Jks:
> Course one might read the classics: Othello, say (jealousy, murder,
fraud), or MacBeth (murder, usurpation, tyranny, revolt); or Anna
Karenina (adultery, suicide), or Homer's Illiad (slaughter), or listen
to opera like Tosca (attempted rape, tyranny, murder, suicide) . . . .
Jks
WS:
It is not that much the lyrics but how the music is being used and by whom - blasted in everyone's face from cars and SUVs by urban gangstas, suburban jocks and assorted wannabes. Nobody does that with classical music.
The same holds for country and western - the lyrics are ostensibly about "love" - but the music is used as the anthem of redneck machismo. I would go as far as saying that the "Ride of the Valkyries" is objectionable based on the way it was used in the "Birth of the Nation" - except that it has been used in that context only once. But I guess I would hate Wagner if I lived in Germany (not that I like him now).
It would be more accurate to say that I dislike certain groups of people and by implication, the cultural expressions that define their identity. In the same vein, I dislike guns and SUVs - not as machines but as cultural identity symbols.
Wojtek