12/11/19

#7 – Music, Ethics and Violence

Polemic Statement: ‘Music is abstract, so it is absolved of any responsibility for violence’

- Music as a weapon
- Music and incitement/promotion

Speech Act Theory

- The sense ‘in which to say something is to do something’ (120)

- Locutionary act: meaning of the words
- Illocutionary act: the force exerted by saying something
- Perlocutionary act: achieving certain effects
- Does the same apply for music? Musical content -> force -> results
- Is there ‘dangerous’ music?
- ‘How to Do Things with Words’ (1962, J.L. Austin)

Music as Inspiration for Violence

- Doom (id, 1993) – First-person Shooter

- Propulsion – Impression of movement and speed, but also force
- ‘[The score] nudges us along, encouraging us to enter dark rooms where demons
wait, then confirms our worst fears’ (Laprad, 1997)
- Musical quotations of heavy metal (AC/DC, Pantera, Metallica, Slayer)

Columbine High School Murders

- Music linked to killings? (Philadelphia Daily News, 22/04/99)

- ‘Killers Worshipped Rock Freak Manson’ (The Sun)

Not just Pop… Violence in Opera

- Tosca ‘created by a sick imagination… an aesthetic aberration’ (Michele Virgillio,

1900)
- Puccini is a ‘symptom of decadence with Tosca ‘the sublimity of decay’ (Fausto
Torrefranca, 1912)
- Puccini is the masterof the art of persuasion… Puccinismus has become a sickness’
(Adolf Weissmann, 1920)
- Tosca’s violence caused concern for the nation’ moral well-being (Wilson, 2007)

Beggar’s Opera (1728)

- ‘Such an Entertainment must highly tend to corrupt and debauch the Morals of the
Nation’ 1728 letter to The London Journal
- ‘The effects of the Beggar’s Opera on the minds of the people, have fulfilled the
prognostications of many that it would prove injurious to society. Rapine and
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violence have been gradually increasing ever since its first representation…’ John
Hawkins, 1776
- Paranoia or serious fears of effects of music?
- Making music a scapegoat?

What happens when you play a country song backwards?

Your girl loves you again, your truck starts working and your dog comes back to life

- Country music: is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with
problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse,
and alienation from work.
- The greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate.
- The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The
existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between
country music and suicide.
- Another study tried to replicate, unsuccessful
- (Stack and Gundlach, 1992)

Logical Problem – Causal Direction and Correlation

- Association is not enough – for music to be charged with serious responsibility, the
link has to be clear and directional
- Can we talk about situations where music is thought to be more directly connected
to violence?
- Music can prompt emotional reactions, so why not prompt actual actions?

The White Album

- Top selling record, but experimental

- Well-known song ‘Helter Skelter’ – proto metal song with highly allusive lyrics

Charles Manson

- Racist cult leader and serial killer

- Thinks that The White Album is prophetic
- Names his apocalyptic scenario ‘Helter Skelter’ and believes album is allegory of
future – interprets lyrics as supporting and explaining future
- Commits murders to trigger ‘Helter Skelter’ scenario
- Creates music with aim of triggering war

Hate Speech/Songs

- Performativity – ancestry in language theory, but basic idea that ‘to say something is
to do something’: level of what’s communicated, level of what effect that has…
- Hate speech- incitement, but also through act it subjugates people through effect
- Westboro Baptist Church
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Music as Weapon: Pieslak

- Loud rock and heavy metal music was played during Operation Just Cause as
psychological warfare against Manuel Noriega – encourage to leave Vatican embassy
where he was hiding. Primarily rock, some pop
(http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/DOCUMENT/950206.htm)
Also because Noriega disliked rock music

Music as Weapon: Torture

Violence in Music as Protest

- Jimi Hendrix’s version of the American National Anthem (esp. at Woodstock, 1969)
- ‘Masters of War’ – Bob Dylan
- ‘War’ – Edwin Starr
- ‘Mississippi Goddam’ – Nina Simone’s protest at racially-motivated killings

Pieslak – Music as Expressions/Depictions of Violence

- Dangerous expression in music?

- E.g. John Adam’s Death of Klinghoffer opera (1991)
- Based on real-life terrorist event
- Often controversy when staged, even in 2014

The Death of Klinghoffer

- Accusations of romanticising and being sympathetic to terrorism

- Accusations of making entertainment out of tragic event
- So – thought of as being anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism
- Taruskin says censorship and considerate to other people are different things
- But no one is being forced to watch or go to see these works

Taruskin

If terrorism […] is to be defeated, world public opinion has to be turned decisively against it.
The only way to go that is to focus resolutely on the acts rather than their claimed (or
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conjectured) motivations, and to characterise all such acts, whatever their motivations, as
crimes. This means no longer romanticising terrorists as Robin Hoods and no longer
idealising their deeds as rough poetic justice. If we indulge such notions when we happen to
agree or sympathise with the aims, then we have forfeited the moral ground from which
any such acts can be convincingly condemned.

Censorship Needed?

- Can you have it both ways? Can we celebrate art as being crucial to our culture and
the great things in society but wholly disassociate it with all negative ideas
- “In the wake of Sept. 11, we might want, finally, to get beyond sentimental
complacency about art. Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm. The Taliban know
that. It's about time we learned.” – Taruskin
- So, his argument is to control what is thought to be ‘indiscreet’?
- But, who gets to decide what is censored? What else would be removed under his
criteria?
- Ambiguity of what the music definitively ‘says’

Ku Klux Klan Music

- KKK use American folks songs, hymns set to new lyrics

- Try to link KKK to American patriotism (in their heritage)
- Not targeting African Americans, but rather Catholics, immigrants and political
opponents
- Old Rugged Cross -> Bright Fiery Cross
- Post-WWI Propaganda: part of marketing on national stage
- Attempts to re-legitimise violence as heroic efforts to preserve heritage
- Justification of violence
- Vinyl records, too, made and sold by Klan groups - Recorded at Gennett Records, by
same engineer who a few weeks earlier produced King Oliver’s band with Louis
Armstrong’s first recorded solo

Problems

- Music as personally meaningful

- Music as open to interpretation
- Issues of power -> use -> accountability
- Who decides to choose what to censor?
- What about context and intentionality?
- What is the effect of music’s sounding and what are the parameters that determines
any relationship with violence?
- Locutionary -> Illocutionary -> Perlocutionary

Questions

- Should music ‘have ratings’ like films?

- What does it mean for music to depict violence?
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- What does it mean for music to be used for violet ends?

- How do we deal with the ambiguity of interpretation?
- Can we equip people to cope with violent music better?
- Difficult with extreme physical properties of music, but perhaps easier with critical
perspectives

Violent Lyrics

- Songs like ‘Kim’ by Eminem. Violent lyrics and imagery (especially towards women
and LGBTQ+ people)
- Is there any difference between singing these lyrics performed in a rap song, and,
say, reading them (as outraged politicians normally do)?
- Is it significant that Eminem plays not only him, but also Kim’s voice