Columns

This week’s motion is “We should ban offensive material in songs”. John Brinsley-Pirie argues the affirmative while Tiho Mijatov argues the negative.
Affirmative
By offensive, what I mean is violent and denigrating material. I don’t care about some dude swearing or telling people he wants to get “fucked up’’ in the weekend. I mean stuff that is found almost universally offensive.  When Eminem states he wants to tie a woman to the bed and set the house on fire – that’s offensive, that’s wrong and that should not be anywhere near mainstream media.
 
Firstly, the socialising effect this has. Rappers like Eminem and Lil Wayne have massive followings and when they release a song, millions listen to it. Essentially they are trendsetters and role models.  This is harmful to our society because of the content of their songs. When these trendsetters rap about killing and raping people, when they tell you it is okay to beat a woman if she disagrees with you or makes you angry AND people buy this, there is harm. It shows that society is prepared to accept this content. Obviously people are willing to buy this hate speech. But just like we don’t allow people to go around talking in public about how they are the master race and all others should be killed, we should not allow this kind of hate speech to permeate into society.

The longer lasting effect this has is on children; they grow up in a society where saying this and thinking this seems okay, because their role models say it is. When this kind of acceptance is allowed to permeate into a child’s psyche, there is serious harm. Children follow what their role models do, it’s fairly clear rappers and so on are role models for children and teens (main market, right?) and it’s not okay to simply say “it’s a parent’s job to censor”, because these rappers are huge and society generally accepts them. There is harm when the acceptance of such offensive material is allowed to ingrain itself as acceptable in a child’s mind, because their viewpoint of the world is set by role models in their life.

Finally, the idea that people can profit off this shit is repulsive. Eminem made millions off “Love the way you lie”, his music video which shows a couple beating each other up. Domestic violence and violent material which is marketed to children and teens should never be something a so-called “artist” can make millions off. That is just sick.

There is harm when society sees this material as acceptable and this is harmful to the next generation. Finally in spite of these harms, millions are made off this material; songs which have such offensive material should be banned.
- John Brinsley-Pirie 
 

Negative
 
Musicians aren’t actually role models in our lives. They are merely celebrities – unusual personalities whose lifestyles intrigue us. We do follow their actions, we don’t model our behaviour on them – when has Lindsay Lohan’s latest scandal ever made you want to snort cocaine to be “like her”?

“Universally” offensive material should be especially protected from censoring, because if these things truly are that offensive, the general population will realise the wrongness of the content rather than embrace it. Just because Eminem sings about domestic abuse does not mean domestic abuse is suddenly considered great. It’s (still) not okay. In fact, the lyrics serve as a useful reminder that certain things are “wrong” and “sick”. It does not mean people begin to lock their partners in burning houses. On a brief tangent, a popular Eighties song is also about burning houses (burning beds, actually). This is offensive. However, it was written about Aborigines being exploited and assimilated into white Australian society; the song was used to speak out against these atrocities. Suddenly banning “offensive” material isn’t so alluring.
 
Music is art and art should have no limits. If people want to express anything from their creative genius, they should be able to. So when Eminem sings about beating a woman up, he may be using this graphic scenario as a metaphor for his anger-ridden life. This does as good a job of expressing raw human emotions just as Picasso’s Guernica expresses despair and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa expresses beauty and intrigue. And nobody wants to burn these masterpieces. Because music is art, offensive material differs from people walking around inciting racial hatred. Why? There is no risk that people will act on these lyrics. On the other hand, inciting hatred on the streets instructs people to kill and hate others, and so is rightly illegal.
 
Basically, songs can’t harm people. If people feel that some songs are so offensive, they do not have to listen to that song again and again! And to say that this is impossible because rappers dominate our society is to ignore the warnings, the shrink-wrapping and even sometimes the criticism in Debatable articles that comes with offensive music.

Finally, let’s (re)think of the children. To say that young people emulate artists is just not true – if my friend calls me a homie and wants to bust a cap in my ass, I tell him he’s being a moron. More seriously, teens have not rampantly started raping, burning, and/or killing others even though offensive music is on the rise.
 
The fact remains: if a boy flicks his hair a la Bieber and serenades a lady-friend, he will be laughed at all the way back to his mother’s bosom.
 - Tiho Mijatov