Cartoon Land is Over!

Do you remember how you used to love cartoons when you were a child? You would sit attentively on the couch with your eyes glued to the television set for hours as if the program was mesmerizing you. When you would finish, you wondered if batman would come and rescue you in real life if you were to ever get in trouble. You also wondered what would happen if you jumped off of a cliff holding an umbrella. As children, it’s fun fantasizing about unrealistic things such as flying superheroes and using umbrellas as aero-floatation devices. When we grow up and learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality, cartoons are no longer entertaining to us. However, we indulge in a new type of fantasy; a fantasy that has been changing the way we socialize, dress, think, and act for as long as I can remember. This fantasy is modern day music.

“Car full of choppers and everybody quiet. Car full of goons and everybody certified.”

These are lyrics from the song Goons Lurkin’ by rapper Plies. For those of you that don’t know, a “goon” in the urban community is considered to be a street drug runner or in lamest terms, a thug. The lyrics above are implying that there is a car full of gangsters who are all carrying guns. They are “lurking”, meaning that they are about to rob someone, perform a drive-by, or carry out any other illegal activity.

Young people tend to embrace the violent and sexually exploitative nature that most rap music entails by dressing, acting, and speaking like their favorite entertainers. Notice that I said entertainers, because that’s what rappers do; they entertain. The purpose of entertainers is to amuse and please their audience. Just like actors, the characters that rappers portray are more than likely not who they really are or want to be. But for the sake of pleasing their audience, entertainers put on their best performance to make the act appear as real as possible. They conduct staged performances that appear real and have fake drama with other celebrities in order to gain more media attention. Most urban youngsters are extremely vulnerable to these performances and are pressured to act out the characters of their favorite hip hop idles. Their vulnerability becomes a problem when they actually start to believe the things they see and hear in entertainment media, just like with the cartoons we used to believe in as children.

When will we grow up and realize that it is all make believe? Not everyone can be a celebrity. Not everyone will be able to drop out of high school because they were discovered by some big time producer in a community talent show. When will men realize that they’ll never find a virtuous lady as long as they have a “thug” mentality and exploits females? When will people realize that they actually can go to jail for distributing drugs and carrying illegal weapons? When will people stop living in cartoon land?

While you all are trying to emulate Plies by disrespecting women and throwing all of your hard earned McDonald's money at the club calling yourselves a “goon”, your idle is sitting on a four-year college degree. That’s right. Rapper Plies actually graduated from the University of South Florida. Plies has a back-up plan. What’s yours?

~Briana "Breezy" McIntosh