Wanna Be a Steader!

MEDIA: That was Then, This is Now

Saw this at www.pluggedin.com and thought you would be interested.

Blessings from Ohio, Kim Wolf<><

Entertainment has undergone a major revolution in the last century. Before that time, our culture’s recreation pastimes included the opera, the ballet, the theater and the symphony. All that changed in 1899 when Eastman Kodak introduced cellulose-based film. In 1906, radio that transmitted voices and music rather than just dots and dashes came on the scene. The entertainment revolution picked up even more momentum in 1939 with the introduction of the television set. So rather than taking a live performance on tour, entertainers had three dazzling options for recording and distributing their message to an ever-growing audience. Thankfully, the early years of the new media produced art that was relatively benign, drawing families together around the radio console or television set, or providing the exciting opportunity for an outing to the movies.

Fast forward to today. The entertainment media’s preoccupation with sex, violence and profanity would have been unthinkable in the minds of their early pioneers. Even if computer generated graphics, advanced special effects and digitized audio had been available back then to carry the messages so explicitly, public sentiment would not have embraced music that glamorizes rape, murder and drugs, or much of what shows at the local movie theater. Nor would MTV, The Playboy Channel, Showtime and even a lot of major network programming have made the grade.

Though it can’t explain our current wallow in the cultural muck, a bit of music trivia at least demonstrates the extent of our fall. In 1967, when The Rolling Stones performed The Ed Sullivan Show, they were asked to change the lyrics of their hit, “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to a much tamer “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.” While they resented the change, they performed it as Sullivan requested. Why? Because society viewed songs about casual sex as—dare we say it?—wrong. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Casual sex is not just accepted; in many cases it’s expected. And through entertainment, it’s even become a “spectator sport.”

For a broader view, take a look at how these hit songs reveal moral erosion in pop music’s romantic relationships: