Either bangin' or lovin', you're still getting screwed

If you've listened to KC 101 lately (admit it, you have), you've probably heard Shaggy's hit single played (as is the station's wont) over and over. Except—surprise!—instead of saying "bangin' on the bathroom floor," Shaggy now says "making love on the bathroom floor." Who stole the original lyrics from the Shaggy song? It wasn't me. Nope, it was the parents who called in to complain.

Parents complained that their little Johnny was just too pure to be running around saying a word like "banging." Forget that the original lyrics could be misinterpreted by a little kid as a description of tantrumic fist-poundings on gleaming white tile, whereas "making love" has only one meaning.

COURTESY MTV.COM

And this is just the start of the inconsistencies. These are parents who didn't complain about "Shoop" or "She Bangs" or "The Thong Song." Parents who now think their inconsistent standards should hold back the rest of the world. Parents who place their own interests above changing the dial. Parents who might as well have surgery performed on Johnny's ears so he won't ever hear anything objectionable.

But this abominable act was not accomplished without the complicity of Shaggy himself. I can picture his thoughts now: "Shaggy, you're fucked (and not like that time in the bathroom). People aren't playing your song. So, you can go in and lay down a new audio track, or you can lose a few bucks as a result of America's hypocrisy...well, duh. Get back in the studio! You don't have any integrity anyway—the whole song's about you not owning up to your mistakes."

The last line of defense in this whole matter was the radio station. It had the option of not playing the edited version; it was under no legal obligation. The Federal Communications Commission couldn't care less about Shaggy's banging, as long as he didn't use profane words or glorify drug use. But heaven forbid that KC 101 lose or outrage one of its listeners, and so it succumbed and played the ridiculous-sounding edit of the song because of a handful of complaints.

I called Jimi Spears, musical director at KC 101, and he assured me that "the most important thing is it never goes off beat." Of course! Lyrics? What lyrics? He added a real gem: "When we get enough complaints on something, in this case it was such a goofy fun song, everyone knows what Shaggy's saying, we might as well change it." A "goofy fun song?" Who are we kidding here? It's a song about infidelity that pretty clearly demeans women and dispenses with morality, with or without the edit. It just happens to be catchy, danceable, and a little cathartic.

Spears acknowledges the difficulty of his position. "It's a job you take home with you, unfortunately," he said. "Did you do the right thing?" Let me make it easy for you, Jimi. You didn't. He defends himself by pointing out that Z-100, the largest station in America, plays the censored version, as if that somehow makes it okay. Nope, it doesn't. It just makes it a nationwide trend. Shaggy's censored on MTV, and he'll probably be similarly emasculated on Saturday Night Live when he appears Sat., Feb. 17.

It's the same trend that makes the word "joint" be dubbed over, as if that somehow eliminated the drug reference in Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How it Feels." It's the same trend that takes out "fucked" before "up" in Eminem's "My Name Is." (One radio station accidentally played the wrong version and was fined $7,000, Spears told me. It's all clear to me now—numerous life-endangering traffic violations garner smaller fines than the comparatively harmless use of profanity on the radio.) It's the same trend that also takes "fuck" out of Nine Inch Nails' "Closer," while leaving in "penetration" and "violation."

Samantha Stevens, another KC 101 DJ, meanwhile, reveals the depth of her thought on the issue in an online discussion board: "It's the context that it is used [in] that bothers me most. It's very disrespectful. Yes, other songs may use the same terminology, but not in a blatently [sic] offensive way." Oh! I see. What's offensive about the song is the word "banging," and not the part where he laughs about being caught cheating? Phew, I guess it's all better now.

Or not. The behavior of the complaining parents, Shaggy, and KC 101 are all signs of a sick society obsessed with the superficial trappings of morality, even as it loses its moral foundations. Don't get me wrong—I'm all for an amoral society. But nothing could be worse than this hypocritical in-between, where people complain about words instead of meanings, where people refuse to change themselves and refuse to trust the strength of themselves or others. Instead, they turn to others to make their moral decisions for them. It's pretty clear that someone's getting banged this Valentine's Day, and that someone is the American public. 

Kushal Dave is a senior editor of the Herald.  

Photo of Shaggy courtesy MTV.com.

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