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In the Cell of Censorship: Frankenchrist By Sam Costello There aren't many bands that get arrested for obscenity anymore, but there's a long, illustrious tradition: Lenny Bruce (well, he wasn't a band, but he certainly deserves mention), The Doors, 2Live Crew, Ice T, Bobby Brown, LL Cool J (really. Can you believe it?), and the Dead Kennedys, to name a few. When you get arrested for obscenity, you're going to have some company in the cell. But you're pretty much on your own when you're not only arrested by both the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments simultaneously, and when your work is one of the central pieces of evidence at Congressional hearings instigated by the wife of a 2000 presidential candidate. In that breezy cell was where the Dead Kennedys found themselves in 1986. Their album, "Frankenchrist," had been distributed with noted fantasy artist H.R. Giger's "Landscape XX" as an insert. The picture (in which the landscape is made up of graphic, but somewhat obscured, illustrated, repeated penetration), along with the album, was deemed obscene. This led to the DK's frontman (also president of their record label, Alternative Tentacles), Jello Biafra being arrested on April 15, 1986. Charged with "Distribution of 'harmful' matter to Minors," Biafra went to trial, but was cleared after a hung jury in 1987. The fury that precipitated this had been whipped up through the actions of the PMRC, the Parent's Music Resource Center, founded and led by Tipper Gore; the people who brought us the "Explicit Lyrics" stickers. (Ta-da! Do you think this happened when she was going through her depression? Maybe if she had just gotten on some mood-controlling drugs at the time, this pesky little censorship thing wouldn't have happened...) The PMRC went after "smut rock," and thanks to the connections of the people they were sleeping with (okay, their husbands), they were able to force Senate hearings. At these hearings, Gore railed against the DKs, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osborne, and helped ruin the career of--of all people--John Denver, who was blacklisted for years due to his being one of the only record industry people with enough backbone to stand up to the witchhunt. And you see where that got him.... So, is this an obscene record? No, I don't think so. I've heard things 100 times worse since. In fact, given the content of the record, it's almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that this was anything but a political prosecution. There's no violence, no sex, and hardly any profanity. Just some searingly incisive critiques of America in the 1980s. "We're sorry But you're no longer needed Or wanted, or even cared about here "Machines can do a better job than you and this is what you get for asking questions." Those are the opening lines of "Frankenchrist," from the song "Soup is Good Food." An anti-automation paean, "Soup is Good Food" dissects the status of human labor in the multinational corporation brilliantly, and is perhaps more relevant than ever now (except that it's not machines taking the jobs now, it's brutally oppressed third world sweatshop workers). The album continues on in the same apologetically revolutionary vein for another nine songs. Some are blazingly forgettable ("Hellnation," "A Growing Boy Needs his Lunch," "Chicken Farm," "At My Job"), but others, despite their lower profile than such Kennedys' classics as "California Uber Alles" and "Holiday in Cambodia," are more affecting and painful. "This Could be Anywhere" recounts the struggles of a family recently moved to the suburbs, who is finding that the madness they thought they had left to the poor and non-white in the central cities has followed them out: "Suburbia is a war zone now Sprouting the kind of gangs We thought we'd left behind." These people are not able to sit idly by, however, and are more than willing to take decisive action to maintain "their way of life": "My Dad's a vigilante now He's bringing home these weird-ass friends like the guy..... Who shows off his submachine gun to his 16-year-old daughter's friends"
Biafra's voice, although never great to begin with, takes on a hellishly urgent and pleading tone as he sings these words, making clear that, not only could this be anywhere, but that terrible things will happen there soon (do we need anymore school shootings to know that he was right?). "Jock-O-Rama" takes on the high school caste system and the perplexing ability of the legal system to look the other way when "good kids" get in trouble. "Goons of Hazard" illuminates some of the social control uses of the underemployed, angry, aimless, violent meatheads prevalent everywhere ("We'll pay you as a str ike breaker/or maybe you'll make Tac squad or the LAPD"). "Hi, I'm your video DJ I always talk like I'm wigged out on quaaludes I wear a satin baseball jacket everywhere I go.
"My job is to help destroy what's left of your imagination by feeding you endless doses of sugar-coated mindless garbage." So begins "MTV Get Off the Air," and not much has changed since. "MTV" flays the skin off the artistic/rebellious pretensions of mass produced culture, far before that was the "in" thing. MTV, after all, had barely been on the air five years, when the DKs knew that it sucked. They were right then, and they're right now. The albums' capstone, the 6+ minute "Stars and Stripes of Corruption," is not a terribly melodic song. Nor are any of the others on this album. In fact, not much the Kennedys ever did could be described as melodic, but that was an intentional, anticommercial statement. "Frankenchrist" is light years beyond the unintelligible hardcore of "In God We Trust, Inc." or "Bedtime for Democracy," though, and this comes through on "Stars and Stripes." In this song, Biafra uses a trip to Washington as an excuse for a lengthy diatribe about many of central issues of the 1980s: U.S. involvement in Central America, the teaching and exporting of violence, greed, the erosion of civil rights, and homelessness. Musically, it's not a great song, but it lyrics bear both attention and consideration, and that, after all, is the point of the DK's music. "Frankenchrist" is probably not the Dead Kennedys' best album, that honor would have to be bestowed on either their debut "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables," or their swan song "Give me Convenience or Give me Death." It is, however, perhaps their most important album, and also one imbued with terrific historical importance. It shows a side of the 1980s few of us remember, and see rarely: the awful, horrible side, where no one cares for anyone, where slogans matter more than ideas or people, and feeling good is the ultimate goal. As "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" ends, Biafra's voice is left to echo the album's final question, final challenge: "If we don't find a way to do better than this, who will?" I don't have an answer. Do you? Sam Costello is a senior media studies major at Ithaca College. |
