From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Mar 05 2005 - 13:56:53 GMT
All:
A critical examination of rock and roll, from "The Closing of the
American Mind" by Alan Bloom:
"Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire --
not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It
acknowledges the first emanations of children's emerging sensuality and
addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as
little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into
gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver
platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry,
everything their parents always used to tell them they have to wait for
until they grew up and would understand later.
"Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is
why Ravel's Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly
known and liked by them. In alliance with some real art and a lot of
pseudo-art, and enormous industry cultivates the taste of the orgiastic
state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flood of fresh
material for voracious appetites. Never was there an art form directed so
exclusively to children.
"Ministering to and according with the arousing and cathartic music, the
lyrics celebrate puppy love as well as polymorphous attractions, and
fortify them against traditional ridicule and shame. The words implicitly
and explicitly describe bodily acts that satisfy sexual desire and treat
them as its only natural routine culmination for children who do not year
have the slightest imagination of love, marriage or family. This has a
much more powerful effect than does pornography on youngsters, who have no
need to watch others do grossly what the can so easily do themselves.
Voyeurism is for old perverts; active sexual relations are for the young.
All they need is encouragement.
"The inevitable corollary of such sexual interest is rebellion against the
parental authority that represses it. Selfishness thus becomes indignation
and the transforms itself into morality. The sexual revolution must
overthrow all forces of domination, the enemies of nature and happiness.
From love comes hate, masquerading as social reform. A worldview is
balanced on the sexual fulcrum. What were once unconscious or half-
conscious childish resentments become the new Scripture. And then comes
the longing for the classless, prejudice-free, conflictless, universal
society that necessarily results from liberated consciousness -- "We Are
the World," a pubescent version of "Alle Menschen werden Bruder," the
fulfillment of which has been inhibited by the political equivalents of
Mom and Dad. These are the three great lyrical themes: sex, hate and a
smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love. Such polluted sources
issue in a muddy stream where only monsters can swim."
In short, rock is of, by and for juveniles.
Platt
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