Research - Censorship and Music Videos

Censorship is the act of altering words, statements or visuals in order to conform with and abide by the rules and laws of society. It helps protect the public from offensive/explicit imagery.

Explicit Content Logo is used to help the audience identify if the visuals they are about to see are inappropriate for the audiences eyes that are under aged or even audiences that feel offense towards what they are seeing in the visuals.

Explicit Lyrics Logo is used to help the audience know that the lyrics they are about to hear are explicit and inappropriate for audiences that are under aged or even audiences that feel offense towards what they hear.

14 things get censored:

·         Nudity/sex

·         Language

·         Violence

·         Drugs, solvent abuse

·         Religion

·         Political/controversy

·         Graphic representation

·         Corrupt the young

·         Sexual violence

·         Class

·         Shock

·         Culture

·         Race

·         True events

Nudity/sex:

Rihanna’s music video “S&M” was censored for the explicit imagery of not only Nudity/Sex, but sexual violence as well due to the sexual movement, revealing so much skin, whipping and tying of the body in a sexual manner.

Religion:

Madonna’s music video “Like a Prayer” was censored for the sexual imagery with Madonna and a black Jesus. This was very controversial in the 1980’s and the way she is dancing and revealing a lot of skin in the church was very offensive to religious audiences.

Lyric Censorship:

Blanking: Entire word is not heard however, music is still playing.

Repeating: Having last word said twice in place.

Disc Scratching: Using a scratch sound of a DJ to cover the word.

Bleeping: Putting ‘bleep’ sound over the word.

Cut and Banned:

When a music video is cut, this means the music video is edited to hide the explicit imagery or to bleep out explicit imagery. This is so the audience isn’t harmed by the imagery or lyrics. On the other hand, when a video is banned, it is not allowed to be shown on TV because of the visuals or even listened to on a radio because of the lyrics in the song.

Advantages:

·         Children are protected from copycat behavior.

·         Promotes a political/appropriate world.

·         Protects children from explicit imagery and lyrics.

·         Protects people’s emotional/physical emotions.

Disadvantages:

·         Freedom of speech.

·         Creativity is restricted/limited.

·         Artist is restricted.

·         Decrease in the views.

·         Blocks legitimate criticism.

·         Individual taste.

·         Compromise entertainment.

Overall, researching censorship has helped me understand that it is an important part of the production stage in making a music video. The industry need censorship as this helps protect the public from inappropriate imagery and lyrics being released onto the internet for them to see. Also, this could help artists abide this and not use explicit imagery and lyrics for their music. In my music video I would like to use imagery which will represent explicit behavior but only in an appropriate way. This is so the audience feel the events happening but can watch it without anything being censored.