COLUMN: The Coarsening of the Entertainment Industry
THE VOICE — “Live Finale” Episode 1321B — Pictured: Pharrell Williams with N.E.R.D. — (Photo by: Tyler Golden/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
WARNING: This post features lyrics with strong language.
As previously pointed out, this year’s Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon suffered its lowest ratings in years. This drop is due to a combination of most of the music, movies, and TV shows that were honored not being appropriate for children, combined with the blatant shoutouts to the anti-gun March for Our Lives protests.
And that’s part of the problem. Most entertainment today pushes a liberal agenda, features gratuitous violence and sex scenes, or has its characters swear like sailors. A previous piece mentioned how video games are just one industry putting out this filth. However, the worst form of entertainment thus far is modern pop music.
Musical acts today make a lot of money putting out filthy songs most parents should find inappropriate for children. To give you an example, here are some lyrics from three popular songs – the first of which was actually performed at this year’s Kids’ Choice ceremony (albeit with most of the profanities being removed):
N.E.R.D. feat. Rihanna – Lemon
The truth will set you free
But first, it’ll piss you off
Hate! Bad bitches wanna be my bae
Hate! Hunt me down like the CIA
Hate! Side of my car, tryna see my face
Hate! Want me to beat it like the T.I. case
Oh (hate!) and if it’s heated I’ma feed my face
Hate! And best believe, it’s gon’ be outrageous
Hate! Hatin’ niggas can’t believe my race
Hate! Niggas hit you with the Eli face, oh
(…)
I get it how I live it.
I live it how I get it.
Count the mothafuckin’ digits
I pull up with a lemon
Not ’cause she ain’t livin’
It’s just your eyes get acidic
And this here ain’t a scrimmage
Mothafucka, we ain’t finished
I told you we won’t stop
A nigga ’bouta business
Kendrick Lamar – King’s Dead (from the Marvel’s Black Panther soundtrack album)
La di da di da, slob on me knob
Pass me some syrup, fuck me in the car
La di da di da, mothafuck the law
Chitty chitty bang, murder everything
Bitch, I’m on a roll, and I put that on the gang
Ed Sheeran – The Shape of You
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with the shape of you
If you can’t see that unsupervised children might repeat some of these lyrics, then you’re not a responsible parent. Period. In order to help children of all colors and creeds succeed in this country, American society – parents included – has to convince them to not engage in destructive behavior like drug and alcohol abuse and underage sex.
I pointed this out here at Carolina Culture Warrior and over at The American Spectator two years ago. At that time, I also pointed out that apologists of Hip Hop, Pop, and Rap continue to show themselves. One of those apologists is former MTV News writer Doreen St. Félix, who now does contributions for The New Yorker magazine:
Rap is art. It’s real and not real, a dramatization of some parts of a life to create entertainment — just as white art forms have done for millennia with impunity. The black men and women who have carved this thing out of despair, oppression, and ancestral style are not unthinking, violent brutes. They are not “thugs,” to use his brutal language. They’re not gun-happy automatons who simply transpose violence onto beats. Rappers are artists. Is that so hard to comprehend?
That’s ridiculous, real artists don’t spew out the N-word every few seconds in their songs, let alone talk about sex or drugs.
The truth is that most of the music that comes out today is destroying our culture in ways most people can’t comprehend. But, you will never get liberal Hollywood and an equally liberal press to admit that. The latter puts out nothing but praise for this garbage, while the former simply wants to make money. And anyone who points out how destructive this kind of music is ends up being attacked by both the press and the industry as St. Félix’s comments prove.
If most our elected officials – no matter what political affiliation they belong to – would put in some energy to try and persuade children not to succumb to our corrupt culture, that would be huge. Of course, there is some great content that comes out of the entertainment industry. But unless it stops endorsing songs, movies, and TV shows with gratuitous scenes and/or lyrics that have no value to the stories they’re trying to tell, its credibility will continue to sink with the average American.
