Censorship

Music censorship is an act of eliminating any unwanted content in a music video. Whether it be a certain lyric or a scene in the video.  This is done to protect the viewer or listener, it  is said that media can influence and affect the way young people behave. Censorship is done in many different ways, it can be a TV advertisement that isn’t allowed to be broadcasted until a certain hour, or a song that has strong explicit language that needs to be either edited or bleeped out. There is evidence to suggest that many media productions have gotten many complaints by viewers and productions companies since they have been criticized for censorship because they’ve either applied too much or not enough.  Some examples of songs which are often on the radio for having  edited censored words are:


- Cee lo Green: Fuck you/Forget you 

- Akon: I wanna fuck you/Love you

- Bruno Mars: So fucking bad/So fricking bad


Censorship became popular around the early 1940’s when modern values were being challenged  by the early rock and R&B genre’s. “Sex and drugs were no longer hidden and secretive acts, but something to be exposed and celebrated”. In addition around the time of the 1970’s and 80’s, music censorship prolonged and targeted music videos as well as songs. Genre’s such as, heavy metal, rock and rap music were usually the ones that were targeted by moral authorities, this was because of the amount of violence that was exposed in their music. Later on, this was trailed on by the Parental Advisory symbol which arose in 1990, this was done because the Parents Music Resource Center insisted the government and music industry to create a rating system for music, evaluating the content of the song, in 1985.

The song ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, was released in 1983 but, however was banned from BBC. This gave them popularity and their single shot from number 6 in the charts to number 1 for a long lasting, 5 weeks. This became the 7^th best-selling UK single ever.  Whilst the original video formed a vast amount of publicity, the band thought it would be a good idea to create a clean video, because the original was not being aired and thus meaning that it wasn't meeting the needs of the music video, which is promoting the song itself.  ‘

Smack My Bitch Up’ by The Prodigy’s was released in 1997 and it was voted the most controversial and debatable pop song. The music video was also banned by the BBC because it was alleged for featuring and promoting domestic violence, illegal drugs and porn.