1988.10.25 - Santa Cruz Sentinel - Album-Art Feud Ignites

Album-art feud ignites

By DONALD MILLER
Sentinel staff writer

SANTA CRUZ — A protest over a record album that allegedly promotes rape and violence against women heated up Monday, with accusations that a local record-store owner is “pandering rape.”

The owner, Ron Prilliman, whose Cymbaline Records has been the target of the protests, later accused protesters of engaging in “thug tactics” against him and his business.

Prilliman was upset after being told that protesters have been distributing a “gold record” [that] blames Cymbaline Records “for an exemplary record in pandering rape in our community.”

Ann Simonton — representing Media Watch, a local group that says it wants to improve the images of women and children in the media — said Monday she plans to continue aiming the protest at Cymbaline and Prilliman, who she said has shown himself to have “no moral integrity.”

What Simonton and other protesters are upset about is a painting called “Appetite for Destruction” on the best-selling album “Guns and Roses” by the rock group of the same name. The painting, a reproduction of a work by artist Robert Williams, is enclosed inside the album. It depicts a young woman whose clothes have been ripped open and who has apparently just been raped by a skeletal-looking robot. The woman’s underwear is pulled down and one of her breasts is exposed. Hovering above the entire scene is a monstrous creature.

A record company official said Monday that the painting actually is meant to represent “media rape.”

The record has been on the Billboard charts for 62 weeks and has earned more than $5 million for Guns and Roses so far. It remains the No. 2 album in the country.

More than 40 protesters gathered outside Cymbaline’s Santa Cruz store Saturday asking Prilliman to remove the album from his shelves. Several other record sellers said they had decided not to sell the record.

Prilliman refused to withdraw it.

He continued to refuse Monday, even after hearing about the protesters’ latest tactics.

“We are not going to withdraw the record,” Prilliman said. “We’re going to leave it on sale."

Prilliman said the record and the protest are an issue of “censorship.”

He also bitterly castigated the protesters for singling out Cymbaline, a store that "has actively supported the women’s movement,” he said.

“I feel our reputation has been damaged extensively. This is a very unfair attack on a community-oriented store," Prilliman said, accusing Media Watch, the group organizing the protest, of seeking a "media splash."

He said that if Media Watch representatives had come to him "quietly” asking him to remove the album, he might have considered the request. But now, after the protests and the gold record, "I can’t do it.”

Prilliman said that if protesters are “asking me to use my moral judgment in this, I’d immediately have to go pull another 50 albums off the shelf.” He said that if this protest forces him to remove a record, then another group, espousing another position or issue could do likewise if they found something offensive with record art or content. He likened the Media Watch protest to reports that fundamentalist Christians have burned albums they thought influenced by Satan.

Simonton — who gained national fame for her role in protesting the Miss California pageant — expressed little sympathy for Prilliman. She said her message with the gold “pandering rape" album is “women are raped by your First Amendment (free speech) rights.”

Simonton said that if the album art pictured a black being lynched, no one would argue that it was an issue of freedom of speech. “Even more amazing,” she said, “is that Cymbaline carries 50 of these albums.”

Simonton said the protests will continue until Prilliman removes the album. "He has his choices and so do we," Simonton said, adding that Cymbaline is being singled out because it is “well-known in the community.”

Bryn Bridenthal — a media representative with the record’s distributors, Geffen Records in Los Angeles — said the protest is misguided and uninformed.

Bridenthal said the original painting is well-known and hangs in a Chicago art museum. The artist, she said, has interpreted the work as being about “media rape of the public. It was never intended as violence against women. That's their (protesters') interpretation."

Moreover, said Bridenthal, Santa Cruz is the first place where the art has been protested.

She said that Simonton and her fellow protesters are targeting the wrong band. “I’ve worked with Guns and Roses since the beginning,” said Bridenthal. “They always treated me with respect. This was certainly never done to hurt women in any way. It was done because they liked the image."

Simonton said she only became aware of the art when she was visiting Columbia, Mo., recently and saw a teenager wearing a T-shirt with the offending image on it. Simonton said the only reason the art and record haven’t been protested elsewhere is that "people are numb" around the country concerning the issue of violence against women.

Opinion article in the same newspaper the next day (Oct. 26 1988):



Opinion
Censorship is wrong, in any form

WE’VE SAID it before and we'll say it again: Censorship has no place in America — or in Santa Cruz.

When the film, "The Last Temptation of Christ,” faced a movement to have it pulled from movies screens across America, we protested that doing so was censorship. The movie may be offensive to some, we said, but that did not mean it should be packed away in a film canister and never shown. America was built on the freedom of speech, we said, and the film makers had just as much right to show the movie as did the protesters to demonstrate against it.

We feel the same way about the recent flap over a copy of the painting “Appetite for Destruction" enclosed inside the best-selling record album "Guns and Roses” by the rock group of the same name.

Media Watch, the group protesting the selling of the album, says the artwork by painter Robert Williams promotes rape and the degradation of women. It demanded that Cym-baline Record owner Ron Prilliman pull the album from store shelves and refuse to sell it.

Prilliman disagreed, saying the demand amounted to censorship. He refused to take the albums off the shelf.

While we agree that anything that promotes rape or the degradation of women is offensive, we cannot condone censorship. It is a dangerous precedent to remove from sale an album that some claim is offensive. Where do we stop? If we pull the album, should we pull, say. the book "Lolita," for its portrayal of a man's carnal love for a young girl or the movie “Deliverance” for its scene depicting the rape of a man? Or do we become like South Africa and ban the freedom of speech that occurs in anti-apartheid protests?

We're getting into dangerous territory here, the kind of spot the United States' founders wanted to avoid when they wrote the Constitution.

We say the protesters have the right to make their point but don't have the right to demand censorship. You can't have it both ways.

We’re outraged that anyone would consider limiting the freedom of speech anywhere — and especially in Santa Cruz.