"The only thing that was on my mind
Was just shoving my dick up this bitch's behind
I looked at the girl and said
Babe, your ass ain't nothing but a base hit
I'm going to have to get rid of your ass, yeah
'Cause you're on my dick, dick, ding-a-ling."
You might not be surprised that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) used these lyrics from Hi-C's song "I'm Not Your Puppet" as an example in its recently released enforcement policy of broadcast indecency, i.e., censorship of TV, radio and movies.
This month marks one year since feminist artist Sarah Jones won her four-year battle with the FCC to lift the broadcasting ban on her song "Your Revolution". What was in the song that caused such uproar? Soft and slow, Jones repeats, the phrase "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs" in a contemporary turn on the classic civil rights poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".
Jones sings what screams silent from today's hip-hop and rap music videos — that "The real revolution ain't about bootie size, the Versaces you buys, or the Lexus you drives". And then she gets on with the feminist message that is so rare in popular music today:
"You think I'm a six-foot blow-job machine, um hum
You wanna subjugate your queen, uh-huh
Think I'm gonna put it in my mouth just because you
Made a few bucks?
Please brother, please."
The 26-year-old artist recalls the song's genesis. At a party put on by infamous rapper Sean "Puff Daddy" Coombs, "I was standing there like some MTV ho [whore], singing along to 'bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks [prostitutes].' And I thought something has gone awry. This is not me, you know, I disagree!"
But when she stepped up to counter the sexist commercial norm with "Your Revolution", the FCC declared her work was offensive to "the community norm". In its order forcing a radio station to pay $7000 in fines for playing Jones' song, the FCC maintained that "The rap song 'Your Revolution' contains unmistakable patently offensive sexual references... [T]he sexual references appear to be designed to pander and shock."
To determine what's offensive, the FCC concentrated on the depiction of "sexual or excretory organs or activities" and the song's alleghed "risk to children". But why the focus on sex and shit? And why is being "offensive", that is, unpleasant and insulting, about misogyny im popular music necessarily be a bad thing for kids and the community when misogynist views pervade the popular music that is regularly broadcast by commercial radio stations?
Other artists like Kid Rock have won commercial success easily and faced only minor battles with the FCC with such ditties as "Fuck U Blind", which includes the "inoffensive" lines as:
"I'm super fly bitch
I'm not that guy bitch
I'll fuck u blind leave you face down in the ditch
Thought you'd get rich straight fuckin with the player
I'm the pimp of the nation yeah the pussy surveyor hey...
"I like that long hair swingin in them Calvin Klines
I pull them young, start fuckin with their virgin minds
I don't give a fuck about your poppa or your mother
I'll walk up on your ass and bitch slap your brother say
I'll fuck u blind bitch
.
"I'll fuck u blind bitch
I'll fuck u blind till you just can't see no more."
While the FCC sought to shield young people from feminist Sarah Jones, MTV serves up Kid Rock and Limp Biskit music videos starring the US's favourite porn stars (Its very common for male pop stars in the US to invest in the pornography industry).
Maria Voukelatos
From Green Left Weekly, September 1, 2004.
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