A (very) short look at moral panic and the PMRC

The media play an instrumental role in shaping public perception of groups and through transmission of mass information are instrumental in apportioning blame for moral decay on subcultures. Every generation has a subculture that inspires fear and concern among a society unprepared for change. These groups range from witches in the 1700s, Jazz artists in the 1920s, hippies in the 1960s and mods, rockers, and punks in the 60s and 70s, and in the 1980s onwards, metal music became a source of mass public outrage. In addition, the media requires spokespeople who are deemed morally and socially honourable to spread fear, and often, disinformation about the affected group. Mass media generated hysteria helped place metal music and its fans under the glare of conservative policy makers, parents, and commentators with unsubstantiated claims of the music inciting crime and corrupting the innocent. This essay discusses how media creates moral panic and how metal music became the target of concerned parents whose fears about these new harbingers of debauchery they formed a powerful lobby group. The essay seeks to chart the history of this lobby group and their role in music censorship through the creation of moral panic.

Moral panic was popularised as a term after the British media sensationalised events in Clacton, England in 1964 surrounding the congregation of Mods and Rockers. (Cohen, 2011) Stanley Cohen first published his seminal work on the media’s role in Folk Devils and Moral Panics in 1972 to respond to fears over a new breed of folk devils, Mods and Rockers (Cohen, 2011). The term “folk devils” refers to figures constructed by the media as figureheads of the panic, categorized into seven groups, in this case, young working-class males acting as a suitable victim, or soft target for mediated sensationalism (Cohen,2017). Furthermore, Ben and Yehuda (1994)) recall Cohen’s assertion that the reaction of media and law enforcement are disproportionate to the event and the ensuing stereotyping of the folk devils involved creates increased fears and hostility that would unlikely exist in other, more sedate settings with conventional figures.

The rise of metal music from the 1970s and its mediated connections to the devil and deviant lifestyles, was enough to raise a moral panic in the 1980s. According to Ben and Yehuda (1994), moral panics require behaviour to be classified as deviant with traits recognised as unredeemable. Metal musicians and their long-haired acolytes had the perfect ingredients for creating moral panic as the media reported on increasingly sinister deviant behaviours. In 1987, Tipper Gore, wife of senator Al Gore, released a book warning parents about the evils of Heavy Metal, “Raising PG Kids in an X-rated World,”  with a chapter devoted to the sinister and violent side of the genre, before forming a group of concerned parents: Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and lobbying Senate to pass legislation to ban the devil’s music (Wright, 2000) Her claims included drug use, violence, sexual deviancy and satanism, and owing to her status and the media’s commitment to sensationalism   the PMRC soon had the support of congress whose attention was sparked when she inferred that children were at risk from obscene lyrics (Gay and Lynwiler, 2000).

The PMRC campaign was bolstered when they released a list of offensive lyrics and offensive artists. Her first target was Prince’s album Purple Rain in 1984 after she unwittingly exposed her 11 year old daughter to raunchy lyrics of the song “Darling Nikki,” which suggested Nicki was masturbating in a hotel lobby (Avery, 2020: 31-32) Tipper soon garnered support for what she deemed the “filthy fifteen,” a list of songs classified according to their presumed harm: X for sexual content, V denoted violence, D/A signalled drug and alcohol references and O was key for Occult themes (Jorgensen, 2021). Metal’s mediated imagery of devil worship, sex, drugs, and loose women made their songs a soft target for Tipper and her moral crusaders. The media attention Tipper’s connections afforded gave her group crucial presence, with Tipper appearing at industry functions, and her pleas for congress to act against “porn rock” soon bore fruit (Jorgensen, 2021). Additionally, MTV was associated with the rise in teen pregnancies, a view seen by some as a “monkey see, monkey do” response and without conclusive evidence (Gordon, 1989, in Hall and Sevigny, 2019).

Metal featured in eight of the “filthy” fifteen songs, including Mercyful Fate and Twisted Sister,. The PMRC stating the lurid imagery of heavy metal could corrupt youth at the 1985 senate hearing, with Twisted Sister’s Dee Snyder famously taking the stand against nonsensical censorship, offering that his lyrics were more about self-expression than hedonism (Hall and Savigny, 2019). Tipper and the PMRC bolstered their campaign for stringent music labelling by insinuating the metal was a form of dark religion with false prophets aiming to corrupt innocent minds and ultimately taking their lives (Anderson, 2020), Writing an editorial for the New York Times, Tipper Gore rallied her troops, calling for a bi-partisan approach and claiming legitimate fears for the safety of American children (Belcik, 2012).

Concerned correspondents were eager to applaud the PMRC’s stance. The Washington Post (1985), defended the moves to introduce parental advisory labels, referring to the lyrics, ‘drifting up like smoke’ and infecting the minds of young people. However, despite widespread approval from conservative groups, the parental advisory stickers had deleteriou

s effect for the PMRC, often increasing publicity and demand for banned music. The New York Times reported that the actions of the PMRC increased publicity of Ice T’s Cop Killer, which sold one hundred thousand copies in one month (Fontenot and Harris, 2010). In 1985, a satirical film on the PMRC, Black Roses, imagined a world where Tipper’s fears manifested, and young girls indoctrinated into Satanic worship and lewd sexual acts after attending a metal concert (Konecny, 2013). Referring to Cohen’s (2019) assertion that moral panics have short life as the public readdresses attention on a new folk devil or more serious concern, the panic surrounding offensive metal music has diminished. Lynxwiler and Gay (2000) discovered the media campaigns were not significant enough to create lasting concerns and most parents found no correlation between listening to metal music and destructive behaviours.

This essay discussed the moral panic surrounding metal music in the 1980s. The primary focus was the United States and the efforts of the Parents Music Resource Centre to enforce censorship on what they deemed music damaging to the moral fabric of society. First, this essay briefly referred to the birth of moral panics and how the media contributes to the cultivation of folk devils. For the purposes of this essay, the Parents Music Resource Centre’s censorship campaign and media coverage was addressed.. After analysing the effectiveness of the cultivation of the moral panic, certain scholars assessed that the hysteria generated by the moral panic was unsustainable. This essay concurs with this assertion that, although there were concerted attempts to create moral panic, the crusades of the PMRC caused only marginal moral panic, now a milestone in cultural history rather than a success for the moral elite. Perhaps the greatest gift Tipper and her cronies bestowed upon music fans was the image of Dee Snyder in the courtroom, and for that I tip my lid to the housewife who thought she could defeat artistic freedom.

References

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Goode, E., & Ben-Yehuda, N. (1994). Moral panics: Culture, politics, and social construction. Annual Review of Sociology, 20(1), 149-171. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.20.080194.001053

Goodman, E. (1985, September 14). Rock ratings and... Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/09/14/rock-ratings-and/334c648e-b1f4-4026-a774-c1b8b0

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Lynxwiler, J., & Gay, D. (2000). Moral boundaries and deviant music: Public attitudes toward heavy metal and rap. Deviant Behavior, 21(1), 63-85. https://doi.org/10.1080/016396200266388

Wright, R. (2000). ‘I'd sell you suicide’: Pop music and moral panic in the age of Marilyn Manson. Popular Music, 19(3), 365-385. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000000222