Fighting the Good Fight on the Home Front

Two weeks ago at my wedding reception, my youngest brother, who had turned 15 the day before, requested the Beastie Boys' “Fight For Your Right to Party.” For reasons that will become clear if I ever get around to writing about the reception, I couldn’t play the song for him, but what I did do was go onto Amazon last week and order as a belated birthday present for him the three Beastie Boys albums with the most widely recognized hits, like “Sabatoge.” My rationale was: he requested the one, maybe he’ll like or come to like the others; if he doesn’t like them, he can send them back and get something else.

I also had a pedagogical reason: the Beastie Boys are a lot more cosmopolitan than the groups my brother has requested in the past.* My brother, who at some point in the past year, upon being told that the people to which he was referring weren’t actually from Mexico, said “We call all the brown people Mexicans”; who made my OTHER brother, the one who actually taught in a ghetto for two years, cringe when he said “Word. My friends and I like to talk all ‘ghetto,’” at which point he made a hideous crossed-arm gesture which not only was culturally imperialist but also so inept it probably would have gotten him laughed off any dance floor not located in a high school cafeteria. Yeah. So I was thinking he could only be helped by a little infusion of punk, jazz, clever samples, Bodhisattva Vow and Free Tibet.

Yesterday, my mother called chattily to let me know the albums had arrived. One of them, she noted, had the song he wanted on it. (This is of course the misogynist jock rock classic License to Ill, which she’s perfectly happy to share a household with.) Also one of the others came with a Parental Advisory sticker so she’d confiscated it. At which point I went ballistic.

Actually, at first I was merely dismissive: Oh, whatever, mom, it’s no big deal, the album just has some swear words on it, I hadn’t even thought about it having an Explicit Lyrics warning on it. I guess I thought that when I explained that I was familiar with the album and could assure her that the Beastie Boys weren’t harmful and were in fact more often called “preachy,” she’d realize her mistake and relent. Instead, she went all High Horse or something, upholding the creed of Parental Advisory. Censorship is a hot button issue for me and I totally lost my shit. The conversation was heated and confused, with me raving about Tipper Gore and “have you read about the founding of the Explicit Lyrics sticker?”** and “I hate this culture of repression, this is exactly why students show up in my classroom and are total dumbasses” (yep, that’s an excellent way to argue with your mother), as well as reminding her that when they took away our Jane’s Addiction tape when I was in high school (“our,” because it was one of a dozen tapes jointly owned by me and my then-seventh-grade brother), they (read: dad) gave it back, recognizing our right to listen to stuff that, as my dad put it, “wasn’t art.” (Though actually? It was.)

For her part, she insisted on her absolute authority to control her son, asserted “they put those stickers on there for a REASON,” and alleged that I could not possibly understand this issue and was not allowed to talk to her about it (?) until I had a teenage son of my own, because apparently there’s something about giving birth THROUGH YOUR OWN VAGINA to a being with a penis that will override 12 years of higher education, an entire PhD program, and an MFA program to boot, making me totally change my mind about all my most passionately-held beliefs about culture.***

Here’s a highlight that brought adolescence (which existentially began for me at about age eight) screaming back to me. I tried to switch from the general question to the specific album at hand. I tried to say that the “explicit labels” too often were arbitrary because they didn’t control ideological content (I did not use the word ideological), but instead merely monitored swear words. I asked: “How is Little Brother going to be harmed by listening to a couple of swear words?” And I kept asking this question, trying to force her to answer, as she tried to wiggle out of answering by impugning my childlessness. But what she finally answered was: “You have to respect me. You are not allowed to ask me that. You are not allowed to ask why. You are not allowed to ask about the reasons for my decision.”

I mean: wow. That shit about “I am the Ultimate Authority and I do not have to engage you on the level of reason” did not work for me when I was eight, and it sure as hell doesn’t work when I am twenty-nine, and when we are in fact talking about my own little brother, who I want in my own way to protect and educate. I can recognize that what she “heard” in our conversation was not the passionate protest of an experienced college professor and a skilled cultural critic, but was instead the angry storming of a daughter who’s been raging at her to EXPLAIN YOUR RATIONALE for years. However: child being father of the man, the very fact that I was that eight year old asking her WHY explains a lot about how I got into the business of analysis, which you might see as raging EXPLAIN YOUR RATIONALE for a living.

It seems really sad that I’ve gained no ground in this war. I am sad/mad that my mother (still) views disagreement with her as “disrespect,” without recognizing that in refusing to allow me to try to offer her more or different information, she is very much not respecting MY education, abilities, learning, compassion. I am sad/mad that when pressed, I have to admit that I DO think that I know more about this issue (defined as the censorship of musical lyrics) than she does, have a broader and more ethically realized conception: it’s uncomfortable to come face to face with your own snobbishness about your education.

As I approach the age where I can actually remember my mother at my age, I understand a bit more what her life has been like. I’m heir to the anxiety and to feelings of being totally unable to deal, and it seems to me that the stance of Ultimate Authority might begin as a way of addressing these feelings. Wanting the children to feel protected, she assumes this crisp and definitive approach, and to have a precocious little kid demanding WHY all the time has got to totally strain the thin veneer of Keeping It Together that is so hard won. What’s less clear though is why she STILL relies on Ultimate Authority, talking down to my kid brother and alienating me.****

In less than three years, my little brother could possibly be drafted, sent off to maim and kill (be maimed or killed) in the name of the country my mother finally adopted as her own only after September 11 engaged her tender heartstrings. Preventing his access to lyrics like “put my dick in the mashed potatoes” is not going to change this, nor is it going to protect him from any of the various deaths that potentially await teenage boys when they get their licenses. Though perhaps giving him access to artists who use their swear words in Protest Songs will at least give him an inkling that he can THINK DIFFERENTLY about things than that small town party line goes, if he wants to.

As for the conversation about the Beastie Boys, my little brother had the last word. As I was talking to him after the argument with our mother, he said – in a delivery that bodes well for his sense of irony – “well, I’m off to watch a Rated R movie they bought for me.”




*Think: N’Sync and the lesser well remembered Boy Bands.

**"The RIAA initiated this system without providing record companies with any standards, criteria or guidelines for determining what albums should be labeled. That decision is left completely up to the companies, which have chosen to label only selected rock and rap albums and not recordings of country music, opera or musical comedy that may also contain controversial material." It's probably also worth pointing out that the album Kid Brother requested to replace Ill Communication with was something called Getting Away with Murder. It doesn't appear to bear a warning sticker, so I'm sure it's a wholesome, fun-loving record.

***In looking back on it, this was one of the most offensive points about what my mother said. Essentially she said, your book learning means nothing and I am not even willing to listen to you as you try to sketch some of the rationale for your position. On the other hand, one of the SILLIEST points was when I said dad always let me read whatever I wanted, and she said but did you read pornography? And I, thinking of Myra Breckinridge, said YES, and she said, but was it pornography ALL THE WAY THROUGH?

****Argumentative know-it-all that I am, I am considering treating HER like a rational adult who can possibly be persuaded to think differently, and sending her some lightly edited blog entries on censorship, in spite of the fact that I have a long-standing aversion to showing my parents anything I write, an aversion which may in fact stem from her long-standing habit of coming into my bedroom to read my journals and look for condoms.