Can a Pop Song Violate Children’s Rights?
The song “+57,” from the Colombian musicians Karol G, J Balvin, and several others, violates the rights of children, a Colombian court has ruled. The AP reports that the court has ordered the artists “to refrain from publishing music that violates the rights of children and teenagers.”
How can a song violate someone’s rights, let alone the rights of multiple people? Unless we’re talking about copyrights, it makes little sense. And no, the court isn’t saying that kids of Colombia have a collective copyright claim to “+57.”
The issue is lyrics in the song that could be read as sexualizing a teen girl. The court claims these lyrics represent a violation of children’s rights.
“Sexualizing minors reduces them to becoming objects of desire, and exposes them to risks that can affect their development,” the 14-page ruling says.
A Blow to Artistic Freedom—And Feminist Protest?
“+57” is about someone who goes out partying after telling her boyfriend she is going to sleep. The contested lyrics—sung in Spanish—call someone “a hot mama since she was 14” and say “although that baby has an owner, she goes out whenever she wants,” according to a Billboard translation of the lyrics.
Some Columbians argue that the backlash against the song represents class bias, moral panic, and a distaste for reggaeton music, according to a New York Times piece last fall on the controversy. It’s hard to look at those lyrics and not get the feeling they’re right.
These are not graphic lyrics. The outrage over them isn’t about preventing a patently offensive and obscene depiction from reaching people’s ears, or stopping some pedophilic exploiters from airing fantasies.
These are lyrics that tell a narrative about a particular fictional character. It is a story, albeit a pretty light one—most of the song is just about drinking and dancing and partying behind the boyfriend’s back. The character is clearly meant to be young, though nothing indicates she’s still under age 18. Nor is there reason to believe that the song’s creators are celebrating the idea of her having been a “mamacita” from a young age.
In any event, declaring these lyrics a rights violation obviously won’t stop any actual sexual harm against children. All it does is stop people from singing about it.
It’s hard to imagine who might be helped at all by a ruling against lyrics like these. But it’s easy to see how the situation is an affront to artistic freedom—and how it could curb people’s ability to speak out against the sexualization of minors and sexual exploitation.
For what it’s worth, the musicians changed the lyrics last fall to “since she was 18,” and Karol G, known as a champion for women’s causes, apologized but also said people were taking the lyrics out of context and in the wrong way.
It Can’t Happen Here?Â
The idea that song lyrics sexualizing minors should be criminal seems far removed from U.S. conceptions of free speech and artistic freedom. But is it?
A number of Republican-controlled states and GOP lawmakers have been trying to toughen rules against performances, books, a
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