MUS 17 -- Week 15, Apr 29 Note: Paper #2 is due May 6 at noon, submit via TritonEd. Guidelines Writing Center at Teaching and Learning Commons in Geisel ... Remember to keep up to date with listening IDs. ... There will be another in-section writing assignment this week. ... My office hours: Mondays 4:30 - 5:30 at the Art of Espresso Cafe. ... Jeff Chang May 13 -- FREE LIGHT REFRESHMENTS To Do, Apr 29 1. Go over quiz #4. Review last lecture. Listen to some of the classic Gangsta tracks. 2. Obscenity issues: 2 Live Crew, Geto Boys and PMRC. 3. IP law and Hip Hop 4. Listening ◦ Ice Cube's solo stuff, ublicP Enemy, Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice Quiz #4 review: 1. What kind of police chief was Daryl Gates? 2. Who is Freeway Rick Ross? 3. Apartheid is ... ? 4. What happened in the Iran-Contra scandal? 5. Native Tongues is ... ? Listening ID practice ?? Toward Obscenity DJ Quick, Jus Lyke Compton, 1992 • Quick is from Compton, but the song is all about leaving Compton and finding all the same stuff in other cities. • Signature evil laugh. • Commodification/export of gangsta aesthetic? • "They need to stop watching that Colors (1988) and Boys in the Hood (1991)" ◦ NB, John Singleton died today. Too Short, the Ghetto, 1990 • Local rapper from Oakland, rapping about that place in a similar way to NWA's relationship to LA. • Samples Donny Hathaway, the Ghetto Snoop Dogg, Deep Cover, 1992 • One of Snoop's first big ecorr dings • Dr. Dre's first solo effort teraf the breakup of NWA • Recorded for the 1992 film of the same name, directed by Bill Duke • Note the emphasis on police corruption rather than just gang violence • Fat Joe and Big Pun 'cover' this song in 1998 Geto Boys Scarface, Bushwick Bill and Willie D. • One of the first eallyr big Southern acts, hailing from Houston. • Famous for recording really extreme gore, sex and violence. Target of various censorship campaigns. Mind Playing Tricks on Me, 1991 • This song is more reflective than their typical fare, and was their only radio hit. • Typical stuff is a possible forerunner to so-called "horrorcore" rap groups, e.g. Insane Clown Posse, possibly Eminem? • Often tackling issues of police brutality, although with an often hard to handle mixture of misogyny and other unpleasantness: City Under Siege, 1990 -- Rap Genius Transcription • Political content Crooked Officer, 1993 "Let freedom ring from the hole in my glock for what you did to Rodney King" "and it ain't nothin you can ask us, since justice is blind, Imma buy the girl some glasses" If you want the nasty stuff: Mind of a Lunatic Geto Boys in performance: Bushwick Bill From the album We Can't Be Stopped, 1991 Censorship Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC): • Founded by four well-connected political people: Tipper Gore, Susan Baker, Pam Howar, Sally Nevius • Originally the targets were Rock musicians with sexually explicit lyrics ("porn rock"), like Prince, Darling Nikki • The so called "filthy fifteen" include: ◦ Prince: "I knew a girl named Nikki I guess you could say she was a sex fiend, I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine" ◦ Sheena Easton, Sugar Walls: "Spend the night inside my sugar walls" ◦ Motley Cru, Bastard ◦ AC/DC, Let me put my love into you: "let me cut your cake with my knife" ◦ Madonna, Dress you Up: "Dress you up in my love, all over your body" from Like A Virgin ◦ Black Sabbath, Trashed • Tipper Gore, in her book Raising PG Kids In An X-Rated Society, writes "at first I was stunned. Then, I got mad." • PMRC manages to convene 1985 senate hearings, or Tipper Gore's opening remarks on the subject of obscenity in the music industry. • "Parental Advisory" stickers are a voluntary initiative to which the RIAA agrees instead of a "ratings" system akin to the one that regulates cinema. Rage Against the Machine, 1993 protest concert 2 Live Crew, Me So Horny, 1989 • Released on album As Nasty as they Wanna Be • Goofy party act that featured nasty lyrics over simple, bouncy electro beats. • Making matters worse, the sample is extremely racially inflammatory, drawn from the controversial scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam War film, Full Metal Jacket It gets worse...Nasty as the Wanna Be tracks: 1. Me So Horny 2. Put Her in the Buck 3. Dick Almighty 4. C'mon Babe 5. If you Believe in Having Sex ...etc Miller v. California, 1973 -- the "miller rule" for obscenity Marvin Miller runs a business selling pornographic materials, sends out brochures in mass mailings all over California. A restaurant in Newport Beach receives one and calls the cops. Raises question: how to know what is obscene? Establishes the three-prong "Miller test" for determining if something is "obscene," and therefore not protected by First Amendment: [t]he basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." ... "Prurient" = excessively sexual, deriving from Latin "itch" "patently offensive" = ? ("patently" = clearly, without any ambiguity) Obscenity, thus defined since 1973, is NOT protected by the first amendment. 2 Live Crew and the Law, part 1: Criminal Obscenity In 1990, 2 Live Crew is arrested for performing obscene material in Broward County, Florida. Evidence against them is a 45-minute audio tape made of the recording by an undercover police agent. The recording is low quality, however. 2 Live Crew's attorney, Bruce Rogow (now representing Roger Stone!!!), argues that 2 Live Crew must be understood within the context of the hip hop tradition. ''These words, as crude as some people find them,'' he said, ''can have artistic value when you have an understanding, when you have them, in effect, decoded.'' ](NY imesT Article about the case)](https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/17/us/obscenity-or-art-trial-on-rap-lyrics- opens.html?pagewanted=all) ...why is it important that they have artistic value? I thought we were talking about the law? Comparison with the obscenity case of The Perfect Moment, an 1990 exhibit in Cincinatti of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. (Note: The Perfect Moment included much more graphic images, often depicting S and M, and including fully nude children (approved by their parents)) Article about the case. The Cincinatti case was ruled in favor of the museum (Mapplethorpe images are not obscene). But it was different matter for 2 Live Crew; Mapplethorpe is an established art world fixture. 2 Live Crew are just some rappers from Florida, with no elite standing as "artists." Recall the obscenity statute: [t]he basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Questions raised by 2 Live Crew obscenity case: 1. Is the music obscene? 2. Is the music "obscene," as defined in legal statute? 3. Is prosecuting 2 Live Crew for obscenity implicitly racist? 4. What would be the best legal strategy for the prosecution? For the defense? 5. What do you think the outcome of the trial was (if you don't already know)? Turn to your neighbor and have a quick debate. Whoever's last name comes first in the alphabet takes the side of the prosecution, arguing that 2 Live Crew is criminally obscene. The other takes the side of the defense. Try to come up with three points of argument from each position. Arguments regarding 2 Live Crew (from various interested parties, columnists) FIRST: Jack Thompson, a lawyer who was not on the prosecution team but was responsible for the trial indirectly: "These guys are out promoting the idea that women are there for nothing but to satisfy men's desires. This stuff makes it more likely that women will be abused." Thompson also transcribes lyrics and sends them to interested parties (law enforcement in Broward Co, Fl, for example) SECOND: Defense (Bruce Rogow), opening statement: ''This is not guitar music. This is not violin music. This is not piano music. But this is serious art, even though it may be different.'' THIRD: George Will, "America's Slide into the Sewer," Newsweek 1990. Makes repeated reference to the Central Park 5 (this was before they had been exonerated!) When arrested a defendant said, "It was something to do. It was fun." Where can you get the idea that sexual violence against women is fun? From a music store, through Walkman earphones, from boom boxes blaring forth the rap lyrics of 2 Live Crew. ... Fact: Some members of a particular age and social cohort--the one making 2 Live Crew rich--stomped and raped the jogger to the razor edge of death, for the fun of it. Certainty: the coarsening of a community, the desensitizing of a society will have behavioral consequences. FOURTH: Henry Louis Gates, author of our beloved Signifying Monkey book, is called as an expert witness. From his NY Times Op-Ed about this case: 2 Live Crew is engaged in heavy handed parody, turning the stereotypes of black and white American culture on their heads.