Essay/Term paper: Gangsta rap: crime

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Movie Reviews

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.