November 06, 2007
Viacom Ain't The Only Problem Rev.--Placing The Blame For Stupid Hip Hop In The Right Place
The Rev. Delman L. Coates organizes for Enough Is Enough in Washington.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times)
I posted this over at Acton.org:
The New York Times reports of a well-intentioned protest by a pastor to protest the ridiculous and dehumanizing lyrics of the type of hip hop shown on networks like BET and MTV.
Wearing white T-shirts with red stop signs and chanting “BET does not reflect me, MTV does not reflect me,” protesters have been gathering every Saturday outside the homes of Viacom executives in Washington and New York City. The orderly, mostly black crowds are protesting music videos that they say degrade women, and black and Latino men.Among other things the protesters want media companies like Viacom to develop “universal creative standards” for video and music, including prohibitions on some language and images. Video vixens and foul-mouthed pimps and thugs are now so widespread, the protesters maintain, that they infect perceptions of ordinary nonwhite people.
“A lot of rap isn’t rap anymore, it’s just people selling their souls,” Marc Newman, a 28-year-old car salesman from New Rochelle, N.Y., said on Saturday. He was among about 20 men, women and children from area Baptist churches marching outside the Upper East Side residence of Philippe Dauman, the president and chief executive of Viacom Inc.
Rev. Coleman must be commended and applauded for having the fortitude to take and stand and being to speak against the dark side of hip hop. His efforts are well intended but I doubt they will help much. Perhaps the Pastor should focus more on preaching about Jesus to fans of hip hop music as opposed to attacking the media corporations. Here's why:
(1) As long as consumers want music that degrade women and celebrate stupidity someone is going to produce it and distribute it. No one forced to buy stupid music.
(2) The best way to protest is with your wallet. If people didn't buy this music, or attend the concerts of the artists who produce the music, this type of hip hop would die.
(3) Viacom does not force artists to rap lyrics that degrade themselves and women. They freely choose to rap about those things on their own volition.
(4) If the public wants Viacom to act virtuously consumers are going to have change their preferences, artists are going to have to refuse to rap about ignorance, and, then, Viacom executives are left to make the risky decision to opt out of distributing filth. If Viacom could make money off of virtue it would.
Viacom does NOT need to create universal standards for content. Maybe morally debased consumers need to embrace virtuous preferences. If the culture is not morally formed citizens will not make moral decisions. Why isn't this group protesting the malformed desires of hip hop's consumers and artists as well?
PS By "stupid" hip hop I do not mean that all hip hop is stupid. I referring to a particular type of hip hop that degrades both women and men--that is the "stupid" type. Most of the underground hip hop, for example, raps about great things!! But the hip hop that contains a lot of stupidity is the type shown in BET and MTV. The quality hip hop is not mainstream.
Posted by anthony at November 6, 2007 06:50 AM | TrackBackThis just goes to show that free markets are not an unabashed force for good. They merely cater to appetites, with no reference to Good outside of individual preference.
It makes perfect sense. If you measure economic well-being by human appetite (which economists do, with marginal utility and indifference curves), then optimizing economic prosperity is just optimizing... human appetites. We need to drop this fiction that GDP tells us what the right economic policy is. It doesn't - it merely demonstrates how effectively sellers match our sinfulness.
Posted by: tusc0n raider at November 6, 2007 07:39 AMWhat's curious about this whole matter is that the largest consumers of "hip-hop" music are white suburban teens. Where is the church on this one?
Posted by: Dave Sarafolean at November 6, 2007 08:03 AMI am pretty sure that Christian parents of white suburban teens are intolerant of Unholy Hip-Hop (UHH). There are three different reasons, in my view, that the church hasn't made much headway against UHH.
1) It's not obviously relevant. Despite the fact that, as you said, most consumers are white suburbanites, white Christian pastors don't necessarily see it as terribly relevant to their flock. White Christian parents have probably done about as much as they can to keep their kids off UHH, and the kids who are really into it probably don't go to church with them. Thus, not a big pastoral issue.
2) It's not a "white issue." Speaking from experience here, white middle class folks tend to assume that the vast majority of other people share their values. In this case, the white middle classers assume that most black people don't really like UHH either because of the degrading effect it has on black people and the listener. Thus, no need to worry about it - black folks have it covered.
3) Bigger fish to fry. Suburbs are full of unhappy, materalistic children who are trying to dull the pain of adolescence by sniffing glue and huffing. Others are cutting or suicidal. In terms of long-term contributing factors, white suburban pastors think that hip-hop is a symptom of the same problem that drives these other problems.
We need to do more at getting kids hooked on Timothy Brindle, shai linne, and the 116 Clique.
Posted by: tusc0n raider at November 6, 2007 08:23 AMTuscOn Raider,
I must politely disagree. See Anthony Bradley's article entitled "Black Man's World?" posted in World Magazine, 5/6/06.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/11799
I think that there is much for white, suburban pastors and parents to say to their young people about this matter.
Posted by: Dave Sarafolean at November 6, 2007 10:09 AM"Viacom does not force artists to rap lyrics that degrade themselves and women. They freely choose to rap about those things on their own volition."
There was an Independent Lens a while back on PBS that centered around a young writer/musician from Boston who wanted to get at the root of why so much rap and hip-hop represents so little of the actual reality of black men and women. One scene was incredibly telling: he went to a cattle-call audition for rappers at a large record label. He listened to some of the songs several rappers were about to use to audition for the label. Every one was violent and degrading to women. He asked several of them why. One of the men summed up every answer when he said, in effect, "I would love to write raps about men who work to support their family, and wives and mothers who are committed to their husbands and children. If I walk in there with that, those executives will never sign me. They want the other." Later on, the young man spoke to the executive director of BET and asked him why his network continued to air rap videos that degraded black society and women. The man walked away without giving him an answer. Of course, that isn't any kind of study, but based on this, I would posit that record labels and music television executives do force artists to write this type of music--they do so by determining who they will give contracts to, pure and simple.
Posted by: dramaturge at November 6, 2007 07:43 PMI should have made clearer that I was suggesting why white suburban Christian folks might think that UHH is not a big problem. I was not endorsing those lines of reasoning myself. Sorry about that.
Posted by: tusc0n raider at November 6, 2007 09:04 PMBoy, I sure wish my parents had pointed out to me how vile some of the garbage I listened to as a kid was. Never got into hip-hop, but there are some things I listened to as a kid that I wish my parents had eliminated!
Posted by: Robert Perry at November 9, 2007 06:24 PM