Censorship

Visualize the world without music. Or imagine a world where people decided what to play, sing, see, and even may listen to in the privacy of our own homes, that world already exists. In more countries that you might think, musicians and composers are under danger, and that danger called “Censorship”, is growing. Day by day, many artists are censored in a variety of ways. I disagree with censorship and I will give you different examples about some artists that have been censored.
Madonna, an American recording artist and entertain, was censored on November 22 of 2006 for a crucifixion scene in “Live to Tell”. The Christian church lobbied in support of censoring Madonna because they thought that these actions were insulting God. Their decision was they still show “Live To Tell”, but used different camera angles so that Madonna isn’t seen until she gets off the cross. This case has been challenged by many religious authorities. However, really, the ban has been lifted. I think that the religious authorities were unjust with her, and they should not criticize her for that crucifixion scene because many other artists have offended God like Madonna, and no one says anything about it. I disagree with this kind of censorship because if we allow that maybe it would destroy the musical image of many artists. In my opinion, this case could have an utterly bad future effect on the freedom of regular citizens because artists can not capable to express their ideas and citizens won’t know the artist’s feelings or opinions.
Madonna’s case is a religious censorship, which has been lobbied and banned by the Christian church. However, censorship can also be political, on November 1st of 2007; Alejandro Sanz was censored by the government for performing in a state-controlled stadium in Venezuela. This happened because in 2004, he was interviewed in the radio and asked questions about Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Sanz said: “I don’t like your president. I don’t like those people from other places either, like Venezuelans who like their president.” For that expression, the government made the decision to expel him from Venezuela. However, the ban has been lifted, and Alejandro Sanz will be allowed to perform at a private concert hall in Venezuela. Obviously, I think that Alejandro Sanz shouldn’t have said that in 2004. However, taking revenge is the worst way to resolve problems so Chaves did it also bad. For that reason, I disagree with the censorship in this case.
Religious and political censorship are not the only kinds of censorship, moral cases of censorship also exist. For example, a Beatles’ photo album called “yesterday and today” was censored in June, 1966 by them because in their photo the Beatles were wearing butcher smocks draped with cuts of meat and cut up to pieces baby doll parts. They thought that their art was being “butchered”. Because of the bloody scene, the Beatles and Capitol records made the decision to design a new cover-image, called the “Trunk Cover”. The original photo never was published and was instead replaced by two other, less compromising for the Beatles, also known as “The Fab Four”. In my opinion, the Beatles were a band powerful enough to really challenge their label executives. I agree with this censorship because if they hadn’t censored themselves, another person maybe could cancel the whole production with a censorship.
Obviously, censorship is based on fear of the authorities. In my opinion, music is a free expression of the ideas, traditions, and emotions of individuals and people. It may express musicians’ hopes and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their very characteristics as a custom. There are people in the world over who are defenseless by the life of a free exchange of ideas; also, there are those who will stop at nothing to strangle them. Although I do not agree with the ideas of those artists, I will protect their sacred right to express their ideas because if no body protects them the music could disappear by the hands of the censorship.