrown Eyed Girl\u201d cannot be easily identified by its lyrics alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Additionally, according to ncac.org, a popular folk band in the 1950\u2019s called the Weavers, were blacklisted due to their \u201cleftist political views.\u201d The band lost their recording contract because of this. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0In 1965, the song \u201cMy Generation\u201d by The Who was banned because the specific vocal style for that song sounded too much like stuttering. M.I.A\u2019s \u201cPaper Planes\u201d released in 2007, was considered explicit due to a gunshot heard in the background of the chorus.
\n<\/span>
\n\"Screen\u00a0 \u00a0And Adele\u2019s song \u201cRolling in the Deep\u201d was censored on some radio stations for explicit content. Because of how Adele sang and her slight accent, in some areas of the song it was difficult to decipher if she was saying \u201csh**\u201d or \u201cship, and \u201cpitch\u201d or \u201cb**ch.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0And, as a final example, in 1988 Neil Young wrote a song that parodied commercial rock titled \u201cThis Note\u2019s For You.\u201d The song was banned by MTV, and according to ncac.org, this was because it critiqued the music industries close relationship to corporate America. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0So in summary, Morrison wrote a song about interracial couples, the Weavers had political views, the vocals in a Who song sounded like stuttering, there was a gunshot in the background of an M.I.A song, Adele sang with an accent and Young parodied the music industry and corporation relationship. All of these choices artists made got their songs censored, banned or blacklisted. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0So, I’ll leave you with two questions. Do you think these examples deserved to be banned, and did the reasoning match with what censorship laws were created to censor? And does this affect how artists can express ideas in their work?<\/span><\/p>\n

Cerridwyn Kuykendall<\/strong>
\nAssociate Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u00a0 \u00a0In 1934 congress established the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) to monitor content on the radio, television and other media outlets. Rules and regulations set by the FCC, regulate public radio\u2019s ability to play content that can be viewed as explicit or inappropriate to an average listener. But what justifies the average listener, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":19555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2144,2109,3],"tags":[2496,946,2007,2413,73,2495],"class_list":["post-19554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-entertainment","category-opinion","category-tartan-news","tag-adele","tag-censorship","tag-cerridwyn-kuykendall","tag-dwyns-den","tag-music","tag-the-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/rs-the-who-68c18ba4-7327-4e0f-b9b5-6b725e022db4.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-55o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19558,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19554\/revisions\/19558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}