When people think about things that provoke violent behaviour they often think of violent tv shows or violent movies. They often overlook the lyrics in music because they can’t see the behaviour occurring. Hearing about it isn’t as bad as seeing it, right? I couldn’t disagree more. Violence in music in my opinion causes more harm than watching it on a television. On television the majority of the time the criminal gets caught, yet songs never really have an end to the story. You don’t know if the activity occurring in the song ever came to an end. Just to clarify here’s an example.
Let’s say you’re watching criminal minds, CSI, or anything along those lines. 95% of the time the criminal gets caught. The stories complete and you know they got punished. It proves that criminal activity has a consequence. With music the story is often incomplete. For example if you read the lyrics of Smooth Criminal, Michael Jackson sings about the murder of a girl and the ending does not end with the killer being caught. Instead it paints a picture that the killer got away. I understand that it’s just a song and it’s completely fictional but others may look at it differently.
I can’t figure out why we’re allowed to publicly speak about murder in such an enthusiastic way. It’s as if we’re glorifying these acts instead of looking down on them. Taking someone’s life is not something that should be blasted into our ears, but murder isn’t the only thing artist’s sing about. Too often music speaks about drug abuse. I know everyone says the glorification of drug abuse in music is unacceptable but no one ever does anything about it, but that’s still not the worst part. There’s no ending to the story found in songs about drug abuse. They never bring up the long term effects of drug abuse nor do they mention what it’s like to be addicted to drugs.
Songs nowadays teach youth that drug abuse is fun and cool but the reality is that’s the complete opposite of the truth. There is nothing fun about becoming dependant on drugs so how is it okay for music to give us a false picture. I understand songs don’t want to mention what drugs really do to you because that will dampen the mood of the song but we are becoming too familiar with songs that teach us incorrect realities and it’s quite sickening.
I strongly believe that music is painting the wrong picture in the mind of today’s youth and if this music continues to be played repeatedly, we are more than likely going to see a spike in criminal activity.
Let’s say you’re watching criminal minds, CSI, or anything along those lines. 95% of the time the criminal gets caught. The stories complete and you know they got punished. It proves that criminal activity has a consequence. With music the story is often incomplete. For example if you read the lyrics of Smooth Criminal, Michael Jackson sings about the murder of a girl and the ending does not end with the killer being caught. Instead it paints a picture that the killer got away. I understand that it’s just a song and it’s completely fictional but others may look at it differently.
I can’t figure out why we’re allowed to publicly speak about murder in such an enthusiastic way. It’s as if we’re glorifying these acts instead of looking down on them. Taking someone’s life is not something that should be blasted into our ears, but murder isn’t the only thing artist’s sing about. Too often music speaks about drug abuse. I know everyone says the glorification of drug abuse in music is unacceptable but no one ever does anything about it, but that’s still not the worst part. There’s no ending to the story found in songs about drug abuse. They never bring up the long term effects of drug abuse nor do they mention what it’s like to be addicted to drugs.
Songs nowadays teach youth that drug abuse is fun and cool but the reality is that’s the complete opposite of the truth. There is nothing fun about becoming dependant on drugs so how is it okay for music to give us a false picture. I understand songs don’t want to mention what drugs really do to you because that will dampen the mood of the song but we are becoming too familiar with songs that teach us incorrect realities and it’s quite sickening.
I strongly believe that music is painting the wrong picture in the mind of today’s youth and if this music continues to be played repeatedly, we are more than likely going to see a spike in criminal activity.