Review Commentary—Framing Violence: Censorship and Race in American Culture

If proof were needed to substantiate the charge that malevolent casuistry had succeeded in institutionalizing and protecting racism as a fundamental American right, one need only note the current fervor aroused by the music and the videos of several contemporary black performers. Two-Live Crew, Prince, Michael Jackson, Ice-T, Sister Souljah, Sir Mix-a-Lot-the list of censured artists whose offerings stand accused of posing a clear-and-present danger to the narrow perspective of White America's cosmic vision is long, and growing longer. The sledgehammer hypocrisy revealed in condemning the violence of black art while simultaneously applauding it in the more "legitimate" representations of white performers such as Arnold Shwartzenegger, good-oldboy rock groups, and a host of country-music singers for whom illegal, immoral, and rebellious acts constitute a veritable leitmotif has been duly noted. Indeed, a few have insightfully pointed out that the legitimization of neo-Nazi intolerance on prime time network television by the likes of Pat Buchanan constitutes a moral obscenity more shocking than anything Ice-T could even envision, much less articulate. The obvious hypocrisy of affording conservative ideologues a public forum to deliver a fervent call-to-arms in the name of cultural purity while banning musical fantasies that advocate destruction on a much smaller scale suggests a depravity of alarming dimensions. There is, however, an even more subversive tendency behind the growing practice of many Americans to discriminate openly and unapologetically against those whose color is different but whose message is the same: the impulse to dismiss black reality as fictional hyperbole while denouncing the art that represents it as a palpable threat to established order. Apparently, it is not so much the message that offends as it is color of the messenger who happens to be communicating it. The fact is, the representation of violence against blacks has always enjoyed widespread tolerance, no matter how bloody the spectacle appears; violence by blacks, on the other hand, can be depicted only if promptly subdued by the forces of authority. To go beyond these established boundaries is to transgress the very laws of a patriarchal elite both willing and able to qualify absolutes in the struggle to retain power. It is, then, no great surprise to find that those who reacted with outrage at the final segment of Jackson's "Black or White" video (fictionalizing the spasmodic rage of the black performer) watched the reality of Rodney King's real suffering with only mild uneasiness. More predictable still, the Jackson video was promptly censored and removed from the sight of mainstream America; the barbarity of Rodney King's reality, on the other hand, enjoyed indiscriminate air play. It was, we were told, just an inoffensive and misunderstood artifact of popular culture. The brutality we saw was an illusion, nothing more than a technological sleight-of-hand that caused us to believe our eyes rather than our hearts, hearts which reassure us that law enforcement officers would never resort to the lawless tactics of those they bring to justice. The brutal treatment of African-Americans has long been a staple in the history of American entertainment. However, the official sanction of the representation of real (as opposed to dramatized) aggression towards African-Americans dates from April 29, 1992. On that day, an all-white jury found an army of white police officers not guilty of using excessive force while subduing a single, unarmed black motorist who was pulled over for a speeding violation. The verdict, shocking enough in and of itself, is perhaps less revolting than the lascivious pleasure articulated by one anonymous juror who agreed to act as a spokesperson for the group in an interview with Ted Koppell on the ABC news program Nightline. The most troubling aspect of the juror's comments was not his/her deliberate and formal embrace of a prejudicial viewpoint in defiance of indisputable ocular evidence to the contrary. …