[lbo-talk] Black music makes history

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Oct 10 08:47:47 PDT 2003



> I think people have missed some of the subtleties of
> the medium - isn't it a bit wrong to judge this top
> ten as some sort of homogenous entity? Shouldn't one
> actually listen to the music beforehand?

As I said elsewhere, I would not like the stuff even if they were reciting Das Kapital in German. Ditto for the Terminator genre, where Schwartz almost impersonates Mother Theresa, protecting women and children, beating up obnoxious bikers and bad cops.

My main beef with the genre is its in-your-face obnoxious loudness - I just loathe the way this crap sounds or looks even before I start listening to its message, if any.

Also how the message, if any, is told - by using hyper-stereotypy of characters, super-villains vs. super heroes, invariably portraying females roles as helpless victims at the male whim - sometimes protected by it, as in the Terminator, sometimes subjugated by it, as in some c-rap lyrics. This is a crass promotion of the most obnoxious infantile variety of machismo by the form alone, before we start even looking into the content.

And if they sometimes happen to send a message that sound good to the left-wing ears? So what? Mussolini made trains run on time. Does that make his brand of fascism less obnoxious?

That is it for today, folks. I am out of here for the weekend - be back Tuesday.

Wojtek



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