Who's Minding the Kids?

I remember enough Dale Carnegie to avoid discussing politics or religion in polite company. After pursuing input for my latest blog post, I can add a third taboo to the list: warning labels on music. It seems that everyone has a passionate -- if not well-informed -- opinion on the topic.

The use of parental warning advisory labels is a particularly contentious issue as it touches on musicians’ freedom of expression, young people’s rights, and the rights of parents to be, well, parents. It my intention to examine the history and the implementation of the stickers. I also hope to clear up some misconceptions about the labels, and to offer some personal opinion on their effectiveness.

Parents teach their children to be safe. When a child is a toddler, a parent will tell them not to touch the stove because they will get burnt and to hold their hand when they walk down the stairs so they don’t fall. As a child grows, the messages continue, but reflect their growing independence, examples such as don’t talk to strangers and look both ways when crossing come to mind. By the time the child reaches the teen years, the instruction is still there, but reflects an even greater freedom: don’t go on an unplanned date and obey the speed limit are just two examples.

Parents also enlist the help of other institutions that reflect their value system such as clubs, religious organizations, and educational institutions. The goal of this instruction is to foster a child over time into a fully functioning member of adult society. But what if someone who doesn’t share a parent’s values captures a child’s attention? Will a child internalize or emulate social ideas that could prove harmful to itself? The prevailing train of thought seems to be better safe than sorry based upon some of the restraints put in place on entertainment consumption for children and teens.

Popular culture that appeals to young people and adult restraints go hand in hand. In the early 1950s, anxiety over sex and violence in comics led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, which held sway over what subject matter could and could not be portrayed in comics. In the late 1960s, the Motion Picture Association of America began its ratings system that assigns movies to different age categories based upon content. More recently, the National Association of Broadcasters has added a similar ratings system to television that allows a parent to block programs of a particular rating on newer televisions. Post–Columbine concerns over violence have seen a ratings system added to video game cartridges.

Rock n’ Roll was always cast a suspicious eye by authority figures even from its earliest days. It was an art form enjoyed by both blacks and whites in a time when segregation was the status quo. The “jungle beat” was accused of encouraging everything from juvenile delinquency to loose morals. (If you ever have an opportunity to look over an old tract or pamphlet denouncing rock ‘n roll notice how many thinly-veiled racist slurs are used.)

The sixties were the decade of discontent. Popular music was adopted as the soundtrack to the protest movement of the 1960s. Musicians became spokespeople on issues of civil rights, the Vietnam War, drug use, and religion.

The proliferation of FM outlets and the diversification of radio formats in the 1970s allowed many rock bands to push the limits of acceptable content far away from the more community-oriented airwaves of AM radio. It became possible to be a successful recording artist without benefit of a hit single. Punk rock demonstrated a fad that sold records despite receiving very little airplay on any format of radio station—the records spewed out a variety of antisocial anthems that wouldn’t have been tolerated by the FCC. (In Britain, where punk was more popular, the artists experienced a great deal of radio censorship.)

The advent of MTV in the eighties saw rock music enter a visual age that went far beyond the pelvis of Elvis and mop top haircuts. Radio became secondary to music videos in breaking hit singles, and the short clips had much to do with building a band or solo artist’s image. Some videos, like Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing or the Cars’ You Might Think used cutting-edge visual effects to get attention. Many others showed bands affecting a macho swagger against authority figures, such as Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It. Other music video directors gave heed to the low budget filmmaker’s muse: breasts are the most inexpensive special effect. Artists like Prince and Madonna got a lot of press out of sexually–charged images in songs and videos.

Although there were calls for regulating the music industry from groups as disparate as fundamentalist evangelists to the PTA, most historians regard the first shot of what would be dubbed the “porn wars” as the day that Tipper Gore, a senator’s wife from Tennessee, brought home the album Purple Rain and put it on the record player. She recounts the incident in her book, Raising PG Kids in an X–Rated Society:

"In December 1984, I purchased Prince’s best–selling album Purple Rain for my eleven–year–old daughter. I had seen Prince on the cover of magazines, and I knew that he was the biggest pop idol in years. My daughter wanted his album because she had heard the single “Let’s Go Crazy” on the radio. But when we brought the album home, put it on our stereo, and listened to it together, we heard the words to another song, “Darling Nikki”: “I knew a girl named Nikki/Guess [you] could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby/Masturbating with a magazine.” The song went on in a similar manner. I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned—then I got mad! Millions of Americans were buying Purple Rain with no idea what to expect."

This is the part of the story where the average parent would toss the LP in the trash or return it to the record store. But Tipper Gore wasn’t the average parent. She was the wife of a senator and had the connections and influence to do something about it. With a group of eight other wives of prominent Washingtonians, she formed the Parents Resource Music Center and held a meeting to raise public awareness about the issue in May of 1985. A letter presented to Stan Gortikov of the Recording Industry Association of America explained their ambitions:

"It is our concern that some of the music which the recording industry sells today increasingly portrays explicit sex and violence, and glorifies the use of drugs and alcohol. It is indiscriminately available to persons of any age through record stores and the media.

"These messages reach young children and early teenagers at a crucial age when they are developing lifelong value systems. Their minds are often not yet discerning enough to reject the destructive influences and anti-–social behavior engendered by what they hear and see in these products.

"Because of the excesses that exist in the music industry today, we petition the industry to exercise voluntary self–restraint perhaps by developing guidelines and/or a ratings system, such as that of the movie industry, for use by parents in order to protect our younger children from such mature themes.”

The conservative mood of the country was on their side and the PRMC capitalized on the exposure with editorials, magazine covers, and numerous television interviews about its proposals. But nothing could prepare have prepared it for the media frenzy surrounding the congressional hearing on record labeling in September 1985.

Who can forget the image of Frank Zappa and Dee Snider addressing members of congress? Or the rock–musician–turned–youth–minister reciting the lyrics about the guy pooping on a girl’s face? Although it made for some interesting television viewing, the hearing accomplished little, if anything, towards the implementation of labeling records. In fact, in doing research for this paper I couldn’t find a pressing explanation for the hearing. Congress didn’t intend to consider any legislation regarding record labeling and the Recording Industry Association of America had already agreed to develop a system of warning stickers. So why were the hearings held? I can only suppose that it was a show of muscle to insure that the Recording Industry Association of America followed through on its promise. In any event, it still took another five years (!) to get the RIAA to make good on its promise for a universal warning label on music.

In March of 1990, black and white stickers bearing the words PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT first appeared in record stores across America. Individual record companies choose to participate or not, and it is they, not an independent board (like the MPAA) that decides if an album warrants a warning label.

A warning label, in my opinion, was the best way to balance out parents’ concern with artists’ rights to free expression. In a perfect world, I could end the paper here. But as Tonio K. once sang, “This ain’t no perfect world.”

In an informal survey I sent around my company’s intranet, I asked 40 parents to describe what warning stickers were, who decided what CDs get labeled, and what the stickers mean. Only one answered correctly. The most common answer was the government decided which albums get labeled and the presence of a sticker makes it illegal for a minor to purchase the album. What I found most disturbing was the impression that most of the responders were happy with the system as they imagined it: to let an official body decide what their children could and couldn’t listen to.

I also spoke with a record store employee on condition of anonymity (Not because I was asking for a sizzling expose about the shady dealings of his employer, but rather because of the fear instilled in chain store employees). She couldn’t recall a single time in the last year when a parent was involved in a music purchase with their child, beyond handing a twenty over. If a minor wanted to purchase a stickered product they just brought along an older sibling or friend.

Which brings me to another result of the warning labels. Many stores restrict purchase on stickered product to people under the age of eighteen. Other retailers, like Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and K-Mart won’t stock stickered product in the first place. It’s given rise to “clean” versions of an album (songs deleted or edited) being offered by record companies as an alternative.

The issue has come a long way since 1985. Who would have guessed that at a recent summit of hip hop industry leaders and artists that they would adopt a resolution to expand the warning labels to advertising and the internet? But no simple tool can take the place of parental awareness in raising a child.