The PMRC was a group of influential “Washington wives” who sought to restrict sales of all music containing ‘explicit images or lyrics, including sexual or occult themes’ because they were offended by the content of some of the stuff they heard. Somehow they were convinced that violent or offensive lyrics adversely affected young people – causing them to do drugs, have under-age sex and become anarchists.
Formed in 1985, the PMRC’s stated goal was increasing parental control over children’s access to music deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes via the brilliant idea of putting ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers on albums (pre-CD days). The committee was founded by four douchebags: Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius.
Punk, metal, and rap music were all deemed BAD because they used vulgar language; and yet all these music genres encourage people to convey their own individuality and self-expressive capabilities through music.
The top 15 songs the PMRC sought to censor were:
- Prince – “Darling Nikki” FOR: references to sex/masturbation
- Sheena Easton – “Sugar Walls” FOR: references to sex
- Judas Priest – “Eat Me Alive” FOR: references to sex
- Vanity – “Strap On ‘Robbie Baby’” FOR: references to sex
- Mötley Crüe – “Bastard” FOR: Violent language
- AC/DC – “Let Me Put My Love Into You” FOR: references to sex
- Twisted Sister – “We’re Not Gonna Take It” FOR: violence
- Madonna – “Dress You Up” FOR: references to sex, masturbation
- W.A.S.P. – “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” FOR: references to sex / language
- Def Leppard – “High ‘n’ Dry (Saturday Night)” FOR: drug and alcohol use
- Mercyful Fate – “Into the Coven” FOR: Occult references
- Black Sabbath – “Trashed” FOR: drug and alcohol use
- Mary Jane Girls – “In My House” FOR: sex
- Venom – “Possessed” FOR: Occult references
- Cyndi Lauper – “She Bop” FOR: references to masturbation
The irony is that much of what shocked these ladies was simply innuendo. Tipper and her friends inevitably projected their own repressed sexuality all over the censorship process. But this this was the mid-80s and the majority of Umerkins pretended to be morally conservative. This is still essentially the case in the US if you step outside of the big cities and mainstream corporate media.
One could argue that the female entries on the above list all required a big stretch of the imagination to be interpreted as ‘filth.’ Sheena Easton invited the world to come spend the night inside her sugar walls, Madonna invited her lover to discard the fancy suits from London let her dress him/her in the velvet kisses of her from head to toe. Cyndi Lauper barely touched anything beyond anthropological in her observations of self-pleasure, and yet that too was included. Like, Holy crap! Women masturbate? WTF?
Perhaps the required context is to consider that in 1985, women were not expected to advertise ownership of their sexuality or desire, and so the idea that mainstream radio might promote women as if they existed as anything other than passive objects of fantasy was offensive and problematic to the patriarchy.
And really, let’s face it: most of the songs on the PMRC list are utter crap. I’ve never even heard most of them…simply because they are just plain awful; not because of the content. The content is worthless. I have to agree that there is little artistic value in any of it, and I’m certainly NOT a prude. But I’m also not about to support a ban on MORON MUSIC.
Around this time, there was also a famous court case involving Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, who was looking at a year in jail and a huge fine in 1987 for packaging the album ‘Frankenchrist’ with a poster by renowned Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, designer of the creature for ‘Alien.’
I bought the album strictly for the poster. It consisted of a repeating pattern of penises and balls. There was a sticker on the cover warning that “some people may find the contents shocking, repulsive, or offensive. Life can sometimes be that way…” All charges against Biafra were eventually dropped. The prosecutor said, “About midway through the trial we realized that the lyrics of the album were in many ways socially responsible, very anti-drug and pro-individual…I just felt I was on the wrong side of history.”
The general point about censorship is a lot more nuanced. Even so-called progressives get suckered into agreeing that a certain artwork has no intrinsic artistic value, but virtually everything visual or aural can influence people. And it doesn’t have to be especially “artistic.”
Fun fact: great writers often explore the more questionable aspects of human nature in their art; it doesn’t mean they are that character any more than Stephen King is a character in any of his books.
It’s art – and artists are entitled to inhabit their own creations. However, does there not come a point at which the nature of the creation itself raises questions about what is and what is not acceptable? These are shifting sands, of course. Nobody seemed to bat an eye when Mick Jagger sang about having sex with a 15-year old, just as nobody seemed to bat an eye when Donovan sang about 14-year olds and dildos, though neither would likely survive today’s moral climate, despite the songs not being autobiographical.
If someone is that gullible and easily offended, they can go fuck themselves.
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