Sound and Fury Signifying What?

If you were listening to politicians, you’d think this was the year Americans finally had enough of gory, raunchy entertainment.

With outspoken culture crusader Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) ascending to the Democratic presidential ticket and Republican-led Senate hearings on the marketing of adult content to minors, the call for a clean-up echoed on both sides of the political aisle--a sure sign that it is now a centrist crowd-pleaser.

But there was a different reaction in the aisles of record stores. There, puckish Detroit rapper Eminem was all the rage with his comically perverse and graphic accounts of murder, incest, sexual degradation and drug sprees. Unlike most albums designed so blatantly to shock, this was no fringe success--it was No. 1 on the U.S. charts for seven consecutive weeks, broke single-week sales records and was hailed as a watershed effort by many music critics.

These two conflicting choruses delivered a mixed message to entertainment industry leaders in the year 2000. Opinion polls and campaign speeches tell them the American public desperately wants them to clean up their act; but if that’s true, their own ledgers show that the public isn’t purchasing what it preaches.

“I think the tensions are real, that there is a genuine clash about culture right now,” says Danny Goldberg, chief of Artemis Records and president of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “There’s a lot of people that make popular culture popular and there’s a lot of their neighbors who really don’t like it.”

That’s nothing new, of course. In the music world, for instance, there is always a new edgy artist who excites fans and horrifies their parents. Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Prince, Marilyn Manson, now Eminem.

And it was quite the year for the rapper, who was born Marshall Mathers. He was reviled in print by Billboard magazine and labeled the worst force in music by Time. He was indicted on criminal charges after some scuffles, got in public feuds with squeaky-clean pop stars, earned the wrath of activist groups for his songs’ treatment of gays and women, and prompted some free speech activists to publicly question their own limits.

Some say he is an artist following the grand tradition of pushing the envelope. Others say he’s going through the envelope with a chain saw like the one listeners hear him fictionally use, on his wife, in one of his songs. That gory rap was all the harder to listen to after his wife in real life tried to slash her wrists this year.

To Goldberg, the furor over Eminem and Hollywood content is more about the people arguing than it is about artists. The real sides in this clash are generational. The entertainment under discussion is bought by young people; voters tend to be older.

“You have people of both parties who disagree about many other issues that join together to attack and bash popular culture, especially teenage culture,” Goldberg says. “It’s practically an election-year tradition now.”

But to many of this year’s most vocal critics of Hollywood, the youth in the audience is the whole point.

They say Hollywood has to answer not just for churning out adult-themed material, but also for calculating ways to hawk it to younger and younger consumers.

Eminem’s music, films such as “Scary Movie” and video games all wed the graphic sensibility of slasher films with a ribald, Mad magazine mind-set tailored for young teens and adolescents. That suggests to entertainment industry critics that Hollywood is putting training wheels on its raunchiest vehicles.

A scathing report by the Federal Trade Commission in September criticized the film, music and video-game industries for marketing violent or risque content to youngsters via ads during cartoon television shows and in the four-color pages of comic books. The FTC’s study found that 80% of R-rated films and 70% of video games with “mature” ratings target kids younger than 17. The study also noted that marketing programs put kids as young as 10 in cinema seats to preview films that eventually received R ratings.

The follow-up hearings on Capitol Hill were a major embarrassment for Hollywood and prompted a flurry of concessions and episodes of supposed soul-searching by studio powers. Leaders of the largest studios pledged they would put more detailed explanations of R ratings in newspaper ads, and on Web sites and videocassette boxes, and ban trailers for R-rated films before family movies, along with several other moves.

The studio coalition did not unanimously agree, however, to a blanket ban on ads in television shows where more than 35% of the audience is under 17, and that sticking point may keep the issue alive in 2001.

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The music industry, meanwhile, escaped the FTC hearings more or less unscathed--not because of the content of its product, but because of a markedly different approach to marketing. Instead of buying television ads, pop music is hyped by radio, a separate and regulated industry. And unlike films, albums aren’t rated with a tiered, age-specific system that invites criticism.

While the FTC report and congressional hearings were a sharp jolt for the entertainment world, the vice presidential bid of Lieberman was more of an ongoing chill.

Lieberman has been an adamant critic of pop culture excess for years, and that was considered one of the core reasons for his addition to a ticket trying to separate itself from any perception of scandal and immorality.

For the liberal-leaning ranks of Hollywood, however, the tapping of Lieberman and the entertainment-bashing speeches at the Democratic convention--right in their own backyard--left them somewhat queasy.

There was also the fact that Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, in the 1980s co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that took on the music industry over these same issues.

Now in the fray are activists such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a fervent critic of Hollywood who convened the hearings that brought studio chiefs to Capitol Hill. McCain made it clear that he does not plan to drop the matter.

“I will continue to work with the entertainment industry to substantially enhance and enforce voluntary codes of conduct,” McCain said. “This requires an expressed commitment on the part of all [entertainment companies] not to target children with advertising for restricted products, a commitment to provide more information to parents about violent content . . . and aggressive enforcement . . . to ensure children are not able to purchase such products without parental consent.”

It’s not clear how effective McCain and others will be. Gore and Lieberman’s loss reduced the odds the cause will be championed from the White House. And FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky said his agency could not follow up the congressional hearings with any action toward Hollywood because of “significant legal limitations” and “substantial and unsettled constitutional questions.”

That was the decision expected by Hollywood powers and their attorneys, and it was more fodder for the belief that much of the year’s political furor was campaign huffing and puffing. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, says any bruises suffered by Hollywood are fading.

“The passions have cooled,” Valenti says. “There was a lot of vexation as a result of what many in Hollywood and I thought was untoward criticism of us. And there was some political pandering going on, and I think we recognize that, but I think those emotions have softened now.”

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The year ahead? Movie exhibitors are expected to be scrutinized by the Senate Commerce Committee for their practices on keeping youngsters out of R-rated films, but Valenti says flatly that he thinks the matter is winding down.

He points to the economic power of film, music, video games and the other copyright industries, which account for $457 billion, or 5%, of the country’s gross domestic product. Technology and a global economy will raise those stakes higher, he says.

Still, there are other voices rising besides the familiar Beltway foes.

Earlier this month, a collective of major health care organizations, including the American Medical Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, released a study that cited television, film, music, video games and the Internet as direct contributors to youth violence in America.

That opinion (along with the conclusion that access to guns and the erosion of the family unit are also major factors) is hardly new, echoing similar studies released in recent years by social service, education and law enforcement advocacy groups. But the study and an ensuing press conference did mark a rare showing by the powerful medical community in the content debate, and may signal there will be other fires to put out for the entertainment world.

Like many American parents, Art Alexakis, lead singer of Everclear, has conflicting feelings on the coarseness of youth entertainment and efforts to police it. The father of an 8-year-old daughter says he loathes much of today’s briskly selling “thug culture,” but he sees a bigger problem: rampant absentee parenting.

“A lot of 14-year-olds right now are goons, and they’re being raised to be goons because their parents let culture raise their kids,” Alexakis says. “I can’t understand how people cannot do the things necessary to be part of their kids’ lives.”

Two of Everclear’s biggest hits, “Father of Mine” and “Wonderful,” explore broken-home themes, so its no surprise that songwriter Alexakis is sensitive to that issue. But as an artist, he says, he cannot abide any talk of protective censorship or new restraints on free speech. “And to be honest, I don’t believe there will be any,” he says. “It’s just politicians talking and then they forget about it after the election.”

But as a parent, does Alexakis feel any pressure to censor himself, considering his band’s following includes many younger fans? “I can’t wear that hat when I’m writing a record, I really can’t,” Alexakis says. “I just have to write the records that feel good to me.”

That’s why the band’s fifth album, “Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time for a Bad Time,” was released this year with a parental advisory warning on it for explicit lyrics, the first time the band’s work has been stickered. Alexakis said he had no second thoughts about the language in “All F----- Up,” a song that offers an anatomy of a harrowing panic attack, but he also doesn’t view the warning label as a negative.

“I don’t have a problem with the sticker, I never have,” he says. “As a parent, it’s there to give you information about what’s inside. It’s not censorship. . . . What would I say to a parent that asks me if their kid should listen to my album? I’d tell them to listen to it themselves and talk about it with their child. That’s what I’m going to do. But the sticker shouldn’t be the only thing they’re thinking about.”

The explicit lyric warning, a measure that was established in the wake of Tipper Gore’s ‘80s crusade, has an ironic impact--many fans see it as an asset, a stamp of street credibility that promises raw rap or the hardest metal inside.

Still, even as Eminem and others feed youth’s hunger for edgy material, the most robust sellers among the youth market remain the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, ‘N Sync and other makers of shiny, happy pop. And, Valenti points out, the most bankable movies are rated G or PG. Through mid-December, only three of the year’s 10 top-grossing films were rated-R: “Gladiator,” “Scary Movie” and “Erin Brockovich.”

Goldberg says culture will continue to evolve and that politicians will have very little impact on its direction. He is confident that the 1st Amendment and the public’s general skepticism of government will prevent any direct action on content, but he expects the rhetoric to continue. The spotlight that was turned on in 2000 may even intensify, he says, but he doubts it will enlighten anyone on either side.

“The problem is, if you’re a record company, do you revolve your business around the people who hate popular culture or the people who love it?” Goldberg asks.

“The mind-sets are completely different. What the entertainment business is about is passionate minorities, and politics is about lukewarm majorities.”