Raging Against The Machine
Imagine the world without music. Or imagine a world where we are told what to play, what to sing and even what we may listen to in the privacy of our own homes. That world already exists. A very politically charged band known as Rage Against Machine is one band out of thousands that has run into problems with the explicit nature of their music. To make a statement, Rage Against The Machine (RATM) had hung two upside-down American flags from their amps. Seconds before they took the stage to perform "Bulls on Parade," Saturday Night Live (SNL) and NBC sent stagehands in to pull the flags down. The inverted flags, says Tom Morello (Rage's guitarist), represented "our contention that American democracy is inverted when what passes for democracy is an electoral choice between two representatives of the privileged class. America's freedom of expression is inverted when you're free to say anything you want to say until it upsets a corporate sponsor. Finally, this was our way of expressing our opinion of the show's host, Steve Forbes." RATM first attempted to hang the flags during a pre-telecast rehearsal, SNL's producers "demanded that we take the flags down," says Morello. "They said the sponsors wou
I suggested that we end music censorship indefinitely. There are several things that need to be done in order to end censorship. One would be to inform the people of their 1st Amendment Rights. I know quite a few people are unsure about what they can and cannot do when it comes to the 1st Amendment. Informing the people of their rights is an important step that must be taken. Writing letters, signing petitions, and speaking with our government officials will also help. I also suggest that we create an organization that promotes anti-censorship. The organization should have information about our 1st Amendment rights and music censorship available for people everywhere. We should also continue with the attempts that are ongoing as of right now. This solution will be beneficial for the United States of America because it will give us the freedom that was taken away from us when the government began to censor. Most importantly, it will take away the restricted boundaries that keep artists from creating the art they chose to create. There have been several attempts at dealing with censorship. People have created web sites and petitions that are anti-censorship such as www.theroc.org and www.damnmusiccensorship.com (Turman). Artists have also tried to speak out against censorship. Can you believe that Rage Against The Machine stood on stage at Lollapalooza naked, just letting the guitars and bass feed back, with the letters P.M.R.C. written in big, black letters, one on each band member's chest. In addition they had black electrical tape over their mouths. The point of this strange and daring display was that if you don't confront censorship, then the music of confrontational artists is going to
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Approximate Word count = 1160
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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