Industrializing Nationalist Dissent: Music Censorship, 2 Live Crew, and the Politics of Performance at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards

Abstract

This article considers how performances at the Video Music Awards (VMAs) have been central to constructing the cultural brand of MTV by fusing debates around nationalism, anticensorship, and consumer activism. When the rap group 2 Live Crew performed their single “Banned in the U.S.A.” during the 1990 VMAs telecast, they drew from their experience of being arrested in Florida for violating the state’s obscenity standards, thus drawing attention to how rap music was being censored on racial grounds. This public relations effort reflected a response to earlier pressure campaigns by consumer and political activist groups like the Parents Music Resource Center. 2 Live Crew’s criticism of censorship was not unique, as other moments in the telecast represented how MTV’s partnerships with music trade organizations, and the later Rock the Vote campaign, worked to industrialize performances of dissent as part of a broader method of handling political regulatory threats over obscenity in music. Through these performances of nationalist dissent, the 1990 VMAs telecast can thus be read as a form of “industrial reflexivity” that worked to brand the consumption of MTV’s youth culture as a legitimate citizenship practice.