Cds And Movies Sanitized To Get Wal-Mart’s Ok Retail Chains Have Profound Impact On American Pop Culture

The CD rack at the Wal-Mart in this small town in southwestern North Carolina, like the racks in 2,300 other Wal-Mart stores around the country, is a world of shrink-wrapped packages marked “edited,” “clean” and “sanitized for your protection.” Other compact discs are not marked this way, but they have been altered from the original version available at most record stores.

Some of the teenagers shopping here say they are not happy about this. But they have no other choice: The closest record stores are 50 to 150 miles away in Gainesville, Ga., and Atlanta.

“They blank out all the words they think are bad,” Adam McLean, a 13-year-old from nearby Andrews, N.C., said about the albums he has bought at Wal-Mart. “I hate it. It doesn’t sound the same.”

On other CDs he has bought at Wal-Mart, record companies have removed songs or altered artwork to make the CDs acceptable to the discount chain.

Adam’s mother, Arlene, said she does not like Wal-Mart’s interference. “It should be my decision instead of theirs,” she said.

Not every parent agrees with her. One teen here said that after he had ordered “Incesticide” by Nirvana in the mail, his stepmother saw the title, smashed the CD and told him he could buy records only at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is the single largest seller of pop music in the country, last year accounting for sales of an estimated 52 million of the 615 million compact discs sold in the United States. Its refusal to stock albums with lyrics or cover art that it finds objectionable long has been a frustration for some customers, musicians and record-industry executives.

What is harder to spot, many in the music business say, is the way the discount chain’s distribution decisions directly are affecting the production of music. Because of Wal-Mart’s clout, record labels and bands will design new covers and booklets, drop songs from their albums, electronically mask objectionable words and even change lyrics in order to gain a place on Wal-Mart’s shelves.

But Wal-Mart is not alone, nor is music the only entertainment form affected. Retail chains that designate themselves as family stores, including Kmart and Blockbuster, are having a profound impact on pop culture. Like their counterparts in the music industry, film studios are recutting movies, removing scenes and changing video boxes, often without the director’s consent, so that Blockbuster, the huge video chain, will put them on its shelves.

“This is a new form of censorship that’s come into being in this country,” said Oliver Stone, whose director’s cut of “Natural Born Killers” was banned by Blockbuster, Kmart and Wal-Mart. “Essentially, it’s the sanitization of entertainment. Studios like Warner Brothers won’t even release a film rated NC-17. They point to economic pressure from Blockbuster and Wal-Mart, who won’t carry those videos. People don’t understand how much power these corporations have.”

It’s not just in rural areas that these companies exert influence. In larger cities, cost-cutting chains are forcing independent retailers out of business, making unaltered music and videos harder to find. In Charlotte, 200 miles from Murphy, eight out of 13 independent record stores have gone out of business in the last year. The reason, said Don Rosenberg, the owner of the Record Exchange in Charlotte, is because corporations like Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy are undercutting their prices, selling CDs for little profit, no profit or even as loss leaders to lure customers.

Independent video retailers sometimes buy films from Wal-Mart because the chain sells them cheaper than their distributor, said Bruce Apar of Video Business Magazine.

“When you have somebody selling music who is not a music retailer, it changes the complexion of the business dramatically, especially when they control that much business,” said Rosenberg of the Record Exchange. “So if you’re an artist and you want to write something controversial about race, religion, politics or sex and you know it’s not going to be carried by a large percentage of retailers, you’re in the position of either singing what’s on your mind or selling your records. The music industry is now hostage to a group of retailers that don’t care a whit about music or the music industry.”

Though other discount chains have similar policies, music executives described Wal-Mart as the most powerful, unpredictable and unyielding. Responding to this assertion, Dale Ingram, the director of corporate relations at Wal-Mart, said: “Producers of music know upfront that Wal-Mart is not going to carry anything with a parental advisory on it, and that’s something they’re going to have to factor in when they produce the product. Our customers understand our music and video merchandising decisions are a common-sense attempt to provide the type of material they might want to purchase.”

The cover of John Mellencamp’s new CD, “Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky,” depicts Mellencamp surrounded by two children and a dog. In the background on either side of him are faded-out drawings of Jesus and a devil. At Wal-Mart, Jesus and the devil have been air-brushed out.

Elsewhere in the discount chain racks, songs have been dropped from albums by Jackyl and Catherine Wheel, a Nirvana song title has been changed from “Rape Me” to “Waif Me,” rap albums have the word “nigger” blacked out of their CD covers and music by White Zombie, 311, Type O Negative, Primitive Radio Gods, Beck, Outkast and dozens more have been altered to remove obscenities.

The decision to change an album in some way might be initiated by the record company, aware that a stickered album will not fly at Wal-Mart. Or it could come from one of the independent companies, like Handleman and Anderson, that do the entertainment buying for most discount chains. Or it could come from Wal-Mart’s corporate offices in Bentonville, Ark. The soundtrack to the movie “Beavis and Butt-head Do America,” for example, having cleared both its record label, Geffen, and Anderson was rejected by Wal-Mart because of a chainwide ban on Beavis and Butt-head merchandise.

Blockbuster, which is run by Bill Fields, a former Wal-Mart executive, has similar policies. Its 4,500 outlets, which account for 25 to 30 percent of video rentals nationwide (a number expected to double in the next four years), are filled with movies in “rated,” “unrated,” “edited” and otherwise altered versions.

Though the changes are made by the studios that released the film, few directors have final approval.

“Often times, editing changes are made without the filmmaker’s knowledge,” said Chuck Warn, a spokesman for the Directors Guild of America. “But the movie goes out with his or her name on it. It can be very damaging to someone’s career.”