I grew up with Paraziții, BUG Mafia and La Familia in the late 90s, in a city where three underworld clans were cutting each other with swords in the city centre, bullets were flying in the air like fireworks, and robbery and theft were out in the open, coming for and from everyone. Constanța, almost 30 years ago. I was born at the end of ’88, and Paraziții and the others were a reflection of what many of us lived day by day. And they were viral, as people would call it nowadays.
- Note: Freedom of speech or expression of any kind is the ultimate value for journalists. We don’t want artists or events banned because of obscene messages, but it would be preferable if they were not paid for with public money (see Community Days) or if they took place at large festivals (see Electric Castle, Neversea, Untold etc) or without any prior warning (e.g. No minors allowed). The oppressive state has been, is and will always be our adversary and the adversary of freedom, especially in Romania in recent years. Do not forget that the state, now, is trying to increase its influence and to gain new powers, to enter our bedrooms and our personal lives. We do NOT want to give them the opportunity to do that, and a ban of any kind is wrong. Education is the solution. The article below is an opinion of the author and does not reflect the stance of Info Sud-Est..
Today, Gheboasă and the others reflect, like Paraziții & co. back then, a large part of the generation of children and teenagers, only through means of greatly reduced intelligence compared to the others.
However, why today can’t we promote hate speech, violence, drugs and sexual abuse, whether it’s in lyrics, on social media or happening near us? Simple. Because we are no longer the same. We’ve evolved. And no, we’re not prudes. Just a little more evolved.
I don’t have kids, but if I did I wouldn’t leave them in the house at 5 years old, alone, with a 2 year old sibling. Most likely Child Protective Services, today, would do a social investigation if they found out we did this. We, however, are the „latchkey on our neck” generation, a term you have to explain to kids today. We used to stay in the house for days while our parents were at work. Today we can’t. Or? Would you leave your 5-6 year old alone in the house? With a younger brother?
Then, do your 7-10 year olds go to school alone? Do they get on the trolley, tram, bus, call them an Uber and go to school? We used to go, yes, in groups or alone. I, for example, used to walk about 4 kilometres to and from school, because my parents taught me about health and physical movement since I was 7. You would say „Those were different times, there weren’t so many cars and dangers”. Totally agree.
When we came home from school and our parents came home from work in the evening we didn’t tell them about how we or other classmates were raped, how we stabbed our teachers or how an older classmate brought drugs into the classroom. We would be ashamed, sure, but that’s not why we didn’t tell, it’s because it didn’t happen. Or it rarely happened, and if it did, we’d be watching Antena 1 and PRO TV, the horror channels we used to enjoy when our parents turned on the TV in the 2000s.
Yes, we were „obedient”, actually locked in a mini-dictatorship where you had to stay on your own word.
However, like any Romanian, we would buck the system and visit a colleague for a study session, go with our teachers to an event or go to do sports, in any case, all ended in the morning with us hungover. We were obviously listening to songs about death, suicide, drugs, sex and all the dementias. What the hell to listen to at 16, the core of rebellion and seething anger gathered here and there.
Except.
Today we’re not there anymore. A slap on the ass that we used to get 20 years ago, a boob pull, a „star” fight, a broken arm in class after a brawl, a broken head, a drunken coma at a bathhouse, sex between 10th graders, a beating from your folks, all, back in the day, „were okay.” Today they’re criminal records.
How do you react if your daughter comes home and says that a classmate or a nobody on the street sexually assaulted her? I mean he put his hand on her ass or her breasts, back in the day we didn’t know she was calling it sexual assault, back in the day we „asked for it” because of attitude or clothes and „it was shameful” to pass the information to others.
But today you go to the police, right? In the old days we used to roll our eyes if we heard that, but today, here’s just one example, a man from Suceava who slapped a woman on the ass is sentenced to prison in the first instance. Funny? No, just different times. We’ve evolved.
Then drugs. You say maybe they didn’t exist back then. That’s all the guys from La Familia sang about. About dead junkies and domestic violence in Bucharest. They existed, only they were weed and heroin, „natural” drugs, not all the synthetics that kill cattle and horses, let alone children.
You’ll say that there was sex before the age of 18 back then too, as well as rape. Obviously. Just not from the age of 10 or 12.. By the way, Romania is today the country with the most underage mothers in Europe, and half of them are under 14. Not fun at all, right? And the rapists weren’t 9 or 11.
Suicides? Of course people have been committing suicide for as long as the world has existed. But it’s like 30 years ago they weren’t 14 and hanging themselves after being challenged on Tik Tok.
Sure, there was no internet or social networking back then. That’s exactly the point. It’s different times, different generations, different traumas. Today, any message reaches the other side of the planet instantly. In the age of depression in children and teenagers. It’s simply different. It’s NOT the same, we are NOT the same.
You can’t come up with songs that pour gasoline on the fire around you in a society where violence may not be as widespread as „back in the day” but its depth is exponentially greater, where drugs enter kids like beer once entered us, where 16 is the age when you become a second time mother.
Sure, Gheboasă and the others look, sing and act like parrots. Who the hell takes them seriously with lyrics like:
„Give ‘tup the gip… girl / Break the bench
Oh, what a beautiful gip… / How she’s wagging her ho…,
Horror movies, she’s filthy”
***
Today we got drugs and puss..s / No one can resist
I’m the jungle geezer / In the past I’ve only pulled the bag
Now we just shoot the streak / And we make the money on the side, so we can get by”.
Cheloo raped your mother, then you, then he buried you both and had no remorse, and the Gheboasă (Hunchback n. red. can’t even say „Fu*k her”. Different times.
In the case of Gheboasă and others like him the explanation is that they can’t do any more. It’s another generation gap, where the dumb ones are much dumber and the smart ones are much smarter. That’s why the world is evolving so fast and so much, but at the same time it’s getting dumber. The rift is deepening.
One of the arguments I’ve heard is that „Paraziții were on stage at Untold, not just Gheboasă”. How many kids listen to Paraziții today like they do Gheboasă&co.? We who grew up with them don’t listen anymore either. Because we’ve evolved. We have families, kids, jobs, we go about our business with a fiery rebellion. We no longer resonate with them. Sure, they’re public figures, they’re on prime-time TV, but even there they don’t use the vocabulary and the attitude that made them famous.
But Gheboasă & co. are viral, on the wave as you might say, they’re the people kids are worshipping now, see the concerts. Sure, most of them make the difference between real life and entertainment. But others don’t. And again, you don’t throw gasoline on a fire.
It’s why Romania and other countries are pouring European and US money into promoting gender equality, eliminating sexual, physical, psychological violence and abuse, or eradicating discrimination of any kind. By the way, the Romanian trap scene includes deeply anti-Semitic, legionary, anti-Western and anti-EU messages, with Russian and AUR rhetoric, is that OK? I know, it was the same in our time. Except that, for example, Russia had not started a revisionist war in a country with which we have a border, and the far right and other extremist parties such as AUR in our country were not at the 2nd place in the polls.
In the old days you could say „black”, „gypsy”, „Bozgor”, „Jew”, slap your wife for „asking for it”, your child for shouting, your teachers humiliated you, so did your peers, today you call it „discrimination”, „abuse” and „bullying”. You could pull a pair of earrings out of a girl’s ears, I’ve been there, you could fight in classroom or in the schoolyard, in the neighbourhood or on the go, you could feel a bit of breast without any problems. For one thing, they were „harmless” in the sense that no one came home raped, drugged, vaginally torn or stabbed. Or if they did they were exceptions. And fewer ended up dead. Then nobody, but nobody told you anything, no institution. It was the girl’s fault, obviously.
And hardly anyone said anything at home. Because it was shameful. But not anymore. Because we’ve evolved.
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