The FTC raps the music industry’s knuckles

So the government has decided that the music industry markets defiantly rebellious rock and rap to teenagers. To quote Claude Rains in ”Casablanca,” I’m shocked, SHOCKED.

Actually, theFederal Trade Commission report that was released on Tuesday was a followup to a report issued last September on the ways the entertainment industry sells its wares to the under 18 crowd. That report, titled ”Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children,” found grave fault with the film industry, the music business, and video game companies for aggressively advertising their ”adult” wares (respectively, R rated movies, CDs with ”Parental Warning” stickers, and Mature rated games) on TV shows, in magazines, and before movies aimed at younger audiences.

The respective industries bowed their heads, shuffled their feet, and promised to not be so, well, avid about turning the youth of America upside down and shaking the change from its pockets. And this followup report finds that the film studios and game manufacturers have made some progress, as they see it.

It’s the recording industry that takes its lumps this time out: In the seven week period studied, ”all five major recording companies placed advertising for explicit content music on television programs and in magazines with substantial under 17 audiences… Furthermore, ads for explicit content labeled music usually did not indicate that the recording was stickered with a parental advisory label.”

In particular, the report finds, advertisements for such groups as Blink 182, DMX, Ja Rule, Rage Against the Machine, Wu-Tang Clan, and the ”Dracula 2000” soundtrack ran during such shows as MTV’s ”Total Request Live” and UPN’s ”WWF Smackdown.”

The upshot has been immediate: The Recording Industry Association of America, as well as the record labels, are all making ”we’re really sorry” noises, while Senator Joseph Lieberman (D – Connecticut) is scheduled to introduce a bill today that flatly outlaws such marketing practices. And everybody is ignoring the fundamental hypocrisy of both the governmental handwringing as well as the labels’ hollow promises to do better.

FACT: It makes no sense to threaten legislation when you have no clue about the music itself. God forbid that folks in Washington should sit down and spin CDs by the abovenamed groups (they’d have to pry them from their kids’ hands first). If they did, they might discover that Rage Against the Machine’s leftist metal attack is as different from the Wu-tang Clan’s kung fu / rap / horror movie mythologizing as Blink 182’s cheery punk / pop is different from Crazy Town’s lightweight rap rock. They might even find that some of these musicians are — horrors! — intelligent people who actively hope to prompt listeners to think. For Pete’s sake, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello went to Harvard.

FACT: No matter how hard the recording industry tries to polish its halo, it is selling these records to under 18s because THAT’S WHO THE AUDIENCE IS. Ever since Elvis Presley first shimmied into Sam Phillips’ recording studio, rock & roll has been predicated on rebellion, leering sexuality, and, above all, driving grownups crazy. That goes double for modern offshoots like rap, metal, punk, and their endless hybrids: They’re power fantasies with greatest appeal to the powerless, and, ‘fess up, who has less power than somebody who has to borrow Mom’s car to go to their job shaking salt on French fries? Believe me, once you have truly attained maturity, you will no longer need or want to listen to Blink 182 (until you bore your own kids silly with it 20 years from now, that is).

Is it right to ban the marketing of violent entertainment to children? Sure — as long as you don’t want to tackle the impossible task of distinguishing between ”violent stupid” and ”violent artistic,” and presuming you think kids have no minds of their own.

Me, I’d argue that while airing an ad for ”Hannibal” right before ”Blue’s Clues” is pretty stupid, a 10 year old who’s watching ”WWF Smackdown” has already had a fairly sizable dent kicked into the violence part of his psyche and in fact might even benefit from a little Rage Against the Machine.

In other words, you’re darn right there’s a problem with violence in our popular culture — and it goes a lot deeper than the top 40. (Has anybody even considered that horror movies and hardcore rap are symptoms rather than the disease?) And, trust me, Senator Joe, the more you try to legislate against it, the more alluring it’ll become to the exact audience you want to keep it away from.