Gangsta Rap: Crime Essay, Research Paper

Gangsta Rap: Crime

The cultural majority in America is up in arms over the rising levels of

violence and horrific images that have seeped into popular entertainment.

Movies, television, and music have always been controversial, but even they can

cross the line between poor taste and immorality. Entertainment corporations

and record labels don’t even blink, when told of the excessive torture or

satanic lyrics found in material. Producers and directors continue to push the

envelop on what is ?done in good taste.?

Gangsta rap is one of the current problems of society. Popular music

for teens has always been controversial, or at least in conflict with middle

class attitudes. Teen music has always been under scrutiny by those who are

older. Parents, whether from the 60’s or 90’s, never welcome the sounds of the

younger generation. Unfortunately this fact does not comfort someone when

listening to Snoop Doggy Dog or Ice Cube talk of sex, violence, beatings, and

suicide.

Hollywood, the country’s Mecca for TV and movies, is another

contaminated disaster area. This area has given us hero’s such as Clint

Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart, and Bruce Willis. Once filmmakers would evoke sexual

interests through eye contact or a touch of the leg. Today cinematographers

resort to graphic sexual acts and horrific beatings. A poll by Newsweek stated

that sexual moderation and fidelity are normal for both married people and for

those who live together. In contrast, 7 out of 8 televised sexual encounters

involve extramarital sex (Newsweek, 1994). This trend is startling when

compared to the fact that children spend more time watching television than they

spend in school. According to the American Psychological Association, a typical

child sees 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on TV before graduating

from elementary school (Nation, 1994).

The results of how television, specifically sex and violence, affect

children is not completely known. Although psychologists state, ?Aggressive

children like to watch violent TV shows, and it appears that watching violent TV

shows makes children more aggressive; this is presumably due to their exposure

to aggressive models? (Eron, 1987). One of Hollywood’s more remarkable aspects,

is that it has produced approximately 400 pictures that convey traditional

integrity and the mainstream virtues of love, loyalty, honor, duty, and

compassion. Consider movies such as Forrest Gump, Little Women, and The Lion

King. In contrast, a movie such as Natural Born Killers was intended to imitate

the link between violence and media attention in our culture.

In the long run, individuals will make decisions about what they will

buy, read, or see. Some will lean towards the vulgar and the pornographic. The

American society has some sense of this. They may be irritated or outraged by

pop culture, but the polls state that the principal courses of violence and

other national problems lie beyond the entertainment industry (Congressional

Quarterly Weekly Report, 1995). Parents are already aware that children are

affected by the general decline of public morality, family breakdown, lack of

religion, and poor parenting.

The price we pay for our cultural freedom is the movies and songs that

influence people to act out their fantasies of grandeur. I would rather the

chaos of the free market than the government telling us what or what not to see

and hear. Our culture would be definitely poorer without those who bring us

daily news, weather, and sports. What would happen if government began to

censor our music, movies, and literature? Children would grow-up never knowing

the internal conflicts faced by Huck Finn, the violent nature of the ?Wild West?

or the songs that built America ?Their blood has wash’d out their foul

footstep’s pollution,? may sound like a excerpt from a Snoop Dog song, It is

actually part of the of the Star Spangled Banner.