Bon's Mots

The Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” was banned from Canadian ra­dio by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), who ruled that “the song vi­o­lates the industry’s code of ethics be­cause the lyrics in­clude the word “fag­got” three times.” This comes on the heels of the re­cent san­i­tiz­ing of the Mark Twain clas­sic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I was 16 years old when “Money for Nothing” was re­leased in the sum­mer of 1985. I wasn’t a huge Dire Straits fan, but I liked the song be­cause it was catchy and the video was ground-breaking at the time. I don’t re­mem­ber much ado be­ing made about the word “fag­got” be­ing used; back then, in my high school, the word was part of the ver­nac­u­lar, of­ten thrown about as an in­sult be­tween teenage boys (a few of whom I’m sure have come out by now).

I was re­cently go­ing through my old high-school jour­nals and no­ticed that I used the term “fag” twice. It was dis­con­cert­ing, to say the least, but that was close to thirty years ago. I didn’t know bet­ter back then; I was the prod­uct of my Catholic up­bring­ing and ho­mo­pho­bic high-school en­vi­ron­ment, where ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity was con­sid­ered a sin. Guys who wore make-up (ex­cept those in new-wave or heavy-metal bands) or were even slightly less than the mas­cu­line ideal were called “fags”. (Which is ironic given that this and this were con­sid­ered ma­cho back then.) Twenty-five years have given me a per­spec­tive and an in­tel­li­gence that one can never have as a teenager.

I now un­der­stand how terms like “fag­got” can be painful to hear for some people. Over time, I’ve be­come a lit­tle sen­si­tive to songs and videos that hint at misog­y­nism. While I bop my head to Jay Z’s “99 Problems”, I cringe over the line “and a bitch ain’t one”. I strug­gled with with “Under My Thumb” by the Rolling Stones un­til I started think­ing that the lyrics don’t nec­es­sar­ily have to be about all women. Even my beloved Beatles recorded a song, “Run for Your Life”, that had the lyric “I’d rather see you dead, lit­tle girl, than to be with an­other man…” It’s a con­flict I deal with oc­cas­sion­ally. Because the al­ter­na­tive — stop lis­ten­ing to pop­u­lar mu­sic al­to­gether — is sim­ply not an op­tion for me.

What I do is put every­thing into per­spec­tive. I con­sider the con­text sur­round­ing the song. Back then, “Run For Your Life” may not have raised many eye­brows at the time - but it would cer­tainly raise a furor now. And to me that shows how far we’ve come. Also, the song is not in­dica­tive of their en­tire cre­ative out­put - the Beatles didn’t have a cat­a­logue of songs ded­i­cated to women-bashing. And lastly, the lyrics may be highly per­sonal or re­flec­tive of the writer’s ex­pe­ri­ence at the time. This same logic ap­plies to “Money For Nothing”. (It’s also in­ter­est­ing to note the et­y­mol­ogy be­hind the Dire Straits song: the lyrics are based on the com­ments of a real de­liv­ery man.)

Censorship is a slip­pery slope. You ban one song, you open the door to more. What about songs that use lit­er­ary de­vices to make a point — do we ban those be­cause some peo­ple don’t get the con­cept of irony? And how far back do we go? And when does it stop? When our air­waves are filled with non-threatening pap like Justin Bieber? “Baby, baby, baby” — God help us.

Instead of cen­sor­ing and ban­ning, let’s ed­u­cate and em­power. Music can be a pow­er­ful mir­ror - it can re­flect things in so­ci­ety we don’t nec­es­sar­ily wish to see. It may also make us un­com­fort­able. But it there’s a song that in­cites big­otry or ha­tred of a spe­cific group, let’s use that to start a dis­course, let’s use it to en­act change. Because no mat­ter how hard we try to sweep some­thing un­der a rug, it will still be there.

But the hul­la­baloo over the CBSC de­ci­sion may be moot. Who ac­tu­ally lis­tens to com­mer­cial ra­dio anymore?