Response Paper

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Response Paper

Kelly Liszewski, in her position paper, Music Censorship, starts by telling a story about her childhood and experience with music. Being naive and young, she did not know the meaning of the catchy lyrics she heard. This saw her parents reprimand her for using foul language. Providing this personal experience in her paper offers evidence for her argument that music can harm its audiences, especially the youth. She supports the idea of censoring music but also recognizes that it is an artistic expression, which everyone has a right to access. To this regard, she suggests that the Federal Communications Commission should be involved in censoring the words used when it came to expressing ones ideas.

This highlights that artists can use better language in expressing the same ideas, which means censorship should not be about the ideas brought forward. Rather, it should be about how such ideas are expressed, in ways that do not harm the audience. From this point, it is clear that she supports the idea of free speech with decency. By providing an example of Eminem’s lyrics, she clearly expresses her point to show that the choice of words matters the most. The song she cites has raised controversy because of the words used, which portrays it in a negative way. Although being negative about something is not an issue, presenting it in a way that harms others is not appropriate.

In addition, the paper talks about the justification for censoring music. It provides evidence that some music genres, especially those with hardcore language, are associated with certain violent behaviors observed in the youth. If music can influence the youth to engage in violent behavior expressed by the lyrics, censoring would be appropriate to protect the society. Therefore, as much as the constitution protects free speech, it does not intend to let harm come to the people. This means that music should be censored to protect the audiences from harm, especially the youth who are most affected.

In conclusion, I agree with her opinion that censorship should be about limiting obscene and indecent words that can cause harm. The advantage of this opinion is that it does not limit freedom of expression. Instead, it advocates for expressing ideas in a way that protects the audiences from harm. This paper gains much of its strength from the evidence used to support the arguments.