"Independent Lens: Hip-Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes" When: 10 p.m. Tuesday on WQED. Filmmaker: Byron Hurt

When one thinks of PBS, hip-hop and rap music don't come immediately to mind -- usually it's something more along the lines of Lawrence Welk.

But public broadcasting defies all expectations with filmmaker Byron Hurt's "Hip-Hop -- Beyond Beats and Rhymes," airing Tuesday as a presentation of "Independent Lens" (10 p.m., WQED).

An incisive, informative and entertaining hour-long documentary, Hurt explores both the potential negative impact of some hip-hop music and the reason the genre has matured the way it has. Though the film bears a viewer discretion warning, it is exactly the kind of program that should be watched by teens who embrace hip-hop music without thinking of the stereotypes it perpetuates and the thug lifestyle it endorses.

Hurt, a former college football star for Northeastern University-turned gender violence prevention educator, speaks directly to viewers at the outset, noting his love for hip-hop, but also his desire for fans of the music to take a hard look at themselves and their music and what it does culturally, particularly in African-American communities.

Hurt and an array of cultural critics trace hip-hop back to the American celebration of the rebel that rose out of the American Revolution and later the Wild West. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson points out that the image of a man using a gun to defend his kin became a suitable metaphor for the notion of manhood.

After the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, hip-hop brought masculinity back, and, correspondingly, it's why so much hip-hop music is devoted to putting down rivals by feminizing them. Hip-hop also strives to create an image of a hard, ego-driven man who asserts himself.

The same American, flag-waving culture that decries violent lyrics in hip-hop music also has played a part in creating it.

"Do you watch movies?" asks rapper Jadakiss. "What kind of movies do you watch?"

Hurt notes that the most popular, flag-waving films are often the most violent, equating manhood with conquering. He even slips in a clip of President Bush declaring, "We're gonna smoke them out," as evidence of a chest-thumping culture that was the breeding ground for hip-hop.

"I really wanted to place hip-hop within the larger American culture," Hurt said at a PBS press conference last month in Pasadena, Calif. "Although hip-hop is hyperaggressive, hyperviolent ... violent themes can also be seen in so many different places in American culture and American popular culture."

Hurt takes his camera to BET's spring break week in Florida and shows men pawing at women and referring to them as rhymes-with-"witches" and "hos."

One spring breaker points at a group of scantily-clad women and declares them rhymes-with-"witches" based on their attire.

The women, however, don't object, saying the guys can't be talking about them, but other women.

"Yo, they are talking about you!" Hurt says, frustrated at the complicity of some women in acquiescing to be a guy's plaything.

Hurt's fascinating, thorough examination of the hip-hop culture extends to its homophobic tendencies -- declared ironic given the homoerotic images male hip-hop stars project by frequently appearing shirtless and buff on album covers -- and its white corporate ownership, which accounts for the production of 70 percent of the hip-hop/rap albums released.

"If the KKK was smart enough, they would have created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black masculinity," explains one of Hurt's interview subjects. "Yet young people of color are being presented with this idea that somehow these [rap stars] represent us and they're cool and they're gonna stand in for us against the white power, while they're completely subservient to the white power structure. It's a really ironic, sad reality."

Carmen Ashurst, a former Def Jam Records executive, said at the PBS press conference that when hip-hop started, it was a voice for young, black America that had been ignored for too long, a voice that wanted to take responsibility for what was happening in the black community.

"Over the past 20 years, it's become more about a business, a business that has been run not by people from the community but by people who are making money off of it and live in gated communities protected from this," Ashburn said. "It became more and more about the thing that's easiest to sell in America, which is violence and sex."

Whether you love or loathe this style of music, Hurt's "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" is a must-see program for anyone concerned with the state of American popular music culture and how it came to exist.