Censorship

8 Pages 1882 Words

was generated and sustained by the youth of the power culture without the blessing of their parents. In 1956, Time magazine described rock and roll as “jungle,” “juvenile delinquency,” and “Hitler mass meetings” (McWilliams 3). The 1960s were full of dramatic censorship controversies. All society seemed to be thrown into turmoil. According to Garry on page xvi, the censorship crusades of today are being waged by the generation that opposed the censorship of the sixties. The most futile censorship attempts occurred in the sixties and seventies. The new generation of youth rebelled against a social censorship of untraditional values, alternative lifestyles, and radical ideas. The continued attempts to censor and control rock and roll lyrics and artistic expressions merely produced more hate of traditional values (6).
Adult America denounced rock as “the devil’s music”, full of messages about sex, drugs, perversion, Communism, Atheism, miscegenation, and criminal activities (McWilliams 12). Examples of such songs are those of the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and even the Beatles (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”). Besides creating public outrage, the new rock music separated youth from their parents and threatened what was considered normalcy. Shocking to many adults was not just the startling sexual rock lyrics, but also the performer’s suggestive stage manner, double entendre phrases, and guttural noises. In the late fifties, when “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets became the teenage anthem, many adults ...