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The Parents' Music Resource Center: from information to censorship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2008

Claude Chastagner
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Extract

My purpose in this paper is to recount the history of the Parents' Music Resource Center, an American organisation founded in 1985 whose main concern has been to denounce the obscenity and violence of rock music on the grounds that it is partly responsible for the numerous ills that plague the United States. The PMRC claimed that it only wished to inform the public but my suggestion here is that the actions of the organisation resulted in a de facto censorship of popular music. I shall accordingly describe the various steps of the process that led from information to censorship as well as probe the deeper reasons that may have motivated the action of the Center.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , May 1999 , pp. 179 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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