18 December
2014
Sound
of Action:
Obscenity in Today’s Music Industry and Future Leader
Corruption of
cultures exists in many forms. These may include popular culture, lifestyles,
popular music, technology and entertainment. The creation of Spotify, iTunes
and Youtube in the world of information and digital technology has made the
music as the fastest trendsetter. However, the rising of explicit contents in
today’s popular music is quite worrying and has become everyone’s concern. The
concern is shared among Muslim society as well as other societies across the
globe. This paper examines the negative potentials of the music industry
towards future leader and the measures that need to be taken in order to create
a morally strong Muslim society to face future challenges.
Morality is
everyone’s business and nobody is excluded in the issue. With morality, a society
can face global future challenges and obstacles without having to worry too
much on not being able to compete in the global world. In the future, global
challenges may include finding fresh drinking water, affordable and reliable
food supply and clean energy (New Straits Times, 2012, p. 21). If Muslims want
to contribute to the betterment of mankind and solve future problems, they
should empower not only men but women today (The Star, 2012, p. 9). However, in
order to bring the society to a higher level of understanding morality, we must
first acknowledge the inner problems faced by the society at the moment – the
corruption of popular music in today’s music industry.
The first thing we
need to look upon is how the contents in today’s music industry affect the
society and future generation. Obviously, music is inescapable as it surrounds
us in public spaces, it invades every café, bar, and restaurant and it blares
at us from passing motor cars and dribbles from the open taps of radios and
iPods all over the planet. However, most people – perhaps everyone don’t bother
to critically listen to the contents of the song they’re listening to. Songs
from Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus are being glorified all over the radios even
if the lyrics are not suitable for children to listen to. Even so, the banning
of these particular songs is impractical because of the world of information
we’re living in, where everyone can download everything from anywhere. Despite
the fact that the popular culture is being spread worldwide, the Muslim should
take extra efforts in facing this challenges.
In the world of information and digital technology, the Muslim society
is unconsciously suffering from the moral degradation issue. Popular music has
provided a space for the youth to express their favourite, hatred, belief,
ideology and misery – which can either be a good thing or a bad sign for the
future. Plato (4.424c) once said, “The ways of poetry and music are not changed
anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city” (The Republic, 2003).
For Plato, music wasn’t a neutral pleasure. It could express and encourage
virtue – nobility, dignity, temperance, chastity. However, it could also
express and encourage vice – sensuality, belligerence and indiscipline. Plato’s
concern has no different from that of a modern person worrying about the moral
character, and moral effect. In the first place, we, as a person of a society should
understand that popular music does not only help us to escape the busy world
but it can also affect our moral behaviours and social belief.
Teenager and young
people no longer acknowledge important scholars because they’re being blurred
by the overload of entertainment in today’s digital technology. There is no
doubt that popular music today enjoys a higher status compared to any other
cultural product. Pop stars are first among celebrities, idolized by the young,
taken as role models, courted by politicians, and surrounded with an aura that
gives them power over crowds. It is surely likely, therefore, that something of
their message will rub off on the laws passed by the politicians who admire
them. The question of the moral character of music is also complicated by the
fact that music is appreciated in many different ways – people dance to music,
they work and converse over a background of music, they perform music, and they
listen to music. People happily dance to music that they cannot bear to listen
to Mozart or Beethoven anymore. However, ours is a “non-judgmental” culture. To
criticize another’s taste, whether in music, entertainment, or lifestyle, is to
assume that some tastes are superior to others. This, for many people, is
offensive. Who are you, they respond, to judge another’s taste? Young people in
particular feel this, and since it is young people who the principal devotees
are of pop music, this places a tough obstacle in the path of anyone who
undertakes to criticize pop music.
Popular music has made it difficult for parents of today’s world. An
American writer and novelist issuing his worry towards the way his daughter
dressing. He’s in dilemma and not wanting to blame his daughter but to express
his worry for the society. He believed that this happened because of the bad
social influence or to be precise, popular culture (The New York Times, 2013). Most
of the artists that were brought up by the music industry todays are promoting
highly sexual ways of life through the ways they’re dressing. Teenagers will
tend to try out the outfits of their favourite artists and hence lead to the
question of ‘why are you dressing that way?’ from their parents. In short,
music industry is not only able to promote their music but they also can
influence the way of youth dressing.
In addition, it’s not hard to understand why girls are sexually
active so early or why they choose to focus on looks and materialism instead of
working on their character. It’s not hard to see why young boys objectify women
and we have to take extra efforts to encourage them to dress in opposition to
the stereotypes that they view in the media. When we who know the difference
listen to the radio, the youth, who aren’t mature enough to know the
difference, listen as well. Just because we let them listen to the edited
version doesn’t stop them from being exposed to the suggestions or from even
searching these artists on the web and wanting to emulate them. Some children
try to grow up too fast, and as members of society who want more for ourselves,
we should be more mindful of the messages we allow them and ourselves to be
exposed.
According to
Williams (2014), we buy R. Kelly’s album without second thought even if we know
statutory rape is wrong. It is well-known that R. Kelly knowingly had relations
with underage girls, but no one says he should get help or writes petitions
against him. They just keep two-stepping – in the name of love. Just about
every rapper talks about committing a wide range of crimes from Scarface to Kanye
West. Elements of Hip-Hop artists as new age include the telling of stories as
warnings and also to simply show the artist’s story-telling ability but there
is a difference between creative storytelling and glorifying a lifestyle. We
need to start asking ourselves what we want to focus on – the good or debased
elements of life and how it contributes to morality in our communities. Music
these days contains lyrics that are filled with racism, gangsterism, rape and
weed taking. These kind of things are solidifying that rape culture is alive
and being celebrated in pop music. The constant usage of words such as ‘ass’
and ‘titties’ in lyrics offends on so many levels yet people are blinding their
eyes because they thought that they’re a part of popular culture.
It’s also ironic that we praise these artists and their lyrics when
they talk about these things that, if they were to happen in our daily lives,
would cause a disturbance in our happiness. Popular artists like Beyoncé and
Miley Cyrus, role models for women young and old, expose more of their body
parts and their twerking abilities than substance. Every woman wants to be seen
as a respectable lady, and men want their wives, sisters and daughters to be
worthy of respect and treated in kind by others. So why does society bring more
attention to the corrupted elements of mainstream culture that we despise than
those we wish to promote within our communities?
In Daily Mail Online, an article is describing the current studies
showing that exposure to alcohol marketing raises the odds that under-16s will
start to drink, the researchers described their findings as a ‘major concern’.
Songs that specifically mentioned drunkenness were also noted. Increased
alcohol promotion in popular music and ensure this does not reinforce the binge
drinking culture or contribute to the already high burdens of alcohol on young
people (Macrae, 2014). An analysis published in the Journal of Music Psychology
found that the mentions of drink are to be most common in tracks from the US
and in R&B, rap and hip-hop genres. In Britain, the citizens are
suffering from the problem of binge-drinking. The problem is so serious that
the Prime Minister announced it as a national scandal (The Star, 2012, p.45). The proportion
of songs that promoted alcohol by linking it to confidence, sociability or good
looks clearly outweighed those that blamed it for hangovers and health
problems. Parents should be aware of the content of songs their children
listen to. Although lyrics cannot be censored, it may be possible to warn about
references to alcohol on labels that point out sexually explicit and violent
lyrics.
Another issue related to the music industry is the increase of
violence in youth. The largest sampling of music video content reveals a
disturbing amount of violence, as well as unrealistic views of racial and
sexual relationships, according to researchers at the Harvard Medical School (Music
Videos Promote Adolescent Aggression, 1998). The rising of murder cases
involving adolescences and teenagers every year are reported through media mass
as violent portrayed in music videos suggests about their own safety and the
way they view people of another gender or race. Hence, the influences of music
towards the youth are terrifying and should be taken seriously.
To worsen the situation, societies around the world have become
selfish and self-centered due to changes brought by technology and popular
culture. In Britain, for example, the Chief Rabbi has cautioned people about
the dangers of extreme consumerism that may lead to breakdown of family
institution (New Straits Times, 2011, p. 26). This selfishness may affect the
society as people started not to bother about what’s happening around them. Eventually,
the filtration of music contents is no longer a big issue thus the music
industry will become more corrupted. From time to time, the music demands not
that we listen but that we submit. If we do submit, the moral qualities of the
music vanish behind the excitement; if we listen, however, and listen
critically as what have been suggested, we will discern those moral
qualities.
In order to deal with the challenges mentioned, the measure has to
begin with education and good parenting. Let's face it, it's impossible to
remedy the views of every living person. So we must start from the root of the
society. Education may consist of formal and informal education but either way
both are important. Education at early age may help the children and the youth
to understand today’s world. Education enables the society to choose which
things are morally acceptable and which are not. The next important measure is
good parenting. Parents are the closest to an individual; hence, good parenting
will result in better adjusted children (Ordonez, 2013).
We as a community and consumers of media have to decide what to
focus on and what we expose ourselves to, in order to properly lead the future
to a virtuous and productive path exempt from the decrease in morality we see
more of every day. We don’t want a future of pimps and their lookalikes. We
want respectable businessmen and woman and we need to change what we watch and
listen to in order to shape our futures in that direction. There is plenty of
tuneful popular music, and plenty of popular music with which one can sing
along and to which one can dance in sociable ways. The choice is in our hand
and all we need to do is to provide the right path to the society and lead a
better way of life by determining our way of life.
