Censorship

Censorship is the monitoring of television, radio, music, books and any other medium and making sure that any content that's considered inappropriate is blanked out that it doesn't reach it's audience. A medium that has seen a lot of this in the past few years are music videos, back when they were new and just coming about a lot of music videos were just the artist standing on stage and performing their song at a gig or concert which is now known as performance based and had very little to censor unless it contained explicit language. However, in the present music videos are a lot more concept and narrative based and in general contain more explicit or violent content which needs to be censored in music videos especially on channels where they're playing before the watershed.A company called Ofcom works very closely with censorship and regulate radio sectors, mobiles, postal services and fixed line telecoms in which wireless devices operate. Some of their duties are to ensure that the UK has a wide range of electronic communication services including high speed broadband and television.

Examples of music videos that have been censored in the past are 'Where Have You Been' by Rihanna which includes a lot of clips using drugs, sex, alcohol and violence. For a short while the video was shown on MTV and other more commercial, mainstream music channels but soon after it was only shown after watershed. I think the reason it was eligible to be censored is because Rihanna's first image as a star was innocent and appealed to a lot of young girls who looked up to her, then as her persona and look changed overtime, people weren't used to it and weren't used to the content in her videos and were afraid it'd influence her younger fans. The argument most people had was that like most of Rihanna's fans, she's also growing up as well and that she has a right to create music and videos the way she wants to, as other artists are allowed.

        Another music video that's experienced the same criticism is Katy Perry's music video to 'California Gurls' where she was dressed provocatively and laying on a pink cloud with no clothes on. A lot of the critics said that her promiscuous attitude shown in many videos influences on her younger audience who may look up to her and try to reflect her image. My last example is a collaboration between Rick Ross, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj and their video 'Monster'. This was never allowed to be aired on any radio station and the video was also censored from music channels. Both the lyrics were too explicit to censor for radio to the point where the majority of the song would've had to be blanked out, for example 'Gossip, gossip, nigga just stop it', 'really, really, I don't give an F-U-C-K, forget Barbie fuck Nicki cos she's fake' and 'None of you cunts have seen the cunts that I've seen'. Also, it was censored from any music channels at any time because the content was seen to be too disturbing, showing all the rappers with multiple women's dead bodies.

Songs of Rap and R&B conventionally have a lot more censorship in their music videos and music because the lyrics are known to be a lot more violent and contain more swearing than a genre like Pop and their videos normally feature provocatively dressed women, promote smoking and alcohol and seem a lot more explicit than most videos in general. An artist that's faced a lot of censorship throughout recent years and when he started moving up in the industry. A lot of his lyrics come across as innocent at first listen but have more explicit meanings such as 'Lollipop', one of his very first songs to be released. While his music videos may not be as disturbing as some of the other music videos that are out there, they contain a lot of women in provocative clothing as conventionally expected from his genre, this also applies to Tyga - an artist from Lil Wayne's music video - and his music video 'Rack City'. Meanwhile, there are other stars that face a lot of censorship controversy in the music industry such as Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga. First off, with Lady Gaga while a lot of her lyrics aren't necessarily considered offensive or anything that should be censored, her conceptual based videos can a lot of the time be considered disturbing and sometimes too much for a younger audience to watch. Her videos such as 'Marry The Night' and 'Born This Way' are often cut short before watershed and even sometimes after watershed. While concept based videos are seen as in fashion, a lot of critics and people who aren't really for Lady Gaga's work say that she more often than not takes it too far to the point where watching her videos

make viewers feel uncomfortable whilst watching. Miley Cyrus is probably one of the most surprising artist to face censorship during her career because she's known for who she started off in her career; the very child friendly, Disney orientated teen star Hannah Montana. Since 2006 Miley was releasing videos that'd been purposely constructed and directed by Disney to appeal perfectly to an audience

of girls from about five to a pre-teen age. These songs and music videos included 'The Climb', wrote for Miley's feature film 'Hannah Montana The Movie' and songs such as 'Fly on the Wall' and 'Party in the USA'. However, after breaking away from Disney Channel and her role as Hannah, Miley started focusing on what she wanted to do as an artist without having to worry about her audience of younger fans. It soon became apparent that she didn't necessarily want to create material that was targeted at pre-teens and moved on to a much more mature and provocative look which was debuted in her music video 'Can't be Tamed' where she appears in a leather leotard, thigh high boots and not much else. This image continued on to her latest video 'Who Owns My Heart' where she wears either her underwear or a blazer with next to nothing underneath. Of course this stroke a lot of up roar amongst the parents of her pre-teen fans, claiming that Miley's new image didn't fit what they wanted out of a role model. Although neither 'Can't be Tamed' or 'Who Owns My Heart' have ever been officially censored, it's very unlikely the videos are shown on networks such as MTV Hits, The Box or 4 Music due to the younger audiences that they may have viewing, particularly before watershed. 

In class we did a debate about Eminem and whether or not his music deserves to be censored by radio and whether his videos should be censored by music channels. We looked like arguments from various groups who're related and concerned with his music, for instance the channels MTV Hits and Kiss alongside the radio station Radio 1. We also took a look at arguments that may be given from mothers who are against his music, teenagers/fans that don't agree with his language, super fans of Eminem, a person who grew up with Eminem's music, Eminem himself as well as his record label. First off, MTV Hits argued that they felt the need to censor some of his music videos completely because they had the duty to bare in mind younger fans that may be watching their channel throughout the day, Kiss also agreed with his statement but said that maybe censoring him off their station completely was a bit far fetched and instead just blanked out some of the more explicit and arguably offensive lyrics that were featured in most of his songs. This sparked up the arguments of the parents saying that they weren't comfortable with their children being exposed to bad language through Eminem's lyrics and that they weren't always needed - the group of fans who didn't agree with his language backed this statement up with the fact that Eminem is constantly in the public eye and therefore it's technically part of his job to set a good example for any fan of his, no matter what their age is.

What also came up in our debates were the content of his music videos, while they weren't consisting of the usual materialistic iconography that stereotypical rap videos consist of, they rather less discreetly addressed other celebrities in the industry that people found insulting and offensive. For instance in his music video for "Just Lose It" he mocks celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Jessica Simpson - Eminem addressed the allegations about Michael being a pedophile which were headlining gossip pages everywhere at that time and he was also mocking Jessica's appearance. People criticized Eminem about this as nobody thought it was his issue to address or his place to say anything about both Michael's allegations or Jessica's image. However, the counter argument about this was that Eminem was simply expressing his opinion and views, just like every other person was on online message boards or in day to day conversation, he just put his into his art.

Counter to this, Eminem's music label argued that he is a rap star not a parent and therefore it's not his duty or anyone else's to protect their children from language that the parents aren't comfortable with and if they feel that way then they should be taking extra measures to safe guard things such as television and the internet at home. For instance, Sky TV along with Virgin Media offers a service where parents can block particular channels of theirtelevision so that children can't access them and Google along with Windows' Firewall let's owners of computers choose which sites people can access and which they can't when they're using that machine. YouTube also has a content block that doesn't let anyone under the age of 18 watch videos that aren't considered appropriate without being logged onto an account which was registered by someone with a date of birth that makes them 18+. Fans of Eminem also pointed out that even though he might not be conventionally considered a 'good influence', it doesn't make him worse than anybody else and a lot of the conspiracy around him only spirals from the fact that he's from the rap genre - saying that the so called 'innocent' genre of Pop has a lot of women who don't necessarily dress in a way which is appropriate for their younger females fans (i.e. Katy Perry, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga) yet they don't seem to get the backlash that Eminem does. The person who argued as someone who'd grown up listening to Eminem said that even though he is offensive and the 'humor' in his raps aren't appropriate for a lot of people, at the end of the day he is still a successful figure in the media who pretty much amounted from nothing and it's better to consider him as a role model than someone who hasn't achieved anything whatsoever. 

In my person opinion, I think that censorship on a whole is a good idea as there does need to be some boundaries as to what's acceptable and what isn't especially with music videos in general being a growing fashion which people seem to be taking a lot of interest in therefore if censorship wasn't about it'd be almost impossible for parents and guardians to control what their children are 

exposed to. However, I also think that sometimes people who're against censorship go too far with it by criticizing the actual artist, it's fair enough that they may find certain features of music videos offensive or too explicit for them or people who're their responsibility but at the end of the day, it's also the artists right to do what they want freely without having to consider everybody that might be exposed to their art because it's really not their responsibility.

My research into my censorship has made me realize that we have to consider who'll be watching our video all the time whilst producing it. This means considering what would be considered appropriate clothing and style for our artist when baring in mind who they appeal to (i.e. This is why perhaps Rihanna can get away with wearing minimal clothing while Miley Cyrus often gets criticized for it) - the same goes to explicit language, while people accept the fact artists such as Eminem and Lil Wayne will have swearing in their songs, it'd be considered an outrage if a band such as One Direction were to mimic this.