Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Historically, the art forms of American youth have undergone the evolution from adult revulsion to adult embrace. Consider jazz and jive, the jitterbug, rock and roll.
However, a wise young man once told us that such would not be the case with rap and hip-hop. This was so, he said, because these art forms were so offensive that they never would be co-opted by the establishment.
This opinion was borne out for decades as successive generations of teens recognized that their parents were repulsed by "lyrics" celebrating drug use, cop killing and the debasement of women.
How then does one explain the motion picture industry's award of its highest honor, the Academy Award, to a hip-hop "song," titled "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"?
How could a majority of the members of the academy possibly elevate this opus – trash art at best, and trash philosophy at worst – to the same status as such songs as "The Way You Look Tonight," "Over the Rainbow," "When You Wish upon a Star," "Buttons and Bows," "Mona Lisa," "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" and on through the list of beautiful, Oscar-winning songs?
The Academy took "lyrics" like following:
Gotta couple hoes workin' on the changes for me
But I gotta keep my game tight like Kobe on game night
Like takin' from a ho don't know no better, I know that ain't right
and placed them on the same plane as Rogers and Hammerstein's:
I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm,
I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string,
I'd say that I had spring fever,
But I know it isn't spring.
It seemed inexplicable, and rather than be drawn into a discussion of what constitutes poetry and what doesn't (though we are more than willing to explain it for you, if you wish) we decided to go directly to the Academy and demand some answers.
Our quest took us to the offices of Howard Bashford, chief of the Academy's Directorate of Hipness and Relevance.
Bashford's office looked like that of a prosperous lawyer, with classic furnishings including an antique oak desk, glass-fronted bookcases, and rich wall paneling adorned with reproductions of paintings by Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth.
The executive, clad in a rather expensive cashmere suit, rose from the desk and greeted us cordially, "Yo! Dawg! Wassup?"
"I'm sorry," I replied. "I'd be more comfortable in English."
"No problem," he said, falling into standard speech. "Please have a seat and tell me what I can do for you."
Taking a leather-upholstered chair, I began: "Simply put, you can explain this 'Pimp' song award. I just don't get it."
Bashford stiffened a bit, but replied evenly, "A majority of the Academy felt 'Hard Out Here for a Pimp' was the best song because it reflected so well the cruel reality of so many of our citizens."
"But past Oscar-winning songs have had melody and real poetry," I protested. "This 'thang' is a musical and literary disaster."
"That may be true," said Bashford, "but lack of music and literature is part of the cruel reality of so many of our citizens. Rap and hip-hop give these deprived masses access to art because pretty much anybody can do it – without the confining rules of traditional music and poetry."
Asked to explain, he went on, "If a line doesn't scan, just talk a little faster or stretch out your syllables so the line ends on the beat. If a rhyme isn't exactly right – like 'harder' and 'water' in 'Hard for a Pimp' – well, you have enough background noise that nobody can understand it anyway. "Besides ..."
At this point, Bashford looked down at his shiny, wing-tip oxfords and tried to hide a smile. I pounced.
"Hey! You don't buy that nonsense, either, do you?" I asked.
The Academy spokesman chuckled, "Well, I kept a straight face for a while there. Of course I don't buy it, but we ignored this 'art form' long enough. It was time to bring it into the mainstream."
To my nearly shouted "Why?" he replied, "Look, the outsiders have been getting rich off this dreck while we've pretty much let the whole market segment go. There's money to be made, and we're going to get in on it.
"From now on, it isn't going to be Sammy Cahn and Burt Bacharach, but Sammy Con and Burt Black Rack. It isn't going to be 'Days of Wine and Roses' but 'Days of Wine and Ho'ses."
"Of course," he mused to himself, "some titles wouldn't need changing, like 'High Hopes' and 'Secret Love.'"
"In other words," I sneered, "you're nothing but a bunch of pimps."
"You got us wrong," snapped an irate Bashford. "We aren't pimps, we're prostitutes!"