CHAPTER
COMMENTARY
This
category illustrates how creative and clever some musical performers
can be with their word choices and sentence structures. But the question is can they use their creative,
imaginative, and cunning talents toward helping humanity?
Although
censorship is wrong, it needs to be recognized that there is clearly a
difference between censoring material for adults verses censoring material for
children. It is absolutely
necessary to keep certain types of inappropriate material away from children
since they do not have the faculties to render good judgment. Indulging in our own selfish personal recreations (i.e.,
getting one’s jollies) at the expense of exposing inappropriate material to
children is fundamentally wrong.
It
is never permissible to expose pornography and other types of inappropriate
material to children. And only
permissible to expose older children, such as teenagers and young adults, to
certain adult oriented material with the consent of parents and guardians or in
other cases at least providing consumer labels so that they may intervene at
their own discretion. In addition,
it is not reasonable to expect that parents and guardians to be able to watch
over their children's well being 24 hours a day for 365 days a year for 18
years. Society has a responsibility
to act as a good neighbor.
If
one was to make a constructive suggestion toward what direction contemporary
music should take and entertainment as a whole, it would be toward generating
less negative material with the goal of meeting social and community
responsibilities. It has been
proven repeatedly over the years that high quality material can be generated
without compromising and sterilizing the creativity process or the points the
artists are trying to make.
An over whelming majority of the
most critically acclaimed pieces of music, movies, plays, and television shows
do not utilize techniques associated with negative material.
Perhaps one of the reasons they are great and withstand the test of time
is because they rise above the pettiness of cheap gimmicks and rely on the creativity, vibrancy, energy, honesty, and the genius of the creator.
People with real talent and integrity do not need to rely on cheap tricks
and gimmicks.
Apparently this high level of creativity, genius, and integrity eludes many entertainers, or why else would they underachieve?