Music Video Censorship

Whilst the Censorship of popular music started in the early 1940's when traditional values were being challenged by early rock and R&B. “Sex and drugs were no longer hidden and secretive acts, but something to be exposed and celebrated” In the early 1970’s and 80’s, music censorship expanded from songs to music videos. Heavy metal, rock and rap music were targeted by moral authorities due to the amount of violence that was expressed in the music. This was followed by the black and white Parental Advisory symbol which occurred in 1990, after the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) urged the music industry and government to create and promote a rating system for music, evaluating the musical content, in 1985.


A good example of censorship was done by the BBC with the song relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood released in 1983, was banned from BBC radio stations and TV shows, but of course its within human nature when told "no" we want to disagree this gave them a huge amount of publicity which shot their single from number 6 in the charts to number one for 5 weeks running and later on becoming the 7th best-selling UK single of all time. This supports the phrase 'any publicity is good publicity' seeing as the songs lyrics, front cover design and music video encouraged the song to be banned due to its 'overtly sexual' nature.

The original video was directed by Bernard Rose, set in in a gay bar/ erotic night club where the men wore S&M/bondage style leather clothing. The video had a very strong homosexual theme which was considered inappropriate by the BBC and was banned straight away. Whilst this music video created a huge amount of publicity, the band decided to create a 'clean' video, seeing as the original was not being aired.




Another great example of UK censorship is the video for the song "smack my bitch up" by the prodigy  released in 1997, the song on its own was very controversial and the same theme went for the video, where there is drug taking, abuse,nudity, drinking and grand theft auto, the video was shot from a 1st person point of view hiding the identity gender of the main character  The behavior in the video is stereotypical of a young male but ends up with a twist when the character looks in the mirror and it is the refection of a young/teen-aged girl going against general stereotypes and caused huge controversial within religious and social groups.


Fredrick Wertham


Fredrick Wertham is a theorist who released a book in 1954 highlighting how comic books are a 'negative form of popular literature'. He argued that they included both covert and overt violence, sex, drugs and crime, he also highlighted the hidden sexual themes such as wonder woman having a bondage subtext, which was admitted by creator William Moulton Marston. 

Because of this the comic book industry were pressured into a code of conduct which restricted the representation of many ideas and episodes.

The seduction of the Innocent can be related to music videos and film, seeing as it supports censorship, arguing that children and teenagers shouldn't be exposed to sex, drugs and violence as it can be damaging and has a negative impact.