Alternative Sex

On TV, wholesome families of the past, the Cleavers and Bradys and Huxtables, have given way to dysfunctional families in hit shows like "The Sopranos" and "Desperate Housewives."

Video games such as "Grand Theft Auto" offer endless hours of amusement for teens who like to pretend they are gang lords stealing cars or shooting policemen.

Megastar rappers like Jay Z, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, who by their own admission have worked as pimps, hustlers and drug dealers, now make fortunes spreading a musical gospel that glorifies the thug life. Get rich or die trying, they say.

Our pop culture is a mirror of our society. It's an easy step from glorifying antisocial behavior in our entertainment media to tolerating it and letting it take root in our community. Make-believe mayhem translates smoothly to real-life mayhem.

"The violence we see in movies and hear in our music helps perpetuate the violence that permeates our society," says the Rev. Reginald Beamon, a San Bernardino community activist and a leader of Mynesha's Circle, a coalition for reform named after Mynesha Crenshaw, an 11-year-old San Bernardino girl who died in an apparent gang-related shooting Nov. 13.

"Movie violence, TV violence, those are bad enough, but I think the violence in music now is even worse," he says. "Because of how we're spiritually made, music speaks to our soul in a special way. We walk with a rhythm, we act with a rhythm. Music is part of us. It's on the inside. And what we put in our body is what we get out. If we put violence in, we get violence out."

Beamon is himself a former Compton gang member and music industry player. He once managed and worked with rap performers like Ice T, Eazy-E and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

"Rap music is just getting more and more violent. That's a big reason I got out of that whole thing, because of the violence. It was getting worse and worse," Beamon says.

Art always has depicted violence. Mankind's earliest cave paintings show scenes of bloodshed. But most experts agree that today's mixture of entertainment and violence represents a toxic brew of unprecedented volume and proportion.

How did we come to this? One argument is that pop culture took a fateful turn some 30 years ago, in the 1970s, and continues down that road to this day.

If the '60s were all about idealism, the '70s were about disillusionment. In the '60s, people felt confident in their power to take action and make a difference. They believed that social ills could be remedied through collective effort. People organized, marched and demonstrated in support of myriad movements, including peace, free speech, student rights, civil rights, black power and brown power.

But idealism took a beating in the '70s. In 1970, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of Vietnam War protesters at Kent State, killing four college students and wounding nine. The 1973 oil crisis crippled American consumers and provoked dark speculation about collusion between government and big business interests. In 1973 and '74, Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon resigned in separate scandals.

The national mood turned pessimistic. Activism turned to skepticism. A spirit of community interest was replaced by a spirit of brooding self-interest. Novelist Tom Wolfe would call the 1970s the "Me Decade."

The dour mood was reflected in the pop culture. Pop music gave way to punk. Best-selling books of the decade included titles like "Winning Through Intimidation" and "Looking Out for No. 1." Television turned acerbic even sitcoms had a caustic edge, as seen in the likes of "All in the Family" and "Maude." On the big screen, so-called "disaster" movies became national favorites, along with ultra-violent films like "The Godfather," "Taxi Driver" and "A Clockwork Orange."

The most popular film of the decade, "Star Wars" (1977), was first regarded as light-hearted escapist fare, a reaction against the prevailing dark mood of the nation. But the evolution of the "Star Wars" franchise proved to be telling in another way.

By the time the six-part "Star Wars" saga reached its conclusion, in 2005, Darth Vader had stolen the spotlight completely, taking full ownership of the centerpiece role.

A Rolling Stone cover story last summer, timed to coincide with the release of the final "Star Wars" installment, was titled "The Cult of Darth Vader." The murderous monster, originally a supporting player, had become not only the greatest movie villain of all time, but a treasured pop culture icon.

"People like villains because they're powerful and they don't worry about the rules," "Star Wars" creator and director George Lucas told Rolling Stone.

These days, villains also have another edge. They can thrive in a culture where traditional heroes have failed, and anti-heroes are embraced as an alternative.

"We are experiencing today in our country a crisis of character," Charles W. Colson told Harvard Business School students in a speech reprinted in the Fall 2005 issue of Christian Ethics Today.

Colson, a former aide to President Nixon who went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, says America has been shocked in the past quarter-century by the downfall of many individuals in positions of authority and trust. He pointed not only to Nixon, but to other political leaders like the Keating Five, a group of U.S. senators implicated in a national savings-and-loan scandal, and Marion Berry, who was mayor of the District of Columbia when he was arrested on narcotics charges.

Religious leaders such as TV evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, not to mention a long list of Catholic priests, have been disgraced by sex scandals, Colson says. And baseball great Pete Rose, ruined in a gambling and perjury scandal, leads a long list of tarnished sports heroes.

The loss of legitimate role models during the last three decades has set America adrift, says Colson, a reborn Christian who today is chairman of Prison Fellowship Ministries. "The reason we have the most terrible crime problem in the world is simple: We've lost our moral consensus."

Traditional heroes have faltered, and anti-heroes have emerged to fill the vacuum, especially in our pop culture. Among the most dramatic examples are rap stars, who have their own intriguing link to the '70s.

The disco dance craze of that era came and went quickly, but not without portentous ramifications. A variant of disco, spawned in its shadow, has not only continued to thrive, but has become today's pop culture goliath.

"The white folks had disco, and that was their dance, so then the black people had their hip-hop and that was their dance," rap star and actor Ice-T (Tracy Marrow) told The Sun. "But there was a big difference. Disco went away, just like that, but hip-hop is still here. It's everywhere. It ain't ever goin' away."

Most young blacks and Latinos of the mid-'70s lacked the money and access to join the white throngs that crowded urban clubs where disco was king. Undaunted, they invented an alternative called the park jam, or street jam. First in the South Bronx of New York, then in other cities, crowds would gather in a park or cul-de-sac, break open the base of a public street light, and splice wires to power up a turntable and speakers. It was party time.

Pirating the electricity was part of the fun, says Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite), one of the pioneers of hip-hop who helped chronicle its development in the 2004 VH1 documentary "And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop."

"It was the aspect of the park jams smashing open the base of the street lights and plugging into the city's power. It was like, yeah, where you gonna get the power? So the fact we were kind of TAKING the power was hot. The attitude was, basically, it was us against them."

The revelers, many times numbering in the thousands, also found other ways to celebrate their "otherness" from the disco world, the white world.

Graffiti, so reviled by the establishment, was embraced by hip-hop culture. Tagging was a way to advertise an event, mark a venue and extol the bragging rights of a particular neighborhood and the "homeys" who lived there.

"It was a response to these kids being marginalized," says Michael Holman, creator of the documentary "Graffiti Rock." "This was their way of saying, 'We aren't nobodies. We're somebodies.' You bomb your name on a train, and that train is going to go all over the city. That's what it's all about: 'Look at me.' "

The music and dancing at park jams also took edgy forms. People danced on grass and pavement instead of parquet dance floors. In time, a distinctive way of dancing evolved that seemed to mimic street fighting. Dancers, either alone or in rival pairs, would drop to the ground, writhing and whirling, as a crowd gathered to watch and cheer. The dancers were called B-Boys, and their moves were called break dancing.

Most distinctive of all was the music at park jams. Revelers followed the lead of a black DJ playing black music, instead of a white DJ playing ABBA or the Bee Gees. In time, the black DJs developed a signature method of "sampling" sounds and snippets from other songs and blending them to make new songs.

In a way, then, the park jams used stolen power to play stolen sounds. And DJs disguised their identities by using inventive aliases, like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash. But something else was happening that would become the unique invention of the park jam scene. The DJs became more and more flamboyant, and they instigated more and more interaction with the crowd, exhorting dancers with shouted commands, cues and rhymes. They were becoming performers, not just disc jockeys, and they were inventing a brand new kind of music: Rap.

Older forms of black music, including gospel, jazz and rhythm and blues, had long before been co-opted into mainstream music. With rap, blacks once again had a music they could call their own. As P. Diddy (Sean Combs) would later put it, with defiant glee, at a music awards show: "We got the microphone now."

Despite its rough edges, hip-hop was first seen, like disco, as a form of escapism, a mostly harmless outlet for channeling energy and aggression. Competitive dancing was better than street fighting, after all.

The Black Power and Brown Power movements of the '60s had largely dissipated in the '70s, falling victim to disappointment, apathy and infighting.

"You had all these kids with all this energy, organization, and with guns, who had nothing better to do," says Cheo Hodari Coker, a chronicler of hip-hop and author of the book "Unbelievable: The Life, Death and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G."

Hip-hop became more reflective of actual ghetto and barrio life. It started tackling subjects like poverty, slum housing, gangbanging, crime and drugs. It became more antagonistic and confrontational.

"Don't push me, because I'm already close to the edge" was the refrain of a 1982 hit, "The Message," by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

The crack cocaine epidemic of the '80s, which made millionaires out of a few pushers but left whole communities enslaved and impoverished, also had an insidious impact on rap music, says Bill Stephney, founder of StepSun Records and co-creator of the group Public Enemy.

"This changes completely the nature of the music," he says of cocaine. "Rappers start to reflect the crack trade, the violence surrounding the crack trade, the materialism surrounding the crack trade. So what had been a culture designed to minimize violence in the black community put your knives down, put your guns down, we're going to rhyme against each other now becomes a culture that reflects a violence unforeseen in the black community."

This new kind of rap was so different, it picked up a new name: Gangsta rap. One of its first stars was L.A. rapper Ice T, who remembers, "I was on the streets, hustling, doing all kinds of illegal activity, pimping, robbing, and my friends were like, 'Write about THAT, man,' and that was, like, the invention of gangsta rap."

Ice-T's first hit, "6 'n the Mornin'," was a diatribe against the Los Angeles Police Department and its chief at the time, Daryl Gates, legendary in the black community for ordering pre-dawn raids on suspected crack houses and gang hideouts.

West Coast hip-hop, centered in L.A., emerged during the '80s as a major new force, and was perceived as more radical and gang-influenced than its East Coast counterpart.

The L.A. group N.W.A. fired a shot heard 'round the hip-hop world with their 1988 album "Straight Out of Compton," a raw depiction of Southern California gang life. One song, "F--- Tha Police," earned official censure by the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies.

Rick Rubin, founder of Def Jam Records, says, "With N.W.A., it was the first time there were a lot of guns around, guys getting strapped to go onstage. We didn't have that before N.W.A."

In the '90s, hip-hop became even more radicalized, especially after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles in March 1991 and the widespread rioting that erupted when a jury acquitted the police officers accused in the beating.

West Coast hip-hop produced a host of major new stars, including Public Enemy, Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus) and Tupac Shakur (Lesane Parish Crooks), who aggrandized the "thug life" of the ghetto and barrio. Shakur, in fact, had those words tattooed in large script across his stomach.

"We've never had black male celebrities like these before," says Nelson George, author of the book "Hip Hop America." "We've had bad, bad dudes, but those bad dudes were not projected into everyone's home on a daily basis with their shirts off, their muscles glistening and big money in their pockets. We ain't had that in people's living rooms in Iowa."

Even the performers have expressed surprise at the attention lavished upon them, and the position of influence they have achieved, as hip-hop has continued to extend its reach. Ice-T says, "When I started making my gangster rap, they said, 'You can't curse on records! Are you crazy?' But f--- that, that's how I'm livin', man, and it was just embraced by so many. Wow, there's a lot of bad little kids out there, you dig?"

In the early '90s, gangsta had established itself as rap's dominant form. West Coast rap music was outselling East Coast rap music three-to-one. Coincidentally or not, homicide rates were setting records in cities throughout Southern California, gangsta rap's birthplace. In 1992, Los Angeles had 1,092 homicides, San Bernardino 84 both all-time highs.

As if alarmed by the prospect of losing their competitive edge, East Coast rappers tried to respond with music that was just as tough as West Coast gangsta rap. The Notorious B.I.G. or "Biggie" (Christopher Wallace) sang the praises of thug life with lyrics like "I get mine the fast way, the ski-mask way." His first CD was titled "Ready to Die" (1994). His second, "Life After Death," contained the hit "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Kills You."

A rivalry between East Coast record label Bad Boy and West Coast label Death Row Records reached its apotheosis in a personal, public feud between their respective stars, Biggie and Tupac Shakur. The feud reached a horrifying flash point when Tupac was shot dead in Las Vegas in September 1996, and Biggie was shot dead in Los Angeles in March 1997.

Both coasts held their breath, but a feared hip-hop Armageddon didn't come to pass. In fact, arguably there has been a mellowing of sorts in the hip-hop world, at least among its first generation of stars.

Many of these individuals are now mainstream celebrities. Queen Latifah (Dana Owens) is an Academy Award-nominated actress. Will Smith is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. Other rap artists also have parlayed their fame into big-screen careers, including Ice Cube (Oshea Jackson), LL Cool J (James Todd Smith) and Ludacris (Christopher Bridges).

Ice T plays a cop, ironically enough, on TV's "Law and Order: SVU." Snoop Dogg is an in-demand schmoozer on the TV talk show circuit. Chuck D (Carlton Ridenhour) lectures on college campuses. P. Diddy promotes voter registration through his "Vote or Die" organization.

Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) is a business tycoon who runs record labels, clothing lines, nightclubs and a vodka company. He even owns a share of the New Jersey Nets basketball team.

Lil' Kim (Kimberly Jones) is in prison, convicted of perjury after lying to investigators about a 2001 shooting in New York. Harlem rapper Cam'ron (Cameron Giles) is recovering from a gunshot wound he received in October on a Washington street. Eminem (Marshall Mathers) recently remarried ex-wife Kim Mathers, who evidently has forgiven him for writing songs about murdering her. 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson), a former drug dealer who has survived multiple shootings, still celebrates the gangster life in songs like "Get Rich or Die Trying."

Recent stories of a public feud between 50 Cent, who is from New York, and Compton rapper The Game (Jayceon Taylor) have stirred unpleasant memories of the Biggie-Tupac tragedy. In February 2005, a member of The Game's entourage was shot in the leg on a New York street.

The hip-hop juggernaut continues unimpeded, however. Hip-hop not only dominates the pop culture of America's minority communities, it has become pervasive in the nation's mainstream culture.

Hip-hop's stars, like artists of every kind and every era before them, argue that it is their job to hold up a mirror to society and that the violent themes and imagery of their art are accurate and necessary.

But perhaps because hip-hop has become so potent and influential a force in early 21st century America, many voices are being raised against it, saying that it does more than chronicle violence, but also glorifies and perpetuates it.

"Rappers are always saying they want to keep it real, but the reality is that rap music is perpetuating the violence in our culture," says Beamon, the San Bernardino community activist.

The minister believes rap stars and their labels should be held accountable. "We need to start demanding that the record companies be more responsible. We can say to them: You keep causing the problem, so now you better become part of the solution.

"I can guarantee you, if some other Fortune 500 company was out there causing this kind of havoc in the community, society would rise up against it, and that company would be shut down tomorrow."

The big money in hip-hop culture could go toward helping society, instead of harming it, Beamon believes. "Music companies make a ton of money. They make millions of dollars off gangsta rap. They could put some of that money back into the community, to help the community, to build social programs, to inspire the next generation of kids to rise up and escape from poverty and violence."

"The murder epidemic that is destroying our cities," she says, can largely be blamed on the "glorification of violence in U.S. films, television, and popular music."

Society must take a stand, King says. She has called for stronger warning labels, a stricter rating system and selective consumer boycotts against purveyors of violent entertainment.

"We have to become more active about confronting the culture of violence that permeates U.S. media. We have to find new ways of encouraging and challenging them to sponsor art and entertainment that celebrate peace and love and create a culture of nonviolence."

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