RAISING PG KIDS IN AN X-RATED SOCIETY
But before I get into all of that, let me share this appreciation for Prince that was posted by Nick Gillespie on reason.com as part of the best commentary on the PMRC that I have been able to find online. It is quite a bit more barbed than the mainstream accolades that you and I have been reading of late.
“No wonder he scared the living s--t out of ultra-squares such as Al [Gore] and Tipper Gore. In 1985, the future vice president and planet-saver and his wife were, as Tipper’s 1987 best-selling anti-rock, anti-Satanism, anti-sex manifesto put it, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Tipper headed up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), whose sacred document was a list of songs it called ‘The Filthy Fifteen’. These were songs that glorified sex, drugs, Satan, and masturbation and could pervert your kid — or even lead them to commit suicide. At number one on the list was Prince’s ‘Darling Nikki’, from his massive soundtrack record to Purple Rain (jeezus, wasn’t that movie a revelation? Of what exactly, I can’t remember; but finally, it seemed, a rock star had truly delivered on the genius we all wanted to see emerge from pop music into film).”
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I heard the story I believe on CBS Sunday Morning; my own seething anger at the time about the whole PMRC charade had been blunted somewhat by seeing the tongue-in-cheek 2002 movie that VH1 broadcast called Warning: Parental Advisory. (As an aside, I have no children of my own, and that might have affected how I feel about it all, though I very much doubt it). It seems that little Karenna Gore (11 years old at the time) was a Prince fan, and Mom and Dad bought her the Purple Rain soundtrack album. And then the track “Darling Nikki” came on; in the context of the film, the Prince character was engaging in what might be called “slut-shaming” today:
I knew a girl named Nikki I guess you could say she was a sex fiend I met her in a hotel lobby Masturbating with a magazine
This was also a central story in their best-selling book, appearing on the third page of Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society: “The song went on and on, in a similar manner. I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics embarrassed both of us. At first, I was stunned — then I got mad!”
(June 2016)
