40 Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly (1991; excerpt)

Susan McClary

People have this idea that ifyou're sexual and beautiful and provocative, then there~ nothing else you could possibly o.ffir. People have always had that image about women. And while it might have seemed like I was behaving in a stereotypical way, at the same time, I was also masterminding it. I was in control ofeverything I was doing, and I think that when people realized that, it confused them. -Madonna,1987

What ifa little girl picked up a guitar and said, 'I wanna be a rock star. 'Nine times out often her parents would nev_er allow her to do it. We don't have so many lead guitar women, not because women don't have the ability to play the instrument but because they're kept locked up, taught to be something else. I don't appreciate that. -David Lee Roth

Madonna is the most controversial figure in popular music of the last thirty years. She push­ es people's buttons: religion, abortion, and sexuality are just a few of the topics she has forced us to consider over the years. Many of these topics are gender related, and can perhaps best be understood within a historical context of women in music. In this chapter from her ground­ breaking book of feminist music criticism Feminine Endings ( 1991 ), Susan McClary provides that context, and shows how it has shaped Madonna's largely negative critical reception. McClary observes that Western music is historically a male domain. In opera, for example, men wrrte the words and music, stage the action, conduct the orchestra, and so forth. Women have a role-as spectacle on stage-but they must not step out of line. Powerful women in opera are usually doomed women. Madonr:ia rejects such control, and is thus potentially disturbing to men. Women have also been deterred in subtle ways from choosing music as a profession. For exam­ ple, David Lee Roth's suggestion that girls are discouraged from playing gurtar explains why we have

321 322 Susan McClary Living to Tell 323 so few rock gurtar heroines. Another restriction concerns public performance: it is one thing for a breathtaking. For example, John Fiske's complex and sympathetic discussion of the man to display his sexuality, quite another thing for a woman. (For this reason, women have in the struggle over meaning surrounding Madonna begins, "Most critics have nothing past been banned from the stage.) Madonna confronts and rejects these controls as well. good to say about her music, but they have a lot to say about her image."4 He then Because she openly flaunts her sexuality, Madonna is dismissed as a mindless media doll, but goes on to say a lot about her image, and he too has nothing whatsoever to say about in fact she composes and produces her music, and controls every aspect of her image. Critics the music. E. Ann Kaplan's detailed readings of Madonna's music videos likewise also dismiss her because she is commercially successful-evidence that she plays to the lowest push the music to the siqe and treat the videos strictly through the techniques of film common denominator (teen girls, for example). Or she is dismissed because she performs criticism.5 "mindless" dance music, that is, music that celebrates the body, not the mind. This essay will concentrate on Madonna, the musician. First, I will locate her with­ McClary answers each of these criticisms, portraying Madonna as a conscious and courageous artist. Of particular interest is McClary's observation concerning the strategies of Madonna's musi­ in a history of gender relationships in the music world: I hope to demonstrate that cal and visual constructions:''she evokes a whole range of conventional signifiers [codes] and then Madonna has served as a lightning rod to make only slightly more perceptible the causes them to rub up against each other in ways that are open to a variety of divergent readings, kinds of double binds always presented to a woman who attempts to enter Western many of them potentially empowering to girls and women." For example, in "Like A Virgin" music. Second, I will turn to her music and examine some of the ways she operates Madonna ironically acknowledges that childish vulnerability is what the patriarchal culture expects, within a persistently repressive discourse to create liberatory musical images. Finally and at the same time makes it clear that she is aware that the fantasy is ludicrous. Indeed, none of I will present a brief discussion of the music videos "Open Your Heart" and "Like a the fantasies she enacts in her videos is really successful as male fantasy. Prayer," in which I consider the interactions between musical and visual components. Finally. Madonna has been accused of setting the cause of feminism back, but McClary sug­ Throughout this ess~y, I will be writing of Madonna in a way that assigns con­ gests that this criticism comes largely from males; by contrast, "many girls and women ... per­ siderable credit and responsibility to her as a creator of texts. To be sure, the prod­ ceive her music and videos as articulating a whole new set of possible feminine subject ucts ascribed to Madonna are the result of complex collaborative processes involving positions.'' the input of co-writers, co-producers, studio musicians, video directors, technicians, marketing specialists, and so forth. As is the case in most pop, there is no single orig­ A great deal of ink has been spilled in the debate over pop star Madonna's visual inary genius for this music. image and the narratives she has enacted for music video. Almost every response Yet the testimonies of co-workers and interviewers indicate that Madonna is very in the spectrum has been registered, ranging from unambiguous characteriza­ much in control of almost every dimension of her media persona and her career. tions of her as "a porn queen in heat"1 or "the kind of woman who comes into your Even though certain components of songs or videos are contributed by other artists, 2 room at three a.m. and sucks your life out," to formulations that view her as a she has won and fiercely maintains the right to decide finally what will be released kind of organic feminist whose image "enables girls to see that the meanings of under her name. It may be that Madonna is best understood as head of a corpora­ feminine sexuality can be in their control, can be made in their interests, and tion that produces images of her self-representation, rather than as the spontaneous, that their subjectivities are not necessarily totally determined by the dominant "authentic" artist of rock mythology. But a puppet she's not. As she puts it: 3 patriarchy." • • • • What most reactions to Madonna share, however, 1s an automatic dismissal of People have this idea that if you're sexual and beautiful and provocative, then there's her music as irrelevant. The scorn with which her ostensible artistic focus has been nothing else you could possibly offer. People have always had that image about women. And while it might have seemed like I was behaving in a stereotypical way, at the same trivialized, treated as a conventional backdrop to her visual appearance, often is time, I was also masterminding it. I was in control of everything I was doing, and I think that when people realized that, it confused them.6

lJ. D. Considine, "That Girl: Madonna Rolls Across America," BuZZ 2, no. 11(September1987): "According to the I am stressing Madonna's agency in her own self-representation in part because PMRC's Susan Baker, in fact, Madonna taught little girls how to act 'like a porn queen in heat' (17). E. Ann Kaplan there is such a powerful tendency for her agency to be erased completely-for her to describes her image as a combination of bordello queen and bag lady. See Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, be seen as just a mindless doll fulfilling male fantasies of anonymous puppeteers. Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture (New York: Methuen, 1987), 126. 2Milo Miles, music editor of Boston Phoenix, as quoted in Dave Marsh, "Girls Can't Do What the Guys Do: This particular strategy for dismissing Madonna has always seemed odd to me Madonna's Physical Attraction," The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 161. Compare because the fantasies she enacts are not very successful at being male fantasies, if that the imagery in Considine, "That Girl": "By some accounts-particularly a notorious Rolling Stone profile-Madonna slept her way to the top, sucking her boyfriends dry, then moving on ~o the next influential m~le" (16). Both ~arsh and Considine refute this image, but it is a fascinating one that combines the predatory sexuality of the vampire and succubus with the servile masochism of the female character in Deep Throat. For a reasonably detailed (if positively 4Ibid., 270. 5 slanted) account of Madonna's early career, see Debbi Voller, Madonna: The Illustrated Biography (London: Omnibus See Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock, especially 115-27; and "Feminist Criticism and Television," Channels of Press, 1988). Discourse, 211-53. 3John Fiske, "British Cultural Studies and Television," Channels of Discourse, ed. Robert C. Allen (Chapel Hill: 6Mikal Gilmore, "The Madonna Mystique," Rolling Stone 508(September10, 1987): 87. I wish to thank Ann Dunn University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 297. for this citation. 324 Susan McClary Living to Tell 325

is their objective: they often inspire discomfort and anxiety among men who wish to 1 Toy." 7 And I am rather amused when men who are oth­ read her as a genuine "Boy Although there are some notable exceptions, women have traditionally been barred with feminist issues attack Madonna for setting erwise not conspicuously concerned from participating in Western music. The barriers that have prevented them from par­ because so many girls and women the cause of women back twenty years-especially ticipation have occasionally been formal: in the seventeenth century there were even 8 (some of them feminist theorists, including even Betty Friedan) perceive her music 9 papal edicts proscribing women'~ musical education. More often, however, women are and videos as articulating a whole new set of possible feminine subject positions. discouraged through more subtle means from considering thems~lves as potential ~~si­ statements in interviews (sever_al of which Furthermore, her spirited, self-confident cians. As macho rock star David Lee Roth (rarely accused ofbemg an ardent femm1st) lend support to the interpreta­ are sprinkled liberally throughout this essay) tend to observes: "What if a little girl picked up a guitar and said 'I wanna be a rock star.' Nine tions of female fans. times out of ten her parents would never allow her to do it. We don't have so many lead not hers alone: even if she wrote everything she performs Yet Madonna's agency is guitar women, not because women don't have the ability to play the instrument, but be important to remember that her music and personae 10 all by herself, it would still because they're kept locked up, taught to be something else. I don't appreciate that." of social discursive practices. Her style is assembled are produced within a variety Women have, of course, been discouraged from writing or painting as well, and fem­ the musics of many different genres, and her visual images draw upon the con­ from inist scholars in literary and art history have already made the barriers hindering women of female representation that circulate in film, advertisements, and stage ventions in those areas familiar. But there are additional factors that still make female participa­ as effective as she unquestionably is, she has to speak shows. Indeed, in order to be tion in music riskier than in either literature or the visual arts. First, the charismatic per­ and perceptions of her audience. Her voices intelligibly to the cultural experiences formance of one's music is often crucial to its promotion and transmission. Whether precisely because they engage so provocatively with ongoing cultural are credible Liszt in his matinee-idol piano recitals, Elvis on "The Ed Sullivan Show," or the afore­ conversations about gender, power, and pleasure. mentioned David Lee Roth, the composer-performer often relies heavily on manipu- Moreover, as will be demonstrated throughout this essay, Madonna's art itself 11 lating audience response through1 his enactments of sexu al power an ddes1re. . notion of the unified subject with finite ego repeatedly deconstructs the traditional However, for a man to enact his sexuality is not the same as for a woman: playfully, sometimes seriously--various boundaries. Her pieces explore-sometimes throughout Western history, women musicians have usually been assumed to be pub­ of constituting identities that refuse stability, that remain fluid, that resist def­ ways licly available, have had to fight hard against pressures to yield, or have accepted the inition. This tendency in her work has become increasingly pronounced: for instance, in her recent, controversial video "Express Yourself" (which borrows its imagery from Fritz Lang's Metropolis), she slips in and out of every subject position offered 9Jane Bowers, "Women Composers in Italy, 1566-1700," Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986): "On 4May1686 Pope within the video's narrative context-including those of the cat and the tyrannical Innocent XI issued an edict which declared that 'music is completely injurious to the modesty that is proper for master of industry--refusing more than ever to deliver the security of a clear, unam­ the [female] sex, because they become distracted from the matters and occupations most proper for them.' biguous message or an "authentic" self. Therefore, 'no unmarried woman, married woman, or widow of any rank, status, condition, even those who for reasons of education or anything else are living in convents or conservatories, under any pretext, even to learn Thus I do not want to suggest that she (of all artists!) is a solitary creator who ulti­ music in order to practice it in those convents, may learn to sing from men, either laymen or clerics or regular mately determines fixed meanings for her pieces. But I will focus on how a woman clergy, no matter if they are in any way related to them, and to play any sort of musical instrument"' (139-40), artist can make a difference within discourse. To strip Madonna of all conscious An especially shocking report of the silencing of women performers is presented in Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara 1579-1597 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), The court at Ferrara had an ensemble in her work is to reduce her once again to a voiceless, powerless bimbo. In intention with three women ~rtuoso singers who became internationally famous, Duke Alfonso of Ferrara had the "three ladies" a world in which many people assert that she (along with most other women artists) sing for Duke Guglielmo of Mantua and expected the latter to "praise them to the skies." "I.nstead, speaking lo~dl~ can't have meant what one sees and hears because she isn't smart enough, claims of enough to be heard both by the ladies and by the Duchesses who were present [Duke Guglielmo] burst forth, ladies made everyone else strategically. are very impressive indeed-in fact, I would rather be an ass than a lady.' And with this he rose and intentionality, agency; and authorship become extremely important do so as well, thus putting an end to the singing" (24). See also the examinations of the restrictions placed on women as musicians and performers in Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Sociocultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: 7In his interview with Madonna in Rolling Stone 548 (March 28, 1989), Bill Zehme says: "Maybe you noticed this Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Julia Kosa, "Music and References to Music in Godey's Lady's Book, 1830-77" already, but a number of songs on the new album [Like a Prayer] have sort of antimale themes." Her response:" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1988). [Surprised] Well, gee, I never thought of that. This album definitely does have a very strong feminine point of view. lODavid Lee Roth, cited in Marsh, "Girls Can't Do," 165. I might add that this is a far more liberal attitude than that Hmmm. I've had some painful experiences with men in my life, just as I've had some incredible experiences. Maybe of most academic musicians. I'm representing more of the former than the latter. I certainly don't hate men. No, no, no! Couldn't live without 11This is not always an option socially available to male performers, however. The staged enactment of masculine sen­ them!" (180). Madonna is caught typically in a double bind in which she is chastised at the same time for being a suality is problematic in Western culture in which patriarchal rules of propriety dictate that excess in spectacles be pro­ passive doll and for being an aggressive man-hater. See again the citations in note 1. jected onto women. Thus Liszt, Elvis, and Roth can be understood as effective in part because of.th~ir transgressi~e 80n a special MTV broadcast called "Taboo Videos" (March 26, 1988), Betty Friedan states in an interview: "I tell you, behaviors. This distinction in permissible activities in music theater can be traced back to the begmmngs of opera m Madonna-in contrast to the image of women that you saw on MTV-at least she had spirit, she had guts, she had vitality. the seventeenth century. See Chapter 2. See also Robert Walser, "Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and She was in control of her own sexuality and her life. She was a relatively good role model, compared with what else you saw." Madness in Heavy Metal Music" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, forthcoming). 326 Susan McClary Living to Tell 327

granting of sexual favors as one of the prices of having a career. The seventeenth­ Women are not, of course, entirely absent from traditional music spectacle: century composer Barbara Strozzi-one of the very few women to compete ..success­ women characters may even be highlighted as stars in operas. But opera, like the fully in elite music composition-may have been forced by her agent pimp of a father other genres of Western music, is an almost exclusively male domain in that men to pose for a bare-breasted publicity portrait as part of his plan for launching her write both libretti and music, direct the stage action, and interpret the scores. Thus career. 12 Women on the stage are viewed as sexual commodities regardless of their it is not surprising that operas. tend to articulate and reinforce precisely the sexual appearance or seriousness. Brahms pleaded with the aging .Clara Schumann politics just described. The proceedings are controlled by a discourse organized in (provocatively dressed, to be sure, in widow's weeds) to leave off her immodest com­ accordance with masculine interests-a discourse that offers up the female as spec­ position and concertizing.13 One of Madonna's principal accomplishments is that she tacle while guaranteeing that she will not step out of line. Sometimes desire is brings this hypocrisy to the surface and problematizes it. articulated by the male character while the passive, domesticated female simply Second, musical discourse has been carefully guarded from female participation in acquiesces. In such instances, the potential violence of male domination is not nec­ part because of its ability to articulate patterns of desire. Music is an extremely pow­ essarily in evidence: the piece seems to unfold in accordance with the "natural" (read: erful medium, all the more so because most listeners have little rational control over patriarchal) sexual hierarchy. the way it influences them. The mind/body split that has plagued Western culture for But a kind of desire-dread-purge mechanism prevails in operas in which the centuries shows up most paradoxically in attitudes toward music: the most cerebral, tables are turned and a passive male encounters a strong, sexually aggressive female nonmaterial of media is at the same time the medium most capable of engaging the character. In operas such as Carmen, Lulu, and Salome, the "victimized male" who has body. This confusion over whether music belongs with mind or with body is intensi­ been aroused by the temptress finally must kill her in order to reinstate social order.16 fied when the fundamental binary opposition of masculine/feminine is mapped onto Even in so-called absolute music (instrumental music in which there is no explicit it. 14 To the very large extent that mind is defined as masculine and body as feminine extramusical or programmatic component), the themes conventionally designated as in Western culture, music is always in danger of being perceived as a feminine (or "feminine" must be domesticated or eradicated for the sake of narrative closure. 17 effeminate) enterprise altogether. 15 And one of the means of asserting masculine con­ The ways in which fear .of female sexuality and anxiety over the body are trol over the medium is by denying the very possibility of participation by women. For inscribed in the Western music tradition are obviously very relevant for the would­ how can an enterprise be feminine if actual women are excluded? be (wannabe?) woman musician. First, women are located within the discourse in a position of both desire and dread-as that which must reveal that it is controlled by 12Ellen Rosand, "The Voice of Barbara Strozzi," Women Making Music, ,185. See also Anthony Newcomb, "Courtesans, the male or which must be purged as intolerable. Many male attacks on Madonna Muses, or Musicians? Professional Women Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Italy," Women Making Music, 90-115; and unself-consciously locate their terror in the fact that she is not under masculine Linda Phyllis Austern," 'Sing Againe Syren': The Female Musician and Sexual Enchantment in Elizabethan Life and control. Like Carmen or Lulu, she invokes the body and feminine sexuality; but Literature," Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 420-48. For more on the role of Renaissance courtesans in cultural production, see Ann Rosalind Jones, "City Women and Their Audiences: Louise Labe and Veronica Franco," unlike them, she refuses to be framed by a structure that will push her back into Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W Ferguson, submission or annihilation. Madonna interprets the problem as follows: Maureen 01Jilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 299-316. 13See the excerpts from Clara's diary entries and her correspondences with Robert Schumann and Brahms in Carol I think for the most part men have always been the aggressors sexually. Through time Neu1s-Bates, ed., Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: immemorial they've always been in control. So I think sex is equated with power in a Harper & Row, 1982), 92-108; and Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca: Cornell way, and that's scary in a way. It's scary for men that women would have that power, University Press, 1985). Women in Music contains many other documents revealing how women have been discouraged from participating in music and how certain of them persisted to become productive composers nonetheless. and I think it's scary for women to have that power-or to have that power and be sexy 14 18 For examinations of how the mind/body split intersects with gender in Western culture see Genevieve Lloyd, The at the same time. Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Susan Bordo, "The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought," Signs 11, no. 3 (1986): 439-56; and Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections Second, the particular popular discourse within which Madonna works-that of on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). dance-is the genre of music most closely associated with physical motion. The For discussions of how these slipping binary oppositions inform music, see Geraldine Finn, "Music, Masculinity and mind/body-masculine/feminine the Silencing of Women," New Musicology, ed. John Shepherd (New York: Routledge, forthcoming); and my "Agenda problem places dance decisively on the side of the for a Feminist Criticism of Music," Canadian University Music Review, forthcoming. "feminine" body rather than with the objective "masculine" intellect. It is for this 15 This binary opposition is not, of course, entirely stable. Imagination, for instance, is an attribute of the mind, though reason that dance music in general usually is dismissed by music critics, even by it was defined as "feminine" during the Enlightenment and consequently becomes a site of contestation in early Romanticism. See Jochen Schulte-Sasse, "Imagination and Modernity: Or the Taming of the Human Mind," Cultural Critique 5(Winter1986-87): 23-48. Likewise, the nineteenth-century concept of"genius" itself was understood as having a necessary "feminine" component, although actual women were explicitly barred from this category. See 16See Catherine Clement, Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius (London: Women's Press, 1989). Press, 1988); and Chapters 3 and 4. The common association of music with effeminacy is only now being examined in musicology. See Leppert, Music 17See Chapter 3. and Image; Linda Austern," 'Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie': Music and the English Renaissance Idea of the 1B01Joted in Gilmore, "The Madonna Mystique," 87. Nevertheless, Madonna is often collapsed back into the stereo- Feminine," paper presented to the America Musicological Society; Baltimore (November 1988); Jeffrey Kallberg, type of the femme fatale of traditional opera and literature. See the comparison between Madonna and Berg's Lulu in "Genre and Gender: The Nocturne and Women's History," unpublished paper; and Maynard Solomon, "Charles Ives: Leo Treider, "The Lulu Character and the Character of Lulu," Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Some 01iestions of Veracity;" journal of the American Musicological Society 40 (1987): 466-69. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 272-75. 328 Susan McClary Living to Tell 329

"serious" rock critics. Recall the hysterical scorn heaped upon disco when it emerged, Madonna's music is deceptively simple. On one level, it is very good dance music: and recall also that disco was the music that underwrote the gay movem~nt, black inevitably compelling grooves, great energy. It is important to keep in mind that before urban clubs, Saturday Night Fevers images of working-class leisure, and other con­ she even presented her scandalous video images to the public, she had attracted a texts that did not conform to the cherished ideal of (white, male, heterosexual, sizable following among the discerning participants of the black and gay disco scenes middle-class) rebel rock. 19 Similar dismissals of dance music can be found through­ through her music alone. She remains one of the few white artists (along with George out the critical history of Western "serious" music. To the extent that the appeal is to Michael) who regularly show up on the black charts. physicality rather than abstracted listening, dance music is often trivialized at the Her music deliberately aims at a wide popular audience rather than at those who same time that its power to distract and arouse is regarded with anxiety. 20 pride themselves on their elite aesthetic discrimination. Her enormous commercial Madonna works out of a discursive tradition that operates according to premises success is often held against her, as evidence that she plays for the lowest common 23 somewhat different from those of mainstream Western music. Her musical affilia­ denominator-that she prostitutes her art (and, by extension, herself). Moreover, tions are with African-American music, with a culture that places great value on the fact that her music appeals to masses of young girls is usually taken as proof that dance and physical engagement in music. It also is a culture that has always had the music has absolutely no substance, for females in our culture are generally prominent female participants: there are no white equivalents of Bessie Smith or thought to be incapable of understanding music on even a rudimentary level. But Aretha Franklin-women who sing powerfully of both the spiritual and the erotic surely Madonna's power as a figure in cultural politics is linked to her ability to gal­ 24 without the punitive, misogynist frame of European culture.21 In critiquing vanize that particular audience-among others. Madonna's music, Dave Marsh (usually a defender of Madonna) once wrote, "A To create music within a male-defined domain is a treacherous task. As some white Deniece Williams we don't need."22 But perhaps that is precisely what we do women composers of so-called serious or experimental music are discovering, need: a white woman musician who can create images of desire without the demand many of the forms and conventional procedures of presumably value-free music are 25 within the discourse itself that she be destroyed. saturated with hidden patriarchal narratives, images, agendas. The options avail­ able to a woman musician in rock music are especially constrictive, for this musi­ cal discourse is typically characterized by its phallic backbeat. It is possible to try 2 to downplay that beat, to attempt to defuse its energy-but this strategy often Madonna writes or co-writes most of her own material. Her first album was made results in music that sounds enervated or stereotypically "feminine." It is also pos­ up principally of her tunes. She surrendered some of the writing responsibility on sible to appropriate the phallic energy of rock and to demonstrate (as Chrissie Like a Virgin (interestingly, two of the songs that earned her so much notoriety­ Hynde, Joan Jett, and Lita Ford do so very well) that boys don't have any corner "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin''-were written by men). But in her third album, on that market. But that beat can always threaten to overwhelm: witness Janet True Blue, she is credited (along with her principal collaborators, Stephen Bray and Jackson's containment by producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in (ironically) her Patrick Leonard) with co-production and with the co-writing of everything except song "Control."26 "Papa Don't Preach." She co-wrote and co-produced (with Bray, Leonard, and Prince) all of the songs on her most recent album, Like a Prayer. It is quite rare for women singers to contribute so much to the composition of their materials, and it is 23 See Mary Barron's harsh and cynical critique of rock's commercialism in general and Madonna in particular in Books, 1988), 173-220. At for production. Indeed, very "McRock: Pop as a Commodity," Facing the Music, ed. Simon Frith (New York: Pantheon almost unheard of for them to acquire the skills required the conclusion of a reading of Madonna's "Open Your Heart" video, Harron writes: "The message is that our girl few performers of either sex attain sufficient prestige and power within the record­ [Madonna] may sell sexuality, but she is free" (218), See also Leslie Savan, "Desperately Selling Soda," Village Voice ing business to be able to demand that kind of artistic control. (March 14, 1989): 47, which critiques Madonna's decision to make a commercial for Pepsi. Ironically, when her video to "Like a Prayer" (discussed later in this essay) was released the day after the first broadcast of the commercial, Pepsi was pressured to withdraw the advertisement, for which it had paid record-high fees. Madonna had thus maintained 19See Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco," On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and Andrew her artistic control, even in what had appeared to be a monumental sellout. 24 Goodwin (New York: Pantheon Press, 1990), 410-18. See the discussion of the responses to Madonna of young girls in Fiske "British Cultural Studies," 269-83. See also 20See, for instance, Theodor W. Adorno's hysterical denouncements of jazz in "Perennial Fashion-Jazz," Prisms, trans. the report of responses of young Japanese fans in Gilmore, "The Madonna Mystique," 38. Madonna's response: "But Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 121-32: "They [jazz fans] call themselves mainly I think they feel that most of my music is really, really positive, and I think they appreciate that, particularly 'jitter-bugs,' bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy" (128). See again the quotation the women. I think I stand for everything that they're really taught to not be, so maybe I provide them with a little bit from Adorno on jazz and castration in Chapter 3. of encouragement." Considine, "That Girl," quotes her as saying: "Children always understand. They have open minds. 21However, I have often encountered hostile reactions on the part of white middle-class listeners to Aretha Franklin's They have built-in shit detectors" (17). frank sensuality, even when (particularly when) it is manifested in her sacred recordings such as ''.Amazing Grace." The 25See Chapter 5. 26 argument is that women performers ought not to exhibit signs of sexual pleasure, for this invariably makes them dis­ When Jackson first signed on with Jam and Lewis, the music for this song was already "in the can" awaiting an appropriate plays for male consumption. See the discussion in John Shepherd, "Music and Male Hegemony," Music and Society: The singer. The mix throughout highlights the powerful beats, such that Jackson constantly seems thrown off balance by them. Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, ed. Richard Leppert and Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge At one point the sound of a car collision punctuates her words, "I never knew what hit me"; and the ironic conclusion to pro­ University Press, 1987), 170-72. depicts the crumbling of her much-vaunted control. Not only was Jackson in a more dependent position with respect 22Marsh, "Girls Can't Do," 162. duction than Madonna, but the power relations within the song itsetf are very different from those Madonna typically enacts. 330 Susan McClary

Madonna's means of negotiating for a voice in rock resemble very much the strate­ gies of her visual constructions; that is, she evokes a whole range of conventional signifiers and then causes them to rub up against each other in ways that are open to a variety of divergent readings, many of them potentially empowering to girls and women. She offers musical structures that promise narrative closure, and at the same 41 time she resists or subverts them. A traditional energy flow is managed-which is why to many ears the whole complex seems always already absorbed-but that flow is subtly redirected. The most obvious of her strategies is irony: the irony of the little-girl voice in "Like Why "Women in Rock'' a Virgin'' or of fifties girl-group sentiment in "True Blue." Like her play with the signs of famous temptresses, bustiers, and pouts, her engagement with traditional musical issues are an insult signs of childish vulnerability projects her knowledge that this is what the patriarchy expects of her and also her awareness that this fantasy is ludicrous. Her unsupervised parody destroys a much-treasured male illusion: even as she sings "True blue, baby, I love you," she becomes a disconcerting figure-the woman who knows too much, Trish Bendix who is not at all the blank virginal slate she pretends to present. But to her female audience, her impersonation of these musical types is often received with delight as a 27 Raphael observes that women are rarely knowing wink, a gesture of empowerment. In Grrrls:Viva Rock Divas (see chapter 39 above), Amy of rock magazines such as NME and Q, and that when they are, they are Madonna's engagement with images of the past is not always to be understood as featured on the covers treated as mere tokens. The May 1994 issue of Q, for example, had Bjork, Polly Harvey and Tori parody, however. Some of the historical figures she impersonates are victims of tra­ 28 Amos on its cover under the provocative headline "Hips. Tits. Lips. Power." These three have and popular culture that demand death as the price for sexuality. ditions in opera nothing in common except the fact that they are women who make music. are Carmen and Marilyn Monroe, both Principal among the victims she invokes On those relatively rare occasions that women do make the cover of magazines like Q or and highly desired, sexual women who were simultaneously idolized and castigated, Rolling Stone, they are portrayed in a strikingly different manner from men: they wear much less finally sacrificed to patriarchal standards of behavior. It is in her explicit acknowl­ clothing. (See the archives of covers at the web sites of Q or Rolling Stone.) edgment of the traditional fate of artistic women who dare be erotic and yet in her Here Trish Bendix, writer and editor of AfierEllen.com, takes exception to the fact that refusal to fall likewise a victim that Madonna becomes far more serious about what women are so often segregated to "Women in Rock" issues, which suggests that rock made by have been referred to as "sign crim,es."29 If the strategy of appropriating and redefin­ women is a minor subgenre.That is demonstrably false.The truth is that women rule the charts ing conventional codes is the same in these more serious pieces as in the "True Blue" today. For example, five of the Top Ten songs on the Billboard Hot I00 chart for January 22, 2011 Kesha, Pink, and Rihanna again). These parody, the stakes are much, much higher.... are performed by solo female artists (Katy Perry, Rihanna, days, often more than half of the Top Ten are songs by women. So why do we continue to see "Women in Rock" issues? Because, according to Bendix, rock music criticism, we have to look to music 27"There is also a sense of pleasure, at least for me and perhaps a large number of other women, in Madonna's defiant magazines are owned by men.To find more balanced look or gaze. In 'Lucky Star' at one point in the dance sequence Madonna dances side on to the camera, looking biogs and pop culture sites on the web. provocative. For an instant we glimpse her tongue: the expectation is that she is about to lick her lips in a sexual invi­ tation. The expectation is denied and Madonna appears to tuck her tongue back into her cheek. This, it seems, is how most of her dancing and groveling in front of the camera is meant to be taken. She is setting up the sexual idolization One reason I don't read print music magazines anymore is their lack of coverage of of women. For a woman who has experienced this victimization, this setup is most enjoyable and pleasurable, while the female musicians. All year round, they focus on boys in bands, or male MCs with Robyn Blair, quoted in Fiske, "British Cultural Studies," 283. male position of voyeur is displaced into uncertainty." their beats. Once in a while, they'll throw in some 28For the ways women performers have been seen as inviting tragic lives, see Robyn Archer and Diana Simmonds, A male producers putting together Star Is Torn (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986); Gloria Steinem, Marilyn (New York: Henry Holt, 1986). For an analysis photos or an interview with someone like Courtney Love or another spectacle they of Hitchcock's punishments of sexual women, see Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and deem interesting enough. treatments of these issues in classical music, see my "The Undoing of Feminist Theory (New York: Methuen, 1988). For are banned to the Women in Rock issues. Opera: Toward a Feminist Criticism of Music," foreword to Clement, Opera, ix-xviii; and Chapter 3 in this volume. The rest of the women 29In Gilmore, "Madonna Mystique,'' Madonna states: "I do feel something for Marilyn Monroe. A sympathy. Because I dread seeing those three words together. "Women in Rock" insinuates that in those days, you were really a slave to the whole Hollywood machinery, and unless you had the strength to pull your­ somehow females creating music is a subgenre; that they can't possibly compete with she didn't know what she was getting herself into and simply made herself self out of it, you were just trapped. I think is apparently something completely male. (Also, these vulnerable, and I feel a bond with that. I've certainly felt that at times-I've felt an invasion of privacy and all that-­ rock music as a whole, which but I'm determined never to let it get me down. Marilyn Monroe was a victim, and I'm not. That's why there's really are very often the only times women are even allowed on the cover.) no comparison" (87). The term "sign crimes" is from Arthur Kroker and David Cook, The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 21. j 331 45

A Mother Takes a Stand (1987; excerpt)

Ti'pper Gore

Ule don't want to censor yo~r songs. What we want to do is change your song. You're the younger generation; you believe in change. -Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane, quoting Rocco Laginestra, president of RCA Records (Kohut and Kohut 1994, 7)

Tipper Gore, the wife of Senator (later Vice-President) Al Gore Jr., was one of the driving forces behind the infamous Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), founded in 1985 in reac­ tion to what Gore and others saw as excessive sexual content, violence, profanity, drug abuse, and celebration of the occult in rock music, particularly heavy metal.The PMRC persuaded the Senate to hold hearings on rock in September 1985; as Reebee Garofalo notes, these were rem­ iniscent of the 1959 hearings on payola discussed in chapter 17 above:"Once again, morally high­ toned critics advocated protecting innocent children from the evils of popular music." (Garofalo 20 I I, 356) Eventually, the PMRC reached a compromise with the music industry, which would henceforth voluntarily affix Parental Advisory/Explicit Content labels on CDs with such content. The compromise notwithstanding, the PMRC continued its work against metal, eventually turn­ ing the spotlight on rap music as well. In this excerpt from her 1987 book Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, Gore explains how and why she and other so-called "Washington Wives" founded the PMRC, and offers her ver­ sion of the events that followed.The group was (and is) accused by many ofadvocating censor­ ship, but Gore is adamant that this was never their goal; rather; they sought printed lyrics or a rating system like that used in the film industry. Moreover; she claims that they aimed to find a solution created by and acceptable to the industry, rather than one imposed by the government or courts.The goal, as Gore describes it, was to give parents the tools to keep their children out of harm's way: "The PMRC sought to balance the precious right of artistic free speech with the right of parents to protect their children from explicit messages that they are not mature enough to understand or deal with."

365 366 Tipper Gore A Mother Takes a Stand 367

Many of Gore's and the PMRC's arguments do not stand up to scrutiny (see chap~er 4:7, Nevius, a former dean of admissions at Mount Vernon College in Washington. Sally of s1.mphs­ below; and Garofalo 20 I I, 355-66). But the issue is complex, and v-:e should be~are and her husband, the former chairman of the District of Columbia City Council, fundamentalist attempt to impose its val­ tically dismissing the PMRC's battles as a right wing or had an eleven-year-old daughter. Also assisting Susan Baker was Pam Howar, a ues on the nation. businesswoman with a seven-year-old daughter. We decided to establish the nonprofit Parents' Music Resource Center, to be known parents in our community. FORMATION OFTHE PMRC as the PMRC. In May of 1985, we set out to alert other Sally arranged for Jeff Ling, a former rock musician who is now a youth minister at a purchased Prince's best-selling album PurJ:le Rain for my In December 1984, I suburban Virginia church, to give a slide presentation graphically illustrating the worst I had seen Prince on the cover of m~gazmes, and I knew eleven-year-old daughter. excesses in rock music, from lyrics to concert performances to rock magazines aimed pop idol in years. My daughter wanted his album because she that he was the biggest at the teenage market. We invited the public, community leaders, our friends (some of "Let's Go Crazy" on the radio. But when we brought the album had heard the single whom hold public office), and representatives of the music industry. Our hope was to and listened to it together, we heard the words to anoth­ home, put it on our stereo, generate a discussion of the issue, raise public awareness, and begin a dialogue with "I knew a girl named Nikki/Guess [you] could say she was er song "Darling Nikki": people in the industry. To our surprise, more than 350 people showed up at our first lobby/Masturbating with a magazine.m The.song went a sex fi:nd/I met her in a hotel meeting on May 15, 1985, at St. Columba's Church in Washington, D.C. manner. I couldn't believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embar­ on and on in a similar To my knowledge, no music industry representatives attended this meeting, with first, I was stunned-then I got mad! Millions of Americ~ns rassed both of us. At one very important exception: Eddie Fritts, president of the National Association of with no idea what to expect. Thousands of parents were giv­ were buying Purple Rain Broadcasters (NAB), unable to attend himself, had sent his wife, Martha Dale Fritts, their children-many even younger than my daughter. ing the album to and two NAB staff members. They 8rought with them a letter that Mr. Fritts had two younger daughters, ages six and eight, began as~~g me Around that time, my just written and sent to eight hundred group station owners, which alerted them to channel ~n cable television. I about things they had seen on MTV, the music ~deo growing concern among the public over ''porn rock": had always thought that videos had great potential as a dramatic new art form, but records and the tone of their related music videos are I had not watched many. I began watching more often, a,~d I observe~ that several The lyrics of some recent rock matter of public debate. The subject has drawn national attention included adult (or at least "mature") themes and images. Mom, why is the teacher fast becoming a articles in publications like Newsweek and USA Today and feature reports on off her clothes?" my six-year-old asked, after watchin~ Van Halen's Hot far through taking TV programs like "Good Morning, America." a "teacher" does a striptease act for the boys m her class. . Teacher, in which that they are extremely troubled by the sexually explicit and violent lan­ like Motley Criie's Looks That Kill, Many state I sat down with my kids and watched videos guage of some of today's songs .... and imprisoned in cages by a studd:d­ with scantily clad women being captured The pre-teen and teen audiences are heavy listeners, viewers and buyers of rock we saw a dead woma? tied leather-clad male band. In Photograph, by Def Leppard, music. In some communities, like Washington, D.C., parents and other interested cit­ man .tied to up with barbed wire. The Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane showed a izens are organizing to see what they can do about the music in question, which at least 2 the walls of a torture chamber and a singer being choked by a woman. These images one writer has dubbed "porn rock." this frightened my children; they frightened me! The graphic sex and the violence were I wanted you, as one of the leaders in the broadcasting industry, to be aware of too much for us to handle. situation .... to make its own decisions as to the man­ Other parents were experiencing the same rude awakening. One day in early It is, of course, up to each broadcast licensee out its programming responsibilities under the Communications Act. 1985 my friend Susan Baker came by to talk about her concerns. Susan and her hus­ ner in which it carries She told that band: U.S. Treasury Secretary James Baker, have eight children. ~e ~o Two weeks later, Mr. Fritts wrote to the heads of forty-five major record companies: of her friends were getting ready to take action on the issu~ of.po~nographic ~nd.v.io­ At its May meeting, NAB's Executive Committee asked that I write you to request that lent images in music, and asked if I would be intere~ted m signmg a ~etter mvitmg all recordings made available to broadcasters in the future be accompanied by copies of others to a meeting to hear more about the excesses m some rock music: the songs' lyrics. It appears that providing this material to broadcasters would place very about the songs my children and I had heard that I .quic~y agreed , I was so angry little burden on the recording industry, while greatly assisting the decision making of Susan was working with Sally to join Susan Baker in doing something about it. broadcast management and programming staffs.

Eddie Fritts has a keen sense of corporate responsibility. He and his wife also have owners and programmers share his concerns. In Music Corp. Words and teenagers at home. Many station lPrince, "Darling Nikki,'' Purple Rain, Warner Brothers Records 1-25110. Warner Brothers . . newspaper Radio and Records reported: "Record industry music by Prince. Copyright© 1984 Controversy Music. June 1985, .the industry Ill.: National this week 2National Coalition on TV Violence, "NCTV Musicvideo Report, Oct. '83-Nov. '84"(Champa1gn, officials declined comment, but radio programmers spotchecked by R&R Coalition on TV Violence, 1984). generally welcomed the NAB's suggestion that record companies enclose written 368 Tipper Gore A Mother Takes a Stand 369 lyrics with records to help stations detect sexually explicit or violent wordings that He suggested that we present our plans to the RIA.Ns Gortikov and not leave him may be inappropriate for their audiences." The story quoted Guy Zapoleon of any choice. Our source said the best way to catch the industry's attention was on the Phoenix, who said: "I think it's an excellent idea. We have a responsibility to our airwaves. So the PRMC launched a grass-roots media campaign that soon took on audience to watch the wordings on songs. Without wanting to sound prudish, I a life of its own. think we owe it to the public to be careful."3 Record companies were not so excited. Lenny Waronker, president of Warner FROM NEWS STORYTO NATIONAL ISSUE Brothers Records (Prince's label), rejected the NAB request to include lyrics. "It smells of censorship," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Rock and roll over the years has always From June to November 1985, we held dozens of meetings, participated in frequent had these little ... furors. Radio stations can make their own decisions about what they conference calls, and exchanged numerous letters, as we sought solutions palatable to want to play." A representative of one local station, the sometimes controversial KROQ: the industry and to the National PTA and the PMRC. As our negotiations intensi­ FM in Pasadena, California, agreed: "It's freedom of choice. The music is the beat; the fied, the issue quickly became a national one. lyrics come secondary .... We make our money on sex, from A to Z. It's what sells."4 Media coverage of the campaign included well over 150 newspaper columns, Considering the initial NAB response, we were off to a good start, but what editorials, and radio stories about the porn rock issue. Ellen Goodman, William should we do next? How could we make ourselves heard by the giants of the record Raspberry, George Will, Charles · Krauthammer, William Shannon, Judy Mann, industry, like Warner Brothers, Capitol, and RCA? Mike Royko, David Gergen, and many other syndicated columnists wrote favorable reviews. Reuter's North European Service carried stories, while the BBC did sepa­ rate radio and TV interviews with Susan 'Baker and me. The Economist of London, A SECRET ALLY the Wall Street journal, U.S. News & World Report, Esquire, Newsweek, Newsday, The By happy chance, we gained an ally in the recording industry who could help us find New Republic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today all ran sto­ our way through the music business. Throughout the ensuing campaign, he gave us ries. Most were supportive. "The difference between the music of yesteryear and invaluable advice-on the condition that he never be identified. that of today is the leap one makes from swimsuits in Sports Illustrated to the Our secret ally held an important position in the record industry. Like us, he was centerfolds of Hustler," David Gergen wrote in U.S. News & World Report. ''If an sickened and disgusted by the trend toward pornography and violence in some rock album were X-rated, most radio stations and video programs would drop the worst music. He advised us to set up a meeting with Stan Gortikov at the Recording offenders."5 Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade group that represents all major The media campaign took care of itself A small story about our first public meet­ record companies. Gortikov had been president of the RIAA since 1972, and before ing appeared in the "Style" section of the Washington Post. Before we knew it, we that he had headed Capitol Records. He agreed to meet with us in early June. were besieged with requests for interviews. Kandy Stroud, a journalist, musician, and Our strategy was simple. We felt it was crucial to publicize the excesses in song mother of three, had earlier written a "My Turn'' column entitled "Stop Pornographic lyrics and videos, the source of our concern. We were convinced that most parents Rock'' for the May 6, 1985, edition of Newsweek. She immediately received an invi­ are either unaware of the trends in rock music, or uncertain what to do about them. tation to appear on "Good Morning, America." Kandy and Pam Howar appeared on We decided to get the word out and build a consumer movement to put pressure on "Panorama," a Washington television show. Soon after that, I did an hour-long radio the industry. From the start, we recognized that the only solution would involve talk show in Oklahoma City, and Susan Baker and Sally Nevius participated in a some voluntary action on the part of the industry. We wanted industry leaders to similar show in another state. assume direct corporate responsibility for their products. The problem was to per­ News of the PMRC's fight to alert the public to porn rock spread quickly. The suade an industry profiting from excesses to exercise some self-restraint. women of the PMRC collectively did hundreds of interviews on radio and television In 1984, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers (the National PTA) had and for magazines and newspapers across the country and around the world. The called on record companies to label their products for sexual content, violence, and "Donahue Show," "Today," "CBS Morning News," PBS's "Late Night America," all profanity, in order to inform parents about inappropriate materials. The PTA had three networks' evening news shows, "Entertainment Tonight," "Hour Magazine," written to thirty-two record companies but had only received three responses. And and many others picked up the story. those refused to discuss the issue further. Our ally advised us not to deal with the Meanwhile, Mr. Gortikov of the RIAA gave us a crash course on the recording companies on an individual basis. industry. In a meeting with the PRMC in June 1985, he explained that the companies in the RIAA sell 85 percent of the recorded music in America. While the industry had

3"NAB Asks Labels To Send Song Lyrics To Stations With Records," Radio & Records (7 June 1985), p.11. 4John Horn, "Rock Porn? Stations Are Warned," Los Angeles Times, 11 June 1985, sec. 6, p.l. 5David Gergen, "X-Rated Records," U.S. News & World Report 98 (20May1985), p. 98. A Mother Takes a Stand 370 Tipper Gore 371 considered a rating system, he said it would be too difficult to administer. The movie The PMRC sought to balance the precious right of artistic free speech with the industry rates about 350 new films a year; the recording industry produces so~e right of parents to protect their children from explicit messages that they are not 25 000 songs and 2,500 albums annually. Gortikov insisted that most recorded music mature enough to understand or deal with. These two rights are not mutually exclu­ w;s positive, despite the many "indefensible" examples of"pl.ain bad taste." We .assured sive and one should not be sacrificed for the other. Records, tapes, and videos are him that we had no complaint about most rock and roll music, but that something had consumer products, mass-produced, distributed, and marketed to the public. to be done about the vast commercial excesses. Children and parents of children constitute the bulk of that consuming public. Gortikov said his hands were tied, but offered to "do my best to exercise persuasion The PMRC and the National PTA have agreed that these musical products with the record companies; in my correspondence I will start to heighten awareness." should enjoy all the rights and privileges guaranteed by the First Amendment. But as Thomas Jefferson once said, when excesses occur, the best guarantee of free speech is more speech, not less. That's all we asked for-awareness and disclosure. Our pro­ BATTLING "THE WASHINGTON WIVES" posal amounted to nothing more than truth-in-packaging, a time-honored principle In August, a middle-aged rocker named Frank Zappa, who enjoys a dedicated fol­ in our free-enterprise system. lowing emerged as the record industry spokesperson chosen to confront the PMRC. In this information age, such consumer information gives parents an important Zappa,labeled us "the Washington wives," and (my perso~al favorite) "cultural ter­ tool for making choices for their children. Without it, parental guidance in the rorists." He summarized his arguments in Cash Box magazine: matter of available entertainment is virtually impossible. The PMRC proposal does not infringe on the First Amendment.' It does not raise a constitutional issue. But it No person married to or related to a government offici~ should be pe~mitted to waste does seek to reform marketing practices by asking for better and more informative the nation's time on ill-conceived housewife hobby projects such as this. packaging. And it does seek to inform consumers when artistic expression borders on The PMRC's case is totally without merit, based on a hodge-podge of fundamen- what legendary singer Smokey Robinson has called "musical pornography."7 talist frogwash and illogical conclusions.6 Who decides which songs are musical pornography? Only the record company He was not the only one to surface in opposition to the PMRC. With a cry of can make that decision-not the government, as some would have us believe, and "Censorship!" Danny Goldberg, president of Gold Mountain Records, formed not an outside censorship board, as others have charged. The music industry, which Musical Majority, which enlisted the help of artists like Daryl Hall and John Co~gar allowed these excesses to develop, would be asked to take responsibility for the prod­ Mellencamp. While the Musical Majority defended a~tists' rights, the PMRC raise.cl uct it markets to the public. questions about the rights of others. What about the nght of paren~s to pr~t~ct their In fact, we are talking about products primarily written for children, marketed to children? What about the right of citizens not to be bombarded with explicit mate- children, and sold to children. In this country we rightly treat children differently rial in the public domain? . . from adults; most people feel that children should not enjoy the same access to adult Our opponents tried to dismiss us with sexist ~omments about housew.iv~s trading on material as adults. Children are not allowed into R-rated movies if they are under their husbands' influence. But they failed to realize that we spoke for millions of other seventeen. In most places, minors are not allowed to buy Playboy and Penthouse or go parents who shared these same concerns and who would not be dismissed out of hand. into adult bookstores. If no one under eighteen can buy Penthouse magazine, why should children be subjected to explicit album covers and lyrics that are even worse? If we have decid­ THE CENSORSHIP SMOKESCREEN ed it is not in the best interest of society to allow children into X-rated bookstores, The PMRC proposed a unique mechanism to increase ~onsumer c?oice in the m~r­ why should they be subjected to hard-core porn in the local record shop? A recent ketplace instead of limiting it. Our approach was the direct opposite of censorship. album from the Dead Kennedys band contained a graphic poster of multiple erect We called for more information, not less. We did not advocate a ban of even the penises penetrating vaginas. Where's the difference? most offensive albums or tapes. We simply urged that the consumer be forewarned In the hands of a few warped artists, their brand of rock music has become a Trojan through the use of warning labels and/or printed lyrics visible on t~e outside pack­ Horse, rolling explicit sex and violence into our homes. This ruse made us gasp at the aging of music products. Critics used the smokesc.re.e~ of censo~ship to do.dge the cynicism of the recording company executives who control the music business. They real issue, which was lack of any corporate responsibility for the impact their prod- found it easy to confuse the issue by throwing out cries of censorship while refusing ucts may have on young people. to address the real problem. They dodged the real point-that in a free society we can

7 6Frank Zappa," 'Extortion Pure And Simple .. .'An Open Letter To The Music Industry," Cash Box 49 (31 August Marilyn Beck, "Motown great blasts porno on records, music videos," New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item, 22 July 1985, sec. C, p. 8. 1985), p.3. A Mother Takes a Stand 373 372 Tipper Gore ex~lic~t .lyrics with more openn~ss, not less. That approach seems to best balance affirm the First Amendment and also protect the rights of children and adults who th b · artistsWh'l right of free expression. . with consumers' right to know what ey are uymg. seek to avoid the twisted tyranny of explicitness in the public domain. . i .e .we ';ere calling publicly for consumer warning labels on albums contain- i~g explicit lyrics, an~ for an ~ndustry panel to set guidelines defining explicit mate­ endorsement of a uni­ PROPOSING ALTERNATIVES TO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY rial, we worked feverishly behind the scenes to obtain industry form standard-one written by the industry itself, not by us. The standard would At a second meeting with the RIAA'.s Stan Gortikov, on May 31, 1985, we presented a loos~ly defi~e .what constituted blatantly explicit lyric content. Meanwhile, the letter to him signed by sixteen wives of United States representatives and senators: Musical Majority and others lined up pop stars to blast "music censorship" and the It is our concern that some of the music which the recording industry sells today increas­ women who would "ban rock and roll." Our ally in the industry had warned us that ingly portrays explicit sex and violence, and glorifies the use of drugs and alcohol._lt is we. would be no match for prominent artists calling us "censoring prudes" or worse, indiscriminately available to persons of any age through record stores and the media. as industry leaders fought to protect the status quo and their economic interests. 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 behaviour engendered by what they THE SENATE HEARING hear and see in these products. By this time, the United States Congress had begun to take an interest in the issue that exist in the music industry today, we petition the indus- Because of the excesses and many me~bers ~onsidered holding hearings. In September 1985, Senator Joh~ try to exercise voluntary self-restraint perhaps by developing gu~delines and/or a rating Da~forth of~issouri scheduled a hearing before the Senate's commerce committee, system, such as that of the movie industry, for use by parents m order to protect our ;vhich he chaired. The commerce committee has jurisdiction over communications younger children from such mature themes. issu~s, and ~anted t? investigate the prevalence of pornographic, violent rock lyrics Braced with this letter, Mr. Gortikov pledged to work swiftly within the music for its own information-not to consider any legislation. industry. The hearing put me in an awkward position because my husband, Albert Gore, Over the next few months, we negotiated several alternatives with the RIAA. We Jr., was a freshman member of the commerce committee. Some critics mistakenly began by asking for a categorical rating system based on content, then suggested assume~ that he h.ad asked, for the hearing, when in fact, both he and I had had using the symbol "R" to designate explicit albums. Finally, we joined forces with the reservati?ns about it. I t?ought the PMRC would be better off working with artists National PTA and its 5.8 million members. Together with the RIAA we called for and the indust~ on t~eir o~ terms, instead of dragging everybody before the TV a consumer warning label on explicit or violent albums or for full disclosure oflyrics. cameras on ~apitol Hill. Artists were already screaming about censorship, and this "We recommend this course of action because we believe it protects consumers by would only give ~hem an excuse to raise the specter of government intervention. providing them with valuable information while respecting recording artists' First view, it would take congres­ 8 . However,. our industry source welcomed the idea. In his Amendment rights," said National PTA president Ann Kahn. sional attention to make the record industry budge. His only regret was that Senator Pam Howar of the PMRC urged the industry to "create a uniform standard to be know in advance that no legislation would come out of it. 9 Danforth let the executives used to define what constitutes blatant, explicit lyric content." We thought the ideal In any event, the September 19 hearing certainly brought the issue out for public solution would be a label (or some symbol) to advise the consumer about explicit d~bate. It turn~d out to be the most widely publicized media event in congressional lyrics in a particular album. Printed lyrics would also enable the consumer to make history. A. seat in the hearing room was the hottest ticket in town all year. an informed decision appropriate for their child's age. Since most albums would not Both sides turned out in force. Susan Baker and I testified for the PMRC d concern parents, there had to be some way to flag those that might. J~ff Ling gave his slide show. The National PTA also sent representatives wh~ :~­ As our critics were quick to note, some album covers are explicit enough in them- tified. Frank.Zap~a,John Denver, and Dee Snider ofTwisted Sister also appeared. selves to show they are unsuitable for children. But many albums with inoffensive The hearing did not seek. to reach any consensus, but on the whole we were covers include explicit lyrics. We suggested distributing a master lyric sheet to all pleased to see the facts come out. Twisted Sister's Dee Snider told the Committee retail stores, but Gortikov said there would be too many outlets to cover and keep up that he was a ~hristian who did not smoke, drink, or do drugs, and insisted that he to date. It seemed that the only solution was to attach the lyric sheet directly to the had been unfairly .accused. A member of the committee-my husband-asked him product. We wondered if sheets of explicit and violent lyrics might actually attract the ~l name of his fan club, SMF Fans ofTwisted Sister. Replied Snider, "It stands children. But the National PTNs Ann Kahn insisted that it would be best to address for Sick Mother Fucking Fans of Twisted Sister."10

B"PRMC and National PTA Announce Coalition for Consumer Warning Labels and Explicit Lyrics," joint press 10 Science, and Transportation, Record Labeling, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985. release by the Parents' Music Resource Center and the National PTA, 11September1985. Senate Committee on Commerce, 9Ibid. 374 Tipper Gore

AGREEMENT WITH THE RIAA rep­ After the Senate hearing, the negotiations produced results that all parties felt resented a workable and fair arrangement. We decided to make a major compro­ and mise-to accept the formation of an RIAA policy statement on explicit lyrics, also drop our request for a uniform standard of what is or is not explicit. We would 46 drop our request for an R rating on albums or tapes to designate explicit products, give in exchange for the warning "Explicit Lyrics-Parental Advisory." We agreed to and the compromise a chance to work in the marketplace, and to monitor it jointly for Sta.tement to the United States assess its effectiveness a year later. We also agreed to cease the media campaign one year. On November 1, 1985, the RIAA, the National PTA, and the PMRC Senate Committee on Commerce, jointly announced the agreement at the National Press Club in Washington. The critics, of course, weren't finished. I became the victim of harsh and often by Science, and Transportation ( 1985) tasteless attacks. Someone sent me a copy of SPIN, a music magazine published 11 con­ Bob Guccione, Jr., and financed by his father, the publisher of Penthouse. It songs tained a satirical article entitled "Tipper Gore's Diary," which detailed all the of I would ban before or after lunch. The article eventually raised itself to the level Dee Snider a personal pornographic attack, by alluding in rather uncivilized terms to my sexual 12 me relations with my husband. Hustler, a pornographic magazine, also crowned ''Asshole of the Month." I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's legs on the album cover is a good indication that it's not for little Johnny. commenting on the album cover for WASP's IF-* -C-K Like a Beast MAKING COMMUNITY FEELINGS RESPECTED -Frank Zappa, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and During October and November of 1985, the New York-based Simmons Market Transportation (1985) per­ Research Bureau surveyed the nation on the issue of rating records. Seventy-five per­ cent of those surveyed agreed there should be a rating system. Additionally, 80 can cent wanted the lyrics visible on the outside of the albums or tapes, where they 13 hearings discussed byTipper Gore in Chapter be read. And the censorship charge didn't stand up to scrutiny. Three musicians testified at the 1985 Senate Of the three, only Snider and his heavy metal I felt particularly gratified when the president of the American Civil Liberties 45: Franl~ Zapp.a, John Denver; and Dee Snider: been targeted by Gore and the PMRC for their lyrics. Twisted Sister's Union, Norman Dorsen, and Harriet Pilpel, co-chair of the National Coalition Against band Twisted Sister had Take It" v:ias one o'. the PMRC's "Filthy Fifteen," a list of the songs they praised the Parents' Music Resource Center on July 4, 1986, at the Liberty song "We're N~t ~onra Censorship, their proposed rating system, it would have received a York Times said of my presentation: found most objectionable. According to Conference in New York City. The New "V" (forViolent Lyrics) rating. a warm hazards of interpreting lyrics. The cofounder of the Parent's Music Resource Center, Tipper Gore, got In t~is exce~pt from h.is testimony, Snider demonstrates the the that their readings of his response for her group's effort to get record companies to identify on record jackets Answering specific ~ccusat1on,s by Gore and her organization, he shows of rely­ do reveal what Gore and the PMRC sexually explicit lyrics inside. The civil libertarians present liked her approach songs bear no relation to the songs' actual content, but record Not Gonna Take It" neither ing on community pressures rather than legal constraints; of asking not that any wanted to hear in those lyrics. For example, the words of "We're coming of age and assertion be banned but only that parents be given an opportunity to discover before a purchase de~cribe nor imply violence; rather; they celebrate the teenager's a means values, and could have been sung was made what their children were buying. [Mrs.] Gore seemed to have found of 1ndep~ndence .. (lndeed, they.~elebra~e traditional American First This leads to one of Snider's of making community feelings respected in a way that also respected the by American patriots to the British during the Revolutionary War:) leave room for the audi­ Amendment.14 main points: "The beauty of literature, poetry, and music is that they No one has the right ence to put its own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the words." judgments for others about art. 1986), p. 6. or the necessary insight to make 11Bob Guccione, Jr., "Who's Who, What's What, and Why," SPIN2 (April that it is a parent's job to monitor what his or her children 12Jamie Malanowski, "Tipper Gore's Diary," SPJN(January 1986), p. 82. Snider's other principal point is Inc. (219 E. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10017), certainly not the PMRC, is capa­ 13"Records Lyrics Survey," from Simmons Market Research Bureau, see, hear a~d ~ead during their preteen years. No one else, and parent, November 1985. judgments of taste or appropriateness for parents. And for a responsible Times, 7 July 1986. ble of making 14Walter Goodman, "Liberty Panel Ponders Wherefores of Freedom," New York

375 47 Can I Play with Madness? Mysticism, Horror, and Postmodern Politics (1993; excerpt)

Robert Walser

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another. -Frank Zappa (Kohut and Kohut 1994, 122)

In this excerpt from his classic study of heavy metal Running With The Devil ( 1993), Robert Walser answers the criticisms leveled at metal in the 1980s by the Parents Music Resource Center and others: that it glorified violence, substance abuse, sexual perversion and worse. As Walser; Professor of Music at Case Western University, notes, those critics acted as though heavy metal imposed these topics on us, but in fact the music simply reflected aspects of our society. Violence is everywhere, from World Bank protests to cage fighting. Drugs have been connect­ ed with music for a very long time (e.g., nineteenth-century symphonic music, and twentieth­ century jazz). And porn is a multi-billion dollar industry in America; it certainly needs no promo­ tion by perverted heavy-metal guitarists. Musicians were under fire not only from critics, but also in the courts. Lawsuits were filed against Ozzy Osboum.e and Judas Priest; in both cases, the musicians were accused of using their music to influence young men to commit ·suicide.The Judas Priest suit alleged that subliminal messages in their 1978 album Stained Class created a compulsion that led two young men to attempt to kill themselves. Supposedly, when played backwards, the record revealed messages such as "suicide is in." The term for this is "backmasking" (or "backward masking"). The first and surely most famous example of backmasking occurred in 1969, when it was alleged that messages suggesting that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died and been replaced could be found in the songs and album art­ work of the group. As Walser observes, intelligible messages can be found on virtually anything played backwards, but there is no evidence that listeners can perceive or be affected by them.

381 Can I Play with Madness? 383 382 Robert Walser

The arguments of the PMRC and of prosecuting lawyers in.the two cases were. b~.s~d o~ September 1985, on the subject of what they called "porn rock." Though the PMRC what Walser calls the "hypodermic model" of musical effects, which suggests that music injects and Congress described the hearings as neutral "fact-finding," others saw them as meanings into listeners, particularly impressionable young listeners, who are presumably un~bl~) terrorism, since congressional interrogation of musicians and leaders of the music to interpret or resist what they hear. We turn to such mechanical (and more o~en myst1ca industry suggested implicit (and illegal) threats of legislation if the moralistic explanations because we have no others to explain the remarkable power of music. demands of the PMRC for "voluntary'' censorship were not met. Although the PMRC has been accused of not really being a "resource center" because its publications display little familiarity with the scholarly literature on pop­ Cradled in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician, 3 ular music, it is unmistakably "parental." The fullest articulation of the PMRC brief The Devil, rocks our souls, that can't resist; is Tipper Gore's Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, published in 1987. In it, And the rich metal of our own volition 1 Gore takes care to establish Is vaporized by that sage alchemist.-Baudelaire her authority as a social and cultural critic by emphasiz­ ing that she is a parent; she dwells on the numbers and genders of the children of In his course on rhetoric, the Roman orator Qyintilian included a fictitious ~e?al PMRC leaders, while neglecting to mention that her main opponents at the Senate exercise in the politics of music and madness. He presented the cas~ of a musician hearings, musicians Frank Zappa and Dee Snider, are also concerned parents.4 Her who is accused of manslaughter because he played in the wrong musical mode du~­ references to twenty-year-old "boys" mark her concern to represent heavy metal as a ing a sacrifice· by playing in the Phrygian mode, a piper allegedly caused the offici­ threat to youth, enabling her to mobilize parental hysteria while 2 avoiding the adult ating priest t~ go mad and fling himsel~ ov~r a clif~ Qyintilian used this story t~ word censorship. Objecting to eroticism and "lesbian undertones" in popular music, support his argument that musical training is essential for the de:elopment of or~ along with sadism and brutality, she conflates sex and violence, which have in com­ · al kill but the problem of the musician's liability is also of interest because it tone s mon their threat to parental control. s, 'al · 0 f th raises questions about the nature and power of music, a~out ~oci mistrust ose It is clear from Gore's book that heavy metal participates in a crisis in the repro­ whose rhetorical abilities find their outlet through music~ discourse. As the pop~­ duction of values, that it is a threat because it celebrates and legitimates sources of larity of heavy metal grew in the late 1980s, it came increasing~y un~er fire from ent­ identity and community that do not derive from parental models. For the PMRC, ics who accused its musicians of "playing in the wrong m.ode, causing ~adness and assuming the universality .of "the American Family," an institution of mythic stature death. In this chapter! will criticize a number ofinflue?tial condemna~i~ns of heavy but scant abundance, provides an absolute norm that can be righteously defended. metal and propose alternative explanations of the significance of mysticism, horror, Gore attempts to naturalize her perspective by appealing to "common sense" univer­ and violence in heavy metal. sals, such as the "shared moral values" that underpin "our" society. She combines such grand claims with disingenuousness about her own political clout, as when she refers PROFESSING CENSORSHIP: THE PMRC AND ITS to "our friends (some of whom happen to hold public office)." Like so many recent ACADEMIC ALLIES ATTACK appeals to "common sense" and "morality," Gore's book is a call for the imposition of official values and the elimination of cultural difference. 5 The single most influential critic of heavy metal in the 1980s was Tipper Gore, who~e To bolster her attack on heavy metal, Gore relies heavily on a pamphlet by a pro­ · i:. f U S Senator Albert Gore Jr provided her with access to media 6 status as t h e w11e o . . , ., . fessor of music, "The Heavy Metal User's Manual" by Joe Stuessy. Not only is attention and political muscle to support her cause. In 1985, Gore, along ~th sever- Stuessy often cited in Gore's book; he was also called upon as an expert witness for al other wives of powerful government figures (among them Susan Baker, wife of then the Senate hearings in 1985. ln both his testimony and his pamphlet, Stuessy argued aker) established the Parents' Music Resource Center treasury secre tary James A · B . . . · ul al (PMRC). The PMRC has been quite successful m articulating a reactionary c tur 3 agenda and accomplishing its political goals. Since its foundin?, the See James R. McDonald, "Censoring Rock Lyrics: A Historical Analysis of the Debate," Youth and Society 19: 3 ?ro~p ha~ pr~s­ (March 1988); pp. 294-313. sured record companies into placing warning stickers on recordings with a~ult lyrics 4Tipper Gore, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1987). Snider, the lead singer and has underwritten partially successful campaigns to persuade sta~e legi~latures to for the heavy metal band Twisted Sister, has even written a book to help adolescents cope with their problems: Dee censor certain types of music, chiefly rap and heavy metal. Through .its conJug.al co~­ Snider and Philip Bashe, Dee Snider~ Teenage Survival Guide (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987). 5Gore, Raising PG Kids, p. 19. Subcultures and countercultures are often seen as marking a crisis in authority; a more nections with Capitol Hill, the PMRC was able to provoke congressional hearings, m useful formulation conceives of such crises as breakdowns in the "reproduction of culture-class relations and identities." See John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts, "Sub Cultures, Cultures, and Class," in Culture, Ideology and Social Process: A Reader, ed. Tony Bennett, Graham Martin, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott (London: B. T. Batsford, 1981), p. 73. !Charles Baudelaire, "To the Reader," in The Flowers of Evil: A Selection, ed. Marthiel and Jackson Mathews 6Joe Stuessy, "The Heavy Metal User's Manual," 18 pages, photocopied and privately circulated. Stuessy is professor of (New York: New Directions, 1958), p. 3; this translation is by Roy Campbell. . . . . music at the University of Texas at San Antonio. 2See the excerpt from O!iintilian's writings in Fiero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, eds., Mustc tn the Western World. I wish to thank him for sending me copies of his pamphlet and his notes for his Senate testimony. A History in Documents (New York: Schirmer, 1984), pp. 12-15. Can I Play with Madness? 385 384 Robert Walser

artists "confidently engaged in 'mad' that heavy metal lyrics are violent and deviant and that metal music is artistically behavior--debauchery, drinking, drug use, irra­ tional thinking-hoping thus to stimulate impoverished. "Most of the successful heavy metal," he testified, "projects one or their creativity .... the viewpoint prevailed that genius and madness are inseparable."12 more of the following basic themes: extreme rebellion, extre~e vio.lence, ~ubstance Berlioz made no bones about his use of opium; his program for abuse, sexual promiscuity/perversion (including homosexuality, b~sexuali~, sa~o­ the Symphonie fontastique explicitly connects opium use with 7 the rhetorical splendor of his music. Abuse of alcohol is well masochism, necrophilia, etc.), Satanism." In fa~t, h.eavy m~tal lyri~s dealing ~th documented for com­ posers such as Schumann, Schubert, and Mussorgsky, these topics are uncommon. For example, examination o~ eig~ty-eight song lyrics and much more information about drugs and canonic composers would no doubt reprinted by Hit Parader reveals relatively little concern with v10lence, dr~g use, o~ be available were it not for the musicological whitewashing of the lives of these suicide. Reduced to the crudest terms, the songs could be grouped thematically so: musicians, which has retroactively enforced compulsory sobriety, heterosexuality, and Christianity. Berlioz's Symphonic Assertion of or longing for intensity: 27 fontastique is, of course, more than the random outcome of an opium dream that it Lust: 17 pretends to be; it is a powerful metaphorical articulation, grounded in contemporary Loneliness, victimization, self-pity: 17 social currents and musical discourses. Contemporary popular music is made to seem Love: 14 (affirmation, 8; regret or longing, 6) especially vulnerable to certain kinds of critique because so much has been purged Anger; rebellion, madness: 8 · . . . from our hagiological histories of music and so much Didactic or critical (antidrug, anti-Devil, anti-TV evangelism, critique of the subver- is hidden by the assumptions about cultural hierarchywe·take for granted. sion of justice by wealth): 5 Throughout his book, Stuessy pursues the simplistic argument that healthy Moreover when such transgressive lyrics do appear, it is in contexts where they o.ften minds don't think negative thoughts, and he alleges that heavy metal is socially function ln ways that are more complex and sophisticated than Stuessy recogmzes, unique in its glorification of violence, which network news shows, for example, as we will see below. . . merely report. But Steussy, like Gore, is being disingenuous, because struggles for Connections between heavy metal and drug use have certainly existed through- power are hardly unique to youth culture or popular culture. From the Super Bowl out the music's history, beginning perhaps with the success of Blue C~eer among to Monster Truck races, from Capitol Hill to corporate boardrooms (where hand­ San Francisco speed 9 freaks in the late 1960s. But drugs cannot explain a style ?f books of advice have titles like Swim with the Sharks and Leadership Secrets of music, since the music, lyrics, and images of even heavily drug-influenced m~sic Atz'lla the Hun), adult Americans (especially men) display their seemingly insa­ cross the boundaries of subcultural scenes and make sense to people who are using tiable fascination with power and violence, a way of thinking that is continually different drugs or even no drugs at all. And be?aus~ both music a~? .drugs are affirmed by the brutality of American capitalism and government policy. From involved in strategies for coping with particular social circm:pstances, criticism of one President Johnson's War on Poverty to President Bush's War on Drugs, American cannot depend on denunciation of the other; bot~ ~ust be loc.ated in the.real world politicians have found military metaphors the most effective means of selling pro­ of material and cultural 10 tensions. Moreover, critics have faile? to ~otice .that as grams that might have been described in communal and compassionate terms. In heavy metal became both individually and collectively more virtuosic ~uring t~e this light, Stuessy's concluding recommendations for action against metal are 1980s, musicians increasingly confided that they could no longer afford to indulge m patently hypocritical: "I think the attack on heavy metal must be waged on all drugs and 11 alcohol because their music would suffer too mu~. • • • fronts using every weapon at our disposal .... Warning labels and ratings might Finally, criticism of rock music because of drug use often implic~tly relies upon an be helpful, but that is not the final solution. Printed lyrics would be helpful, but absurdly sanitized version 13 of musical history. Many now-canomc nineteenth-century that is not the ultimate weapon." Glorification of violence in American society is hardly deviant, as we see from Stuessy's own plan for a "final solution" to the problem of heavy metal. 7Joe Stuessy: notes for testimony to U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, 19 September 1985, p. 6. Stuessy's status as a professor of music makes him a useful ally to those who SThis sampie includes all of the lyrics printed in Hit Parader's Metal of the 80s, 1990, .s~ring and Hit P~ra~er's ~p 100 would strip heavy metal of First Amendment Meta/Albums, Spring 1989. Of course, lyrics about drugs can be at once moralistic and celeb~atory, which 1s ": Y protections as free artistic expression, I offer this survey of lyrics only to make a limited point about the sorts of to~ics tha~ are typ~cally addressed m metal for he is able to offer an aggressive twist on the usual mystification that elevates clas­ son s Interpretation of songs must be much more complex. But critics' hysteria notw1thstandmg, as Jon Pareles says, sical music and protects it from ideological critique, leaving popular musics more "In~ of rock, there are probably fewer songs about bestiality than about molecular biology" (New York Times, 11 vulnerable to attack. Stuessy assures us that the process of artistic creation remains February 1990, p. H30). · · 1988) 121 9H Shapiro, Waitingfar the Man: The Story of Drugs and Popular Music (New York: William Morrow, . 'p. . 10s~aul E. Willis, "The Cultural Meaning of Drug Use," in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1976), PP· 106-18. . db 12Peter F. Ostwald, Schumann: The Inner T/oices of a Musical Genius (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985), llS fior example the comments by Accept's Stefan Kaufmann in The Best of Metal Manta #2 (1987), P· 66, an y ee, ' p· "D d D p. 191. star drummer Tommy Aldridge in Andy Doerschuk, "The Big Heavy 1cture, ' rums an rummmg, l3Stuessy, "User's Manual," p. 16. August/September 1990, p. 47· Can I Play with Madness? 387 386 Robert Walser

i O~ thh: ohther "shrouded in mystery," and the inspiration of composers like Beethoven was "myste­ ~and, Raschke also pretends to have objective, scientific 3'ustifica­ t on ior is ystena: rious and quite possibly divine"; but heavy metal, he argues, is merely cranked out according to a formula, which disqualifies it from protection under freedom of ~n 19~5' the Wall Street journal reported that a fat sheaf of neuro-psychological research expression, making it instead subject to "consumer protection'' regulation like other as s . ow? remarkable, and complex, relationships between music listening and brain manufactured products.14 ~~~~1:;tlon: ~oger Shepa:d, a p~ofessor at Stanford University, believes that certain At the same time, the aesthetic tradition has been so successful in effacing the music mesh effect1velyw1th the deep cognitive structures of the mind" H metal seems tom h 'th h l' b' b · · eavy social meanings of culture that Stuessy found it necessary to argue at length that es . w1 : e im ic ram, the most primitive and potentially violent stratum of cere b ral processmg.20 music can in fact affect us. He adopts, and Gore accepts from him, a "hypodermic model" of musical effects; music's meanings are "pounded" or ''dumped" into listen­ ~t the last, damni?g sentence of this passage is a deliberate fabrication, for heavy ers, who are helpless to resist. Young people in particular are thought to be more vul­ m~t was never mentioned by Shepard. Raschke has tacked onto his summa of nerable, especially when repetitive listening and headphone use help create "a direct, ~wt~ un~ontroversial report his own condemnation of heavy metal carefull ry h ~ 15 m unfettered freeway straight into the mind." Stuessy's problem is to define music so . scientific'fi language ("limbic brain ' " "cerebral processmg. ") so as to' y suggest thatcouc ite i that heavy metal can be held responsible for harming listeners without calling into JUSti ied by the findings of Shepard's research He misleads his read · s to whip · fi d · ers m an attempt question the violence in Beethoven's Eroica, for example, or the glorification of . u~ a repressive re~zy irected against metal musicians 16 and fans. Raschke drugs, violence, and Satanism in the Symphony Jantastique. The solution is simply ~,~okes scie~ce as part of his effort to essentialize what are in fact social tensions· to assume that the meanings of classical music are essentially benign because they are ~avy met do~s more than dissolve the inherent inhibitions against violence I~ art, whereas heavy metal ought to arouse our suspicions because it is popular and actively fosters, c?nfi~r~s, anneals, reinforces, and purifies the most vicious ~nd commercially successful. Those who embrace such a position seem undaunted by the d~~raved tendencies withm the human 21 bin · · ,, , organism." When he d escn'b es b ot h "'m h'i- elitism that is required to underpin it, or by the fact that what we now call "classical .:s agams~ vio1 ence and' depraved tendencies" as inherent qualities rather than 17 music" is and always has been "commercial." soci y .negotiated ones, Raschke wants to have it both ways: hea metal dissolves Another academic, this one a professor of religious studies at the University of the fragile bonds of repression that make civilization possible and 7unnatu 11 - Denver, has recently launched a full-scale attack on heavy metal. Like several earlier rupts human nature itself. . ' ra Ycor book-length denunciations of rock music, Carl A. Raschke's Painted Black: From Drug ~he. terro.rism of Raschke and similar critics depends upon two tactics· anecdote Killings to Heavy Metal-the Alarming True Story ofHow Satanism Is Terrorizing Our OU:d l~S!~uatton. Ras~ himself cites a group of sociologists of religion ~ho deter­ Communities is explicitly concerned with defending "the values of Christian civiliza­ mme . t a~ there was not a shred of evidence" 18 that Satanism is a roblem in tion," which he presumes are shared by all right thinking citizens. The book "reveals" America, directly contradicting the thesis of Raschke's book The " 'd p d' . grates as cl · · , · evi ence ismte­ a national epidemic of Satanism, manifest in ritual crimes and supported by heavy . ose exammat10n occurs 'whenever Satanism and crime are linked, accord- metal music. Unlike Tipper Gore's book, which maintains a rather calm tone and clear mg to J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute 11cor the Stud f Am . R li · · s Y o encan documentation, Raschke's is a potboiler, filled with sensational claims backed by . e g10n m f a~ta B~bara<2 Raschke replies by recounting, in sickening detail a few shoddy scholarship. On the one hand, he uses unsubstantiated and marginally coher­ mstan~es. o cnme.s involving .satanic symbols, without addressing the ques;ion of ent similes to suggest that heavy metal is a terrible threat: "The end result [of heavy how significant this sort of cnme is-how it compares statistically with c ple crim · d b , ior exam­ metal] is to erode the nervous system with noise, as drugs destroy the cerebrum''; "A b ' . es comr~utte . Y c1 ergy or suicides related to plant closings.23 In Stuess 's national epidemic of'satanist-related' crime was growing faster than AIDS"; and, most ook, m Raschke s, and m a lecture I heard by a touring campus crusader against ro:k puzzling: "Heavy metal belongs to a so-called avant-garde art form that has 19stayed veiled from the eyes of mass audiences, the style known as aesthetic terrorism." ~~RRaschke, Pa~nted Black, p. 170. Raschke incorrectly cites the source of the article aschke, Painted Black, p.175. · 22Raschke, Painted Black, P· 246. Another study has charged that ri ht- . d .. Satanist threat; its authors claim that there are fe th h g dwmg an religious groups have manufactured the 14Stuessy, "User's Manual," p. 6. wer an one t ousan actual Satanists in th U . d S th are members of a religion 15Stuessy, testimony, p. 8. . protected by the First Am en d ment, d h an t at none of them h b e linkedmte tates, . atal they. 16Berlioz ends his symphony with the triumphant frenzy of a witches' Sabbath. ee avid Alexander; "Giving the Devil More Tha H' D ,, ,.,..... u . as een S ~ D n is ue, .wenumamst March/April 1990 to5 any14 ntu3 crimes. 17The creation of"classical music" and its aesthetic ideology have been discussed in previous chapters. 23 dor caul see of stati.stically suicide, we might look to "In th; 4f lBCarl A. Raschke, Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal-the Alarming True Story ofHow Satanism Is ~ ~ :1 ~ignificant deindu~trialization: 1J~er- th h e er ogu orporatlon closmg of its roller-bearin lant in D . . h ma o t e Terrorizing Our Communities (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), p. 170. Compare Dan Peters and Steve Peters, took their own lives. This macabre stat!' st'1c '1s c tu gtpl etr01t, e1g t .of the nearly 2,000 affected unlor na e workers with Cher Merrill, y not unusual In their tud f d' 1 d Why Knock Rock? (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1984); Steve Lawhead, Rock of This Age: The Real Kasl found a suicide rate 'thirty times the expected n b ,,, (B Bl . s yo isp ace workers, Cobb D . um er arry uestone and Bennett H · Th and and Imagined Dangers of Rock Music (Downers Grove, Ill.: lnterVarsity Press, 1987); Bob Larson, Larson's Book of Rock [~~:'~==~::::.·~~f:~~g"ing., Community Mand,.mmt, and th• Dinnant/ing a}'j,;';;,nin,.:try (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1987). 1 19Raschke, Painted Black, pp. 56, 170, 244. Can 388 Robert Walser I Play with Madness? 389 music I found the same handful of stories repeated rapidly and balefully so as to sug­ aberration of youth and commercial exploitation, scapegoating heavy metal musicians gest that they stood as select examples of widespread trends rather than ~?e bi:arre and fans for problems that are undeniably extant but for which she holds entirely and anomalous events they were. In the end Raschke waffles and hedges: And 1f no blameless the dominant social systems, institutions, and moral values she defends. one can bJame rock music directly for the 300 percent rise in adolescent suicide~ ~r Calls for censorship serve to divert attention from the real social causes of violence and the 7 percent increase in teenage pregnancies, it may sure~ be more than a n~glig1- misogyny. ble factor."24 With the word may, Raschke admits that no lmk can be made; with the ~ of :hese cri~ics share the notion that heavy metal is bad because it is perverse word surely, he attempts to cover up that admission. Moreo~er, if we assume that deviance m the midst of a successfully functioning society. They ascribe much too rock music is to blame for that rise in suicides, do we then credit rap and heavy metal much importance to a transhistorical notion of "adolescence," which allows them to with causing the dramatic decrease in drug use among high school students in the overlook the specific forms that culture takes in particular circumstances of power . . al ltu ";> 25 1980s, the decade during which those styles came to d ommate ~us1c c~ re: . and pai~; 1:hey believe that insisting that "healthy minds don't think negative In fact, none of these critics is able to connect heavy metal directly with swc1de, thoughts will make p~ople overlook the devastation caused by deindustrialization Satanism, or crime. Tipper Gore does provide information on Dungeons and Dr~gons, and ~i~astrous social policies. They imagine that fans are passive, unable to resist the a fantasy role-playing game that has been attacked f~r the sa~e reasons. According to permc10us messages of heavy metal, and thus they themselves commit the sort of her, over eight million sets ofD&D have been sold m the Umt~d States'. yet ~~en the dehumanization they ascribe to popular culture. They make fans into dupes without game's harshest critics can link it with fewer than. fifty people mvolv:d .m swc1des or age~c! or subjectivi:r, without social experiences and perceptions that might inform 31 homicides.26 As with metal, one might reasonably mfer from such stat1st1cs that D&D their mteract10ns with mass-mediated texts. And they portray heavy metal musi­ is to be applauded as a stabilizing factor in many adolescent lives. If I have dwelt on c~ans as "outside agit~tors," just as social authorities tried to blame civil rights these critiques longer than seems necessary, it is because they have in fact been violen~e on C~mmum.st troublemaking, as though poverty, joblessness, and police extremely influential. The flimsiness of these arguments seems to escape reader~ who brutality weren t sufficient explanation, But heavy metal exists not in a world that are predisposed to accept heavy metal as a convenien: scapeg.oat; Raschk~ w;s given a :-voul~ be fine. i~ it ~ere not marred by degraded culture, but in a world disjointed by complimentary "Portrait," for example, in The Chr.onzcle ofHtgher Education. mequ1ty and mJust1ce. Gore and other critics also point to actual v10lence at heavy metal concerts as In hi~ 1987 movie;~The Hidden, director Jack Sholder satirized such portrayals of more proof of the music's malignancy. But such violence is greatly exaggerated by the horrific effects of heavy metal. The back of the video-cassette release summarizes metal's critics; mayhem is no more common a metal concerts than at sports events-:­ the plot: "a demonic extraterrestrial creature is invading the bodies of innocent vic­ or at the opera in nineteenth-century Paris or performances of Shakespeare m tims-and transforming them into inhuman killers with an unearthly fondness for 32 nineteenth-century New York. 28 In fact, concert security guards report that hea'?' metal music, red .Ferraris and unspeakable violence." The Hidden replicates crowds29 at country music concerts are far more difficult to manage than heavy metal crowds. prec1sel~ the. understanding ?f.hea:vr metal promoted by its harshest critics, linking Culture is valued because it mobilizes meanings with respect to the most deeply held met~ with violence, and dep1ctmg 1t as a threat coming from elsewhere, with no con­ social values and the most profound tensions. Only by effacing cultural. hi~tory. can nect1?~ to. this world, working its evil on helpless, innocent victims. The arguments heavy metal be portrayed as singularly violent in thought or deed. But msmuat1ons of ?ntics like Gore, Stuessy, and Raschke depend upon denying fans subjectivity or of metal's violent effects are also contradicted by a recent study that finds no corre­ social agency so that they can be cast as victims who can be protected through cen­ lations between teenagers' preferences in music and their likelihood of having sorship. By depicting fans as "youth," an ideological category that lifts them out of 30 society and history, these critiques "behavioral problems" at school. . . . manage to avoid having to provide any explanation To be sure, Tipper Gore raises legitimate concerns about sexual violenc~ m the lyrics of why fans are attracted to the specific sounds, images, and lyrics of heavy metal. and visual representations of metal shows. But she labors to portray such v10lence as an SUICIDE SOLUTIONS

24Raschke, Painted Black, p. 164. Emphasis added. The most celebrated public controversy over heavy metal to date revolved around a 25See Rock and Roll Confidential, September 1991, p. 2. lawsuit against Judas Priest, tried in 1990. Five years earlier, two young men 26Gore, Raising PG Kids, p. 118. from 27"Portrait," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 January 1991, P· A3 · . . 2ssee Jane Fulcher, The Nation's Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art (Cambndge: Cambndge University Press, 1987), pp. 38, 88, 101-2; and Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural 31 For a striking ethnographic Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), PP· 61-65, 91. refutation of this view, see the forthcoming collection of interviews with a variety of peo­ ple about how they 29Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Lexington Books'.1991), P· 181. use music in their lives: My Music, edited by Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi and Charles Keil to be published 30Jonathon S. Epstein, David J. Fratto, and James K. Skipper, Jr., "Teenagers, Behavtoral Problems, and Preferences for in 1993 by University Press of New England. ' ' 32 Heavy Metal and Rap Music: A Case Study of a Southern Middle School," Deviant Behavior 11 (1990), PP· 381-94. Jack Sholder (director), The Hidden (New Line Cinema and Heron Communications, 1987). 390 Robert Walser Can I Play with Madness? 391

Reno, Nevada-Ray Belknap, eighteen, and Jay Vance, twenty-had consummated such messages in heavy metal music lead to violence. (The host of the show neglect­ a suicide pact by taking turns with a shotgun. Belknap was killed instantly; Vance ed to mention that Key has in the past claimed to have found satanic or sexual mes­ survived to undergo three years of reconstructive surgery before dying of a drug over­ sages on Ritz crackers, $5 bills, and Howard Johnson's placemats.)37 Yet studies by dose in 1988. Both men had been avid Judas Priest fans, and the suit alleged that psychologists have repeatedly shown that while intelligible messages can be found in subliminal messages embedded in the band's 1978 release, Stained Class, had created virtually anything played backward, there is no evidence that listeners perceive or are a compulsion that led to their deaths. According to the plaintiffs, one song contained affected by backward messages. "Even when messages are there, all they do is add a commands of "do it" that were audible only subconsciously, and other songs, when little noise to the music," says one researcher. "There is absolutely no effect from 33 38 played backward, exhorted ''try suicide," "suicide is in," and "sing my evil spirit." content." As with previous accusations of"backward masking" in rock music, :he suit dep~nd­ Lead singer Rob Halford may have tipped the scales of justice when he appeared ed on the premise that such hidden messages can be decoded without consc10us for the last day of testimony with a tape containing backward messages he had found awareness and on the idea that they affect listeners more powerfully than overt com- on the Stained. Class album. Reversing the fragment "strategic force I they will not" munication. from "Invader" yielded an intelligible, if cryptic, "It's so fishy, personally I'll owe it." The strategy of the defense was simple: they argued that the lives of Vance and Halford reversed "They won't take our love away," from the same song, and had the Belknap had been such that no mysterious compulsion was required to account for courtroom howling when they heard "Hey look, Ma, my chair's broken." Finally, he their suicides. During the two years preceding the suicide pact, for example, Vance played his last discovery: "Stand by for exciter I Salvation is his task'' came out back­ had run away from home thirteen times; his mother ad~itted beating him. ":oo ward as "I-I-I as-asked her for a peppermint-t-t I I-I-I asked for her to get one."39 often'' when he was young,34 His father beat him, too, especially after he lost ~is JOb The trial ended with Judas Priest cleared of all charges, for the judge remained (when a GM plant closed in 1979) and began drinking heavily. Vanc~'s ;10lent unconvinced that the "subliminal" messages on the album were intentionally placed behavior long predated his involvement with heavy metal; a school psych1.atr1st had there or were neces~/ary to explain the conduct of Vance and Belknap. There seemed expressed concern about his self-destructive behavior when Vance w~s m se~ond no credible motive for the subliminal crimes of which the band was accused; as their grade, and his mother testified that he had tried to strangle he~ an~ h~t he~ with a lawyer put it, "In order to find for the plaintiffs here, you'd have to assume that there hammer while he was still in grade school. 35 He had even been mst1tut1onal1zed for is at work out there an Evil Empire of the media and the artist who want to damage attempted suicide in 1976, at age eleven. . . . . the people who are buying their works. You hafta be nuts to think that ifJudas Priest Ray Belknap's background was just as bad. At the time of his. suicide attempt, ~e had the capability to insert a subliminal message they would tell the fans who've been had just decided to quit his job with a local contracto:, after .h1~ boss had w~n. his buying all their albums, 'Go kill yourselves."' 40 week's wages in a pool game. His mother, a born-agam Christian whose relig10us I? the face of such evidence, why is it that accusations of subliminal compulsions beliefs increased the tension at home, had just separated from her fourth husband, "a persist? Those who condemn heavy metal often posit conspiracies in order to scape­ reportedly violent man who had once been arrested for menacing R.ay's n:other wit~ goat musicians and fans, avoiding questions of social responsibility for the destruc­ a gun" and who sometimes locked Ray in the garage and b~at him with a belt. tive behavior of people such as Vance and Belknap. But charges of secret messages Defense lawyers argued that in such circumstances, there was little need to postulate may persist because we as a society have afforded ourselves no other ways of explain­ secret musical compulsions in order to account for suicidal thoughts. The prosecu­ ing music's power to affect us. Subliminal manipulation substitutes for a conception tion replied that many people have bad home lives yet do not kill themselves~a of music as a social discourse; since we are trained not to think of music, or any other risky line of reasoning, one would think, since their case de~ended on overlooking art, as symbolic discourse, drawing its power from socially grounded desires and con­ the millions of people who listen to heavy metal yet d~ not kill t~emselves. . . testations, we fall back on a kind of mysticism to explain the effects that music unde­ The Judas Priest case hinged, though, on the question of the impact of sublimi­ niably produces. Such effects may be acceptable when they are created by dead nal commands, allegedly masked but made no less effective by being placed on the "great" composers, but they are perceived as dangerously manipulative when pro­ album backward. As part of the substantial media attention given the case, duced by others, such as heavy metal musicians. "Newsline New York" interviewed an "expert," Wilson Bryan Key, who claimed that

37 Doug Ireland, "Press Clips," Village Voice, 20 March 1990, p. 9. Key was taken very seriously by many people; he also appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and in Jack Anderson's syndicated column . 38 .'.l3Jvan Solotaroff, "Subliminal Criminals: Judas Priest in the Promised Land," Village Voice, 4 September 1990, John R. Vokey and J. B. Read, "Subliminal Messages: Between the Devil and the Media," American Psychologist 40:11 (1985), pp. 1231-39. See also S. B. Thorne and P. Himelstein, "The Role of pp. 24-34. Suggestion in the Reception of .'.l4The Editors of Rock & Roll Confidential, You've Got a Right to Rock (Duke & Duchess Ventures, 1990), p. 21. Satanic Messages in Rock and Roll Recordings," journal ofPsychology 116 (1984), pp. 245-48. 39Solotaroff, "Subliminal 35Minneapolis Star/I'ribune, 18July1990. Criminals," p. 34. 4°Kuipers, 36Dean Kuipers, "Executioner's Song," Spin, November 1990, p. 66. "Executioner's Song," p. 66. Can I Play with Madness? 393 392 Robert Walser

that only a tiny minor­ on subliminal messages was that an impor­ of responses is possible; indeed, the evidence suggests Another reason the Priest suit hinged ~ange and thought­ a judge decided th~t ove~t lyrics "Suicide Solution" depressing rather than sobering tant precedent had already been set in 1985, when ity of ~ans found to This earlier case Metallica to thank them because he had decided not were protected speech under the First Amendment. provoking. One fan wrote to about suicide "Fade to Black."43 The lead singer whose song "Suicide Soluti?n'' (1981) was alleged kill himself after hearing their song about suicide, was a suit against Ozzy Osbourne, Scars (1989): "There's a song h.ave compelled .ninetee~-ye~r-old John Dark Angel described a song from their album Leave to have promoted suicide in its lyrics an~ to of of being an 41 were inspired by the that covers the depression and anxiety to shoot himself. Osbourne s claim that the lyrics called 'The Promise of Agony' McCullom and who pick up the new album and realize from a friend and that the song is in fact antisuicide adolescent. Hopefully there will be kids alchohol-related suicide of 44 feigned after the fact. even in their darkest despair they really aren't alone." sentiment was dismissed as sham social conscience, reading the lyrics that antidrug in for suicide indicates that a feeling dis~issed, the case ?ecame.a cause celebre, study of p~tients hospitalized for contemplating Although this suit too was eventually A actually go on to Osbour~e and strongest predictor of which of them would The PMRC was in the midst of a campai~n ag~inst of helplessness is the it was timely. of 45 metal because it makes them feel helpless. just culminated in widespread discuss10n of regulation kill themselves. Nobody listens to heavy other musicians that had by overregulation, and Senate hearings, and they were quick to use distin~ish between ~atalistic suicide, caused the record industry and the infamous Socio~ogis:s. points out that many of the evil effects of heavy metal. attributable to nonintegration. Donna Gaines the McCullom suicide as yet another example anomic suicide, and head off a live bat since they feel both overregulated by adults his reputation for transgression-he once bit the y~ung people are doubly vulnerable, But despite 46 texts can resonate with such attitudes· tossed onstage by a fan-Ozzy ?sbourne'~ l~~cs :~nd alienated from them. It is possible that (which he thought was rubber) have helped make suicide ~ Ozz album (1981), which contains Swcide The Sorrows of Young Werther seems to to be quite moralistic. His Blizzard of Goet?e's of violence Movies," which deplores the degra­ of the late 1770s. But although its explicit treatments Solution," also includes an antiporn song, "No Bone Continental fad for environmen­ metal is attractive precisely because it offers obsessive lust. "Revelation (Mother Earth)" is a plea might make suicide seem more familiar, dation caused by and helplessness. Even when it attributes its craziness to the modern pressures faced a way of overcoming those feelings of loneliness tal responsibility, and "Crazy Train'' be dismissed celebrates love; "Goodbye to heavy metal confronts issues that cannot simply "heirs of a cold war." "Steal Away (The Night)" models musical despair, by the the infa­ as members of a community of fans, making And in "Mr. Crowley," Osbourne's lyrics refer to or repressed, and it positions listeners Romance" mourns its loss. not regulate them. but far from celebrating occult them feel that they belong to a group that does mous English Satanist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947); sui­ ~y ~sbm.~ne fans don't worship Satan and don't commit taunts Crowley, displaying an ironic tone often used The vast majority of heavy metal practices, the song metal songs that deals with such critics). Osbourne evokes the fascination Wl~ cide; yet many fans enjoy that fraction of heavy (and never noticed by his literal-minded this, for they things that were sacred/mani­ have provided no credible explanations for supernatural that Crowley represents-''Uncovering things. Heavy metal's crit~cs the attraction to exist, preferring to believe that the same time that he tweaks Crowley's nose: deny .fans the ag~nc~ that 1s necessary for fest on this earth"-at this unsatisfactory is to open up such images are inflicted rather than sought. To find you think you were pure? and horror..... Mister Charming, did the problem of explaining the attractiveness of mysticism Mister Alarming, in nocturnal rapport

Mister Crowley, won't you ride my white horse? Mister Crowley, it's symbolic, of course. they evoke a po_wer and mys­ Osbourne plays with signs of the supernatural b~cause song offers ~n expen~nce of those tery that is highly attractive to many fans, but his of magical practices. qualities and even a critique, not a literal endorsement

six thousand teenage suicides Suicide is a serious problem (some estimates report 42 artists address it. But music per year in the United States), and that is why popular tex~s become ~opular w~en does not simply inflict its meanings upon helpless f~ns; the contexts of their own lives. That is why a wide people find them meaningful in 43 fan told me that "Fade to Black" Justice," Rolling Stone, 12January1989, p. 77. Another David Fricke, "Heavy Metal his life. helped get him motivated to make something of made him realize how stupid suicide would be and Judas 44 Thrash of Dark Angel," RIP, June 1989, p. 94. the same song was fil:d in 1989, but as in the Gene Hoglan, quoted in Mike Gitter, "The Hellish Variety, 6 November 1985, p. 2. Another suit concerning 45 41See lyncs. New York Times, 10February1985, p. A23. that subliminal messages were at fault rather than Priest case, the plaintiff alleged p. 98. 46 Dead End Kids (New York: Pantheon, 1990), p. 253. Suicide?" Los Angeles Times Calendar, Sunday, 8May1988, Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's 42Patrick Goldstein, "Is Rock Scapegoat for Teen 48 Columbine: Whose Fault Is It? (1999)

Marilyn Manson

Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised -Marilyn Manson

When a dude's gettin' bullied and shoots up his school And they blame it on Marilyn {on Marilyn) and the heroin Where were the parents at? -Eminem, "The Way I Am"

Why not blame the libraries? They're full ofviolent books. -Music and movie executive David Geffen, in response to calls following Columbine that the industry turn down the violence (Broder 1999)

Q n the morning of April 20, 1999 two teenagers, Erk: Harris and Dylan Klebold, entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and began shooting: they killed 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves.The tragedy sparked endless round-the-clock media coverage and speculation about what had caused it The answer for many was violence in movies, video games and music, and there were, once again, calls for censorship. Shortly after the shootings, a rumor circulated that the killers were fans of the industrial rock star Marilyn Manson. It soon emerged that they were not fans-they disliked Manson and his music-nevertheless, Manson quickly became the poster boy for what is wrong with modem culture and music (as had Ozzy and Judas Priest before him; see Chapter 47 above), and he was even blamed directly for the shootings. This op-ed piece, published on June 24, 1999 in Rolling Stone, was Manson's response. (He also cancelled the remaining concerts of his 1999 tour.) Manson turns the spotlight back on the media itself, observing that newspapers and magazines revel in events like Columbine, putting the faces of killers on front pages and covers to sell copy. Violence is a part of human nature;

395 Columbine: Whose Fault Is It? 396 Marilyn Manson 397 to search Middlweren't wearingA . h make d h , for scapegoats to explain it is to search for simplistic answers. Who, for example, is up, an t ey weren t dressed like me or like goths Si "responsible" e . menca as not heard of the music the for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? Instead, we should be talking about per- did listen . nee Rammstem, among others) the med' . k d Y . to (KMFDM and sonal responsibility, which is a necessary price of freedom. Responsible journalists h;ve reporte~ !;~; sori;,~t~mghth% th?ught was similar. not Marilyn Manson fans-that the even di:~~~u city t ~t arns ~nd Klebold were It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games that gives them no excuse nor does~t th d m~ music. Even if they were fans, or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother James Huberty's ins iratio~ when h mean at music is to blame. Did we look for Abel's brains in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to Timothy McVeigh flke to watch? vJh~~~~~t ~wr:i people at ~cDonald's? What did violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of what­ entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel h uld a:id Koresh,J1mJones? Do you think ever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we him the guns he used in the Sprin~~:l~ oOre :~ am; th;ie fact have based our ~at ~s fat~er b~ught culture around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and to blow people up in Kosovo? Was its ' thi g th mMur killin . killi ome e~s. Wh~t msprr~s Bill Clinton around our necks, and we have just taken that for granted all our lives. Is it a sym­ ng at omca Lewmsky said to him;i I ' g JU~t ng, regardless ifit's in Vietnam or Jonesboro Arkansa ) Wh d . bol of hope or hopelessness? The world's most famous murder-suicide was also the .sn t tify one, JUSt because it seems to be for the ri ht ;i ' s. y o we JUS­ birth of the death icon-the blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately, for all of their reason? If a kid is old enough to cl . gb reasons. Should rive a car or there ever be a right inspiring morality, nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence uy a gun · ' h ld praised as a virtue. personally responsible for what he does with his c ' i~n t o ' enough to be held A lot of people forget or never realize that ~ I started my band as a criticism of these someone else be blamed because he isn't nli har or j· Or.1fhes a teenager, should very issues of despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn Manson has never celebrat­ America loves to find an icon to han asi: ~ tene as an ei~hteen-year-old? ed the sad fact that America puts killers on the cover of Time magazine, giving them the role of Antichrist· I am the N' t' g . guf1~t o~. But, admittedly, I have assumed . ' me 1es voice o mdivid ality, as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars. From Jesse James to Charles Manson, ciate anyone who looks and beha cl l :ves cl'1ueren .cc. tl y Wlt. h uill ' gal an peop e tend to asso- the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk · al .. heroes. They just down, most adults hate people who o a ainst th .e ?r imi:ior actlVlty. Deep created two new ones when they plastered those dipshits Dylan Klebold naive enough to have forgotten and Eric . Elvi'sgJ' gM . e gradm. Its comical that people are Harris' pictures on the front of every newspaper. , 1m ornson an Ozzy s · kl All f h Don't be surprised if every kid who were subjected to the same a e-old a called . o qwc y. o t em gets pushed around has two new idols. "Lunchbox" and g . alir~ments, ~crutmy and prejudice. I wrote a song ' some Journ sts have mter We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole purpose is to destroy all of t cl · song is about being picked on and fighJ,: mankind, and we grow up watching our president's brains splattered all over Texas. !~~}\ ~e ~.;;:~;';ts~~:~~s. use as a on Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised. Does bec~use weap~n the playground. In 1979' metal lunch boxes were bann':j they were considered dangerous weapons in anyone think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If television had existed, you the hands of cl 1i I al could wrote a song called "Get Your Gunn "Th 'tl . 11 . e nquents. so be sure they would have been there to cover it, or maybe · e ti e 1s spe ed Wlth tw0 ' b h even participate in it, like was a reaction to the murder ofD D 'cl G . ns their violent car chase ecause t e song of Princess Di. Disgusting vultures looking for corpses, activists while I was living there Tr.h tavi hunuln, ~ho was killed in Florida by pro-life exploiting, fucking, filming and · a was t e timate h · I · serving it up for our hungry appetites in'. a glutton- up: that these people killed someon . th fb . ypocnsy e m e name o emg "pro-Ii£ witnessed" growing ous display of endless human stupidity. . The somewhat positive messages of these son When it comes down to who's to blame for the high school murders in Littleton, s are us all e. t10nalists misinterpret as promoting the ver thing I cl u ?nes that sensa- Colorado, throw a rock and you'll hit someone ~the who's guilty. We're the people who sit one is thinking of how they can prevent back and tolerate children owning t~ngs ff~e ~~ttl:tcry1r;.f Ri~ht now, every­ guns, and we're the ones who tune in and watch AIDS, world war, depression car crashes;i W li . the up-to-the-minute £ on. ow o you prevent details of what they do with them. I think it's terrible when freedom there is a burden of . e. ~~ m a ree country, but with that anyone dies, especially if it is someone you know and love. But what is more offen­ what is moral and immoral x;~~on~ respons1b1lity. Rather than teaching a child sive is that when these tragedies happen, most people don't really care any more than what the laws that govern u~ are v:an wroalng, we first and foremost can establish they would about . .iou can ways escape hell b b 1i . . . the season finale of Friends or The Real World. I was dumbfound­ ut you cannot escape death and b I . you cannot . y not e evmg m it, ed as I watched the media snake right in, not missing a teardrop, interviewing the escape prison t is no wonder that kids are growin u m . . parents of dead children, televising the funerals. Then came the witch-hunt. tion in front of them Th hg p ore cynical: they have a lot of informa- . ey can see Man's greatest fear is chaos. It was unthinkable that these t at they ar 1i · 1 , kids did not have a sim­ bullshit. In the past there was always th . cl h e ving m a wor cl thats made of ple black-and-white reason for their actions. And so a scapegoat was something better But now Am . h e bl ea t needed. I . at you could turn and run and start remember hearing the initial reports from Littleton, enca as ecome one b' all cl b that Harris and Klebold were Internet and all of the technology h h , ig m ' an ecause of the wearing makeup and were dressed like Marilyn Manson, we ave t ere s nowher t p 1 whom they obviously must everywhere. Sometimes music, movies and books e worship, since o ~n. eop e are the same they were dressed in black. Of course, speculation snowballed into someone else feels like we do I'v al . cl are the only things that let us feel . e ways tne to let like making me the poster boy for everything that is bad in the world. These two idiots people know it's OK, or better, if 398 Marilyn Manson

some geek from Ohio can you don't fit into the program. Use your imagination-if willpower and creativity? become something, why can't anyone else with the defend myself, though I was I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and I didn't want to contribute to begged to be on every single TV show in existence. looking to fill their churches or to these fame-seeking journalists and opportunists pointing.... So is entertainment to get elected because of their self-righteous finger because their coverage of the blame? I'd like media commentators to ask themselves, any of us have seen. event was some of the most gruesome entertainment too powerful to take on, so most I think that the National Rifle Association is far yours truly. This kind of controversy people choose Doom, The Basketball Diaries or want it to. I'm a controversial does not help me sell records or tickets, and I wouldn't to create music and videos that artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers and hollow. In my work I challenge people's ideas in a world that is watered-down CITED to show people that the devil we WORKS examine the America we live in, and I've always tried So don't expect the end of the world blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. every day for a long time. to come one day out of the blue-it's been happening