Thesis About Music Censorship

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In the modern society when more people gain access to the wide range of music works, the question of music censorship is arising with new power. Large controversies are caused by the discussion of this problem since people are either for it or against the phenomenon. The articles “Music and Censorship” by Victor Lombardi and “Better Songs Through Censorship” by Neil Strauss both reveal the perception of censorship in the society. However, their ideas of the necessity of censoring music and the effects that this activity might have on the audience as well as on the society differ. In his work, Lombardi expresses the idea that music as a form of art reflects our real life, thus it should show the truth and no censorship is required. In comparison…show more content…
Due to this fact, his article is highly persuasive and since people to whom he refers were highly involved in the arts in general and in music in particular. The main idea expressed by the author is the claim that music is a rather subjective case for interpretation. Since “music is subject to vague interpretations and may alienate people according to subculture”, the lyrics appear to be the main aspect of any song that might be censored (Lombardi). However, the lyrics always express personal ideas of the author, thus censoring might be identified as breaking the right for freedom of speech. Furthermore, as far as the author mentions the perspective of action and its name, acts come usually prior to its verbal expression. Thus, censoring music cannot perform its main function of preventing people from recognizing the signs of immorality in the songs. Even more, according to Lombardi's perception of music censorship, it only disregards the way people express themselves while injuring their feelings and the way of perception of the world as far as “lyrics can be shocking, but they describe the reality of our lives in our world” (Lombardi). To sum up, the idea of censorship by Lombardi envisions that music censorship is used as a means of hiding the truth of real life and dirtying the names of singers and songwriters who make a choice of being truthful…show more content…
In his article, the author clearly states that the censorship is aimed at making the music better and more appropriate for the wide audience. The author of this article believes that censorship is the activity that allows to deliver the idea to more people while simply using the weaker form of expression and states that adjusting song for definite purpose is a usual practice. According to him, censoring a song and rewriting it in order to make it more appropriate for radio can even make the song more popular and higher estimated. He supports this benefit of censoring music by the examples of famous rap singers that include Jay-Z, who “succeeded in making the song simultaneously more popular and, to some critics, more offensive” pointing out that only one word changed in the song is viewed totally differently (Strauss). However, the author of this article also shares with the audience the idea that highlights the ineffectiveness of censoring concerning popular music. According to him, the replacement of offensive words with more neutral ones often appears unsuccessful in terms of hiding the initial meaning and sometimes even makes this meaning more obvious. Thus, he does not agree that the meaning of the song can be strongly influenced by
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