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It’s All Happening has a feature segment entitled Banned On The Run that spotlights music that has, at some point in time and for one reason or another, been banned or restricted by the powers that claim to be, usually by declaring any airplay of the material verboten, and purging it from TV and radio playlists, as well as occasionally from store shelves.
The Self Destruct(ion) episode spotlights a work by one of the world’s biggest megastars, Michael Jackson, who wrote and recorded his song ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ a couple of years after himself being strip-searched by police in 1993. The song was denounced by The New York Times even before it’s release (how on brand of them), and was condemned by some as being ‘anti-semitic,’ a charge which Jackson strongly denied, stating stated that the lyrics were intended to convey a message of equality and anti-discrimination. He explained that the use of certain words was meant to illustrate the ugliness of prejudice and to provoke more real world public discussion about these societal issues.
Accompanying this media-manufactured controversy were the not one but two different music videos created for it by filmmaker Spike Lee, both of which generated their own controversies. The creation of two different video versions of the same song was a first for Jackson, only further highlighting the songs importance to him.
The first, and by far most widely seen and distributed version, was shot in the city of Salvador and in the favela’s of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil with the cultural group Olodum. State authorities tried to ban the production out of fear that it would put Brazil in a bad light as it was vying to host an upcoming Olympics, and deterring tourism and investment. In spite of these efforts at restriction and control the video was finished and became a global hit in both the video and music charts.
However, it was the second version of the song which really got the clampdown. Filmed in a prison, it contains real footage of police attacking African Americans (including the beating of Rodney King), the military crackdown of the protests in the Tiananmen Square, the Ku Klux Klan, war crimes, genocide, execution, martial law, and other human rights abuses.
Though the Brazilian dance version was distributed and became a worldwide hit, the ‘prison version’ was effectively shadow banned by the powers that be, rarely to actually never being played on television in most any country. Even to this day it has not even a tenth of the views on platforms such as YouTube and other digital platforms.
Hear the song as featured on ‘Banned On The Run’ on the “Self Destruct(ion)” episode of It’s All Happening
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