An Interesting Way to Attack Social Disintegration
There might be a lot in this:
Hip hop mogul 50 Cent, Universal Music Group and several of its record labels were sued on Wednesday for promoting a “gangsta lifestyle” by a 14-year-old boy who says friends of the rapper assaulted him.
The lawsuit filed by James Rosemond and his mother, Cynthia Reed, says Universal Music Group — owned by Vivendi SA — and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records, bear responsibility for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.
The lawsuit also names 50 Cent — whose real name is Curtis Jackson — Violator Management, Violator CEO Chris Lighty, Tony Yayo, a rapper and a member of 50 Cent’s G-Unit hip hop group, and Lowell Fletcher, an employee of Yayo.
All defendants declined to comment.
I imagine that the plaintif here is seeking a payday, and some lawyers are licking their chops over a hefty out-of-court settlement - but it occurs to me that those who purvey socially destructive sex and violence in our popular culture do bear at least some responsibility for the resultant social pathologies. Should not a record company, for instance, which puts out music glorifying “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll” pay a price when some of their customers take them at their word and ruin themselves via a course of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll”?
I’ve often wished I could ask some of our pop culture icons - especially those in music - if they feel any shame or remorse that their glorification of sex, drugs and violence has led countless young people into a self-destructive lifestyle, un-supported by the vast monetary resources of rock stars and music moguls, who can pay for rehab and for others to clean up their messes? Now it occurs to me that we could, in effect, place a tax on popular culture - make it help pay for the problems it helps create.
How many of us have friends and family members who went whole hog into sex and drugs because it was “cool” - and made “cool” because various pop culture heros did it (or, at least, seemed to do it) and it never appeared to cause them any problems, and is presented to the public as a heck of a lot of fun? Counting quicky among my friends and family over the past 30 years, I come up with seven who destroyed their lives at the urging of popular culture, and one of them is actually dead. True, we all have to be held responsible for our own choices in life - and these friends and family members are paying their price…in poverty, addiction and, in one case, in a coffin. And as we all have to be held responsible for our choices, shouldn’t stars and media corporations pay their price for their choices? No one was ever clamouring for gansta-rap - the music business put it out, and slickly marketed it for maximum impact on young people. They created the market for it, and then raked in the huge profits…isn’t it high time they paid a bit back? Made good some of the damage they’ve done?
What do you think?
36 comments April 10th, 2008
