“I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive!”

Are those the lyrics America is currently obsessing over in a song by Jason Aldean extolling the virtues of small towns?

Oops no, that’s Hank Williams Jr.’s hit single from 1982.

So what’s the difference?

The difference is I’d actually heard of Hank Williams Jr. I became aware of Jason Aldean only after all the fol-de-rol about the music video of his song Try That in a Small Town. (The song itself was released in May.)

So as soon as I heard about the controversy I went right over to YouTube and played it.

Apparently so did a lot of other people because it’s currently at the top of the charts in spite of being banned on Country Music Television. Which is now experiencing a backlash from country singers standing in solidarity with Aldean and demanding their videos be removed from CMT.

Critics claim its message is racist and promotes vigilantism. Aldean protests it’s about how in small towns, “We all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other.”

The fact anyone can interpret, “Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk / carjack an old lady at a red light” as racist is kind of creepy, and frankly sounds pretty racist.

Like somebody mentions crime and you automatically jump to the conclusion they’re talking about race?

On the other hand, “Well, try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road / Around here we take care of our own” does sound like it approves of people taking the law into their own hands.

But if you want a song that is straight up about personal vengeance in a small town it’s hard to beat Martina McBride’s 1995 song Independence Day, about a battered woman who sets the house on fire, immolating herself and her husband.

And half a country and worlds away from the country music scene, Disney is getting very nervous about their live action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It seems they’ve removed all but one of the dwarfs and replaced six of them with a highly diverse cast.

So striving to make a version promoting diversity and inclusion, Disney has excluded — and denied jobs, to the smallest minority in the acting community.

Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have phrased it that way…

Obviously this is all about “message” in entertainment, bringing to mind Samuel Goldwyn’s advice, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.”

But messages have been in entertainment since the first storytellers sat by the fire and gathered the tribe around.

The Trojan Women was written and staged by Euripides a year after he participated in the massacre of the men of Melos during the Peloponesian War. It was translated to film in 1971, and widely interpreted as a commentary on the Vietnam war.

Obviously it stands well as entertainment with a timeless message about the horrors of war and the plight of the conquered.

I could cite a lot of excellent movies and songs with messages. So why is it some make your heart swell and your eyes tear up, and some just irritate the heck out of you?

I want to say it’s the difference between subtle and hitting you over the head with the message but The Trojan Women isn’t subtle at all, it reaches into your chest and rips your heart out.

Could it be about the coherence of the message itself?

I wish I knew.

— Steve Browne is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent