Listening to: "When Will I See You Again" by Babyface
Playing in my head: "Here I Come" by Casting Crowns
*sighs* Once again, I have to wonder at people and their rationales. No matter how old I get or how many times I read headlines about artists being in trouble for a laundry list of apparently "inappropriate" uses of their creative talents, I just have to shake my head. Perhaps my ignorant American side just can't quite bend far enough to see the point of view that is given for why certain things always cause such a fuss. In a world that is supposed to be so advanced and ever evolving, I just have to wonder if people will ever really just...grow up.
There is something so ridiculous about hearing people whine and complain about seeing or hearing something they have full choice to simply not watch or see. To me, something is off center about an artist getting the law laid down on them for what really is just art. Perhaps my art background is simply getting in the way of my thinking or causing a bias, but some things are just blown out of proportion when it comes to what people create. In my short 20 years of life, I've seen the strange, the gross, the creepy, the nasty, the questionable, and even the down right wrong. Naked people, disturbing images, unconventional representations...I've seen it all if you want the truth. From movies, to books, to paintings, to sculpture. I've seen an artist draw a naked man laying bleeding with a knife through his heart on a bed of skulls and people call it a master piece. They praise and lift it high for its ingenuis representation of human form. Meanwhile I simply furrow my eyebrows, turn the other way and go find something more appeasing to my tastes.
There is nothing wrong with me not finding the painting appealing just like there is nothing wrong with the people that DO find it appealing. I'll say that certain taste are more perturbing then others, but who am I to judge? I'm not going to sit here and talk about how wrong it is for people to paint pictures of naked people or how movies have gone too far with their displays of the sexual and grotesque.
But I will say this: Songs about making love/sex do not cause teens to become morally and sexually violated. If you want to get upset about the young people being exposed to sexual and inappropriate content then track down the sex offenders, people making porn videos, and the prostitution circles. Never in my life have I seen more artists getting the slap across the face for talking about making love to people than I have in a day in age when I would say we need to be over the sex thing. It happens. People have it. It's going to continue to happen for many many years and you better be happy about it or else we're going to go extincted (surprise!).
People have been writing about making love since the stone age. BoyzIIMen sings "I'll Make Love to You" and it was one of the most loved songs of all time (one of my personal favorites too). I don't see anyone sending them hate mail. I could list hundreds of songs by artists all singing about that same old intimate experience. Just because another artist sings about the same thing in a different or more intense way, doesn't make them a sexual deviant out to corrupt little kids.It's about an emotion that most, if not all people, want to feel in their lives: love. Sex just happens to be one of the ways people experience that and express it.
And YES, there are people that go too far, so okay then: Tell them that this one is too graphic and one too many descriptive images and keep it moving. There is no need to make an example of them so that everyone is staring like they've never heard of this strange phenomenon called "sex". I've had quite enough of reading headlines about some artist getting the fifth degree from singing about getting hot and heavy with someone. And if it shows up in a performance of the song as a little taste of excitement to spice things up, you know what, if you're so offended, then either don't go or leave. No one is making you listen to it or enjoy it, but SOME people are. So go find another "painting" to gaze at and leave this one for the people who do appreciate it. My goodness you'd think we were all toddlers sometimes the way people go on and on about this stuff.
I, for one, would like to enjoy someone's creative talents as I like without having to worry if it's going to land that artist in the dog house. Let parents educate their kids about moral rightness like their supposed to and let the law handle the ones that REALLY take it too far. Making examples of minor details like they are big accomplishments is really just a sad display of man's inability to set their priorities right.
Even God's good book has a chapter on sex.
~Mochi
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