Amanda Palmer gets banned in the UK

I love Amanda Palmer.  She is my one true musical love.  I think oasis is hilarious personally and I'm in the UK!  The video's just the icing on the cake, really.  

www.myspace.com/stopstartstall - acousticy music type stuff.

I saw this video a little while ago around the controversy of it being banned, and totall loved. Reminded me of a 'lite' version of the feminist riot-grrl music of the 90s; powerful women with social messages.

This is not offensive in the slightest, in fact it celebrates women's strength. Yes, for some women the choice of an abortion is a huge deal, emotional and conflicted. However, for lots of women out there it's not. It's a choice they make as responsible individuals and responsible possibly future parents about when the right time is to have a child, and to not destroy one's life over the fate of a small bunch of clumped cells, and they don't regret it; are in fact quite pleased that they did so.

But, of course, to hear a woman celebrate her reproductive autonomy and not want to become a mother as soon as possible, challenging the myth and lie that being a mother is naturally the ultimate for a woman, is offensive to many people. That a woman might be sexually active and enjoying it and taking responsibility for her body; well they can't have that.

And of course the disgusting anti-choice 'pro-life' nutjobs that want to impose their belief systems and moral imaginings upon other people don't want people to know that abortion and reproductive autonomy are GOOD things. That women might think it's a GOOD thing that abortion is available to us, that we can make our own choices about our bodies, is just a frightful scary thought to them, as their imaginary little worlds come falling down around their ears.

So, I say good on you, Amanda Palmer! And yes, the irony of this song being banned is just brilliant :)

Sarah 

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http://kiwi-grrl.livejournal.com/

I absolutely love this video. Anybody who gets the satire in this video most likely loves it. But what about uneducated kids who don't see the satire?

I understand why it's banned. Even though Palmer meant this as a critique of our society, many artists make songs that are lyrically very similar, but who actually mean it seriously. Take Fergie and My Humps: "The boys they wanna sex me, always dancing next to me, trying to feel my hump hump". The lyrics are relatively similar to Oasis', but Fergie is actually seriously saying it's sexy - which sends out a completely different message than Oasis. Even though the TV/Radio stations are smart enough to know that the songs are in fact completely different, they don't want to send out the wrong message to their predominantly underage audience, who might not catch the difference.

If Palmer did want it aired, she should make sure that her underage audience knows she's being satirical. At the moment, I'm not sure they do.

(sidenote: thank god Alanis Morissette showed how rediculous Fergie is, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W91sqAs-_-g)

I saw her in london and she played a slower version of oasis that the radio would probably play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG1McdiEpfU

Amanda Palmer is right to say that the UK is meant to be the home of Black humour. I think the banning of her song says a lot about the current social climate in the UK. Teen pregnancy is a major problem here, as is youth binge drinking and now violent crime. Ofcourse these are not problems particular to the UK, but I believe we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

The government do not know how to handle these problems and flit back and forth between better sex education and pretending like sex doesn't exist. Truth of the matter is, sex ed in the UK is TERRIBLE (let alone gay sex ed, which Im pretty sure, still isn't allowed to be mentioned). The reception of this song probably has a lot to do with this current climate and the recent arguments over reforming the abortion law. For all of the UK's apparent liberal stance on certain issues, Im afraid to say that the country is moving to the Right. I think its safe to say that the Tories will win the next election, so expect to see more reactions like this one.

Having said all of this, I do have to say that I don't think the irony in this song and video is very clear. It's ambiguity has probably caused it extra problems because many people won't take the time to think about it. I'm not siding with the censors, but I can understand why this happened.

I heart Amanda Palmer, she's one of my favourite artists ever, thus I obviously love her style and the topics she sings about.

This song might not be for everyone and I can understand if someone were to take offense, but to ban it is ridiculous.

Besides, everyone knows that if you ban a song only more people will want to listen to it.

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Who doesn't blog these days?

well that just sucks

but seems like amanda will always have to deal with censorship.

I mean the whole "Yes Virgina" Album (dresden dolls) got censored for walmart 

video or not. the best thing ist still seeing her life

The video is very unsettling, which I'm sure she wanted to achieve.

Altough I am against censorship, I can understand why certain networks have banned it - I'd say that the majority of people that would see it would not realise it is satire. I don't think the networks were really worried about how religious people or young people would see the video, but more about offending rape victims or people that have had abortions with images that might disturb them. These are serious issues and I can see why people might get upset by this video. In the end the networks probably would have received more complaints than positive feedback and so they probably thought it wasn't worth the hassle.

Is she parodying the youth of today or people's reactions to such topics? I can't be sure. Also, is she British? All this talk of Blur and Oasis, it looks like a late-90s britpop video!

I don't think it should be banned, but I also don't think there is anything funny about rape. I realize this is only for "satire" purposes and she is trying to say you should make light of tradegy, but I still disagree.