Reported in today’s Globe and Mail comes news that the 1980s song Money for Nothing by the British rock band Dire Straits has now been deemed unacceptable for play on Canadian radio, which has really set me thinking.
The report goes - In a ruling released Wednesday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says the song contravenes the human rights clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.
Yet it’s ok for a catholic school board official to liken gay students to to Nazis! !
A listener to radio station CHOZ-FM in St. John's complained last year that the song includes the word “faggot” in its lyrics and is discriminatory to gays.
The broadcaster argued that the song had been played countless times since its release decades ago and has won music industry awards.
A CBSC panel concluded that the word “faggot,” even if once acceptable, has evolved to become unacceptable in most circumstances.
I’m shocked that no one on the CBSC panel seems to have taken the song and it’s use of the word in context, to pull it out of the song just for the word it’s self could be deemed offensive on its own seems completely wrong and well, so called politically correctness gone insane.
I hate the word fagg*t, it is offensive in the extreme, to me it’s like the ‘C**t word, it’s upsetting, hateful and hurtful. I even have problems when it’s used within the community, by gay people to other gay people, partly because I feel how can we ever complain about the heterosexual people using it toward us if we perpetuate the belief that it’s OK by using it ourselves to ourselves and others! However, I hold my tongue, a swallow my annoyance, they use it for shock tactics and perhaps they feel they are trying to reclaim the word, making it less hurtful, less offensive, like the gay rights movements of the 70’s tried to do with queer!
Yet, when used in context, in say literature or music the word can be a powerful tool to indicate the time and the prejudices of an era, of a hateful person depicted in such. In Money For Nothing the viewpoint is a slightly homophobic unhappy individual bemoaning in true 80’s style everything to do with the rock stars of the day. It’s not exactly pleasing, but it fits. Another thing – “you person attracted to the same sex” “You Homosexualist” just doesn’t scan as well with the rest of the lyrics.
Is this ban on a 20 odd year old tune going to be the start of a new revolution in Canada and elsewhere, are we now going to have to go back and pull out all the potentially hurtful words used over the years and edit them out, as not to possibly offend just one touchy person? Will Lady Chatterley now be fully clothed and just have friends, will Winne The Pooh have Pooh and the game Pooh Sticks edited out because of it sounds like poo and its against health and safety regulations. Are the Canadian’s now going around every home, art gallery, library armed with censored stickers to cover over any possible word, picture, nipple, penis, or whatever because the change in use or acceptance of a word has changed and become offensive?
Playing the song unedited, with the f word intact is. perhaps a good indication of how far we’ve come in understanding what is and is not acceptable.
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