Warning: Parental Advisory is a 2002 TV-movie, originally aired on VH-1, about the 1985 PMRC hearings where John Denver, Dee Snider and Frank Zappa testified before Congress about proposed governmental regulations on music.
Tropes found in Warning: Parental Advisory:
- As Himself: Dee Snider's role is played by Dee Snider.
- Fun with Acronyms: Tipper Gore settles on "Parents Music Resource Center" as a name for their committee after rejecting other names for having acronyms like "PMS" or "POOP."
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Charlie's strategy is to recruit John Denver to play good cop at the hearings, to counteract Zappa's more aggressive tactics.
- Hypocritical Humor: In the epilogue, years after having defeated the moralizing parents of the PMRC, Charlie finds his daughter listening to profane rap music and gets angry.
- Oh, Crap!: Many members of the committee are thrilled to have John Denver in attendance, thinking he'll back up their arguments. Those same members are horrified when he speaks passionately against censorship and talks about how his song "Rocky Mountain High" was falsely accused of having drug messages.
- Pass the Popcorn: The music video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" is shown during the committee hearing and Dee Snider is genuinely disappointed when they shut it off halfway through."Aw man! They were coming up to the best part!"
- Streisand Effect: In-universe, Zappa notes that all the censored and targeted songs in music history sold millions.
- Underestimating Badassery:
- Charlie dismisses the PMRC as a bunch of bored housewives with stationery, ignoring Pamela's warning that they have the most important resource of all in Washington, connections.
- Everyone treats Dee Snider like a joke until he takes off the sunglasses and proves to be rather eloquent during his testimony.
- By that same token, people on both sides of the aisle expect John Denver to be in support of regulation of song lyrics because of his gentle, clean-cut image. They're proven very wrong. During his testimony, Denver talks about how he has suffered misinterpretations of his lyrics in spite of his clean-cut image, showing that this could happen to any artist.
