The Article entitled “Policing Morality, (Mano Dura Stylee): The Case of Underground Rap and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-1990s” by Raquel Rivera illustrates how the policing of public morality contributes to strengthening social consensus and demonizing transgressors, as well as cementing social prejudices, power relations, and oppression structures. The article also discusses how issues of power affect or influence the definition, contestation, and enforcement of morality and social order. The Drugs and Vice Control Bureau of Puerto Rico's Police Department raided six record stores within the San Juan area in February 1995. Hundreds of Underground Rap and Reggae music’s cassettes and compact discs got confiscated by the police. The police said that the recordings of the Underground music genre violated local obscenity laws through their use of crude references to sex, as well as their incitement or stimulation of drug use and violence. The police raids brought Underground music to the public’s attention and triggered a heated debate about censorship, morality, and artistic freedom. This paper explores the article and presents the various sociological impacts represented by the article.
The Sociological Impacts Represented by the Article
According to the article, Underground was a vulgar and violent music genre, whose lyrics prominently embraced the use of terminologies relating to guns, sex, and marijuana. Such contents of Underground music made the law enforcement authorities to conclude that Underground was a component of a subculture of sexual libertines, drug use, violence, and lack of respect for others. The Underground music incited young people to get involved in violence, illicit sex, and drug use. The correlation between the Underground music and the immoral behavior of the youth created an enormous moral panic and extensive public support for the declaration of state censorship.
The Underground music’s youthful audiences raised public concerns. Young people seemed to model their behavior and characters based on the obscene lyrics of the underground music. Underground music also created a platform for the battle for safety and social order since the Underground arena got characterized by confrontations between the forces of morality (good) and immorality (evil). While one group of the youth was viewed as a potential target of the immoral influences, the other youth sector was perceived as the primary agent of insecurity and social disorder. The underground music made the youth to be viewed as occupying a delicate juncture, where compliance and order met transgression and disorder.
According to the article, the Underground music's evil image resulted from its popularization of a cultural form, created by Marginal youth, among the broader population. Since Underground was a music genre primarily created by and identified with the young people from labouring-impoverished social classes, it represented the voices of demonized people in public view or imagination. The youth accused by the police of using Underground music to spread mayhem were identified by their areas of residence, the ghetto. The youngsters from the ghettoes were, therefore, perceived to be creating a societal threat through cultural contagion.
Most people also considered the Underground music, which was a mixture of rap and dancehall reggae, as a foreign form of musical expression that threatened the integrity and value of the Puerto Rican National Culture. Therefore, Underground music was further degraded or debased in Puerto Rico for being considered a product of America’s ghetto culture, which had initially been proven as the actual source of local youth’s contagion. According to the article, the self-identification of Underground music with ghetto lawlessness and hardness was an attempt by young people to vindicate urban marginality. However, the author also argues that the self-construction of Underground music may be considered a negative celebration of the stereotypes linked to or associated with poor urban populations. Also, according to the article, Underground music's lyrics reflected the firm beliefs and attitudes of criminals and the police censorship threats were in defence of the public wellbeing and social order.
Conclusion
Underground music became a public safety issue in Puerto Rico when it was no longer limited to marginal areas, with its powers threatening the Puerto Rican national culture with contagion. The Underground music’s increasing visibility, popularity, and mass availability raised great concern among the Puerto Rican educators, parents, government authorities and activists regarding its potential implications on the youthful audience. Underground music was obscene and pornographic, and it was, thus, considered immoral and dangerous not only for the youth but the whole of Puerto Rican society. Besides, Underground music was viewed as filthy and societal degeneration that deserved censorship. It was seen as a cultural expression that eroded the bond of decency and morality upon which the Puerto Rican social order rests. Despite the Superior Court of San Juan’s dismissal of the charges filed against the businesses that sold underground music, the police raid and state censorship threat brought a significant change in Underground lyrics by creating a vastly different, more accepted Underground music content.
References
Rivera, R. (1998). Policing Morality (Mano Dura Stylee): The Case of Underground Rap and Reggae in Puerto Rico in the Mid-1990s. Grounding Underground, 111-130.
