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Sex & music has it gone too far? backlash over lyrics, violence and threat to young women grows
Ebony, Oct, 2002 by Lerone Jr. Bennett, Zondra Hughes
Undergirding all this, coloring and informing all this, is the fourth fantasy idea that life is cheap and fast and that a real man has to prove all the time that his (car, house, etc.) is bigger and that a real man must be prepared to do anything, to die even, to keep from losing face.
The basic problem here and elsewhere is that some macho-macho Brothers have been taught by society, by the images they've seen and the mothers and fathers they've known, to hate themselves and who therefore repeatedly invite self-destruction in suicidal or near suicidal acts.
The inevitable results--how could it be otherwise?--is that millions of stars and fans in the music world and the athletic world are experiencing extreme difficulty in telling the difference between fantasy and reality.
We see this most poignantly in the lives of multimillionaire stars who believe the fantasy they sing and who act out these fantasies in the real world, usually with disastrous results. We see it also in the millions of fans who buy the CDs and music videos and fantasies and try to do to women on their own streets what the stars and the stars' videos and CDs say they do to the women on their street.
A number of studies indicate that the constant portrayal of young Black girls as sex objects is making them targets for people who are not mature enough to distinguish between video fantasy and reality. The problem is magnified when the recording artist himself can't tell the difference between the two and tries to live his video life even after the cameras stop rolling.
This, some say, has led to a national wave of young Black women being hustled and manipulated by unscrupulous stars and predators posing as stars. In some cases, Black teens have been tricked into sex with older celebrities by empty promises of fame, fortune and record deals. But it is not all a one-way street. Some teens, blinded by the fantasy floodlight, seek out older celebrities for sex and materialistic rewards and are even encouraged by their own family members. "Some parents profit from these [arrangements] financially," says Dr. Julia Hare, "and then when it is discovered, they claim, `Oh, I didn't know what was going on.' Materialism seems to be replacing values. It's all about, `What can I have to show and to impress my friends.'"
This situation, Dr. Julia Hare, Dr. Nathan Hare, psychiatrist Carl Bell and others say, is destroying us and requires major action at every level of our lives.
First of all and most important of all, experts say, we've got to ask Black leaders and all Black organizations, especially Black male and female organizations, to take a stand against the institutions and men and women who are singing and dancing us to destruction.
Secondly, and most importantly, they add, we've got to ask entertainment executives; Black and White, to turn down the heat on the musical images they're beaming to our children.
This is not an argument against free speech; this is not an argument against the right of responsible adults to listen to anything they want to listen to and to look at anything they want to look at--this is an argument against the legal wrong of crying fire in a crowded theater of children. It is an argument against adults taking advantage of immature children and adults by exploiting frailties and needs created in large part by the broken images and streets and institutions forced on them by history and racism.
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