Hip Hop Is Not Art

[jon1jt]

"despite the myriad of differences what we share is our humanness."


This thread is filled with lots of passionate opinions, and lots of food for thought. Yes, race is a sensitive issue...

you know, i am beginning to feel a lot of love in this thread here. :D gimme big hugs you two! :D


VIRGIL: You are a mad genius where did you get this fine article?!?!?! Everyone following this thread should read that article in its entirety - it's just fabulous. the part i found especially interesting is how the hip-hop industry - which is comprised mostly of black rappers...i mean artists, objectifies women with their despicable portrayal of women as B***hes and Hoes and the industry's dumping millions into the making of cheap trashy videos that kids emulate and music award ceremonies worship with P-Diddy coronations circled by female dancers (aka performers) intoxicated with false hopes of launching a "real career" -- relegated to dance in sleazy outfits for back alley go-go's where, sadly, many will wind up hooked on heroin, after the conglomerates fold their tents and P-Diddys and J-Zs and M&Ms and Ludicrous's have long sunk deep into their Sodom and Gomorrah quicksand lives, alongside their money and bling-bling teeth and gaudy jewelry that i wouldn't let my cat wear; with stockpiles of drugs and cars, Cars, CARS and "Cribs" (it's all reported their videos and music, the art! :alien: )

the article's words:
"Black intellectuals, such as Cobb and Dyson, are enforcing that code of silence. They are also defending the sad status quo among poor black people. Added to the recipe is the intellectual defense of hip-hop — with music, videos and films — that excuses failure and even celebrates destructive, criminal "Gangsta" behavior such as violence, stealing to get 'bling-bling' and abusive treatment of women."

:blush:

ps
amen for women like Andrea Dworkin who continue to write fierce criticisms against the hip-hop and porn industries, institutions of domestic violence, etc.

[jon1jt]

i didn't mean to start a new thread...the posting system is disturbed because i posted this under dramasnot's "internalized racism" thread. but hey we can discuss hip hop if you like.

some questions that come to mind:
Is hip hop art or trash? POETRY OR GIBBERISH? to what extent does the industry have a "public responsibility" and why?

[Virgil]

VIRGIL: You are a mad genius where did you get this fine article?!?!?! Everyone following this thread should read that article in its entirety - it's just fabulous. the part i found especially interesting is how the hip-hop industry - which is comprised mostly of black rappers...i mean artists, objectifies women with their despicable portrayal of women as B***hes and Hoes and the industry's dumping millions into the making of cheap trashy videos that kids emulate and music award ceremonies worship with P-Diddy coronations circled by female dancers (aka performers) intoxicated with false hopes of launching a "real career" -- relegated to dance in sleazy outfits for back alley go-go's where, sadly, many will wind up hooked on heroin, after the conglomerates fold their tents and P-Diddys and J-Zs and M&Ms and Ludicrous's have long sunk deep into their Sodom and Gomorrah quicksand lives, alongside their money and bling-bling teeth and gaudy jewelry that i wouldn't let my cat wear; with stockpiles of drugs and cars, Cars, CARS and "Cribs" (it's all reported their videos and music, the art! :alien: )



Just came across it in my morning reading. I have a few web sites that compile commentary articles and editorials like that. I think that one came out of realpolitics.com. Like I said Juan Williams is an African-American. You might have come across him on NPR.

[Virgil]

some questions that come to mind:
Is hip hop art or trash? POETRY OR GIBBERISH? to what extent does the industry have a "public responsibility" and why?

When rap/hip hop (I'm not sure i know the difference) came out I thought it was inventive and cool. But two things ultimately turned me off. (1) the values it projects are appalling and repulsive. (2) It kind of gets monotous. There doesn't seem to be much variation. But I'm hardly an expert.

There is nothing inherently wrong with rap if it would clean up its values. Now it doesn't have to be spic and span. Certainly rock isn't, but currently it is way out there. I enjoy the word play. I'm not saying it's poetry, but I don't consider many songs poetry. It can be if it were consciousy trying.

As to public responsibility, that's a tough call. Competing values of freedom of exression, freedom of the market place, and public decency. I certainly have leaned on the side of public decency in the past, and I probably would here too. It's not just decency issues; positive images for poor people would probably help them.

[jon1jt]

It's not just decency issues; positive images for poor people would probably help them.


i agree with you entirely. public decency must be a concern. Hip hop has defined a generation of thuggery that celebrates the idea that they don't care about 'nothin.' this is the "Whatever Generation," a swelling attitude among teens that they can slack off, listen to their hip hop, play video games while listening to their ipods, eat McDonalds, and go to colidge on a Pell grant. ugh.

[Virgil]

i agree with you entirely. public decency must be a concern. Hip hop has defined a generation of thuggery that celebrates the idea that they don't care about 'nothin.' this is the "Whatever Generation," a swelling attitude among teens that they can slack off, listen to their hip hop, play video games while listening to their ipods, eat McDonalds, and go to colidge on a Pell grant. ugh.

You probably understand the young kids better than I. I'm a bit removed from them. My one experience with a person who's into rap is actually positive. I hired this black young man from Newark a few years ago as an engineer out of college. I think he came out of Rutgers. Everytime I happen to sit in his car his radio churns out rap. And loud too. ;) But he's a great young engineer. I'm really proud of him. He might be a extra special though. I occaisionally have classical playing in the background at my desk and he's come by and recognized it and even talked opera. I was shocked. He said he had studied it in school. :)

[IamMissingaLink]

Who is claiming hip-hop is art ?:idea:

[jon1jt]

Who is claiming hip-hop is art ?:idea:


the entire hip hop community claims it. they've completely erased "rapper" from their vocabulary because it smacks of old school run DMC, Public Enemy, Grand Master Flash, blah blah. being deemed an artist allows them to draw from the chi-chi and poor. yet the chi-chi culture wants nothing to do with those thugs, just spend a few bucks to watch 8-Mile or buy the latest Jay-Z/Linkin Park mix. ugh.

the court jester of hip hop would have to be Naz: he's a self-proclaimed artist/poet. all thugs i tell ya.

[IamMissingaLink]

the entire hip hop community claims it. they've completely erased "rapper" from their vocabulary because it smacks of old school run DMC, Public Enemy, Grand Master Flash, blah blah. being deemed an artist allows them to draw from the chi-chi and poor. yet the chi-chi culture wants nothing to do with those thugs, just spend a few bucks to watch 8-Mile or buy the latest Jay-Z/Linkin Park mix. ugh.

the court jester of hip hop would have to be Naz: he's a self-proclaimed artist/poet. all thugs i tell ya.

Kanye's aight :thumbs_up

[ghideon]

I think Hip-Hop describes a body of work of great differences in quality. Now the question: Is Hip-Hop art? Before we look at the worst examples of this music genre it would be helpful to look at the best as well. I am certainly no expert about this but I have listened to DMX, Tupac, Snoop and liked much of their work.

Yes, almost all of the junk out there now...is junk. No argument. But that does not mean that it is not art. First, can we define hip-hop solely in terms of certain formal principles. In what ways is "H-H" distinct from all other forms of song/music?

The Dada movement certainly sent a punch to the art world when found objects were used as art pieces and displayed in galleries and some museums. There is the legendary example of the toilet in France, I believe. Also I doubt there would ever have been an Andy Warholl if the dada artists had not taken the risks of challenging the formal definniton of what is trash and what is art.

There is a difference between saying that a particular category of work is not art or is poor art or pop culture art or any of a dozen different labels. Nobody would argue, I assume, that literature is not an art form. However, when Stephen King was given the Pulitzer(?) there was a huge argument within the awards committee about whether or not he should even have been considered. This question came up again when Charles Johnson was given the National Book Award for Middle Passage.

My own personal deal is this...I am sick of the same bs other people have already mentioned. But on the other side of this coin there was a time in my life when all I listened to was Me Against The World one of Tupacs most important albums. Tupac is considred to be one of the greats of HH and I have to say that his music has had a definite and positive impact on me. He is well worth listening to for those who have not heard him before;for those who have not heard the best Hip Hop; or for those who love powerful music.:thumbs_up

Hip Hop grew out of Rap which actually has a goes back to the late 50s and 60s/70s music/poems of The Last Poets, Amira Braka and Gill Scott Harron (sp?) among others and can really be traced to black cultural uses of words/language/poetry in the cities long before MTV.

[ghideon]

After looking again at the above decrying of hip-hop music and culture I just stopped and thought "Uh...this is sounding so much like what one generation was telling another generation back when Elvis started his pelvic thrusts" Cries about cultural degredation and cries that we need to stand firm about certain values.

I can just picture folks sitting in front of the tv watching Mr Ed or Leave It To Beaver as their sons and daughters were rocking to You Aint Nothing But A Hound Dog.

Gee...some think Tupac and Elvis are both alive and living in the tropics some where.:idea:

[ShoutGrace]

I made my stance on rap music clear in this thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18148). Hip hop is fine music - if it wasn't for the degrading lyrics, misogynism, hateful themes and base, shallow ways of thinking, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

"Hip hop" certainly can be "art," but the way it is commonly presented and created prevents it from being so.



It's like I tell my niggaz, keep your eyes on these *****es
They love to G a nigga young dumb and gettin riches
What the **** you think a trick is nigga
Nigga done stick and wet his d**k
and then get tricked out all his riches by a -- *****!
I'm here to school you to the rules of the game, it'll cost ya
Think you alla that just cause she let a nigga toss her
It's like a mother****in priveledge
So don't give up your conversation, give that ***** your 7 digits
When she call ya, ask that tramp whassup
And if she hesitate, nigga hang up, worrrd up
And let that ***** meditate to the dial tone
And call me when you're ready to bone, and it's on
A mother****ing mack tonight
Stay that stay strapped cause my raps is tight
You ****in punks, I hate you snitches
Went against the grain and the game to be fake *** *****es

(God, damn! You can't just hit them niggaz with that game
and expect them to accept it; girl your heard me it gets skanless.
But we gonna kick this **** like this here)


I can't stand it, hoes talkin bout they got a man
**** all I wanted her to do is suck my D**K
So how about hittin a mother****er on my pager
Busy now ***** but you can give me the pussy later
Fly how I fade her, played her like a game of Sega
****in with the player that done made her, huh
And I ain't sleepin caught you creepin for my money
Got the d**k and now you get the pistol honey (*****)
So get the bozack, knockin hoes back, keep my dough stacked
So where the mother****in hoes at?
Punk niggaz can't fade the mack, livin fat
Gettin paid to rap, it's like that, you mother****in *****es

[ghideon]

I am posting these lyrics of another song by Tupac. I do not have any argument that condemns the blatant, offensive sexism in rap or hip-hop. It is a very serious issue.

But Tupac, in particular, really struggled in many ways as regards his art and its message. He claimed a Thug identity but also really is still seen as having made tremendous contributions to the black community. I know that Eric Michael Dyson is regarded as a hot-headed Lefty and so on and in some ways I agree. But folks may be suprised by some of his work where he really does take the black community to task. He wrote a book about Malcom X in which he points out critical errors in Malcom's theory and practice...one of which was homophobia.

Tupac grew up in a black revolutionary family that was deeply connected to the Black Panther movement. His mother was a member but also, later on, became a serious addict and wound up in prison. Tupac's relation to black power/revolutionary-radical politics and its theory/practice was complicated by the rise of Gangsta culture. One point that Dyson makes, and I think he is on solid ground here, is that there is a real confusion in the US in general between criminal activity and rebels/militancy. It was easy for Shakur, growing up during the era that he did (the crack epidemic, the enormous increase in inner city gang violence...) to take on a Thug identity and confuse it with a well thought out, reasoned political stand. I offer no excuses for his decisons, songs...Each one is accountable for their lives. I am simply trying to offer some information that may provide a useful context for the discussion.

The song below is actually a very good example of the tension between criminality and community. It certainly reveals Tupac as more then just another typical rapper. There is some real cultural crticism being expressed below...as well as a powerful defense of how young black women are used, abused within his own culture and people.


"Brenda's Got A Baby"

Brenda's got a Baby
Brenda's got a Baby

I hear Brenda's got a baby
But, Brenda's barely got a brain
A damn shame
Tha girl can hardly spell her name
(That's not our problem, that's up ta Brenda's family)
Well let me show ya how it affects tha whole community
Now Brenda never really knew her moms and her dad was a
junky
Went in death to his arms, it's sad
Cause I bet Brenda doesn't even know
Just cause your in tha ghetto doesn't mean ya can't grow
But oh, that's a thought, my own revelation
Do whatever it takes ta resist tha temptation
Brenda got herself a boyfriend
Her boyfriend was her cousin, now lets watch tha joy end
She tried to hide her pregnancy, from her family
Who didn't really care to see, or give a damn if she
Went out and had a church of kids
As long as when tha check came they got first dibs
Now Brendas belly is gettin bigger
But no one seems ta notice any change in her figure
She's 12 years old and she's having a baby
In love with tha molester, whos sexin her crazy
And yet she thinks that he'll be with her forever
And dreams of a world with tha two of them are together,
whatever
He left her and she had tha baby solo, she had it on tha
bathroom floor
And didn't know so, she didn't know, what ta throw away and
what ta keep
She wrapped tha baby up and threw him in tha trash heep
I guess she thought she'd get away
Wouldn't hear tha cries
She didn't realize
How much tha tha little baby had her eyes
Now tha babys in tha trash heep balling
Momma can't help her, but it hurts ta hear her calling
Brenda wants ta run away
Momma say, you makin' me lose pay, tha social workers here
everyday
Now Brenda's gotta make her own way
Can't go to her family, they won't let her stay
No money no babysitter, she couldn't keep a job
She tried ta sell crack, but end up getting robbed
So now what's next, there ain't nothin left ta sell
So she sees sex as a way of leavin hell
It's payin tha rent, so she really can't complain
Prostitute, found slain, and Brenda's her name, she's got a baby

Baaaaaaaaby

(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)
(don't you know she's got a baby)

[jon1jt]

After looking again at the above decrying of hip-hop music and culture I just stopped and thought "Uh...this is sounding so much like what one generation was telling another generation back when Elvis started his pelvic thrusts" Cries about cultural degredation and cries that we need to stand firm about certain values.

I can just picture folks sitting in front of the tv watching Mr Ed or Leave It To Beaver as their sons and daughters were rocking to You Aint Nothing But A Hound Dog.

Gee...some think Tupac and Elvis are both alive and living in the tropics some where.:idea:


ah, there you are, its my dear friend, ghideon! how are ya, pal? i thought you'd gone given your last post sounded so final, dreary even. your whole rant about whether civic dialogue really mattered in the end. do you know that Socrates would be very furious with you if he heard you say that?! i take the opposite position, actually. i think all people who participate in a dialogue are very open to changing their opinions. it's just that our personal belief system resists. so perspectives must evolve, and dialogue facilitates that. or it's at least a nice idea. :lol:

the fundamental difference between the music of Elvis and Tupac is how it affected people. it's true parents were shaken listening to this strange man who stood on his toes with those boppy hip-swinging moves and leg gesticulations to "Jailhouse Rock"! (Did he just say, "Jail", dear?) yeah, parents of that era freaked. but people danced to Elvis and often they smiled. they had a real interest in learning dance moves, enthralled by the sound of this wild Memphis cat!

when i hear tupac, i hear rage; i see hate, i see a snarl, a sneer, a smugness, a human being who spits in the face of the world, who basks in hate and debauchery. i see guns and the glory in murder - a rage against the machine; a disdain for all authority, including parents. sure, kids of the 1950s snuck out at night to spend a few hours at the local dance with boys, have a few drinks, but they weren't thinking about guns and 'doing a drive-by. no, the children of Elvis were by and large good kids. it was still an age of innocence, despite the shifting times. there's a difference, a big one.

[IamMissingaLink]

I found an interesting article it's called the Metaphorical Conceptions of Hip Hop Music by Scott Crossley:

"Many hip-hop critics are rightly concerned, however, with what they see as the hyper-commercialization of rap music by the corporate record industry. (6) They also malign the influence of dominant commercial concerns on the aesthetic and political values of rap music. Many also find fault with commercialized rap's neglect of political, social, and racial consciousness, African American linguistic traditions, and its development as a viable art (Gladney 294, 304, Powell 2002). But even Ice Cube, who glorifies violence, materialism, and misogyny in his lyrics, insists that his music is fundamentally socially responsible and that his use of vulgarities helps to communicate this responsibility to communities that would otherwise be disinterested (Ogbar 170). Other critics say that gangster rap, the major offender in the commercialization of rap music, is a self-styled product of "the ghetto." As such, it purposefully reproduces the exaggerated "Blackness" of African American ghettoes and the destruction there and should therefore be seen as an accurate and symbolic replica of the urban African American experience (De Genova 106). The commercialization of rap music and the ownership of many large record labels by African Americans and the distribution of money to African American artists, producers, executives, and business managers have increased the success of many African Americans, but have contributed little to the improvement of the social reality of substandard housing, medical care, and education that affects half of African American children and accounts for a quarter of African Americans under the control of the justice system (Tate 11-12).

In essence, for better or for worse, rap music is one modern response to the social and economic ailments of the collective African American community, which include joblessness, disempowerment, and poverty (Smitherman 1997: 5) Young members of the hip-hop generation find themselves essentially in an antagonistic relationship with the institutions that attempt to structure and control their lives. Law enforcement, school systems, and popular media all identify them as internally dangerous elements of urban America, and this identification leads to the social construction of rap as also fundamentally unsafe (Rose 1991: 279). As a result, hip-hop culture is often viewed by mainstream society as impoverished, and the evidence used to support this claim is rap. In the minds of many within and outside hip-hop, this culture is affiliated with unemployment, violent crime (including the high incarceration rates that accompany it), drug abuse, fierce materialism, and the objectification of both men and women (Powell 2002). It is my contention that these topics, being both intensely emotional and problematic to hip-hop culture (and consequently corresponding favorably to Sperber's Law), have become centers of metaphoric attention within the community.

More importantly, I believe that an evaluation of the relative metaphors found in gangsta' rap can be used to better explain and understand the social history of the hip-hop generation and to reveal the underlying conceptual system formulated by the same. (7) This conceptual system was generated to structure hip-hop reality and give it meaning. The identification and classification of this conceptual system can also give both the dominant culture and the subculture a better understanding of the hip-hop generation. Using this understanding, activists, community leaders, politicians, and civil servants might more efficiently meet the challenges that the hip-hop generation faces. At a minimum, this knowledge may help them approach the problems faced by contemporary, urban African Americans with a clearer awareness of the experiences faced by the same.

Perhaps the most immediate experience that members of the hip-hop generation encounter is their neighborhood. As stated earlier, the hip-hop generation has created numerous metaphorical references for the areas in which they live or about which they produce art, virtually none of them positive. Critic Nick De Genova brands the ghetto of rap music as a "space of death" and also as a space of "survival and transcendence." It is the "heart of Blackness" (119). In this sense, Black urban neighborhoods are mythically emblematic of the distance American society has not covered in its effort to end segregation. African Americans as constructed in gangsta' rap lyrics remain strongly segregated from their White counterparts In neighborhoods that are ripe with criminal gangs, drug abuse, violent crime, inferior schools, and poverty. Those mythical African American neighborhoods are glaring contradictions to the idea that progress has been made from the civil rights movement and that there has been great growth in the desegregation of America. At least a part of hip-hop's "immoral" philosophy finds its origin in the fact that the civil rights movement did not fulfill its promise to Black America (Evelyn par. 18, online). The rap/hip hop community realizes these inconsistencies, and constructs metaphorical concepts of their neighborhoods that are portrayed in the rap music that comes out of the hip-hop culture."

[SheykAbdullah]

It seems the general consesus on this thread is that hip-hop could be art, if it were differently motivated. I've learned in my various experiences that art is a very plastic term. It will be interesting to see if in a hundred years hip-hop will be called art. It very well may be, after all most of the great artists of the Roccoco school were unashamed to freely admit that the body of their work was nothing more than expensive pornography for the walls of the nobility, and they were content with that, yet today we call men such as Boucher and Fragonard geniuses.

The problem with hip-hop is not nesecarily about it being degrading and essentially low-brow, but that it expresses, unself-consciously, essentially universal human ideas that must be understood before they are dismissed, and not everyone is willing to either understand or dismiss them. In each of us here in our history there lurked the possibility that we could become misogynistic, violent debauchers or 'booty' shaking 'ho'es. Something, however, caused us to evaluate our own personal circumstances and navigated us away from that path, be it parents, school, education, whatever. We may have never even been exposed to that side of life and think it could never have happened to us, but as I said, it was only the insulation of family or maybe religion or something else, that kept you from it.

Humanity at its base is essentially the same; a dark, unrestrained, violent being with unlimited potentional (and potential, in the words of my father, just means you aren't working hard enough. You could be better). How do you restrain such impulses in people that are unwilling to change, or were given no alternative in their early lives? You can't. In fact, in a free society there is nothing you can do aside from education in the various sciences, and if education in the intellectual process fails to convey a better social stance then there is nothing left. After all, untill they have actually committed a crime they have every right to be as crass as you may be noble, and while that could be the ultimate undoing of free society, changing it would be its death just the same.

[Shannanigan]

I just finished a course in African-American literature, and hip-hop art was very much included in the Norton Anthology that the course required. A lot of members are saying that they are tired of hearing "the same themes" over and over again in hip-hop, but how is that any different than the blues or rock and roll? Many genres focus on certain themes, sometimes they are even defined by those themes! Hip-hop, at least good hip-hop, will focus on themes that concern black people of the time...

Now, I am by no means a hip-hop fan (though my sister most definitely is), but while I do agree that there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called music (just as there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called poetry or literature) we can't denounce an entire genre of music just because what we, non hip-hop enthusiats, focus on the negative effects of the music and music videos and not the positive effects of the artists providing a sense of identity and companionship for young black people just as other musical artists undoubtedly did for us while we were growing up (I don't know how I would have survived without my alternative music growing up...)

There is good hip-hop out there...once you look past the stereotyped rhythms and baselines...

[jon1jt]

I just finished a course in African-American literature, and hip-hop art was very much included in the Norton Anthology that the course required. A lot of members are saying that they are tired of hearing "the same themes" over and over again in hip-hop, but how is that any different than the blues or rock and roll? Many genres focus on certain themes, sometimes they are even defined by those themes! Hip-hop, at least good hip-hop, will focus on themes that concern black people of the time...

Now, I am by no means a hip-hop fan (though my sister most definitely is), but while I do agree that there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called music (just as there is a large number of useless, uncreative crap out there being called poetry or literature) we can't denounce an entire genre of music just because what we, non hip-hop enthusiats, focus on the negative effects of the music and music videos and not the positive effects of the artists providing a sense of identity and companionship for young black people just as other musical artists undoubtedly did for us while we were growing up (I don't know how I would have survived without my alternative music growing up...)

There is good hip-hop out there...once you look past the stereotyped rhythms and baselines...


it's sad that hip hop would be included in a Norton Anthology for a college course next to the great minds of the heritage. i also don't understand how hip hop can be classified under "literature." i know of several high school teachers in the suburbs who spend mindless time in class interpreting hip hop music presumably because they can't get enough students jazzed up to read Robert Frost. forget about Shelley.

ghideon states that hip hop provides a thoughtful "social criticism" to ghetto life. it's just superficial observation "girl from compton got knocked up pop's picked up for grand larceny, yo yo, kid limp and cold in da' g'bage pail..." ugh. and the only time they inject a criticism is when it pertains to law enforcement.

has anyone heard the fairly new hip hop song, "Riding Dirty"? need i say what the song's about? i happen to see the video on MTV, which embellishes the drug dealer being "too slick" for the cops. i don't hear rock and roll doing that or even the disposable pop music out there. the days of dylan, simon and garfunkel, neil young, harry chapin, were social critics of their age and often kernels of poetry were discovered in their music along the way. not always. nor was it always fair and even-handed toward those it waged its disagreements. much of it was wrapped in hyperbole and crudeness. but the music pushed boundaries and provoked policy change, and generated an awareness of and discontent with democracy, not against it.

[subterranean]

Define art please....


And why am I getting an impression that non hip hop rap genres are not guilty from giving bad influence?

[jon1jt]

Define art please....


Art is not smut.

[stlukesguild]

Virgil, etc...

This question of whether rap/hip-hop is art really doubles back on our previous discussions of l'art pour l'art. Having previously stated that I am quite uncomfortable with the notion of using non-art measures (morality, politics, etc...) as a means of judging art, I must agree that rap is art, if I am to maintain any semblance of continuity. On the other hand, whether I like or dislike it (usually the latter) or whether it is good or bad art is another matter. I find that most of this "music" is rather simplistic (if not mindless) as poetry... laden with ridiculous bravado and swagger which mostly lacks any wit or inventiveness. And then there is the repetitive... monotonous nature of the music itself. Of course similar criticisms could be leveled at many other musical styles: certainly much of heavy metal (which is almost equally [unintentionally?] comic in its posturing to rap) and much of pop music in general. Of course there are always exceptions and I have long maintained that 90% of all art is mediocre at best. As to the issue of art... music, film, TV etc... having a potentially negative impact upon an audience, this is another question altogether. While I fully support the right of artists to create works laden with blatant sex, violence, anti-social behavior etc... I don't immediately assume that the rights of the artists to create such should be interpretted as negating the rights of parents and society from censoring... or restricting access to such from children. I should also note that the defense used by the music/film/tv industries suggesting that exposure to such "entertainment" has no impact upon society is complete BS. You only have to ask yourself why would corporate America spend billions advertizing on TV, magazines, etc... if such investments did not impact consumer behaviors (spending). But then excessive violence and sex on TV has no impact?:eek: They can't have it both ways.

[SheykAbdullah]

Art is not smut.

I would just like to reiterate my comment about Boucher and Fragonard, two of the greatest artists of the Rococco movement, who painted unabashed pornography which is now hung in nearly every major, and many minor, museums from the National Gallery in DC to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

As far as older music styles not having empty violence and senseless death, I might refer you to Mississippi John Hurt's "First Shot Missed Him" which says, among other things, "First shot missed 'im a mile away; First shot missed 'im a mile a way; But the second shot got 'im, so they say, But the second shot got 'im so they say" or many of the songs in the Stago Lee sagas. Also there are bluegrass classics like "Willow Garden" with lines like "I drew the saber through her which was a bloody knife; I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight," and goes on to explain how he hoped to bribe his way out of jail. Also one can reference "Long Black Veil," which is about an adulterer. All these are important songs in the development of the American music tradition, and each of them were recorded originally before 1950.

Granted the violence in at least the first song is not so terrible, but when taken from the cultural context in which it was recorded it can be said to be no less extreme than that present in rap music.

Gratuitous violence is also extremely common in political songs. One can reference "Dunagon '57" which has lines like "And the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabluary, the pro-British militia in Ireland) went right back in again when he found he was lookin' down the barrel of a sten (machine gun)!" and "And if the British soldiers came, he said he'd blow 'em all to hell!" Additionally, "British Army" has lines like "When I was young I had a twist for punchin' babies with me fist." Of course, one can say that these songs are socially degenerative, revolutionary, and therefore not art, but they are political action songs not unlike The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or poems like The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Of course these examples only address the violence inherit in rap and not the misogyny, which is admittedly pretty unprecedented.

I am not excusing the content of Rap songs, or even saying that I listen to them, nor am I saying that they are art. Art is far too maleable a term to be applied in a rational discussion of things, but to dismiss the music out of hand simply for having disagreeable elements is certainly not an enlightened approach to understanding the nature of the phenomenon, which exists by popular demand, and thus is not an enlightened approach to understanding our society, which endorses, at least on a public stage, this form of music and elects it by patronage as modern, maybe I should say post-modern, dance standards.

As to the shame of it being included an an anthology next to the 'great-minds' of our literary heritage, I have to disagree. The fact is rap is as popular, if not more, today than Byron ever was in his own time, and popularity is more often than not what dictates endurance and legitimacy (there are obviously some exceptions to the rule). Perhaps Rap may be less intellectually challenging than Shelley (whom I have heard accused of being a driveller by several critics), less involved, less allegorical, but such possibly malicious simplicity may be the common sentiment of our time.

Undoubtedly many things can be said of rap to discredit it as a trend worthy of note, but then again, many things can also be said of 'artistic' works of the past. After all, what, fundamentally, is the difference between Animal Farm and propganda? Andy Warhol and the glorification of Commercialism? Uncle Tom's Cabin and a common pamphlet intended to incite what could be a seditious view of the state fo affairs? Trajan's column is little more than the self-glorification of an emporer, and who can really see Napoleon standing amidst plague victims as in the painting by Gros? Despite the rather unflattering origins of these pieces of 'art' no one hesitates to call them such, and many of our great pieces come from similiarly disgraceful origins, yet we do not hesitate to label them as great, and why? Because of popular sentiment. You may doubt my words, but if I were to proclaim Shakespeare here as a hack what would people say? There would be universal uproar and clamor decrying my sense of literary quality, but if I said I thought so because his stories were outdated, uninteresting and lacking the clear, straightforward, glorifingly simplistic guise of modernism, my opinion would still be repudiated as uninformed by the argument that the whole world loves him, that he is the earth's second greatest selling author, and as such I am in disagreement with the enlightened opinions of the greater part, again overwhelmingly greater part, of the educated world, and that therefore my opinions must be wrong, based on an artist's popularity, dare I say his percieved intellectual cachet.

The fact of the matter is that whether we like it or not rap and things just as intellectually challenged in my mind (Conceptualist pieces such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone living, which is a shark suspended in a tub of formaldehyde), are popularly, therefore highly, regarded today. Part of the price of democracy is admitting that the power of the people to make desicions about art is just as legitimate as the power of the people to decide their own government, and the price that must be paid is the swallowing of certain uncomfortable compromises thus implied. Rap seems to be one of them. As someone who considers himself a gentleman I find it as offensive as the next person, but the cruel, carnal fascination it posesses for the rest of us demands it be recognized, explored and if not wholly legitimized, at least accepted for what it is precieved by society as a whole. People will only be able leave it and its ideas behind, or accept them as wholly legitimate and normalized, once that has been done, once its basic concepts have been brought out and shown for what they are and people forced to choose whether it is what they truly like and agree with or whether it is really smut. If there is any power to destroy it that power is certainly not scorn, force, or disownment. Those only give it cachet as being the 'the music of the people,' 'the Truth,' or even the 'unart,' whose very nature begs at what it pretends to oppose.

[stlukesguild]

Critic Nick De Genova brands the ghetto of rap music as a "space of death" and also as a space of "survival and transcendence."

As someone who teaches in the public schools in the very neighborhoods that spawn rap music I am well aware of the pain and horror and injustice that still exists in America. I guess that where I am having a problem with a good deal of rap is that I fail to see any "transcendence". Certainly a great many of the jazz musicians came out of circumstances that were no better (and in some aspects, worse) and yet there is the magic of the pain transcended... turned into art. This is not to say that the reality... the pain is ignored. It is certainly there. But there is no wallowing in juvenile embrace of the very worst. Transcendence certainly exists in Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington... and in other times and places and art forms it certainly existed in Sholom Aleichem, S. Y. Agnon, the Book of Lamentations, Goya, Breughel, etc...

[ghideon]

This is a place where minds of reason can, one hopes, meet. With that said I will examine your words,language and arugments. I do this with the hope that in website focused on literature and language we will all own the words we use. I have no problem owning up to each word I write. I hope the same can be said for all others.


"to the great minds of the heritage."

Heritage usually referrs to aspects of a tradition that have been passed down from one generation to the next. If you were using the word with that meaning then which tradition do you mean when you write "the heritage"? Do you believe there is one tradition that needs to be taught in the nation's schools? Now before you go and just lump me into one of the Lefty, multi-cultural, relativistic boxes let me remind you I have no interest in diversity for diversity sake. As if we need to stop and pay attention to non-white, non-Western literature out of some sense of duty or obligation. No. The simple fact, and I am more then willing to back this up with as much objective evidene that you may need, the fact is that if there is a single heritage in this society it most certainly would include an enormous diversity of cultural influences. That is just the simple truth not some Michael Moore whine.

Or have you forgotten that there would have been no Rock and Roll if there had not been the jazz/blues musical genre first. Are you unaware of Elvis's debt to the black musicians that preceded him? He was certainly aware of it.




i know of several high school teachers in the suburbs who spend mindless time in class interpreting hip hop music presumably because they can't get enough students jazzed up to read Robert Frost. forget about Shelley.


One film that I dare say could be considered part of this nation's cinematic "heritage" is Blackboard Jungle. It depicts a high school in the late 50s. It's a tough school in a tough part of town and the students, almost all of them white, with the exception of just a few blacks and hispanic students (one of whom is played by that actor you may have heard of Sidney Poiter). Anyway, a new teacher is hired and he keeps on failing to get the attention of the class. They pass notes, giggle, throw gum at each other, and so on...anyway, at wits end he gets a movie projector and plays a Tom and Jerry cartoon (I think it is Tom and Jerry) and the kids shut up and just watch. He then asks them questions. Good questions. Questions about motivation? Questions about plot? And the students begin to actually grasp the pleasure of critical thinking.

You glibly dismiss the efforts of some school teachers. Do you have any idea what most teachers are up against every hour of the day? If I was a teacher I would use anything I could to engage the students. What would you do?

Oh, by the way, those whites in the suburbs buy tons of rap and hip-hop. In fact, if memory serves me, they purchase at least as much of the music as the folks living in the hood. Are those students the innocent victims of some ghetto/black/Lefty conspiracy? Just what is going on in that dynamic there? Are they innocent victims of some dark menacing force (maybe born from the jungles of Conrad) that yearns to take over the clean, pure minds of our "good" youth?





ghideon states that hip hop provides a thoughtful "social criticism" to ghetto life. it's just superficial observation "girl from compton got knocked up pop's picked up for grand larceny, yo yo, kid limp and cold in da' g'bage pail..." ugh. and the only time they inject a criticism is when it pertains to law enforcement.

There are several differences between some of the thoughtful criticism and writings that are on this thread and your above assessment of hip hop lyrics. One is that most of the posts actually contain from actual songs. Yours does not and again the glibness gets in the way of reason.

You may ask yourself if those who are producing the clothes, music, parties, magazines, websites, of the Hip Hop culture care that you find it "superficial"? Or better, I am fairly confident that many of them would actually appreciate your attitude because it would offer them more evidence, as if more was needed, that many of their critics know nothing about their world but think they do.



has anyone heard the fairly new hip hop song, "Riding Dirty"? need i say what the song's about?

I don't know. Has anybody heard a major song out now(found it on Yahoos home page) called "Hip Hop Is Dead". A major artist expresses his anger with the community and the music he cares deeply about. Yes there is even "meta" hip hop out there and it is critical as well.


.
i don't hear rock and roll doing that or even the disposable pop music out there. the days of dylan, simon and garfunkel, neil young, harry chapin, were social critics of their age and often kernels of poetry were discovered in their music along the way.

You "don't hear" cause you don't listen. Lets see...how much chicken blood is going to drip from the Satanic tribe? Or then there is the Hard Core Punk music. You know, that wonderful, classicaly trained musician Sid Vicious. I am down for all of it. I don't like like all of it but I do not base my values on my personal take. I do not let my individual likes/dislikes get in the way of being able to appreciate important cultural representations. Yea, maybe I don't want to listen to The Sex Pistols more then twice a month but their importance to the working class culture of England can not be ignored. Nor would it be wise to forget that Punk opened doors for many other types of music and bands from XTC to The Clash.


And finally, I could list about 500 songs from white Rock and Roll groups that glorify everything from murder, rape, drug use and so on. You're willing to defend everything from the the Door's glorification of LSD to Clapton (who I think of as a music deity) wrote singing "Cocaine".

But I forgot...coke is the uptown drug these days that rich folk use. The hood is still doing that ghetto fix crack. And thus, songs about snow are fine but songs about rock...no, no.

[stlukesguild]

I would just like to reiterate my comment about Boucher and Fragonard, two of the greatest artists of the Rococco movement, who painted unabashed pornography which is now hung in nearly every major, and many minor, museums from the National Gallery in DC to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

SLG- As an artist I would be very interested in seeing all of these "pornographic" paintings. Certainly Boucher and Fragonard painted a great deal of art that might be termed "erotic" in nature...:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/boucherMmeOMurphysmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/BF-Leda-Bouchersmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/FragonardGirlwithherDogsmall.jpg

... and there are the rare paintings and drawings (not uncommon to most artists) that verge upon "pornography"... or at least those that qualify as more blatantly erotic. But unabashed pornographic paintings hanging in every major museum? Only if your definition of pornography matches that of mark Twain who imagine nothing but lewdness and crudity in Titian's great Venus D'Urbino.

As far as older music styles not having empty violence and senseless death, I might refer you to Mississippi John Hurt's "First Shot Missed Him" which says, among other things, "First shot missed 'im a mile away; First shot missed 'im a mile a way; But the second shot got 'im, so they say, But the second shot got 'im so they say" or many of the songs in the Stago Lee sagas. Also there are bluegrass classics like "Willow Garden" with lines like "I drew the saber through her which was a bloody knife; I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight," and goes on to explain how he hoped to bribe his way out of jail.

SLG- Again, I have no qualms with death, violence, sex etc... portrayed in art. Art should be able to address all aspects of the world. On the other hand... the "meaningless" or "emptiness" needs to be trascended through the art. Goya, for example, presents images of horror and ugliness that he certainly lived through during the dark days of the Napoleonic wars. However, he attempts to transcend these... to give them some "meaning" if you will by giving them the beauty an artist can lend. The bravado and sexism and racism and anti-social behavior presented in a great deal of rap music is not the expression of an invented character... it is rather the rather mindless ranting of an angry and simple minded "performer". It has about as much artistic worth as the rambling and self-centered agrandizing affected in most teenager's diaries, the "stories" of familial dysfuctionality explored on Jerry Springer or even the hate-filled racism and sexism spouted forth by the unemployed drunk in the local bar.

Gratuitous violence is also extremely common in political songs. One can reference "Dunagon '57" which has lines like "And the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabluary, the pro-British militia in Ireland) went right back in again when he found he was lookin' down the barrel of a sten (machine gun)!" and "And if the British soldiers came, he said he'd blow 'em all to hell!" Additionally, "British Army" has lines like "When I was young I had a twist for punchin' babies with me fist." Of course, one can say that these songs are socially degenerative, revolutionary, and therefore not art, but they are political action songs not unlike The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or poems like The Charge of the Light Brigade.

SLG- Again, the gratuitous violence alone does not negate our taking a work seriously as art. Certainly, Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel, Blood Meridian is disturbing in the extreme... and it is easy to understand why many balk at Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Nabokov's Lolita, or Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge. In all of these instances, however, there is an undoubtable artistic brilliance. There certainly may be many precedents in other forms of music and art for the violence inherent in Rap/Hip Hop. In most cases, however, these were not afforded the commercial support that establishes Rappers as role-models among society. As for the suggestion that there is no difference between violent hip-hop and violent close-minded calls to murder and torture a political solution and The Charge of the Light Brigade... I guess that such an analogy is only possible to one unable to discern the difference between Boucher's rather harmless (even... dare I say it?... cute) eroticism and pornography. The next step would seem to be to suggest that there is no actual difference between the real act of murder and Shakespeare's portrayal of such in his plays.

... to dismiss the music out of hand simply for having disagreeable elements is certainly not an enlightened approach to understanding the nature of the phenomenon, which exists by popular demand, and thus is not an enlightened approach to understanding our society, which endorses, at least on a public stage, this form of music and elects it by patronage as modern, maybe I should say post-modern, dance standards...

SLG- Certainly, I would not think to dismiss all such music out of hand... and certainly not upon grounds that it tackles themes which make me uncomfortable. On the other hand... I can dismiss a good deal of it as juvenile and rather uncreative... using violence merely for shock value... or because the "artist" himself is is simply a rather hateful person. As for the notion that the music represents what the audience wants... this has long been claimed by the music and etertainment industry. This may indeed say something about our culture. It may say more about the whoremongering industry that will provide whatever is desired for a price. Do we, however, allow for the lowest common denominator to direct our culture? Because there are many teenage boys who can think of nothing more to which to aspire to than becoming a pimp does that justify not merely providing images and soundtracks for this market, but the backing of a great commercial industry to publicize such work?

continued...

[stlukesguild]

As to the shame of it being included an an anthology next to the 'great-minds' of our literary heritage, I have to disagree. The fact is rap is as popular, if not more, today than Byron ever was in his own time, and popularity is more often than not what dictates endurance and legitimacy (there are obviously some exceptions to the rule). Perhaps Rap may be less intellectually challenging than Shelley (whom I have heard accused of being a driveller by several critics), less involved, less allegorical, but such possibly malicious simplicity may be the common sentiment of our time.

SLG- Now this is pure BS. First of all, popularity with the masses of the time has never been the element by which great art survives. Works of art survive because they continue to inspire the art experts (critics, scholars, historians, and other artists... in other words, those who have invested time and effort into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art) and they survive because they continue to speak to the public of art lovers (in whatever art form) over time. Most works of popular art quickly fade into embarrassing "period pieces". The Monkees sold more records than anybody in 1967... however I greatly doubt that they will still be idolized by 2067. Indeed, most would find them rather embarassing now. Harry Potter... well I'll leave that one alone. There certainly were artists who have survived who were grossly popular during their own lifetime... however there may be just as many, if not more, whose achievements were not recognized... whose work was too challenging or out of sync with the time. As for the notion that rap may well last because it is the best expression of the time... I should note that every time in history has had its simplistic entertainments. These rarely survive as the great art of the time. Art is more than entertainment and more than merely a mirror of a given time and place. We merely live in a time in which the money exists in the mass marketing of entertainment/art due to the ability to mass produce reproduction of art forms (books, cds,dvds). Pandering to the market of the moment is far more lucrative than marketing to a more discerning market.

Undoubtedly many things can be said of rap to discredit it as a trend worthy of note, but then again, many things can also be said of 'artistic' works of the past. After all, what, fundamentally, is the difference between Animal Farm and propganda? Andy Warhol and the glorification of Commercialism? Uncle Tom's Cabin and a common pamphlet intended to incite what could be a seditious view of the state fo affairs? Trajan's column is little more than the self-glorification of an emporer, and who can really see Napoleon standing amidst plague victims as in the painting by Gros? Despite the rather unflattering origins of these pieces of 'art' no one hesitates to call them such, and many of our great pieces come from similiarly disgraceful origins, yet we do not hesitate to label them as great, and why? Because of popular sentiment.

SLG- Popular sentiment has nothing to do with it. Neither George Orwell nor even Shakespeare are enamored of the mass public. The reason they survive and continue to do so... even in spite of presenting elements at times which disturb... is because they are acknowledged for their artistic worth by those who have invested the time and effort and even (perhaps) money into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art. Certainly I may question Gros' idolizing of Napoleon no less than Leni Reifenstahl's agrandizing of Adolph Hitler and Nazism. However, I do not question their ability to give brilliant artistic form to their perceptions.

You may doubt my words, but if I were to proclaim Shakespeare here as a hack what would people say? There would be universal uproar and clamor decrying my sense of literary quality, but if I said I thought so because his stories were outdated, uninteresting and lacking the clear, straightforward, glorifingly simplistic guise of modernism, my opinion would still be repudiated as uninformed by the argument that the whole world loves him, that he is the earth's second greatest selling author, and as such I am in disagreement with the enlightened opinions of the greater part, again overwhelmingly greater part, of the educated world, and that therefore my opinions must be wrong, based on an artist's popularity, dare I say his percieved intellectual cachet.

SLG- Again, popularity has nothing to do with it. What does matter is that your arguments would be refuted by many who have the experience and have invested much into the field of literature who would not merely counter with an argument as lame as that of suggesting that he's a best seller but rather they would answer each of the charges with reasons as to why they disagree with your assertions. As for the notion that you might critique Shakespeare (and undoubtedly Mozart and Leonardo) as failing to meet the simplistic standards of modern entertainment I suppose that this is done so everyday by the public that prefers Brittany Spears to Mozart, Yugi-o to Leonardo, and Tupac to Shakespeare. Personally, I don't buy the notion of artistic "relativity"... the concept that there is no "good" nor "bad" in art... that its all relative. To have such standards is often dismissed as elitist and snobbish, but the snobbism that I find far more offensive is that anti-intellectualism which sneers at anything which requires intellect, demands effort and discipline or achieves a high standard.

The fact of the matter is that whether we like it or not rap and things just as intellectually challenged in my mind (Conceptualist pieces such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone living, which is a shark suspended in a tub of formaldehyde), are popularly, therefore highly, regarded today. Part of the price of democracy is admitting that the power of the people to make desicions about art is just as legitimate as the power of the people to decide their own government, and the price that must be paid is the swallowing of certain uncomfortable compromises thus implied. Rap seems to be one of them. As someone who considers himself a gentleman I find it as offensive as the next person, but the cruel, carnal fascination it posesses for the rest of us demands it be recognized, explored and if not wholly legitimized, at least accepted for what it is precieved by society as a whole. People will only be able leave it and its ideas behind, or accept them as wholly legitimate and normalized, once that has been done, once its basic concepts have been brought out and shown for what they are and people forced to choose whether it is what they truly like and agree with or whether it is really smut. If there is any power to destroy it that power is certainly not scorn, force, or disownment. Those only give it cachet as being the 'the music of the people,' 'the Truth,' or even the 'unart,' whose very nature begs at what it pretends to oppose.


SLG- Certainly art and democracy do make strange bedfellows. Art is inherently an elitist activity. It is about "bad" and "good" and "better" and "best" and the masses certainly lack the ability (or the interest) to make such choices. Plato warned of the problems of art in a democracy as did DeToqueville. I agree that in the visual arts we find many questionable works of art that are praised and collected by an increasingly "democratic" public. This public has the wealth to buy art, but has invested little effort into looking at art and learning about art. As such, they are prime dupes for underhanded dealers. As a working artist I completely reject the notion that the public in any way should be seen as the legitimate measure of artistic worth. I would also suggest that I find it quite intriguing that the notion of "elitism" is such a problem in art... and yet we have no problem in admitting that elitism... that measures of "good", "better" and "best" exist in other fields. Certainly, we would not think to take a poll of public opinion with regard to questions of quantum physics, biology, the law, history, etc... As Plato suggested centuries ago, you go to the doctor when you are sick. You don't poll the man in the street. Why then should I care the least for the opinion of the public who has invested no real time or effort into exploring and learning about art beyond that which is spoon-fed them by the entertainment industry?

[jon1jt]

Dittos STLUKESGUILD! Well said!


You may ask yourself if those who are producing the clothes, music, parties, magazines, websites, of the Hip Hop culture care that you find it "superficial"? Or better, I am fairly confident that many of them would actually appreciate your attitude because it would offer them more evidence, as if more was needed, that many of their critics know nothing about their world but think they do.

of course they appreciate my attitude because they live under the illusion that my criticism is an acknowledgement of their innovation and also that people like me can't grasp its sophistication, such thinking which is a function of their own self-aggrandizment and nothing more. there's no sophistication in bubble gum; people chew it and spit it out.


You "don't hear" cause you don't listen. Lets see...how much chicken blood is going to drip from the Satanic tribe? Or then there is the Hard Core Punk music. You know, that wonderful, classicaly trained musician Sid Vicious. I am down for all of it. I don't like like all of it but I do not base my values on my personal take. I do not let my individual likes/dislikes get in the way of being able to appreciate important cultural representations.
Yea, maybe I don't want to listen to The Sex Pistols more then twice a month but their importance to the working class culture of England can not be ignored.

history makes the music sometimes and unfortunately trash is deified in the process. but these are blips in history, for only years later does posterity reclaim it's soul as it comes to terms with its old absurdity.


Nor would it be wise to forget that Punk opened doors for many other types of music and bands from XTC to The Clash.

And finally, I could list about 500 songs from white Rock and Roll groups that glorify everything from murder, rape, drug use and so on. You're willing to defend everything from the the Door's glorification of LSD to Clapton (who I think of as a music deity) wrote singing "Cocaine".

i'm happy you didn't mention pink floyd because i like them! and there's complexity in that music uncomparable to that hip hop horray ho! :D


But I forgot...coke is the uptown drug these days that rich folk use. The hood is still doing that ghetto fix crack. And thus, songs about snow are fine but songs about rock...no, no.

i don't dispute drug choice as being most tied to class. but i'm still trying to figure out who you mean when you talk about contemporary rock music full of drug (snow) references (lenny kravitz?, (new) aerosmith?, bob seger?...i don't think so) and grunge is dead, don't you know? are you talking about classic rock, perhaps? that was over thirty years ago! the 1980s was all about walking on sunshine. :D (hey i like that cheesy katrina and the waves song! :D ) well, there was ol' scruffy george michael getting dirty with wanting everyone's sex! :lol:

you keep bringing up music as being an evolutionary creation rather than the sheer genius of great lyricists and musicians who followed their own impulses. did you happen to get that evolution theory from one of those "Rap and Rock: Cultural Phenomena" courses offered as a multicultural elective in college? just a hunch. maybe you've even read that there book called "The Death of Rhythm & Blues" by Elson George that claim "white" rock is just an offshoot of "black" blues. yeah i'm familiar with all that drivel too.




You glibly dismiss the efforts of some school teachers. Do you have any idea what most teachers are up against every hour of the day? If I was a teacher I would use anything I could to engage the students. What would you do?

no, you're right, i wouldn't know anything about that. what would i do?
i would quit.

[dramasnot6]

To put it briefly, I find those hip hop and rap music videos revolting. They seem to appeal to every form of sexism out there, and promote stereotypes about many different races. So many of my peers idolize hip hop stars, using shockingly limited and crude vocabulary and objectifying themselves(particulary girls). Some of the older hip hop wasnt so bad, but today i can never turn on MTV in fear of gagging from images of skimpily dressed women with breast implants hanging off of violent men using lyrics far from poetic or soulful. Music is the language of the heart and soul,not the loins.

[SheykAbdullah]

SLG- As an artist I would be very interested in seeing all of these "pornographic" paintings. Certainly Boucher and Fragonard painted a great deal of art that might be termed "erotic" in nature...:

[... and there are the rare paintings and drawings (not uncommon to most artists) that verge upon "pornography"... or at least those that qualify as more blatantly erotic. But unabashed pornographic paintings hanging in every major museum? Only if your definition of pornography matches that of mark Twain who imagine nothing but lewdness and crudity in Titian's great Venus D'Urbino.

Boucher and Fragonard did paint pornography, it just is not at the same level of pornography that we acknowledge today. Their paintings were boudoir paintings intended to glorify the sexuality of a mistress or of woman with the thin verneer of occasional classical acceptability. Titian's Venus D'Urbino served the same purpose.

Just because something is not x (pornography for example) as we recognize it today does not mean it is y (what we call it today). The fact that their paintings were mostly made for pornographic purposes may or may not affect how you view them as art, and it may not dismiss them automatically as art, but everything must be looked at in its proper historical context in order to understand why it exists and what purpose it ultimately serves, in other words to get to the heart of the matter, and that means understanding why it was made. Boucher and Fragonard painted their greatest works to titilate their viewer, and such an action recieves the definition of pornography.


SLG- Again, I have no qualms with death, violence, sex etc... portrayed in art. Art should be able to address all aspects of the world. On the other hand... the "meaningless" or "emptiness" needs to be trascended through the art. Goya, for example, presents images of horror and ugliness that he certainly lived through during the dark days of the Napoleonic wars. However, he attempts to transcend these... to give them some "meaning" if you will by giving them the beauty an artist can lend. The bravado and sexism and racism and anti-social behavior presented in a great deal of rap music is not the expression of an invented character... it is rather the rather mindless ranting of an angry and simple minded "performer". It has about as much artistic worth as the rambling and self-centered agrandizing affected in most teenager's diaries, the "stories" of familial dysfuctionality explored on Jerry Springer or even the hate-filled racism and sexism spouted forth by the unemployed drunk in the local bar.

Art, as I said before, is too meaningless a word to argue about its meaning. If we used the Webster's definition of the word art, which is

"The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principals, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance"

Then rap is art. It is a production according to aesthetic principals (granted a dark aethetic, but aesthetic is not necesarily beautiful as commonly precieved), which has for some people more than ordinary significance.

If we are going to get into a metaphysical debate about art, then I supose that would depend on your definition. I've never met two peole who had the same definition of art, strange as it may sound, which is why I stopped caring long ago about what is art and am more concerned about what is significant, because almost everything is, in fact, art in one way or another, depending on your perspective.

As for the empty violsence and pointless sexism I agree. I'm not arguing about that.


SLG- Again, the gratuitous violence alone does not negate our taking a work seriously as art. Certainly, Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel, [I]Blood Meridian is disturbing in the extreme... and it is easy to understand why many balk at Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Nabokov's Lolita, or Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge. In all of these instances, however, there is an undoubtable artistic brilliance. There certainly may be many precedents in other forms of music and art for the violence inherent in Rap/Hip Hop. In most cases, however, these were not afforded the commercial support that establishes Rappers as role-models among society. As for the suggestion that there is no difference between violent hip-hop and violent close-minded calls to murder and torture a political solution and The Charge of the Light Brigade... I guess that such an analogy is only possible to one unable to discern the difference between Boucher's rather harmless (even... dare I say it?... cute) eroticism and pornography. The next step would seem to be to suggest that there is no actual difference between the real act of murder and Shakespeare's portrayal of such in his plays.

What is brilliance?

There is no functional difference between Boucher and pornography, the only difference is the value we currently assign to each. Boucher's paintings were intended to titilate in the boudoir, to illicit a sexual feeling, and pronography is intended to do the same. I'm not calling into question that value either, to tell you the truth I don't care much for Boucher or pornography, though I like Boucher more. We must look to what something is intended to accomplish before we can judge what it really is.


SLG- Certainly, I would not think to dismiss all such music out of hand... and certainly not upon grounds that it tackles themes which make me uncomfortable. On the other hand... I can dismiss a good deal of it as juvenile and rather uncreative... using violence merely for shock value... or because the "artist" himself is is simply a rather hateful person. As for the notion that the music represents what the audience wants... this has long been claimed by the music and etertainment industry. This may indeed say something about our culture. It may say more about the whoremongering industry that will provide whatever is desired for a price. Do we, however, allow for the lowest common denominator to direct our culture? Because there are many teenage boys who can think of nothing more to which to aspire to than becoming a pimp does that justify not merely providing images and soundtracks for this market, but the backing of a great commercial industry to publicize such work?

continued...

If the music were not what the audience wants wouldn't it stop selling? I realize there is a market that manufactures ideas and brands and markets 'cool,' but the fact of the matter is one way or the other people buy ever increasing volumes of this freely. What would you do about it?

We do not have to allow for 'the lowest common denominator' to govern society, I never said we did. I said that the status of music is determined by its popularity. I would ask you, if most of America listens to rap, or at least a significant percentage of the youth population, a plurality I would imagine, are they then the 'lowest common denominator'? I believe that we may find ourselves soon in the 'lowest common denominator' if rap keep growing the way it does, and then what will we have to say for ourselves? That what we value is superior to the many? That the majority of society is trash? Society has no values, only individuals have values and the values respected by society reflect the values held by the majority of its members, in a democracy at least. The important thing to do is to understand rap, study it, so that you can understand what the phenomenon is as opposed to dismissing it off the cuff because its importance is measured in the quantity of its adherents.

[SheykAbdullah]

SLG- Now this is pure BS. First of all, popularity with the masses of the time has never been the element by which great art survives. Works of art survive because they continue to inspire the art experts (critics, scholars, historians, and other artists... in other words, those who have invested time and effort into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art) and they survive because they continue to speak to the public of art lovers (in whatever art form) over time. Most works of popular art quickly fade into embarrassing "period pieces". The Monkees sold more records than anybody in 1967... however I greatly doubt that they will still be idolized by 2067. Indeed, most would find them rather embarassing now. Harry Potter... well I'll leave that one alone. There certainly were artists who have survived who were grossly popular during their own lifetime... however there may be just as many, if not more, whose achievements were not recognized... whose work was too challenging or out of sync with the time. As for the notion that rap may well last because it is the best expression of the time... I should note that every time in history has had its simplistic entertainments. These rarely survive as the great art of the time. Art is more than entertainment and more than merely a mirror of a given time and place. We merely live in a time in which the money exists in the mass marketing of entertainment/art due to the ability to mass produce reproduction of art forms (books, cds,dvds). Pandering to the market of the moment is far more lucrative than marketing to a more discerning market.

I don't know whether I would say popularity of the masses has never been the route to survival by great art. There are many art styles that have survived due to poularity despite having little real contribution to the history of art itself. I might point out styles such as Art Nouveau which continues to be popular, but gave us little in the way of new techniques or vision. The Pre-Raphaelites are another popular movement for their time that have little of great worth to communicate to use. Sometimes popular movements do die, and then sometimes they last. There is no explanation and no way to predict what lasts. It's just whatever catches people's fancy.

Art, the great art to which you refer, is anything. Anything that deserves a label as such. You are right in saying that great art can do more than just reflect the mores of a time and place, or be more than just an entertainment. Art can be almost anything. It can be an experiment, a farce, a commentary, an entertainment or an infinite number of other things. It is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.


SLG- Popular sentiment has nothing to do with it. Neither George Orwell nor even Shakespeare are enamored of the mass public. The reason they survive and continue to do so... even in spite of presenting elements at times which disturb... is because they are acknowledged for their artistic worth by those who have invested the time and effort and even (perhaps) money into studying/appreciating/exploring/understanding art. Certainly I may question Gros' idolizing of Napoleon no less than Leni Reifenstahl's agrandizing of Adolph Hitler and Nazism. However, I do not question their ability to give brilliant artistic form to their perceptions.

I would argue about Shakespeare being enamoured by the mass public. Everyone wants to like Shakespeare because of its percieved intellectual cachet. I have met plenty of 'rappers' from the ghetto, people I served along with, cheek to cheek, who liked Shakespeare and Tupac in equal quantities, even if they didn't necesarily always understand the first.

Popularity does not necesarily restrict itself to the mass population. Fame is dictated by the popularity not just of the public, but the popularity a certain work has with the intellectuals. If a work were not popular with them it would not be handed down as genius. It would become lost to time, rotting away on a shelf. Perhaps there are a hundred better (in either my oinion or yours) Shakespeares in such a state who were relegated to molder because the professors, academics, intellectuals, theologians and scientists of the time considered them to be terrible, base and uninteresting.

Again, what makes brilliant artistic form? Quantify that term. It is wishy-washy and easily bent into anything the speaker wants. Is brilliance allegory? Aethetics? Treatment? Color comprehension? Structuralism? Tonality? Pleasant manipulation of the scales? Intended disharmony?


SLG- Again, popularity has nothing to do with it. What does matter is that your arguments would be refuted by many who have the experience and have invested much into the field of literature who would not merely counter with an argument as lame as that of suggesting that he's a best seller but rather they would answer each of the charges with reasons as to why they disagree with your assertions. As for the notion that you might critique Shakespeare (and undoubtedly Mozart and Leonardo) as failing to meet the simplistic standards of modern entertainment I suppose that this is done so everyday by the public that prefers Brittany Spears to Mozart, Yugi-o to Leonardo, and Tupac to Shakespeare. Personally, I don't buy the notion of artistic "relativity"... the concept that there is no "good" nor "bad" in art... that its all relative. To have such standards is often dismissed as elitist and snobbish, but the snobbism that I find far more offensive is that anti-intellectualism which sneers at anything which requires intellect, demands effort and discipline or achieves a high standard.

The literati would undoubtedly have a better argument, but I would bet you the vast majority of the reading public would cite such a reason in refuting my taste in literature if I said such a thing.

You fail to understand what I said, I did not mean that I dislike Shakespeare
because he is not simplistic, perhaps I mischose my words. I dislike Shakespeare because (and I don't really dislike Shakespeare, but I don't really like him, this is for argument's sake a bit of an exaggeration of my actual opinion) he is not a minimalist and I like minimalists. I like authors who are, in the words of Sabatini;

"...the modern realistic school, by which I mean a synthetic author, an uninspired university product, a chronicler of unimportant and mainly sordid trifles, whose unimaginative and uninventive art lies somewhere between the arts of photography and journalism, whilst expressing, with that presumption which is the chief asset of his class, his contempt of the modern historical romance"

Which is a little unfair because while I revere those he derides I don't hate historical romance. In any case, Shakespeare is not one of those uninspired university products that chronicle unimportant and sordid trifles. It is the glory and scale of Shakespeare I object to and for that reason I say that Greene's The Heart of the Matter is infinitely better for its simplicity of both expression and theme. In accordance I will freely admit I prefer Charlie Parker to Mozart and Edward Hopper to Leonardo.

Art must be relative, else who are we to judge it? Who defines what 'art' is? How can that defnition be made when there are a thousand conflicting opinions even among the educated? If I were to make a definition of art, and I am educated on the subject, well-read, versed and spend a lot of time in the study of both literature and painting, I would say that almost every famous painter since and including Rothko with the exception of Botero, whom I do not like either, is the farthest thing from an artist and are instead mere opportunists, rogues, self-delluded or egoists striving for a piece of Modernism's greatness, but what would be the point in me saying something like that? Would it change how their art is percieved? Would it change what they did? I have studied Pollock, Rothko and Warhol despite the fact I find them no more interesting the the ingredients on the actual soup can one of them painted, but they need to be understood within their context and with their own unique ideas in the same way rap does.

[SheykAbdullah]

SLG- Certainly art and democracy do make strange bedfellows. Art is inherently an elitist activity. It is about "bad" and "good" and "better" and "best" and the masses certainly lack the ability (or the interest) to make such choices. Plato warned of the problems of art in a democracy as did DeToqueville. I agree that in the visual arts we find many questionable works of art that are praised and collected by an increasingly "democratic" public. This public has the wealth to buy art, but has invested little effort into looking at art and learning about art. As such, they are prime dupes for underhanded dealers. As a working artist I completely reject the notion that the public in any way should be seen as the legitimate measure of artistic worth. I would also suggest that I find it quite intriguing that the notion of "elitism" is such a problem in art... and yet we have no problem in admitting that elitism... that measures of "good", "better" and "best" exist in other fields. Certainly, we would not think to take a poll of public opinion with regard to questions of quantum physics, biology, the law, history, etc... As Plato suggested centuries ago, you go to the doctor when you are sick. You don't poll the man in the street. Why then should I care the least for the opinion of the public who has invested no real time or effort into exploring and learning about art beyond that which is spoon-fed them by the entertainment industry?

Art and science are not even comparable. I do not want to get into an argument about Truth here, and while I uphold that the sciences and mathematics are arbitrary, the fact is that they have testable, independantly verifiable values. Art does not. If a painting is mispainted it does not blow up a rocket, does not send a bridge crashing to the ground. The sciences are a non-zero sum game. If you screw up, you've lost, and you are therefore varifiably wrong. Art is not even close. Art isn't even a game. There is no result. And as far as there being no public opinion poll on law, I would refer you to the concept of a referendum which is exercised every two years in most places in the US. Sometimes you might go an election without one, but it's rare.

Plato also suggested we have a philospher king. Would you agree to such a tyranny? I never would. Even a philosopher king of art. After all, didn't the entire scope of modern art evolve from the necesity of breaking the dictatorship of artistic elitism? What was the cry of the Salon des Refuses in 1863? Didn't Manet, Cezanne, Whistler and Pisarro decry the dictation of the elite, the Academy, in marking the quality and veracity of art in accepting any who would submit? What would art be today if no one stood up to challenge the authority of 'legitimate' taste? What did Modigliani's entire life stand for if not an empahtic statement of the unacceptability of the dictation of taste? His empty eyes, his long necks? We have never had an academy in this country, not for language, art or les belles lettres, and we do not need it because we are a country where the aesthetic is not dictated to us, and nor should it be, because such dication necesarily means certain important movements and ideas will be left in the cold and progress prohibited. Art, as it exists as an idea, must necesarily be unfettered. Movements must be allowed to run their course without intervention, and if that is done, if rap is accepted for what it is we may find it passes faster than we expect. After all, it draws its very greatness from its illegitimacy, when, in fact, it is not. If it is the ideas of rap that we find distasteful it is those ideas that must be fought and not rap, which I gather you would agree with. Art is nothing more than ordered expression, a vessel within which almost anything can be contained.

[subterranean]

Art is not smut.

And you don't burn the whole burn just to kill the few mice. And I believe, when you're talking about filth in entertaiment, hip hop is not alone.

[Obdurate]

Hip Hop is art just as rock is, just as metal is, just as punk is (or anti-art, whatever), just as jazz is, just as the blues is, etc. I don't even see why it's an issue.

Because mainstream rap tends to do with capitalist/materialistic issues such as money? And sexist issues? There's a lot of stuff that is diluted to get to the mainstream, though not everything is.

If you don't like mainstream rap- though there are good rappers in the mainstream, and to name a couple: Eminem and Nas- then dig deeper. You want variety? Rap has it.
Edit: Not that I enjoy the mainstream vs underground argument. I don't really agree with the idea of pitting them against each other instead of evaluating the entire genre as a whole, but like genres, it's easier for most people to understand if you do it.

cLOUDDEAD, basically ambient rap.
Sage Francis
Atmosphere, very much the opposite of what's in the mainstream in terms of subject matter.
Why?
Immortal Technique.

And so many more.

Those are just three but rap is very much art, also known as street poetry. It has a history, it has reason, it has passion, and it has a future... just because some people want to capitalize on it doesn't mean it isn't art.

There's also the Rap vs Hip Hop debate but I'd just rather not get involved with THAT.

[ghideon]

OK.

Hip-Hop music exists. Yes?

If Yes, then is it art?

Excerpts from a Wikipedia article entitled Hip Hop.

'It consists of two main components: rapping (MCing) and DJing (audio mixing and scratching)."


"It is, typically,: intensely rhythmic lyrical form making abundant use of techniques like:assonance, alliteration, and rhyme." (emphasis added)

"The rapper is accompanied by an instrumental track, usually referred to as a "beat", performed by a DJ, created by a producer, or one or more instrumentalists. This beat is often created using a sample of the percussion break of another song, usually a funk or soul recording. In addition to the beat other sounds are often sampled, synthesized, or performed. Sometimes a track can be instrumental, as a showcase of the skills of the DJ or producer."

"In the 1990s, a form of hip hop called gangsta rap (emphasis added) became a major part of American music, causing significant controversy over lyrics which were perceived as promoting violence, terrorism [2], promiscuity, drug use and misogyny. Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2000s, hip hop was a staple of popular music charts and was being performed in many styles across the world." )emphasis added)

We are now, I believe, in a better position to discuss the merits, value, impact of hip-hop. And we are most certainly in a better position to determine which disagreements concern facts and which are rooted in perspectives/opinions.

G;)

[Logos]

:eek: interesting articles today on http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/29/D8MAMLF00.html and Washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122600994.html) about " 'Ghost-riding the whip,' as it's known, has swept from its origins in San Francisco's East Bay to much of the rest of the country, propelled by a pair of hip-hop songs that celebrate this exceptionally dangerous regional tradition."

I've never heard of this before :lol:

[jon1jt]

:eek: interesting articles today on http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/29/D8MAMLF00.html and Washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122600994.html) about " 'Ghost-riding the whip,' as it's known, has swept from its origins in San Francisco's East Bay to much of the rest of the country, propelled by a pair of hip-hop songs that celebrate this exceptionally dangerous regional tradition."

I've never heard of this before :lol:

great article logos thanks! it demonstrates how vulnerable teens emulate the music videos and some get killed while hip hoppers sit in plush studios (many doing drugs) and cooking up more filthy ways to sell records. i read an article that said that the music per se is besides the point. what drives hip hop is "image." the music sounds all the same, all presented as a catchy beat line and saturated in images of fast cars, money, and the objectification of women. the superficial references (lyrics?) and stereotyping make it easy for kids to grab onto.

today's hip hop is such a far cry from Grand Master Flash's "The Message" --- done in the 1980s, an example of early "rap" which has structure and for all its generalization (i.e. smut) a simple plotline. art, no. but at least the bulk of the song centers around a definable rhyme scheme, which spoke of black folks having trouble obtaining employment in go-go Wall Street times.

hip hop, with its manufactured beats and rhymes, basks in sexist remarks and the glory of drug dealers and unheeded materialism. while music doesn't owe us a book of virtues, if hip hop dares to be great and rise to art form, it will give the listener something to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident, which at present it is not.

[dramasnot6]

hip hop, with its manufactured beats and rhymes, basks in sexist remarks and the glory of drug dealers and unheeded materialism. while music doesn't owe us a book of virtues, if hip hop dares to be great and rise to art form, it will give the listener something to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident, which at present it is not.

:nod: Very much agreed. It disgusts me how these horribly sexist and prejudice messages are being delivered to young people. Teenagers already embody a strong id, no need to exacerbate it with graphic and crude popular culture.

[Shadowsarin]

There is nothing inherently wrong with rap if it would clean up its values. Now it doesn't have to be spic and span. Certainly rock isn't, but currently it is way out there.

I think the biggest problem that rap seems to have is people generelising it to its extremities. Yes, there are some rappers who go about preeching about how great sexism is, for example I'm sure most of us know the whole '*****es and ho's' steriotype and all. But how about you compair that the following lyrics:

WARNING - The following lyrics are REALLY NOT NICE.


I´m a prevert in the nation
Teaching yer children all about the sex education
In the school system
I´m a mentor
I´ll make yer daughters ****
Red and sore

She´s just 13
With torpedo t**s
Hey Dennis Ruley
Ain´t that the ****

She´s into sex education
And I am the biggest pervert teacher in the nation
Your daughter she´s mine
So fresh off the vine

The Mentors were a metal band that formed in 1976, long before Hip Hop gained the social stronghold it has today.

Now, another example: Violence

This is one of the most extreme examples I have come across.

Once again, these lyrics arn't nice.


they kicked her until they cracked her ribs and she stopped moving
blood leaking through the cloth, she cried silently
and then they all proceeded to rape her violently
Billy was meant to go first, but each of them took a turn
ripping her up, and choking her until her throat burned
a broken jaw mumbled for god but they weren't concerned
when they were done and she was lying bloody, broken and broos
one of them ni**az pulled out a brand new twenty-two
they told him that she was a witness of what she'd gone through
and if he killed her he was guaranteed a spot in the crew
he thought about it for a minute, she was practicly dead
and so he leaned over and put the gun right to her head

Now obviously, that is really bad. But compair it with the Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse:

WARNING - THESE ARE REALLY REALLY NOT NICE



Through my anatomy, dwells another being
Rooted in my cortex, a servant to its bidding
Brutality now becomes my appetite
Violence is now a way of life
The sledge my tool to torture
As it pounds down on your forehead

Eyes bulging from their sockets
With every swing of my mallet
I smash your ****ing head in, until brains seep in
through the cracks, blood does leak
distorted beauty, catastrophe
Steaming slop, splattered all over me

---

I was once a man before I transformed
into this molester, freshly deceased children
You have born, torn by my rape
The dead are not safe, the lifeless child corpse
I will violate

Pleasure from the dead, complete satisfaction
I open the coffin
Sick thoughts run through my head as I stare
At the dead, over and over, I can't escape
I begin the dead sex, licking her young, rotted orifice
I c** in her cold ****, shivering with ecstasy
for nine days straight I do the same
She becomes by dead, decayed child sex slave
her neck I hack, cutting through the back
I use her mouth to eject

I'm really sorry to quote such lyrics on here, but for comparisons sake I have. I'm also really sorry if I've offended anyone too.

Now, next set of lyrics. These are rap:


Excuse me Miss, can we chat for a second
I'd ask how you doin', but you fine I reckon
Wait, do you have a man, cause I aint' into home-wreckin
No?. .Aiight cool just checkin
Look, from a hundred yards you caught my eye
An all my boys said I didn't have the heart to say hi
I'd like to have your number you don't have ta give it now
But if you diss me while they lookin I'm a never live it down
Y'know what I mean, Aww damn, my name's Will
Maxine. Pleasure to meet you, look here's the deal
Can I sit? Thanks, now I don't mean to objectify
But this the metaphore that crossed my mind
You sweet, good enough to eat
Make a brother wanna TLC--Creep
A brother can't sleep
It's like a kid fallin for you
So here's my own private nickname, I'm a call you

Hang on a second...those lyrics aren't violent or evil...Something must be wrong here!

Or maybe steriotypes are a bad thing.


Erm, now I've got that out of my system, the topic question.

To quote the definition of art on Wikipedia (I'm sure someone has already done this)


Art is an application of a creativity that has some form of appreciative value, usually on the basis of aesthetic value or emotional impact. Much about art is controversial, including what specific cases can be considered such.

Well, that about sums it up for me. I know it takes a lot of tallent and creativity to MC and DJ. I know several rap songs appreciate and enjoy, and I know several rap songs that touch me emotionally.

Rap has as much claim to be art as does any other form of music.

I did the best job I could to censor the lyrics, including several words the filter didn't pick up on. Once again, I'm really sorry if you take offence to them.

[ghideon]

This has actually turned into an important and quite learned thread. I take my hat off to all.

I agree with a great deal of what has already been written. I think that some issues can be further clarified.

When I think of hip-hop I think of both the sexist,violent,bs that we all have acknowledged exists in large bounty. But I also think of the pure hip-hop, what the music could be if one simply applied it's principles(particular forms of beat, use of DJ turntable collaboration, particular linguistic forms) in an ideal sense. And yes I think of quite a few artists and raps that come close to expressing the true essence of this music.

I have been deeply moved by quite a few hip-hop songs but I have done time, been on the street, was poor, am poor and have lived within the African American community my entire life. I have looked out a window in a yellow walled cell and watched the cars and trucks and people all going and coming. I have seen my mother sleep on the streets because she was too far gone to take care of herself. I have heard too many stories from people I love that are nothing but tales of rage and despair. I do not know one black man in my life right now who has not done time or known a close relative who has done hard time. And so what a song about "the trash in the street and the punk cop on the beat" means to you may be so different then what it means to me.

One of my deepest concern is that each one of us admits that all they have to base their opinions on is what they have learned, read, heard, saw, been taught and what they have lived through. Given that reality it is, imho, close to impossible to make absolute statements when it comes to subjective issues. And the determination of the value or worth of a particular form of music is by its very nature a subjective not absolute determination. It is not like "the sun rises" or even "Picasso is one of the most important artists of the 20th century." The statements are is supported by tons of objective evidence.

But the debate about hip-hop that is going on here seems to me to be much more about our own personal consciousness and how we now, at this moment in time, see and conceptualize the world we live in.

I feel confident about the above proposition because it seems to be easily verified.

If someone writes, that at this point in time hip-hop does not give the listener something "to chew on, a profundity of thought line, concealed or evident."

How can that be an absolute? How confident are we that when Joe, Suzy or Paul listen to a particular beat that nothing important, deep, is going on? I can certainly listen to a song and find nothing there. However, how can I verify that nobody else is finding depth?

The popularity of video games, text messages, the whole sum of this society's pop culture...by definition we are looking at trends that have vast appeal. But something can have both breadth and depth. The two, although certainly not always evident, are not mutually exclusive.

I would even suggest that when something becomes important to millions of people there must be depth going on.

Isn't that the real problem? Like it, love it, hate it the truth is that everything from Jerry Springers TV antics (which I find literally impossible to watch) to the popularity of World Wrestling is an objective fact in the USA. Now I can not simply accept that millions of human beings are stupid, lazy, or really fundamentally different then I am. And if that is true then whatever the reason is that so many watch such "junk" is worthy of a great deal of reasoned, dare I say compassionate, discussion, analysis and debate.

If it were simply the case of a whole nation of idiots then wouldn't that make everything pretty cut and dry. The truth is that the only realy valid method of determining the reason for the popularity of, for example, violent hip-hop is to ask those who are listening. And I mean really ask with respect and attention. Not the kind of rhetorical game where somebody might ask James "So why do you like this violent, superficial music? Huh?" No. I mean asking because you, we, do not need to know and we want to know. In fact, we need to know.

And we do not.
Anybody reading this post or any of my other posts where I have discussed some of my background is free to ask me questions. There is nothing stopping anybody from asking me, or others, why they do find this music important. Either there are no questions being asked because we are not in the habit of asking each other such questions. Or we believe that we already have enough information or experience that asking is besides the point.
Well, I say that the value of hip-hop is not determined by how much information one has, so no matter how many books you have read it is not enough. It is determined by experience and in this case I believe it is imperative that we ask those with profoundly different backgrounds what the music means to them.

Otherwise, we may think we know and yet in truth be lost.

[dramasnot6]

"One of my deepest concern is that each one of us admits that all they have to base their opinions on is what they have learned, read, heard, saw, been taught and what they have lived through. Given that reality it is, imho, close to impossible to make absolute statements when it comes to subjective issues. And the determination of the value or worth of a particular form of music is by its very nature a subjective not absolute determination. It is not like "the sun rises" or even "Picasso is one of the most important artists of the 20th century." The statements are is supported by tons of objective evidence.

But the debate about hip-hop that is going on here seems to me to be much more about our own personal consciousness and how we now, at this moment in time, see and conceptualize the world we live in.

I feel confident about the above proposition because it seems to be easily verified."

If your meaning was that we only interpret hip hop this way because of our own context, i completely agree. I have not "lived on the street" before, I have spoken to people who have in my volunteer work though. But jsut because people do not have a first hand experience in poverty and , for lack of a better term, "ghetto life" does not make them blind to the issues in the world and the horrific nature of the content of many hip hop songs. I personally am a big fan of songs of rebellion and revolution. But there is a very thick line between social revolution(sticking it to the man :p) and just plain inappropriate and disgusting material. Look at the lyrics shadow posted. I could never believe the act of rape to have any positive connotations ever. Yet in hip hop it is sung by singers who are portrayed as "cool", giving it positive connotations and youth very wrong imnpressions. I think, no matter what context you have, rape and sexism to that extreme should be looked at as an immoral and wrong act.

[Logos]

General Mod note:
let's not get into quoting/posting a lot of explicit lyrics here, mmmkay?
please remember the forum rules, especially #1 and #3.
thanks.

[Comrade Ahab]

ok, so it has become quite clear as i read this thread that neither side is going to change its mind, however, the fact that anyone would try to put restrictions on a definition of art seems counter-productive. what makes art what it is, is that it continues to be progressive and provokes a reaction. moreover, art is personal. what one person considers to be art may be what another considers ''smut''. given this, no one should be brazen enough to assume that they alone can put distinctions on what is or is not art.

here are some thought provoking lyrics by a hip-hop group known as 'binary star' expressing what they see wrong with much of today's ''hip-pop'' music scene:

"Honest Expression"

I ain't hardcore, I don't pack a nine millimeter
Most of y'all gangsta rappers ain't hardcore neither
Whoever gets mad, then I'm talkin' 'bout you
Claimin you fear no man, but never walk wit' out crew
Where I'm from, your reputation don't mean jack
So what, you pack gats and you sell fiends crack
You ain't big time, my man
You ain't no different from the next cat in my neighborhood who did time
Rhyme after it's the same topic
What makes you think your hardcore 'cause you was raised in the projects?
Broke-*** finally got a hundred in your pocket
Now your on the mic, spittin' money's no object
What you say is bullcrap, if you wasn't wit' your crew
Or wasn't drunk off the brew, would you still pull gats?
You need to stop fronting or your headed for self-destruction.

Yeah, today's topic, is self-destruction
I ain't talkin' 'bout the KRS-One discussion
I'm talkin' 'bout the one-too-many ignorant suckers
Lyin' on the mic to my sisters and brothers
Every time you listen to the radio
All you hear is nonsense, they never play the bomb ****
Everything that glitters ain't gold
And every gold record don't glitter, that's for damn sure.

(Scratching Voices:)
"Y'all need to be cool as ****"
"Tryin' to teach you from the heart"
"Y'all rambling on, and ain't sayin' nothing"
"I'm busy in the mind"
"I'll go invent, I think I'll elevate my mental"

(Interlude)
See cats got confused somewhere man (confused)
About what hip-hop was, you know what I'm sayin'
Or what hip-hop is, (it's business yo) you know it
It's all business (its big money, know what I'm sayin'
that's all these cats about)
You know that's bull****, right? That's nigga talk, nigga talk
But if you want to make money though.
I got it broke down though, I got it broke down, (break it down yo)
You got hip-hop, then you got hip-pop.
Hip-pop?
Hip-pop.
Alright, (but a lot of cats want pop)
Yes. (know what I'm sayin')
It used to be real hip hop.
You got the top forty version of hip-hop.

I still got something else, something else that I wanna get off my chest
What? (know what I'm sayin'?)


How many cats you know
Speak the ill-legit rhyme after rhyme diligent
Eighty-five percent represent ignorant
Either you're innocent or guilty,
Some of my favorite emcees fell off
It damn near killed me
Lookin' at the kids that was true hip-hop
Nowadays them cats don't even do hip-hop
Rap got 'em brainwashed, with cats that don't last
And five minutes of fame, that's when it's a shame
Seein' real emcees tryin' to imitate rappers
If you ask me, they goin' out ***-backwards
Trading in respect to push a fat Lex'
Puff rhymin' on the remix, what's next?
It hurts so bad, I wanna smack 'em
My favorite crew members break up
Turn around and join whack ones.

This is dedicated to you hip-hop hypocrites
Droppin' whack songs, like you don't give a ****
I ain't got nothin' against nobody trying to make a decent living
It ain't the money that's the issue
Only if that's the reason why these cats ain't makin' decent music
That's when I got beef wit' you
And I'm a bring it to you like never
Go ahead, call me player-hater if it makes you feel better
Try to jump my crew if you cats feel boggy
You need to wake up, and smell the damn coffee.



Now this is not to say that i haven't enjoyed reading all of the posts so far; discussing these issues can be intriguing, but it's important to remember that the definition of art isn't etched in stone.

[Comrade Ahab]

sorry bout the explicit lyrics. i just took them from a different site. won't happen again.

[ghideon]

Dramas et al:

I would actively support any inteligent and forceful statement or act that rebukes, in no uncertain terms, the sexism/vilolence against women that is glorified in rap and hip-hop songs.

I also have to own up to the fact that I am a man and so, while I can try to understand what a woman feels in relation to songs about rape, the truth is I will never be able to actually switch places and know from the inside out.

I am white. I assume most others here are although please correct me if that is mistaken. However, whatever may be the case, I do see a difficulty in terms of white people and insitutions coming down on the glorification of violence in a music that is rooted in the African-American community. It is not that I would say that nobody but black people are worthy of their comments. And certainly gender has to be taken into a huge consideration as well. It is simply that given the amount of violence blacks have suffered from the hands of whites the whole issue of violence needs becomes complex both in terms of class, gender and race.

[dramasnot6]

Hmm...well there are quite a few white rappers emerging today ghideon, and singing about the same content. There are definetly many stereotypes and racist messages about different races of people in songs, they are pretty unfair to most people.

[jon1jt]

I think US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had it right when he defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."

hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.

but according to ghideon no on is privileged to make an absolute statement about music, let alone artful music, because what defines these categories is by its very nature subjective. but we know that this is just patently false. value judgments are made every day and the basis of American law and jurisprudence makes such determinations defined by evolving standards of decency. you can't urinate in public; you can't curse in class; you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. in America, you can't walk down a residential street without clothes. you can't drink in public. certain forms of sexual representation are prohibited (child porn), the FCC regulates radio/tv broadcasting. fines are often rendered for lewd or licentious acts.



One of my deepest concern is that each one of us admits that all they have to base their opinions on is what they have learned, read, heard, saw, been taught and what they have lived through. Given that reality it is, imho, close to impossible to make absolute statements when it comes to subjective issues. And the determination of the value or worth of a particular form of music is by its very nature a subjective not absolute determination

according to this attitude, absolutely everything is beyond the reach of a value judgment. the relativist thinking propigated by ghideon is quite alluring because there is a tendency to distrust government, let alone the idea of a censorship board that bans hip hop. i've said in another thread, however, that i see absolutely no literary, artistic, political or scientific value in Hitler's Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. if they were banned, the world wouldn't lose any sleep. they espouse hate and create subdivisions and have caused more than one hate crime.

the liberal Us Supreme Court of the 1960s and 1970s embraced ghideon's relativism (almost) in the court's evolving standard for "obscenity." check out the case, "miller vs. california - early '70s, quite interesting. it leaves many things unanswered. it's sets forth a social value "test." i don't remember it but it's three-pronged, and cases are considered all the time against it.

i strongly believe that "man is NOT the measure of all things." there are certain abiding truths in the world. plato established this philosophically over 2000 years ago. if you haven't all ready, i recommend reading his book, "Meno." and this thinking of certain "inalienable rights (self-evident truths)" is the basis of our democracy.

ghideon also goes on to admit that he can't 'entirely' identify with a woman's perspective because he's not a woman (interestingly he identifies with the black man's plight). its abundantly obvious that hip hop objectifies women; everybody knows that it doesn't make the lives of women any easier either, especially in light of their oppressed history.

i disagree. we CAN identify with each other because human beings are tied together by an empathetic cord and thereby allows access to one another's emotional space. we "feel" the grief of parents whose sons and daughters are killed in war.

relativism has been chipping away at all forms of public authority for at least the last century. what's at stake is not only authority but the very notion of a "public."

[SheykAbdullah]

I think US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had it right when he defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."

hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.

but according to ghideon no on is privileged to make an absolute statement about music, let alone artful music, because what defines these categories is by its very nature subjective. but we know that this is just patently false. value judgments are made every day and the basis of American law and jurisprudence makes such determinations defined by evolving standards of decency. you can't urinate in public; you can't curse in class; you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. in America, you can't walk down a residential street without clothes. you can't drink in public. certain forms of sexual representation are prohibited (child porn), the FCC regulates radio/tv broadcasting. fines are often rendered for lewd or licentious acts.

You can not randomly ban things because you feel they are inappropriate. That censorship is what fueled the governments of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, The Ayatollah, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Mussoulini, the First Republic under Robespierre, Qadafi, Mugabe and many others. You do have the right not to listen to rap, but never the right to tell another person not to.

You can not make value judgements on what another person likes, to do so implies a superiority of taste and to assume any superiority of taste is degrading to the integrity of a free society. Certain prohibitions may be made against ACTIONS, the making and keeping of child pornography, urinating in public, etc because these actions, by their very nature, harm another person by themselves. They do not merely inspire injurous action, they ARE injurous action. As for FCC regulations, they don't stop anybody. Most networks keep an escrow funds just to pay the fines they inevitably incur every year.


according to this attitude, absolutely everything is beyond the reach of a value judgment. the relativist thinking propigated by ghideon is quite alluring because there is a tendency to distrust government, let alone the idea of a censorship board that bans hip hop. i've said in another thread, however, that i see absolutely no literary, artistic, political or scientific value in Hitler's Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. if they were banned, the world wouldn't lose any sleep. they espouse hate and create subdivisions and have caused more than one hate crime.

Even suggesting banning these books shows a hatred against history. Should we should ban everything that we find offensive on a knee-jerk reaction, regardless of what important information they can shed on the darkest days of our history?

You know what, you're right. We shouldn't even try to understand the Nazi's from their own perspective, after all, what can we learn from a bunch of Fascists? We should just forget it ever happened, we should outlaw the very words 'Fascist,' 'Third Reich,' 'Hitler' and 'Nazi'. We shouldn't even teach about them in school, except to say that the Righteous US and her Glorious Republican (Vengeful France, Just great Britian and forget Russian because it's history is too ugly) allies overcame the power of a dark, sinister evil that was threatening to overcome the Great, Glorious True world. Why it was evil we don't really know, but why's not important. Just trust me. It was bad, real bad. So bad, we don't even remember.

After all, there have been lots of governments that have banned books they found offensive, Soviet Russia for example, where according to the Criminal Code of 1926 rap would have been illegal, under Section Ten, spreading propoganda, and since they are making money, section 4, aid to the international Bourgeoisie, Section One, counter-revolutionary activity and Section 8, terror. They would have gotten at least twenty-five years in the Gulag, because remember, thought is the same as action. Oh I forgot one, since it was distributed and ivolved more than one person, Section 11, criminal organization. You wouldn't even need a trial. You could just sentance them, the seditious, inappropriate criminals, without a pesky judge.

Not nearly as rough, in Iran they'll just arrest you and beat you to a pulp in some interrogation cell for listening to western rap, that is if you don't have the connections to get out of it.

You know what, Soviet Russia is another one of those bad places I'd rather not think about. Communism could always come back if people read about it and it'll be just as bad then. Better not give people ideas. Better outlaw that too, no Gulag Archipelago, no One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, throw them all out. Mayakovsky ESPECIALLY. We don't even want to think about it. Better get rid of Marx while we're at it, might inspire a reduction of the country-side Pol Pot style, or even Chairman Mao style. We can't have any more Greal Leaps Forward, too many people died. Oh and all those books about British Imperialism. The US gov't might get ideas about India. I'd better start throwing away everything I have by Kipling.

[SheykAbdullah]

the liberal Us Supreme Court of the 1960s and 1970s embraced ghideon's relativism (almost) in the court's evolving standard for "obscenity." check out the case, "miller vs. california - early '70s, quite interesting. it leaves many things unanswered. it's sets forth a social value "test." i don't remember it but it's three-pronged, and cases are considered all the time against it.

i strongly believe that "man is NOT the measure of all things." there are certain abiding truths in the world. plato established this philosophically over 2000 years ago. if you haven't all ready, i recommend reading his book, "Meno." and this thinking of certain "inalienable rights (self-evident truths)" is the basis of our democracy.

And I reject your 'truths.' We are a species of individuals for a reason, it is not in our biology to operate as a hive of ants dancing out messages to insure conformity as we march on to the sugar. Your post here has no where even hinted at the fulfillment of our 'inalienable rights.' In fact, you have pretty much said let's throw the First Amendment out of the window. Tear it out of your Constitutions, folks, we'll wad it up for toilet paper, or at the very least we'll just color over the "abridging free speech" part.

As I said before, the greatest works of art of the past two hundred years came about as a result of non-comformity, came about as an attack on the establishment. Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe was called smut when it was displayed, his Olympia was called pornography. Modigliani was lambasted for the eroticism of his portraits. Matisse was caled a 'fauve' because he used colors 'like a wild beast' and had no eye for 'true art.' If we had censorship the like of which YOU recommend we would have no great art, merely repititions of the past.

Examples of this kind exist not just in art, but in everything. Women being allowed to vote was considered obscene, women in pants, women in PUBLIC in some places was considered obscene, and that never would have been allowed if we were protecting the moral standards of the time by outlawing everything we viewed as contrarian and abided by 'true' 'objective' values. They even had scientific evidence of why women were inferior.

Don't forget jazz music, which grew up next to the brothels of New Orleans and was nearly as primitive as rap before it was taken to the heights it later reached. If censors had had their way it would have been nipped in the bud before it could have grown into what will be the classical music of two hundred years from now, unarguably the most advanced music form created in the twentieth century! But of course, I assume those critics then didn't know nearly as much as we do now, and our taste and moral refinenment is infinitely more sophisticated than theirs.

Lastly I would ask you who establishes these truths? Who dictates to humanity what they should do? Should we establish a committee? Only the most virtuous citizens should sit on it. Virtue, we'd have to figure out what we meant by virtue too, but I'm sure we won't have to look for for our new nomenklatura! It'd be twenty years before they were hoarding pornography in their own closets, for their own edification on the nature of the problem, of course.

In a society with censorship there is no evolution of ANYTHING. Society becomes a stagnant morass until someone stands up and fights it, and that person is ultimately labeled an unconventional, seditious, dangerous traitor by his contemporaries and a noble, moral, just man by the people of the next generation who want to impose the same restricting standard that he fought against.


relativism has been chipping away at all forms of public authority for at least the last century. what's at stake is not only authority but the very notion of a "public."

What is the 'public'? Is not the rights of the individual the very thing that assures the prosperity of a 'public'? Has not history, not twenty years ago, proven that an unfettered society with a FREE exchange of ideas is infinitely stronger than a bloc with no freedom of speech and a 'unified' public? There are few places where things were welded into such a block as in the USSR, and despite their huge population, massive resources and their strangle hold on 'seditious' freedoms, such as freedom of speech, the inability of the government to encourage the work of an INDIVIDUAL choked their ability to produce, destroyed their ability to innovate and locked them in a cycle of reaction to what the West did as opposed to allowing the USSR the freedom to move on its own.

A public need no more unity than recognizing that at certain times it need be united for the common defence and for the regulation of the HARMFUL ACTIONS of its members, not for the thought-crimes of those same people. The censorship of rap would indeed be recognition of thought-crime, and the banning of Mein Kampf, that would be even worse. It would be an insult to everyone who died in the Holocaust or who was killed in WWII. That book exists as a testament to the madness of one man and the insanity of his blinded single-mindedness and lack of perspective. I don't know if you have ever read Mein Kampf (I hope you have since you claim enough authority on the subject to ban it), but I have. It's drivel. It's mindless, and it's very unlikely to make anyone a Nazi who is not already in jack boots. But even worse, Mein Kampf wasn't banned in this country during WWII and you would suggest banning it NOW sixty years AFTER the conflict and AFTER true Fascism, not the Franco version, which is debatable as to whether it actually was Fascism, has died?

What you are suggesting is nothing more than vengeful attack on history, a subject that deserves respect not just for our country but for the entire world, and indeed, for every member of the human race, not just those alive now, but even for those who will be born after us, an uncountable number, exponentially larger than we can even understand. You would steal what is by the very fact of humanity's existence its birth-right. The understanding of themselves, where they came from, and what we've come OUT OF. You would steal ourselves.

[Shadowsarin]

I'm just going to say a simple little quote here, and I think it is the single most relevent and amazing quote I've ever come across:


I may strongly disagree with what you have to say, but I will die to defend your right to say it

The point that makes, is that if you have the right to censor others opinions, they by default have the right to censor your opinions.

Just wanted to add that.

[Petrarch's Love]

Dramas et al:

I would actively support any inteligent and forceful statement or act that rebukes, in no uncertain terms, the sexism/vilolence against women that is glorified in rap and hip-hop songs.

I also have to own up to the fact that I am a man and so, while I can try to understand what a woman feels in relation to songs about rape, the truth is I will never be able to actually switch places and know from the inside out.

I am white. I assume most others here are although please correct me if that is mistaken. However, whatever may be the case, I do see a difficulty in terms of white people and insitutions coming down on the glorification of violence in a music that is rooted in the African-American community. It is not that I would say that nobody but black people are worthy of their comments. And certainly gender has to be taken into a huge consideration as well. It is simply that given the amount of violence blacks have suffered from the hands of whites the whole issue of violence needs becomes complex both in terms of class, gender and race.

I felt I had to respond to the last part of this quote, especially because I think, from what I've read elsewhere, the person posting it seems to be thoughtful and well intentioned, and I've heard other well intentioned people use similar logic. This logic appears to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that since black men have been opressed, it's O.K. for them to sing songs about the opression of women. I don't see how that helps things. Aren't black women then doubly oppressed? I'm sorry, but songs glorifying gratuitous violence against another human being (woman or man) should be criticised (I will not say censored) by black and white alike. Note, I am not claiming that all hip hop necessarily falls into this category, but I've heard songs that certainly do, and it's those I object to. There is no justification I can think of for lyrics like the second one that Shadowsarin posted, describing the violent rape and murder of another person, apparently for no better reason than entertainment for a group of guys, and some bizzare initiation ritual. I don't care if it's describing a bunch of white, ivy league frat boys commiting this act, or a black gang in the ghetto. It's not right, and I think everyone regardless of skin color has not only the moral justification, but the moral obligation to say it's nothing to sing about.

[ghideon]

I think US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had it right when he defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."


OK. You "think" he had it right but do you "know"? The very construction of your sentence leans towards a non-absolutist perspective.




hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.

No. That is not a fact. The facts are more complex. One fact is that hip-hop lyrics have not always been as crude and sexist as they are now. Another fact is that not "all" hip-hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, and sexist and others have already posted examples. It is true that most of the hip-hop songs that you have listened to are as you describe. It is true that most of the songs played on the radio and played on MTV...display crude, sexist and self-indulgent attitudes.

But you see no need to actually think critically. You make absolute statements that are not. Now you may differ with me in many ways but irregardless, I believe you owe it to yourself and all readers to be clear about what is true and what is not. If you lean more towards the importance of definitive statements then fine go ahead and make them. But I suggest that when you do you do so wisely. At this point you are making it too easy to negate them. Again and again you ignore context. While your actual language is full of phrase constructions such as "I think" "in my opinion" you then go on to make pronouncements about the entire history of hip hop. Not thinking at its best.



but according to ghideon no on is privileged to make an absolute statement about music


I did not say that nor would I.

In my post one example of an absolute statement that I would support was "Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century." That was about a visual artist but there are many similar statements I could make about music. "The Beatles Sgt Pepper album in both lyrics and musical construction reflected the rising importance of drugs, particularly LSD, and altered states of consciousness of that era."" I could go on and on. So do not put words unless you know they fit.


Now, do I have a grave problem with granting individuals and institutions "priviliged" authority above all others to define what is considered good art, decent art, art of worth. You bet I do! Are you so absolutely confident that nobody could ever think that some of your posts are worthless and self-indulgent. I am NOT saying they are. I am simply asking you if you could imagine a person in a position of authority thinking of your writing in that way and thus taking acts to silence it?


you can't urinate in public; you can't curse in class; you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. in America, you can't drink in public


The "cursing in class" bit is close to sci-fi. My God have you even been in a HS class these days? Cursing? Folks are worried about bullets.

Now "yelling fire in a crowded movie house" is against the law and, I would assume, almost always enforced, I would hope so. I can not imagine a situation in which that could not lead to some real problems and that is probably why I have never experienced such.



there is a tendency to distrust government, let alone the idea of a censorship board that bans hip hop.

Er...yea...yes,yup. You bet there is, actually tendency is not putting it strongly enough, to distrust government and the idea of a censorship board. Are you actually, on the one hand asserting the virtues of the founding principles of this nation and on the other hand suggesting that this distrust of both govt and acts by the government should simply be trusted at face value? What are you actually saying here? I actually do want to know? I am not a historical scholar but wasn't there a general agreement that the citizens of a nation should always think about their nation and its institutions and not simply blindly go along with them. Wasn't that one of the key things that the founders wanted to be different then other nations.

Remember your hero Emerson. Why don't you imagine that you are sitting across from him and explaining why you believe people are in error when they have distrust or why you believe that a censorship board needs to be created. I suppose he would have a quixotic expression and say something to the effect "Well. You seem to be thinking independently, I admire that. I have always had great respect for those who can and do." at which point he would pause, look out the log cabin window at the Oak and Maples and go on to say "I am troubled though that such an independent spirit wishes to move our great nation away from that very act. You are one breath of independence yearning to choke the very inhalations and exhalations of others. I pray you never go, through some act of Apolo, from a breath to a storm."



"So I eschew 'selectivity' and follow free association
of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of
thought, swimming in seas of English with no
discipline other than the story-line and the rhythm
of rhetorical exaltation and expostulated statement,
like a fist coming down on a table with each complete
utterance, bang!"
-Jack Kerouac


You eschew free association of mind? limitless blow? swimming in seas of English with no discipline other than the story-line and the rhythm"?

Or am I wrong in assuming a relationship of affirmation between you and your signature.:lol:

[Shadowsarin]

hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.

Really? Well apparently Rock Music promotes Satanism and causes kids to go out and either kill themselves or shoot up a school.

Don't generalise, its extremely fallacious.

[jon1jt]

Really? Well apparently Rock Music promotes Satanism and causes kids to go out and either kill themselves or shoot up a school.

Don't generalise, its extremely fallacious.


i'm not generalizing. i lump all the smut together. remember mrs. gore's initiative, putting labels on such smut and the music industry was up in arms? does anyone recall the suicides ozzy ozbourne's music triggered and his music being on trial?

that will be the day when i die defending a person for writing lyrics that degrade women and spit in the face of authority. all hip hop/gangsta rap music does not do this, but a great deal being broadcast by major radio stations/tv does. it's quite interesting - even laughable - how ghideon is a civil libertarian when it comes to free speech but when it comes to free markets he's bent on the view that "corporations are taking over the world," exploiting workers, etc. can't i easily say that the word, "exploitation" is as malleable a word as "art"? ah! another double standard...of course.



You eschew free association of mind? limitless blow? swimming in seas of English with no discipline other than the story-line and the rhythm"?

Or am I wrong in assuming a relationship of affirmation between you and your signature.

as far as my signature, if you knew anything about jack kerouac you'd know that your analogy is quite off the mark. there's a big difference between violating a mode of writing - formalism, as his generation did, and embracing musical forms which embellish violence and misogyny. a great deal of their work was actually banned initially (e.g. Ginsberg's Howl), dealing with the drug references, anti-establishment rhetoric, etc. but the totality of their work says something far greater. the same can't be said for hip hop. first read kerouac's on the road and then the Norton Anthology for black literature---particularly its section on hip hop, then tell me they strive toward the same end.

hip hop is a social pariah, feeding on misogyny, the glorification of drug dealers, and a provocative sexual imagery. it offers nothing beyond a four-minute cheap-listening thrill and soils far more minds that has a domino effect socially. in the area of tort law, courts use what's known as reasonable person standard. and the reasonable person can be applied to defining such defiant modes of expression.

lastly, this argument about works of art that were early on banned or rejected by the public only later to be deemed great just doesn't resonate anymore to give free license to a hip hop industry that thrives on controversy. to sit there and suggest that hip hop and gangsta rap have no negative bearing on the populous is to walk through life with a blindfold on. that's giving up under the guise of free expression.

i wonder if ghideon and abdullah would adhere to the same civil libertarian sensibility if a certain form of (white) rock music became widespread that stereotyped blacks and arabs in a hostile, negative way. i'll just take a pot shot guess how it would be dealt with: the ACLU for one would run to the courts and invoke the standard of 'fighting words' in an effort to have it banned. surely the ACLU would -- in high ghideon fashion -- point to the institution of American slavery as evidence for making the distinction between the kind of stereotyping hip hop makes and that new brand of rock music against blacks.

[kilted exile]

For the first part:

No I do not see Rap/Hip Hop as art (OT: although I have still not decided on what exactly I feel does constitute art - Is it enough that it art creates an emotion inside of us when we are exposed to it?). I agree that the wide majority shown in the mainstream media is crude & bordering on the obscene (but as has already been mentioned Rap/Hip Hop is not alone in this respect) As a result I make a concious decision not to listen to it.

However

I do not believe it should be banned just because I dont agree with, or enjoy listening to it. There would be very little left to listen to if these were the general parameters.

[Shadowsarin]

Right, thank you.


Don't generalise, its extremely fallacious.

Now, you said:


all hip hop/gangsta rap music does not do this

And in that, you yourself have said that not everyone in the hip hop community is a violent racist rapist like you seem to be implying.

However, you contradict that point by, oh dear, generalizing with quotes such as:


i lump all the smut together.


hip hop is a social pariah, feeding on misogyny, the glorification of drug dealers, and a provocative sexual imagery.

...Which are implying quite strongly that all Hip Hop is this evil you say it is. Not a good way to keep an argument together really.


Now, the white power thing. I haven't defended white power lyrics in the past, no, but I have, in line with the quote I adore, defended the BNP in a philosophy class. The BNP aren't a white power band, they are a white power political party. I think that kind of superseeds your point about me being a hypocrite (Ok, it wasn't exactly aimed at me, but the point still stands)

Oh, and I'm not even going to bother with the Ozzy Ozborne thing. I can just imagen you, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their little rampage in 1999, leading the protest saying it was Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom that caused it. Never mind the fact the kids had an obvious history of mental problems. It just has to be Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom.

[jon1jt]

shadowsarin,

for whatever reason the system is not letting me quote your series of quotes that crescendos with the pronouncement that i somehow "contradicted" myself because i suggest in one part that "all" hip hop is smut and elsewhere its not the case. i figured that smart people, presumably you included, would get the message that i was conceding that not all hip hop emulates misogyny, death to police, etc. when i also said, "Hip hop is a social pariah" i was not IMPLYING, i meant the whole ball of wax, that's correct, the industry as a whole. the hip hop that falls short of what i deem to be HIGHLY OFFENSIVE is not necessarily immune from what's OBSCENE and vile. there are gradations of obscenity and i was acknowledging that.

you suggested i used the word "evil" to describe hip hop. i don't ever use that word for reasons i'm not going to discuss in this thread. just know that that's not a good way for you to keep an argument together either.

shadowsarin said,
"Oh, and I'm not even going to bother with the Ozzy Ozborne thing. I can just imagen you, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their little rampage in 1999, leading the protest saying it was Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom that caused it. Never mind the fact the kids had an obvious history of mental problems. It just has to be Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom."

of course they had mental problems, i don't deny that. and i didn't claim that minus the musical/video influence that somehow that they wouldn't have necessarily committed that despicable act. undeniable is that manson and rammstein and doom and those video games allowed them to cultivate their aggressions. they used some games to hone their shooting skills.

let's face it, the music and video games don't contervail the aggressive tendency in human beings, it often exacerbates it. it's always easy to just say, "well they had mental problems---they were sickos, so what do you expect? but the vile music fuels hate---maybe not necessarily to the point where every such person predisposed to violence will act, but it draws on the worst attributes in human beings, and the potential for public harm is real.

[Shadowsarin]

you suggested i used the word "evil" to describe hip hop. i don't ever use that word for reasons i'm not going to discuss in this thread. just know that that's not a good way for you to keep an argument together either.

However, what you are accusing Hip Hop of could be considered evil in a lot of peoples books. Its easier to write a single umbrella term than to copy out word for word what you said. Also, different words have different meanings to different people. I didn't quote you as saying it was evil so I'm hardly putting words into your mouth.


let's face it, the music and video games don't contervail the aggressive tendency in human beings, it often exacerbates it. it's always easy to just say, "well they had mental problems---they were sickos, so what do you expect? but the vile music fuels hate---maybe not necessarily to the point where every such person predisposed to violence will act, but it draws on the worst attributes in human beings, and the potential for public harm is real.

I first watch a really violent movie when I was seven (Aliens). I first played an arcade shooting game when I was nine (Time Crisis). Since then, I have watched all manor of violence, played all manor of violence, and listened to all manor of violence.

Yet why haven't I shot up my school yet?

Or stabbed a random stranger in the streets?

How come the MILLIONS of people who play and watch and listen aren't out butchering people?

And how come there were butchers and massacres and murders and all such detestable acts before such things came along?

Oh, btw, I'm curious now, what kinds of music, if any, do you enjoy?

[jon1jt]

However, what you are accusing Hip Hop of could be considered evil in a lot of peoples books. Its easier to write a single umbrella term than to copy out word for word what you said. Also, different words have different meanings to different people. I didn't quote you as saying it was evil so I'm hardly putting words into your mouth.



I first watch a really violent movie when I was seven (Aliens). I first played an arcade shooting game when I was nine (Time Crisis). Since then, I have watched all manor of violence, played all manor of violence, and listened to all manor of violence.

Yet why haven't I shot up my school yet?

Or stabbed a random stranger in the streets?

How come the MILLIONS of people who play and watch and listen aren't out butchering people?

And how come there were butchers and massacres and murders and all such detestable acts before such things came along?

Oh, btw, I'm curious now, what kinds of music, if any, do you enjoy?


images of violence effect people differently---this is a widely accepted precept in psychology. in fact, only a very small segment of the population is adversely affected - and many are doing time for such - but the MILLIONS (including you) indirectly suffer when innocent people are brutally murdered, raped, or robbed.that is, if you believe in community.


here's the pile of cd's sitting on top of my stereo i listened to this week:


Emily Haines
Miles Davis
Hanelei
Wilco
Tom Waits
Laura Veirs
America
Regina Spektor
heather nova
dave matthews
enya

i like music that doesn't talk about bling bling and "throwing that thang back" and smoking "J's" and guns in' da' hood and babies wrapped in garbage bags. the music i listen to has class, that has a sense of place and often grapples with difficult questions and moreso to conditions that tie us together, not divide us. and love, but a sensual love, not the gratuitous degrading hip hop version.

[ghideon]

Petrarch:

First off I just want to say thanks for the respect your post communicated to me even while you take issue with some of what I say. That is the one ingredient most neccesary for mature discussion. And it is not nearly evident as much as we would all desire.

Now, as to your specific points. The first paragraph in my post was the following:


I would actively support any inteligent and forceful statement or act that rebukes, in no uncertain terms, the sexism/vilolence against women that is glorified in rap and hip-hop songs.

In your response you summarized my argument as the following:
that since black men have been opressed, it's O.K. for them to sing songs about the opression of women.


Short of censorship, if I could come up with some way of changing this horrible component of the hip-hop/rap culture I would. I am open to any suggestions. But I never implied or stated that I thought it was ok. It is not.


Aren't black women then doubly oppressed?

You must have read my mind because just last night, after reading some posts and writing one, that is exactly what I thought of. I imagine black women are in an extraordinarily difficult position. On the one hand they are being blatantly and repeatedly disrespected, made fun of, and made into seemingly legitimate targets of violence. On the other hand if they speak out they are open, and I bet would receive, attacks that they are on "whitey's side" and seen as traitors to their culture/race.


It's not right, and I think everyone regardless of skin color has not only the moral justification, but the moral obligation to say it's nothing to sing about.

I agree with you 100% and admire your willingness to speak about this in no uncertain terms.

Now as regards the race and gender issue that I wrote about. Any effort that is made to try and examine the causes of different violent behaviors is too often seen as making excuses or even giving justification for the acts. And as a result we only endorse measures that deal with surface issues and do not look at the deep systemic and psychological dyanamics causing the gang wars, the abuse of women, the abuse of children, and on and on...

I wish that I could wake up tomorow to a world where nobody was ever deliberately hurt by someone else. I really do. But there is considerable work to do before we can even begin to hope for that day. Hard work. Hard because the factors involved are demanding and not open to simplistic attempts at resolution. Certainly if it was easy to end violence it would have been over a long time ago. And so, while I have no problem with people speaking very clearly that using rape as entertainment is a profound betrayal of all things humane I do not think that criticism alone will be enough to solve this or other problems. I wish it was but it is not.

I want to look at just why there is such violence in hip-hop. And I do not want glib answers. The men and women willing to actually think when they would much rather just strike out are the ones who show the deepest dedication to peace making and justice. I want those here in this discussion being those who are also willing to keep on thinking and asking hard questions even when it seems we need not or should not.

The violence in hip-hop music can not be understood unless it is also seen within certain specific contexts. It is clearly a gender issue in terms of what is causing so many men, both men of color and white men, to be violent to women, to sing about such violence, to be entertained by such violence.

It needs to be seen in a race context as well. There is a profound sense of worthlesness that I sense when I hear these songs. A need to pump up the self using guns, gold and violence because the self on its own is barely able to stand. One of the things I feel when I hear much of these songs and watch the videos are men who still are fighting off a core (you are my slave black boy) consciousness by running 1,000 miles in some other direction. They are running to some supposed place on the top of the mountain where they are the kings. It is a dream.

And because that dream is also a dream of a capitalist I dare say that we, I am talking about white people here specifically, can not stand on the side-line all the while not owning our own deep complicity in the very system that is profitting off of that mythic gold, adolescent fantasy, dream male mountain top. I read a ways back that the ones who are actually making the real real big big money, I am talking billions here, are the CEOs and top executives of the major record labels. There is no AK 47 pointed at radio stations or record executives forcing them to play these songs. No. There is, however, money and lots and lots of it. They know this. They want it and they are doing what they need inorder to get it.

(I just had a thought, want to share it, is it possible that part of what is going on in the hip-hop culture and music is the black man saying hey white folk I am beating you at your own game. Look. Now I have the gold chain and now I have the big house and now I have the limo. And is it even also possible that part of what white culture hates about this is the degree to which we do feel beaten by those we once led by chains and whips...I do not think this is going on at a level of day to day awareness but it just feels accurate in terms of deeper levels?)



The best way we can approach the problem of black male violence is by dealing with it from a point of true deep integrity. That is, that we make it clear we do not simply have a problem with the violence they are singing about. No. We stand against all acts of violence and that must include the violence that is going on in their communities as well.

This may not sound fair. It might not be. In a better world we would not have to work so hard at dealing with such blatant acts of rage and arrogance. And I also am not some (despite what jon may believe)I am not some Michael Moore Berkeley CA liberal (I live in Oakland) who would never speak bluntly to those poor, hurting African Americans. I am simply trying to de-construct what I see as the web of factors underneath the seemingly juvenile, unthinking cultural productions we are examining.

[ghideon]

i like music that doesn't talk about bling bling and "throwing that thang back" and smoking "J's" and guns in' da' hood and babies wrapped in garbage bags. the music i listen to has class, that has a sense of place and often grapples with difficult questions and moreso to conditions that tie us together, not divide us. and love, but a sensual love, not the gratuitous degrading hip hop version.


So, the great advocate of the absolute finally uses the words "I like..."

Jon...nobody else here repeatedly makes up lyrics. You do so again and again. I say this in honesty. It makes it all the harder to read what you say with any real seriousness.

As for "the music I listen to has class."

At this point in the thread there are probably more then a dozen posts that have already stated clearly and even with respect that your blatant arrogance is so obviously lacking in reason that I see no other conclusion except that at this point you are unable or unwilling to even look at yourself. Recall who said "Know Thy Self." hmmmm?

Is there anything that anybody could ever say and I mean this. Is there any author or govt official or priest or spiritual leader or artist or classical musician or poet who could help you finally wise up?

When you write "the music I listen to has class" you, and I mean this I am not simply writing this to get at you, it sounds just like some deeply insecure pseudo intelectual horrified that he may not be who he thinks he is. Look everybody I have class. Hah. Jon. Those who are actually quite self confident feel no need to make their personal likes into absolute truths. They feel no need to use such rhetoric inorder to shore up their ego.

You have written in praise of those who aspire to greatness. If you have any aspirations whatsoever can you please at least try to present your personal opinions as just that. Or is that simply beyond your current reach. If so then I think you too deserve a degree of understanding. Perhaps a tolerance or understanding that is presently beyond me.

Oh, I can not end just yet. You actually think that hip-hop fails to articulate a "sense of place." Can I then conclude that the songs are as accurate in their description of where you live as they might be for other areas? Violent? Yes. Sexist? Yes. But lacking in a sense of place?

At some points your writings do leave me beyond wor....

[Jay]

When posting on a public forum, our opinions are bound to clash, we all have different tastes and (dis)like different things, more so when it comes to discussing sensitive issues like religion or questions of race. Please, try not to personalize your comments and agree to disagree.

[jon1jt]

So, the great advocate of the absolute finally uses the words "I like..."

Jon...nobody else here repeatedly makes up lyrics. You do so again and again. I say this in honesty. It makes it all the harder to read what you say with any real seriousness.

As for "the music I listen to has class."

At this point in the thread there are probably more then a dozen posts that have already stated clearly and even with respect that your blatant arrogance is so obviously lacking in reason that I see no other conclusion except that at this point you are unable or unwilling to even look at yourself. Recall who said "Know Thy Self." hmmmm?

Is there anything that anybody could ever say and I mean this. Is there any author or govt official or priest or spiritual leader or artist or classical musician or poet who could help you finally wise up?

When you write "the music I listen to has class" you, and I mean this I am not simply writing this to get at you, it sounds just like some deeply insecure pseudo intelectual horrified that he may not be who he thinks he is. Look everybody I have class. Hah. Jon. Those who are actually quite self confident feel no need to make their personal likes into absolute truths. They feel no need to use such rhetoric inorder to shore up their ego.

You have written in praise of those who aspire to greatness. If you have any aspirations whatsoever can you please at least try to present your personal opinions as just that. Or is that simply beyond your current reach. If so then I think you too deserve a degree of understanding. Perhaps a tolerance or understanding that is presently beyond me.

Oh, I can not end just yet. You actually think that hip-hop fails to articulate a "sense of place." Can I then conclude that the songs are as accurate in their description of where you live as they might be for other areas? Violent? Yes. Sexist? Yes. But lacking in a sense of place?

At some points your writings do leave me beyond wor....

i think there are many members here who have wonderful musical taste. i wasn't implying that i'm above the rest, please - get real. somebody in here asked me what i listen to because he was baffled by my hip hop criticism, so that comment addressed him.

Ghideon calls me blatantly arrogant. i said elsewhere that ad hominem is an indication that either you lost the argument or don't have one. in your case, both are true.

and yes, hip hop lacks a sense of place, i know what i said. hip hop doesn't capture the struggle of hard working families in the city or the myriad of individuals railing against the ghetto raging outside their windows, like parents working two-three jobs to keep their kid out of public schools where hip hop infestation is writ large. students are fighting back by reading books, doing their homework, taking the advice of teachers and parents, and working after school. they're "showing up" and have formulated goals. you want to sit there and suggest the term ,"ghetto," comprises an entire city of degenerates that's somehow captured by the gangsta rap and hip hop. hip hop is not nor will it ever be the mouthpiece for ghettos (it's more concerned with bling bling anyway) so i strongly disagree. there are many pockets of good works going on that's not reported in the smut music. in fact, the music distorts the reality. but how would i know anything about ghetto life? i'm a white guy from the suburbs.

to be honest with you - and i'm not saying this facetiously, i still don't quite grasp your argument - you're all over the map and that's at least partly because your thinking is intoxicated by relativism, which i've discussed in great detail above. so there's a tendency in you to lack a center, a core. you say you're deconstructing this argument? how? you take a position and in the next statement recoil. in between you invoke, "know thyself." but socrates didn't mean that we shouldn't have an opinion about things - he believed we should make informed judgments. my judgments are informed, yours are wishy washy, but wishy-washy doesn't come closer to the Socratic ideal. keep in mind that it was Socrates student Plato who wrote The Republic that called for censorship (and to think if plato could see hip hop! :eek:). you bring up socrates, have does that adage pertain to this discussion exactly? and do you even know about deconstruction? you have a tendency to sprinkle your posts with terms and big names, so i'm just checking again, because you still havn't clarified your statements on emerson and thoreau. i assume you're talking about Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, yes? how do you "deconstruct" this hip hop issue?

i assure you that any lyrics i made up in this thread are far less distasteful than the hip hop smut out there. a'ight?

gideon says
"Is there anything that anybody could ever say and I mean this. Is there any author or govt official or priest or spiritual leader or artist or classical musician or poet who could help you finally wise up?"

that's quite gratuitous, don't you think? to suggest that i'm pig-headed just because i disagree with your intellectualization call to more closely examine the causalities of hip hop is wrong. it doesn't mean i already haven't considered such.

[SheykAbdullah]

wonder if ghideon and abdullah would adhere to the same civil libertarian sensibility if a certain form of (white) rock music became widespread that stereotyped blacks and arabs in a hostile, negative way. i'll just take a pot shot guess how it would be dealt with: the ACLU for one would run to the courts and invoke the standard of 'fighting words' in an effort to have it banned.

My friend, you may wonder what I would do, but, you would be sorely wrong. I would never espouse the censoring of anything not directly harmful to a person. I believe in freedom of speech. Anyone can say anything they want to or about anything.

In fact, I find it personally offensive you would suggest that I would do such a thing. In the future, please do not presume to assume to know what I would do, and I won't presume to know what you would do, which I have not in a single one of my posts done. I have only responded to the words you put on the proverbial paper.


keep in mind that it was Socrates student Plato who wrote The Republic that called for censorship (and to think if plato could see hip hop! :eek:).

I will say here that I think perhaps things have gotten a little heated and a little personal, but this censorship idea seems to be the unspoken center of this thread, at least to me. I, for one, have no problem admitting that the misogyny and violence espoused by rap music is no way to live. I do not listen to rap music myself, but I also do not believe that something such as 'art' can be accurately defined; meaning defined in a way that brings common consensus, thus art, I think, is much like treasure, meaning it can be another man's trash.

In any case, I think we have hit the main issue of importance here. Hip-hop censorship, which is the part of your posts, Jon, that I find the most disturbing, and quite frankly I would call them at the very least tyrannical. Hopefully you are not.

Howver, the one thing I would ask you, beyond everything that has been mentioned here, what gives you the right to censor something that is so obviously freedom of speech, and so obviously defended by over two hundred years of legal jurisprudence, defended by a legal tradition that is upheld by not only the world's oldest existing Republic (and not Plato's Republic, but the real one) but also the world's second oldest government (not country, obviously, but only England's government has a longer continuous existence in its modern form than that of the United States)?

You have discussed at long length the evil of relativism, and pure relativism is indeed evil, but have you ever considered the evil of pure objectivism? This is the evil that drives empires, crushes men, lays low great societies, tortures men, punishes intellectuals and turns scientists into slaves dedicated not to improvement, but to the creation of war machines. I have asked you before and I ask you again, what gives you the right to make your absolutist statements? Plato? His Republic wouldn't last a second in the real world, and consequently his Republic is not ours. What makes your arbitration of taste the ultimate one? Or maybe I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?

I hope this doesn't come as a personal attack because it is not intended to be, but you have recomended to total censorship of whole volumes of human thought and history, ugly as they may be, and have said that the world would be better off without remembering some of the ugly scars that have taught us the pain of our mutual struggle to come to where we exist today. What gives you the right to say that something is so harmful that we must pretend that it never occurred, for surely erasing documents that shed light on the history of something that actually happened in a non-relativist, very absolute way would be nothing more than pretending? What gives you the similar right to pretend that what people say and consume today isn't important to understanding the people who identify themselves with it?

I can understand that we all have our own definitions of art, and I will defend mine as everyone here has defended theirs. In fact, it is the very thesis of my argument that everyone creates their own definition of art. 'Art' is not a tree. It has no leaves to whisper in the breeze. It is not green, or brown, or even any color. It is an abstract concept created in the mind of man. Indeed, the very word comes from 'artifice' meaning something created. I feel to regard art in any other way is to sell it short of something. There may be art we dislike, art we consider better than others, art we consider trash. I have hated many pieces of art in my time, and even said I don't consider 'x' to be art, but the truth is that someone else inevitably will. As a result I have given up attempting a definition of art, because whenever I do I find it irreconcilable to the other myriad of personal definitions people hold, and why is that? It is because art is like the image of God. We all have one, be He a kindly man with a white beard, a nebulous ball of light or simply a black void of non-existence. Who knows which is better or worse (of course, each will inevitably have its partisans whose rights to free disagreement are protected under the same Amendment which prohibits your cesnorship). At least we've stopped killing one another over it, for the most part.

Art is not a mathematical equation, and y never equals x because none of us play the game with the same variables, and the moment we try to fix those variables, the moment we attempt to FORCE our ideas upon another we have lost that essentialy individual thing that powers great artists to transcend the normal and the banal. By denying the freedom of hip-hop to be coarse you deny the freedom of the impressionist to paint a shadow green, the jazz musician to improvise and the author to write a stream of conscious narrative that breaks the rules of literary narration.

Hip-hop as it lives today may be untenably rude and vulgar, but its rudeness and vulgarity is an expression of a segment of our culture. It may not be a pretty segment, it may not even be an acceptable one, but it is one that exists and closing one's eyes to it does not make it go away. You can not fight it with a blindfold or fingers in your ear. Outlawing it legitimizes its form, it gives it a forum (again I refer you to the great Salon des Refuses in both its year of inception and the later years of its tradition) from which to proclaim that society is afraid of its raw 'truth' when its raw 'truth' is nothing more than the self-indulgence of a few angry men trying to posture themselves into what they perceive as greatness. This is one of those things that if killed will live on to choke its enemies when they are finally forced to eat it. You can never understand something you kill out of fear and disgust, and you can never end something that you refuse to look at. Our problems will live on if not in rap music than in something else. All things must be created, and they are created not because someone decided they should, but because they complete an idea someone felt needed to be completed. It is the idea that may be bad, but not the medium it is expressed in. An idea can only be negated once it is understood and once its adherents are shown a better way, which they never will come to see if led to it by a nose ring like a recalcitrint ox on a yoke.

And by the way, Jon, I like music you would describe as having 'class' too. As I have said before, I don't listen to hip-hop for the very reasons Kilted Exile said he does not. I don't like it. I don't like its message, and I don't like the content. I prefer jazz, the blues, a little bit of bluegrass, some oldies and even on occasion a bit of doo-wop, which I think is as far from rap as you can get. Just listening to music with 'class' does not confer a right to sit in judgement over the music of someone else. Elitism is not necesarily a bad thing, but much like absolutism and relativism it is something best taken in strides.

[ghideon]

Wow.

There is nothing that I can add to the above. I once was told that a writer is someone "who has something to say and a way to say it." There is nothing more I can add in terms of insight regarding the advocacy of censorship. Nor is there anything I can add that would make the above statement more eloquent. It has all been said and said well. I offer my deep thanks to the individual who posted the above Sheyk Abdullah. I now have an example of an argument that is both sound, persuasive and written with heart. Quite good.

I have gone from feeling:crash: :brickwall

:argue: :rage: in this forum.


to;) and that is quite a nice way to feel on a rather chilly Oakland night.

[jon1jt]

i already discussed in great detail that absolute freedom of speech is a chimera. i'm not going to repeat that one again. you have a duty to read people's posts before making such remarks. wonderful rhetorical flare though. and the hip hoppers will pay homage to your fanatical spirit of freedom, however illusory it is.

abdullah
In fact, I find it personally offensive you would suggest that I would do such a thing. In the future, please do not presume to assume to know what I would do, and I won't presume to know what you would do, which I have not in a single one of my posts done. I have only responded to the words you put on the proverbial paper.[/B]

i presume what you would do based on the comments you left here. it's called an educated guess. isn't that part of my right to say "anything i want to or about anything"? or do you deny me that freedom that i cannot deny gangsta rappers who demonize cops and hip hoppers who make women out to be objectified meat? c'mon.


abdullah
I will say here that I think perhaps things have gotten a little heated and a little personal, but this censorship idea seems to be the unspoken center of this thread, at least to me. I, for one, have no problem admitting that the misogyny and violence espoused by rap music is no way to live. I do not listen to rap music myself, but I also do not believe that something such as 'art' can be accurately defined; meaning defined in a way that brings common consensus, thus art, I think, is much like treasure, meaning it can be another man's trash.

i've already made my case that hip hop is not "art." well, like i said earlier, if art can't be defined then "exploitation" can't be defined when it comes to foreign workers and child labor in a way that can bring common consensus. but the fact is legal interpretations define terms everyday.

abdullah
In any case, I think we have hit the main issue of importance here. Hip-hop censorship, which is the part of your posts, Jon, that I find the most disturbing, and quite frankly I would call them at the very least tyrannical. Hopefully you are not.

jon1jt
that's a wee bit hyperbolic, no? to use the word "tyrannical" to apply to me? i haven't heard that word used in a while. i came across it in the Federalist Papers once as it was used to connote an infrequency of the majority, "Tyranny of the majority." i think it was madison who said such a majority couldn't hijack government because power was divided and dispersed. it reminds me that there's a tyranny of the majority today which sustains hip hop and other egregious modes of expression (e.g. porn) used to disgrace women. and such is relativistic liberalism at work the last half-century, some of which is rehashed here (by you and not me) for edification.

abdullah
Howver, the one thing I would ask you, beyond everything that has been mentioned here, what gives you the right to censor something that is so obviously freedom of speech, and so obviously defended by over two hundred years of legal jurisprudence, defended by a legal tradition that is upheld by not only the world's oldest existing Republic (and not Plato's Republic, but the real one) but also the world's second oldest government (not country, obviously, but only England's government has a longer continuous existence in its modern form than that of the United States)?

what a burst of rhetorical exaltation! but don't you know, speech, both written and spoken, can be subject to government scrutiny? such is known as defamation, seditious libel, slander, etc. there are court-imposed "gag rules" --- also, read Miller v. California for the strict scrutiny test that limits speech.

cont. below

[jon1jt]

abdullah
You have discussed at long length the evil of relativism, and pure relativism is indeed evil, but have you ever considered the evil of pure objectivism? This is the evil that drives empires, crushes men, lays low great societies, tortures men, punishes intellectuals and turns scientists into slaves dedicated not to improvement, but to the creation of war machines. I have asked you before and I ask you again, what gives you the right to make your absolutist statements? Plato? His Republic wouldn't last a second in the real world, and consequently his Republic is not ours. What makes your arbitration of taste the ultimate one? Or maybe I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?

to answer your question, no, i have never seen a world in which objectivism was tried. neither have you. but i've read enough about it to know that it's no less brutal than the brand that permits the smut we see emulated in schools, on tv, radio, etc. what you present here is nothing more than theoretical speculation. and i have more to go on given the history of relativistic liberalism that reveals numerous examples of an erosion of democratic institutions and culture.

abdullah
but let me get to the part that really raised my eyebrows is your question:
I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?

jon1jt
actually - what raises my eyebrows is your lack of knowledge regarding the literature, particularly the realm of philosphical literature as it pertains to the framers drafting of the declaration of independence and US Constitution. the framers -- particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- the producers of those great documents, were quite clear that without the guidance of the nearly two thousand years of history that came before them they could never have fashioned the system's ideological underpinnings in the relatively short time it took in the glorious summer of 1787. ah! just feast your eyes on the correspondence between jefferson-madison-washington and especially madison's notes to the constitutional convention, which are replete with references to solon, pericles, plato, aristotle, alexander, later - theres the age of enlightenment thinkers they borrowed from: montesquieu (spirit of laws); jean jacques rousseau; voltaire; david hume; kant; etc. i can go on and on but you get the point. to suggest that the past didn't inform their judgments or doesn't inform our judgments now is just wrong. i recommend that you read the federalist 10, 56, 78, 84. :lol: even jefferson himself acknowledged that the constitution was "perpetual" in it's need to be reconsidered continuously through history and even in one writing suggested that every 20 years it should be replaced! the constitution was seen then as "evolutionary" in that it adapted to changing circumstances, but that the past would inform the present, always. see USSC decisions, esp. justice reinquist and scalia, which are a major part of the historical record on this subject matter.

abdullah
I hope this doesn't come as a personal attack because it is not intended to be, but you have recomended to total censorship of whole volumes of human thought and history, ugly as they may be, and have said that the world would be better off without remembering some of the ugly scars that have taught us the pain of our mutual struggle to come to where we exist today. What gives you the right to say that something is so harmful that we must pretend that it never occurred, for surely erasing documents that shed light on the history of something that actually happened in a non-relativist, very absolute way would be nothing more than pretending? What gives you the similar right to pretend that what people say and consume today isn't important to understanding the people who identify themselves with it?

look, you want to retain Mein Kampf, then so be it. :lol: i didn't say that we ought to pretend it didn't happen - that's pathetic you would suggest that - i'm not saying ban the teachings, we need that. i raised the issue of whether banning Mein Kampf would fundamentally alter such teaching, and i don't think it would. on another level, i'm keenly interested in those things that extend beyond the sphere of private that pour into the realm of public harm. and i've already discussed the impact Mein Kampf is having on the modern day in the way of parmilitary and neo-nazi groups. you're not reading the posts abdullah and wasting my time. please at least read the postings, not selectively. such takes great effort, but the dialogue will be that more spirited!

abdullah
art we consider trash. I have hated many pieces of art in my time, and even said I don't consider 'x' to be art, but the truth is that someone else inevitably will. As a result I have given up attempting a definition of art, because whenever I do I find it irreconcilable to the other myriad of personal definitions people hold, and why is that? It is because art is like the image of God. We all have one, be He a kindly man with a white beard, a nebulous ball of light or simply a black void of non-existence. Who knows which is better or worse (of course, each will inevitably have its partisans whose rights to free disagreement are protected under the same Amendment which prohibits your cesnorship). At least we've stopped killing one another over it, for the most part. Art is not a mathematical equation, and y never equals x because none of us play the game with the same variables, and the moment we try to fix those variables, the moment we attempt to FORCE our ideas upon another we have lost that essentialy individual thing that powers great artists to transcend the normal and the banal. By denying the freedom of hip-hop to be coarse you deny the freedom of the impressionist to paint a shadow green,the jazz musician to improvise and the author to write a stream of conscious narrative that breaks the rules of literary narration.

jon1jt
the only thing i want to address here is your variant of the slippery slope argument that goes that banning x (hip hop) will necessarily result in banning (y) an impressionist's right to paint a shadow green, etc. here's my formula: apples (x) and oranges (y).

abdullah
]Outlawing it legitimizes its formit gives it a forum (again I refer you to the great Salon des Refuses in both its year of inception and the later years of its tradition) from which to proclaim that society is afraid of its raw 'truth' when its raw 'truth' is nothing more than the self-indulgence of a few angry men trying to posture themselves into what they perceive as greatness. This is one of those things that if killed will live on to choke its enemies when they are finally forced to eat it. You can never understand something you kill out of fear and disgust, and you can never end something that you refuse to look at. Our problems will live on if not in rap music than in something else. All things must be created, and they are created not because someone decided they should, but because they complete an idea someone felt needed to be completed. B]

jon1jt
the last i checked outlawing slavery didn't legitimize owning slaves. tossing hip hop to the gutter from which if came and whence it return won't legitimize anything other than seer into the collective conscious the notion of an irredeemable America which decisively rails against the glory of drug dealers, big money, and objectification of women and that such thinking will not be tolerated in this great country.

you've also spun quite a number of metaphors in your last paragraph, which is wonderful if it was a poem. you do not once CONSIDER the potential or actual public harm (to women, etc), not one sentence devoted to it. you acknowledge the problem but are steadfast against the possibility that hip hop is harmful and whether the government has a compelling state interest in it, to the extent that it's polluting the youth (and sadly, some adults) who listen to it. yes, it's true as you say that problems will always exist. but is that all you can say??? (sigh) we call upon the mechanisms of law and justice to remedy such problems. but your not interested in minimization, only furtherance. that thinking does not help people, that's giving up.

abdullah
[/b]And by the way, Jon, I like music you would describe as having 'class' too. As I have said before, I don't listen to hip-hop for the very reasons Kilted Exile said he does not. I don't like it. I don't like its message, and I don't like the content. I prefer jazz, the blues, a little bit of bluegrass, some oldies and even on occasion a bit of doo-wop, which I think is as far from rap as you can get. Just listening to music with 'class' does not confer a right to sit in judgement over the music of someone else. Elitism is not necesarily a bad thing, but much like absolutism and relativism it is something best taken in strides.[/b]

jon1jt
i think our musical interests suggest that we'd get along just great. :lol: but your idea that i'm being elitist for aforementioned informs me that you didn't read my qualifications on that issue either - another oversight? ...surely as you've done throughout. let me leave you with a rhetorical flourish of my own: in the words of the great kurt vonneguet, "So it goes." :D



i apologize for the page not being bracketed -

[jon1jt]

Wow.

There is nothing that I can add to the above. I once was told that a writer is someone "who has something to say and a way to say it." There is nothing more I can add in terms of insight regarding the advocacy of censorship. Nor is there anything I can add that would make the above statement more eloquent. It has all been said and said well. I offer my deep thanks to the individual who posted the above Sheyk Abdullah. I now have an example of an argument that is both sound, persuasive and written with heart. Quite good.

I have gone from feeling:crash: :brickwall

:argue: :rage: in this forum.

to;) and that is quite a nice way to feel oQUOTE]n a rather chilly Oakland night.

if you don't mind me asking ghideon, this sideline display wouldn't in any way suggest that you can't handle being in the arena anymore, now is it? should i just hand the scalps to you then? :D

[Petrarch's Love]

Short of censorship, if I could come up with some way of changing this horrible component of the hip-hop/rap culture I would. I am open to any suggestions. But I never implied or stated that I thought it was ok. It is not.

You must have read my mind because just last night, after reading some posts and writing one, that is exactly what I thought of. I imagine black women are in an extraordinarily difficult position. On the one hand they are being blatantly and repeatedly disrespected, made fun of, and made into seemingly legitimate targets of violence. On the other hand if they speak out they are open, and I bet would receive, attacks that they are on "whitey's side" and seen as traitors to their culture/race.

I agree with you 100% and admire your willingness to speak about this in no uncertain terms.

Now as regards the race and gender issue that I wrote about. Any effort that is made to try and examine the causes of different violent behaviors is too often seen as making excuses or even giving justification for the acts. And as a result we only endorse measures that deal with surface issues and do not look at the deep systemic and psychological dyanamics causing the gang wars, the abuse of women, the abuse of children, and on and on...

I wish that I could wake up tomorow to a world where nobody was ever deliberately hurt by someone else. I really do. But there is considerable work to do before we can even begin to hope for that day. Hard work. Hard because the factors involved are demanding and not open to simplistic attempts at resolution. Certainly if it was easy to end violence it would have been over a long time ago. And so, while I have no problem with people speaking very clearly that using rape as entertainment is a profound betrayal of all things humane I do not think that criticism alone will be enough to solve this or other problems. I wish it was but it is not.

I want to look at just why there is such violence in hip-hop...


Thanks for the reply. Just so there's no misunderstanding, I didn't mean to suggest that you personally did approve of the misogynistic nature of this music. Because your remarks about being reluctant to criticize the violence of young black men came after your remarks about violence toward women though, I thought they were connected points. I can see from your subsequent post that what you were suggesting was that we ought not to unreflectingly dismiss angry young men because they are angry, but should try to look at and understand the roots of their anger. I do agree that race, and poverty and violence are complex issues, and so I agree with you about trying to understand the point of view of people whose experience may be very different from our own (or at least, very different from my own). I can only follow this philosophy of understanding to a point though, especially where violence toward others is concerned.


That is, that we make it clear we do not simply have a problem with the violence they are singing about. No. We stand against all acts of violence and that must include the violence that is going on in their communities as well.

This I agree with entirely. Ideally, no violence should be tolerated, though as you sadly and rightly said, this often remains an ideal, since there is no easy end to violence.

I said that I follow your philosophy of understanding this "hip hop" point of view only up to a point, because it does become problematic if taken too far. Instead of only understanding it becomes justification (which I'm not saying you're doing), and there isn't a good justification for gratuitously violent acts against other human beings (as I'm sure you agree).

The other huge problem I have with this line of thinking when carried too far is that it makes this a black and white issue, when in actuality there are many black people who aren't a part of a culture of violence and/or don't want to be (and obviously there are white people who are and do). By getting too caught up in the idea that past wrongs done to black people are the reason for present black youth being fascinated by violence, we run the risk of not only turning this into a justification for violence, but of perpetuating stereotypes by making it sound like the violence of hip hop and rap is somehow a black thing, and representative of black culture. As we've both already suggested, the more violent and objectionable kind of hip hop really doesn't represent black women. If anything it demeans them further. It also doesn't genuinely describe the lifestyle of a lot of black men. I think this is what the Juan Williams article that Virgil posted on the other thread was trying to get at. This kind of music shouldn't be regarded as the cultural statement that represents a whole group of people. On a personal level, I have had black friends from different economic backgrounds (upper middle class suburbs, and poor area of Chicago's south side) tell me that they resent the assumption by people, both black and white, that because of their skin color they in some way identify with thug life as described by rappers or would think it's okay for someone to go around calling them "nigga" or "b****" or "ho." This is not to say that there are not black people for whom this kind of music is a part of their culture, or that there aren't some hip hop songs that honestly represent peoples' experience in less blatently offensive ways, but it seems to me that if you generalize too much that it's only to be expected that black people will sing about violence and even be violent because of their race, that this might become all that people expect from that race (and worse, all that young black men expect of themselves), and that surely is not fair to the many people of color who also come from a background of opression and do their best to live kind and peaceful lives.

[SheykAbdullah]

i already discussed in great detail that absolute freedom of speech is a chimera. i'm not going to repeat that one again. you have a duty to read people's posts before making such remarks. wonderful rhetorical flare though. and the hip hoppers will pay homage to your fanatical spirit of freedom, however illusory it is.

You have mentioned a lot of names, gone through a lot of Classical philosophy and even quoted a Supreme Court justice, but you don't seem to be actually proving your point, you just say 'look at this, look at this. I'm right, your rights are an illusion!'

Admittedly, you do get mention the case Miller v California lower, and I will address it in its turn.


i presume what you would do based on the comments you left here. it's called an educated guess. isn't that part of my right to say "anything i want to or about anything"? or do you deny me that freedom that i cannot deny gangsta rappers who demonize cops and hip hoppers who make women out to be objectified meat? c'mon.

Say anything you want to. That's fine, but this forum has a policy of not personally offending the posters, and I was just letting you know that you had done just that by assuming to know myself better than I, and I would hope that since I have not offended you, or at least not consciously or intentionally, in the spirit of civilized discourse you would not do the same to me. In any case, I fail to see what part of my comments on this thread have suggested I prefer the freedom of speech of one group over another. If you can point out where, exactly, you think I said that perhaps we could clear up the confusion on why you would think I feel that way.



i've already made my case that hip hop is not "art." well, like i said earlier, if art can't be defined then "exploitation" can't be defined when it comes to foreign workers and child labor in a way that can bring common consensus. but the fact is legal interpretations define terms everyday.

I don't see the connection, and I don't think you've made a cohesive argument. Could you explain the realtion between art and labor exploitation? Sometimes I may be a bit slow to grasp something.


jon1jt]that's a wee bit hyperbolic, no? to use the word "tyrannical" to apply to me? i haven't heard that word used in a while. i came across it in the Federalist Papers once as it was used to connote an infrequency of the majority, "Tyranny of the majority." i think it was madison who said such a majority couldn't hijack government because power was divided and dispersed. it reminds me that there's a tyranny of the majority today which sustains hip hop and other egregious modes of expression (e.g. porn) used to disgrace women. and such is relativistic liberalism at work the last half-century, some of which is rehashed here (by you and not me) for edification.

I'm sorry I misused my pronouns. I call the idea of censoring hip-hop tyrannical, and not it is not hyperbolic. Any censorship is tyrannical, a usurpation of our freedoms, some of it is necesary, but if it goes too far there is no limit to its rampage.

Our checks and balances have worked, they have saved us from the censorship you suggest. The fear you have regarding hip-hop is not unlike the fear the Nazis instilled in Germans regarding Communism and the Jews. Of course, your suggestions have a long way to go before that, and will probably not degenerate into genocide, obviously, but any step backward from what we have achieved is a defeat. You would fear-monger about rap until it were thrown into a legal as opposed to a merely social ghetto, and from a social ghetto there is a chance for enlightenment, from a legal one there is only damnation.

The fear of the 'tyranny of the majority' refers to exactly what you are espousing we do, it is designed to be set in place in the event a mob mentality sweeps the nation and that majority shoud USURP the rights of a minority. The framers of our constitution, being the classical liberals that they were, would never have created a document that restricted the free exercise of a citizen's rights. For proof of this one need merely look at the Amendments to our Constitution, and with the exception of the Eighteenth, which was passed on the mob-mentality created by the Temperance unions that alcohol would destroy society if it went unchecked, none of them RESTRICT THE FRANCHISE OF RIGHTS (I put the emphasis because I feel it is important, indeed, central to a Republic and our ideology).

And let me ask another question, how well did that cesnorship of prohibition work? If I remember correctly it created the mob.


jon1jt]what a burst of rhetorical exaltation! but don't you know, speech, both written and spoken, can be subject to government scrutiny? such is known as defamation, seditious libel, slander, etc. there are court-imposed "gag rules" --- also, read Miller v. California for the strict scrutiny test that limits speech.

Of course I know that, but in order for something to be considered libel or slander it has to be demonstrably false with an intention to harm. Something that is true is NOT slander or libel, and if slander and libel were so easy to prosecute how many tabloids would you expect to be in existence?

However, such cases are NOT scrutinized by the gov't. They are civil lawsuits brought against an individual by ANOTHER individual, namely the party who has been slandered. Thus the legal system does not act as a gag over the speech, but as artbitration between a wronged party and its accuser, between two PRIAVTE parties, it does not exercise a censorship function on its OWN BEHALF, and thus does not restrict freedom of speech. We could go back to duels over slander and libel. I don't know I would object.

I have looked the case referred up on wikipedia (I'm sorry, but I lost the website I normally used as a reference for Supreme Court decisions which was a little official. If anyone has it, it is a web-list of all their decisions, I would greatly appreciate it), and it seems to say that a work of art could only be banned under SLAPS; if it has no redeeming scientific, political, literary or artistic value; the thing in question was jusdged to be purient by THE COMMUNITY'S STANDARDS (not national standards, meaning the Fed gov't cannot ban it, and meaning in the Ghetto it can be legal) and the work describes explixitly sexual or excretory functions, which admittedly some rap does.. I would say rap has both social and artistic value, but the last may just be because I am in this matter, as you have accused me of being, a relativist. In any case, I certainly can't see how it doesn't have social value.

[SheykAbdullah]

to answer your question, no, i have never seen a world in which objectivism was tried. neither have you. but i've read enough about it to know that it's no less brutal than the brand that permits the smut we see emulated in schools, on tv, radio, etc. what you present here is nothing more than theoretical speculation. and i have more to go on given the history of relativistic liberalism that reveals numerous examples of an erosion of democratic institutions and culture.

Oh, we both have seen a world where objectivism was tried. It was called the USSR. There was no relativism, either you agreed with the objectivist view of the State or you went to a Gulag. Another example was early Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, need I go on?


actually - what raises my eyebrows is your lack of knowledge regarding the literature, particularly the realm of philosphical literature as it pertains to the framers drafting of the declaration of independence and US Constitution. the framers -- particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- the producers of those great documents, were quite clear that without the guidance of the nearly two thousand years of history that came before them they could never have fashioned the system's ideological underpinnings in the relatively short time it took in the glorious summer of 1787. ah! just feast your eyes on the correspondence between jefferson-madison-washington and especially madison's notes to the constitutional convention, which are replete with references to solon, pericles, plato, aristotle, alexander, later - theres the age of enlightenment thinkers they borrowed from: montesquieu (spirit of laws); jean jacques rousseau; voltaire; david hume; kant; etc. i can go on and on but you get the point. to suggest that the past didn't inform their judgments or doesn't inform our judgments now is just wrong. i recommend that you read the federalist 10, 56, 78, 84. :lol: even jefferson himself acknowledged that the constitution was "perpetual" in it's need to be reconsidered continuously through history and even in one writing suggested that every 20 years it should be replaced! the constitution was seen then as "evolutionary" in that it adapted to changing circumstances, but that the past would inform the present, always. see USSC decisions, esp. justice reinquist and scalia, which are a major part of the historical record on this subject matter.

Perhaps I am ignorant regarding the literature, but maybe it's just because agroikos eimi, ten skafen skafen lego. I assume you don't need a translation of this Classical Greek since you are so familiar with the classics.

I don't see anything here that has demonstrated I have a lack of understanding of philisophical documents. I have said that many of their suggestiosn are impractical and antithetical to an American perspective, but they were written over 1500 years ago. To assume they have some supremacy over our Constiution is, to say the least, unprecedented, and not just in a legal sense.

You would not consider a 'reconisderation' of our founding document, you would throw the baby out with the bath water! What freedom is there in censorship? You would have us turn our backs on our entire tradition as a nation, as a country. You have quoted some SC cases so I will cite some, Brandenburg v Ohio which says that inciting another to commit a crime verbally is protected by the First Amendment (exactly why you would censor rap, I believe) . The only speech not protected by the decision is that which supports criminal activity in speech that is likely to incite imminent action, likely to directly cause such action and whether the direct intent is to incite criminal action, and rap's purpose is not to INCITE such action. It may glorify, but it never says 'Go out and rob a bank,' which is required to be banned. In other words, the test fails to ban rap on all three counts. The violent impact of rap is not guaranteed and it will not drive people to crime by just listening to it.

[SheykAbdullah]

look, you want to retain Mein Kampf, then so be it. :lol: i didn't say that we ought to pretend it didn't happen - that's pathetic you would suggest that - i'm not saying ban the teachings, we need that. i raised the issue of whether banning Mein Kampf would fundamentally alter such teaching, and i don't think it would. on another level, i'm keenly interested in those things that extend beyond the sphere of private that pour into the realm of public harm. and i've already discussed the impact Mein Kampf is having on the modern day in the way of parmilitary and neo-nazi groups. you're not reading the posts abdullah and wasting my time. please at least read the postings, not selectively. such takes great effort, but the dialogue will be that more spirited!

PLease do not insult me. I have read the posts, and such a mentality toward Mein Kampf would be tantamount to what I described. After all, the very knowledge that there was a National Socialist Party could drive people to Naziism, and that's what you want to avoid, right? I think it was a quite logical extension of your argument. You want to avoid negative ideas by destroying the source of those negative ideas. How many negative ideas could we get rid of if we just destroyed history. My reasoning is perfect, flawless. I am taking exactly what you have said your purpose in banning Mein Kampf would be and expounded it.

I assume you do not study history, or have not at a serious level. The one thing that is most important for a Historian to have is as little prejudice as possible. Even when studying the Nazis the historian must not look at them as an evil group, or even as a bad group. Such objectivism does not mean the historian condones the ideas that the group espoused, but it does mean he will be able to understand the events that ocurred as a result of the ideology, and believe it or not, the absence of Mein Kampf, an incredibly important document for the era, would seriously undermine historical attempts to understand the period.

And what you actually raised was not the issue of whether banning Mein Kampf would effect teaching, what you said was;


i've said in another thread, however, that i see absolutely no literary, artistic, political or scientific value in Hitler's Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. if they were banned, the world wouldn't lose any sleep. they espouse hate and create subdivisions and have caused more than one hate crime

pg 4, first post, Jon1jt

Those were the words I responded to. You didn't say anything about teaching, you said the world in general would be a better off place if they were banned because they give rise to hate crime.

It is people that give rise to hate crime, not ideologies. People merely use the ideology as a tool, just like all culture is a tool, that justifies and enables their actions.


the only thing i want to address here is your variant of the slippery slope argument that goes that banning x (hip hop) will necessarily result in banning (y) an impressionist's right to paint a shadow green, etc. here's my formula: apples (x) and oranges (y).[QUOTE]

There is a relation whether you see it or not. Those art movements in their conception were seen just as degrading as you see rap. They did not spring fully formed into genius out of the artist's head.

Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe was labeled as pronographic smut because he depicted a nude outside the social conventions, his Olympia was threatened with destruction because it protrayed a prostitute in full frontal nudity, unashamed by her profession. Modigliani came uder constant attack for the same vulgarity for his paintings of the female form which were very correct. That is how banning hip-hop strips the art from an artist. Banning one thing considered 'vulgar' inevitably leads to the banning of something else considered 'vulgar' and then you are left with nothing. The things you are saying now about rap are nothing different than what was said of the Impressionists, the Beats (as has been brought up before) and many others.

Of course, the difference now is people call one art and the other crap, but would these same people call the beats art if they had been born seventy-five years ago? Or would they have been campaigning for the censorship of smut? Would they have liked jazz if they were around when it was played in the brothels of New Orleans, or would they ask it be banned for the sake of society, as it was?

[QUOTE=jon1jt;307880]the last i checked outlawing slavery didn't legitimize owning slaves. tossing hip hop to the gutter from which if came and whence it return won't legitimize anything other than seer into the collective conscious the notion of an irredeemable America which decisively rails against the glory of drug dealers, big money, and objectification of women and that such thinking will not be tolerated in this great country.

Outlawing slave-holding did not legitimize slavery because slavery didn't derive its cachet from illegitimacy. Rap does. Because of that outlawing it would be giving it an endorsement and would say to all of its adherents, 'your country doesn't care about you. It's afraid of you, so feel empowered!' I would rather those people feel empowered because they are taken seriously enough to be understood well enough that their problems, the things enciting them to violence, are solved.


you've also spun quite a number of metaphors in your last paragraph, which is wonderful if it was a poem. you do not once CONSIDER the potential or actual public harm (to women, etc), not one sentence devoted to it. you acknowledge the problem but are steadfast against the possibility that hip hop is harmful and whether the government has a compelling state interest in it, to the extent that it's polluting the youth (and sadly, some adults) who listen to it. yes, it's true as you say that problems will always exist. but is that all you can say??? (sigh) we call upon the mechanisms of law and justice to remedy such problems. but your not interested in minimization, only furtherance. that thinking does not help people, that's giving up.

I have been saying all along THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO INTEREST, COMPELLING OR OTHERWISE, IN CENSORSHIP. I did address rap's harmful effects, and I said they are NOT alleviated by censorship, but only by understanding. We do not need a Criminal Code of 1926 such as they in the USSR to eliminate our problems.


i think our musical interests suggest that we'd get along just great. :lol: but your idea that i'm being elitist for aforementioned informs me that you didn't read my qualifications on that issue either - another oversight? ...surely as you've done throughout. let me leave you with a rhetorical flourish of my own: in the words of the great kurt vonneguet, "So it goes." :D

As has been said before, saying "I listen to music that has class" is an elite statement as it implies what you don't listen to is worthless.

[jon1jt]

abdullah you ought to read ayn rand's objectivist philosophy who wrote quite extensively and borrowed from aristotle before giving me examples like the USSR and China.

ABDULLAH SAYS,
Outlawing slave-holding did not legitimize slavery because slavery didn't derive its cachet from illegitimacy. Rap does. Because of that outlawing it would be giving it an endorsement and would say to all of its adherents, 'your country doesn't care about you. It's afraid of you, so feel empowered!' I would rather those people feel empowered because they are taken seriously enough to be understood well enough that their problems, the things enciting them to violence, are solved.

jon1jt
i want to respond to this right now briefly, asking whether you are unaware that the United States fought a bloody civil war and it was such a sensitive issue that lincoln himself acknowledged the slave owner ideology and made compromises regarding the institution leading up to it. the slave owner, however, felt as much the "right" to own as the rapper to make his smut. if you don't buy this argument, i recommend glancing John Calhoun's Union and Liberty. scholars today are baffled by it's logical precision in its establishment of a natural, absolute, and inviolable right to own slaves. he was from the south and was removed from Jackson's administration as Vice President - quite interesting. again, you need to learn the history and philosophy before making false analogies.

and your point that i have a superficial understanding of history because i'm not objective in my reading of it is just not true. how do you know my disposition when i read history?? look, everything is perspectival -- even great historians like gordon wood and john keegan (and jacques barzun) acknowledge that. this idea that we can somehow be transcendant eyes perusing the annals is gibberish. i've removed myself in the same spirit as you and the rest, but you deny me the right to have an informed opinion on history, and that's where you're wrong.

and for your info i studied greek for only two semesters and i'll admit not having as much of an interest at the time as latin. i felt latin had more to offer me for where my interests were heading and so took three years of that. so there you have it.



you have made many interesting points that i would like to respond to later when i have the time.

[jgx]

I had to re-register so my name is different. But the man behind it? Still good ol Ghideon.


i wasn't implying that i'm above the rest, please - get real. somebody in here asked me what i listen to because he was baffled by my hip hop criticism, so that comment addressed him.

Jon1: OK. Somebody asked you what you listened to? That is a simple question and could have been answered simply. My feeling is that the list of artists you listen to speaks for itself in terms of what your personal likes and dislikes are. Why did you feel the need to say that your music has "class?" And then, after having written that statement, you now say that you were not implying that your taste was of some higher type then others. Then what were you trying to actually get across to readers when you used that phrase? Certainly you are aware that many people, upon reading a statement "my music has class" is a loaded phrase. Either you were not aware of the likelihood that most readers would make the same inference that I and others have made or you were aware of that likelihood and did not care about it. In the first case you lacked a particular understanding of language and its use in this society. In the second case you did not care if your writing was misunderstood.

Additionally, since I have read many of your posts in which you have stated that hip-hop is smut and that quite a few other genres are not then I think that most readers would also assume that you believe hip-hop lacks class and other forms, such as the ones you listen to, do have "class". Am I wrong?

[GimmyDiamond]

I am not responding to any one individual, but reading through this entire thread all I've noticed is the lack of any one persons experiences while they give quote after quote.
I, me, I have lived in violence. When I was 5 my Dad kicked me with steel toed boots b/c I changed the channel on the TV which I wasn't even aware he was watching. (Which led me to believe for a long time afterward that I was deserving of punishment no matter how extreme and it didn't matter if I knew what it was for.) He moved out when I was 8, but up until that point there were many nights of screaming and fighting and all manner of abuse. When I was about 9 or 10, visiting him, he smashed my head and my brother's head against a wall because we were laughing and he couldn't hear the TV over it. My house has been broken into 5 times. 2 of those times we were home. I have been attacked more than once walking home from school. Two of my brothers were mugged. My sister was attacked by a prostitute who thought she was taking her picture. I have had someone banging at our door for over 15 minutes, screaming unitelligibly, and found out later it was b/c they were beaten with a hammer one street over. I have myself, cleaned up after a man and his girlfriend got into a fight with a broken beer bottle. I've helped pack up the belongings of someone who commit suicide after a lifetime of crime and jail. A car drove into a house and hit the gas line, no explosion, and me and my mom going out to see what was going on find a man who had been stabbed over 20 times collapsed in our yard, which was as far as he could make it from the car.
So I say without reservation, ANYTHING that GLORIFIES violence, is NOT ART!!! Any lyrics, in any song, in any genre, or any book, or show or ANYTHING which GLORIFIES THAT(!), is NOT ART!!!!!!!!!!
Do I think it should be censored? Perhaps to your surprise, no, I don't. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. My late pastor taught me that. Our church and it's community groups have fought against drugs, abuse, massage parlours, prostitution, pawn shops, private clubs and fought for better housing, better funding, and more involvement from the actual community. My pastor was very vocal in that people make their own decisions, and should be personally accountable, and believe in God or not, how else could a New York kid who almost died of an overdose, have grown up to be hailed a hero and crusader for those in need in the inner city of Winnipeg? It is by compassion and understanding that a difference will be made. When he found out that a house was dealing drugs in our neighbourhood, he got up early one morning and while trying to think of what to do he opened the Bible randomly hoping for a passage that would say, “go do this . . . or go do that”. What he found was a passage about darkness not existing where there is light. So if the drug dealers are the darkness what is the light? Then it hit him and while it was still early he went and put flyers up all over the neighbourhood 'advertising' for these crack dealers. Boy did it come as a surprise to the dealers when a news crew showed up at their door that morning. That crack house closed down so fast b/c no one would be caught dead going to a house with so much heat. As for music that 'speaks out against' this, it is no doubt going to have controversial content, but to ban it would be to sweep it under the rug. It would be to take everyone living in the midst of terror and abuse and tell them, we don't want to hear about it because it is 'unpleasant'. It would be to take a drug dealer, a hooker, an addict, like one of my brothers, or anyone and tell them you aren't a person to me, in need of love, and consideration and understanding. And who are we to decide who is worth 'saving' and who isn't. Let us not be so quick to judge, ANY music, rap and hip hop included, that denounces such things, is both necessary and ART! Deeply moving and beyond placing a value upon.
One quote I leave you with, not because you will even recognize the person that said it, but because I believe it to be inherently true
"Those who are too timid to embark in some venture of love are finally left on the desert shore of a life without interest or hope. We never live so intensely as when we love strongly. We never realize ourselves so vividly as when we are in the full glow of love for others. Love establishes the fullest intellectual contact with the world about us. It has a passionate desire for full comprehension, whereas selfishness loses interest as soon as it has made the other serve its ends. To understand things and people we must love them.”
-Walter Raushenbusch
Having stated my opinion, I will not be posting on this thread again merely to repeat myself. Thank you for reading.

[Logos]

I had to re-register so my name is different. But the man behind it? Still good ol Ghideon.
Why? did you forget your password or something?

[jgx]

I can only follow this philosophy of understanding to a point though, especially where violence toward others is concerned.


This is a healthy discussion we are having. When all is said and done ending violence is the most important objective for humanity.

When you say that you can "only follow this philosphy of understanding to a point...when violence towards others is concerned" you actually illustrate the importance of working hard at building bridges between those who act violently and those who are the victims

The issue here is that most victims of violence would say what you have just said. The guy who got shot standing outside a corner store would say the same thing if another person wanted to figure out the deep reasons why someone shot him. I am a Jew and I know that on an emotional level I would not have too much patience for deep understanding of why the Nazis did what they did. And so women also fear that the effort to understand will turn into justification.

Now the crisis this poses is real. The black men who are supporting the violence against women will tell you that they are quite sick and tired of the violence their community is subject to. And both sides in this discussion will be reluctant to listen to each others grievances because what they are fundamentally and emotionally attached to is their condition and not the condition of the 'other'.

Couldn't you very easily imagine a scenario where a person of color gets sick and tired of the violence that has been done to them and really says exactly what you have said, that they really are a hell of alot more concerned with ending it then all this discussion, dialouge, talk and attempts at understanding.

On a fight/flight emotional survival level we are set up to care much more about our own suffering then the suffering of others. And this is most certainly the case when we are being targeted with violence.

Art, for me, is grand because it expresses that which is most human, our ability to think, create, and act in ways that go far beyond core survival modes of fight,eat,drink,sleep. We can create works of such depth, complexity and intensity that art is the affirmation of spirit.

And in that same sense, I have no doubt that humans are capable of reaching out to those very people and communities that they may hate or that may hate them; that they may be attacking or that may be attacking them.

I really see no other way out, other then blood.
We either move forward by building bridges of mutual respect and concern or we build walls, moats and castles with large iron cauldrons of oil to pour on anybody angry, desperate or brave enough to try and scale them.

I have done violence to others. Nothing that has ever resulted in serious injury but that is not what seems so crucial to me. I understand, at least on a personal level(and through the books I have read and the people I have talked to)that those who do violence are the very same who believe firmly in their heart that they have been horribly victimized as well.

If we want to hold on to the one truth that is most dear to me, that all human beings share a granite rock solid core of absolute humanity, then there can be no other explaination for violence other then the one doing it believes and feels it was first done to them.

There are other important points that you raised in your post that deserve attention. I will stop now however and perhaps get to the other points in later posts.

ghideon;)

[jgx]

The other night I wrote a poem and posted it on one of the forum threads. Then I discovered the poetry site that is connected to this one. I went there and logged in and tried to post the poem there. But it did not seem to work; I did not see any box or anything that I should click inorder to post. So I just assumed that I had logged in with the wrong password. I then clicked on the "forgot password" button and after going through the process I got an eight digit number emailed to me that was my new password.

Then I used that password with the same name "ghideon" and on the one hand it told me that I was only a "guest" until I registered. I did not want to register all over again with a different name. So I tried this two other times. Each time it told me I had to register again and when I tried to just go to the "ghideon" control panel with to change things it told me that there was already a user with that user name.

Ugggghhh....:(

Finally, this morn I caved in and created a second self (this is diffenitely vitual land) named jgx with a different email address and a different password. It is ok I guess but I do not know how to still have access to my message center and collection of past posts under the "ghideon" name.

Oh, I did send a "having problems" email to the web administrator and he sent me an email back saying that the poetry site was not working. I guess I am glad to know that now. But, one, I replied to him that, if possible, there should be some way of letting us folks know that. If I had known that my difficulties were because of the site I would never have tried to fix my password.

Also, knowing that the poetry site is not working does not resolve my password/ new identity problem. I wrote another email to him saying this but have not heard back.

Sorry this was not a short answer but I guess I figure that some of the info above is important for some boss type folks to be aware of. As well as me wanting to fix my problem.

(sorry but I guess you are in that boss group...but not really :) ;)

look forward to your reply
ghideon
or am I
jgx?

[SheykAbdullah]

abdullah you ought to read ayn rand's objectivist philosophy who wrote quite extensively and borrowed from aristotle before giving me examples like the USSR and China.

I don't understand why I need to read Ayn Rand before giving you examples like the USSR and China. Am I not capable of drawing my own opinions from my reading? Is my reading of the subject matter, which has always had an interest for me and thus I can claim to be fairly well read on the issues, moot? Is my understanding of things inferior because I have gotten it from The Gulag Archipelago or Conquest Without War (excerpts of Khrushchev's speeches) and not from The Republic or Fountain Head?

I have cited examples of things to back up my statement that the USSR and China we absolutist, but aside from quoting authors you have said nothing to refute them. You have merely claimed I need to read more before stating my opinions.

The absolutism of the afore-mentioned regimes is undeniable. Their jurisprudence of thought-crimes and their belief that any act against Socialism, or any act neutral to Socialism, or any failure to act in its support are acts of political criminality should prove sufficiently that their thought process was comletely absolutist without even the tiniest allowance for realtivism. In fact, I would say that is the definition of absolutist.

Besides, I have read Ayn Rand and I disagree wih her on many things. I believe I have also disagreed with almost every political opinion of Aristotle and Plato (which in truth I disagree with many of their views on government) you have brought up thus far.

However, if you believe the mentioned regimes were not absolutist perhaps you should explain how they were not, even if it requires the reiteration of other's words. After all, I have explained myself in simple enough terms.


i want to respond to this right now briefly, asking whether you are unaware that the United States fought a bloody civil war and it was such a sensitive issue that lincoln himself acknowledged the slave owner ideology and made compromises regarding the institution leading up to it. the slave owner, however, felt as much the "right" to own as the rapper to make his smut. if you don't buy this argument, i recommend glancing John Calhoun's Union and Liberty. scholars today are baffled by it's logical precision in its establishment of a natural, absolute, and inviolable right to own slaves. he was from the south and was removed from Jackson's administration as Vice President - quite interesting. again, you need to learn the history and philosophy before making false analogies.

I should point out here I made no analogies, false or true, as far as the slavery argument is concerned. You made the analogy. I only pointed out how it is a false one.

The difference between slavery and rap are the sources they draw their legitimacy from, which is why outlawing one was be effective where outlawing the other will only encourage it.

Slavery drew its justifications from a tradition in the legal system, both legislated and by common interpretation. Rap draws its legitimacy from the street, from its OPPOSING tradition in both society and the legal system. Its current cachet is that it is on the edge, that is scares people. If we outlawed it we would be proving to rappers and their listeners that it is on the edge and that we are afraid of it, the very reasons they participate in the 'hip-hop culture.'

The difference between the two is, again, the source of the legitimacy of each. Just because they were both social questions, and social problems, does not make them the same.


and your point that i have a superficial understanding of history because i'm not objective in my reading of it is just not true. how do you know my disposition when i read history?? look, everything is perspectival -- even great historians like gordon wood and john keegan (and jacques barzun) acknowledge that. this idea that we can somehow be transcendant eyes perusing the annals is gibberish. i've removed myself in the same spirit as you and the rest, but you deny me the right to have an informed opinion on history, and that's where you're wrong.

Great historians like Gordon Wood admit they have a prejudiced view of history when they turn back to it, that's true, but the marker of a good historian is the minimilzation of such prejudices. Every historian will inevitably analyze history in a personal way, according to a material dialectic, according to a Hegelian dialectic, etc, but they try as hard as they can to avoid value judgements. As such, they never say such in books "Calligula was evil" or "Hitler was a dark, sinister man who deserved to die, and the allies glorious and they triumphed as justice would have it." Which is the kind of historical analysis required to outlaw historical documents.

As to how I know your view of history, it is again from what you said. You said there is no room for relativism, which means there is no room for perspective. If there is not room for relativism, if there is only a righteous truth, then history is not a study of the events of humanity but a morality tale frought with victories and defeats.

You said we should outlaw Mein Kampf because it encourages undesirable ideas and opinions, again not something a historian trained in his discipline (Gordon Wood included) would ever say.

I would also make the interesting point that you are arguing that a perspectival view (relativistic) of history is acceptable, where the same relativism is unacceptable elsewhere. Could you explain why. After all, if there is a moral truth, why is everything perspectival?

As to GimmyDiamond comments, I think they hold the solution to the problem of hip-hop, which you are so concerned with Jon. It is not by ignoring it and illegalizing it that the ideas it currently popularly expresses are overcome, rather it is by the concerted efforts of certain individuals that have the courage to overcome the situation they find themselves in and act. If the person in his story had simply closed up shop and pretended nothing was going on around him, tried to reject the reality of where he lived by maintaining an internal censor he never would have been able to do anything about it and the corruption would continue going on around him.

[SheykAbdullah]

JGX/Ghideon's post is a perfect example of why we can not censor rap, regardless of how low-brow it is.

[Petrarch's Love]

I am not responding to any one individual, but reading through this entire thread all I've noticed is the lack of any one persons experiences while they give quote after quote.
I, me, I have lived in violence.

GimmyDiamond--I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your experience with this thread, and the wisdom and insight you have managed to take from truly terrible experiences. You have summed up very eloquently some things that I think Ghideon and I have been trying to sort out.


So I say without reservation, ANYTHING that GLORIFIES violence, is NOT ART!!! Any lyrics, in any song, in any genre, or any book, or show or ANYTHING which GLORIFIES THAT(!), is NOT ART!!!!!!!!!!


Thank you. I think that speaks for itself.


Do I think it should be censored? Perhaps to your surprise, no, I don't. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. My late pastor taught me that...

Your pastor sounds like a very wise man. We cannot just ignore the darkness, we must see it, acknowledge it, and find a way to shine light upon it. This must be a very difficult thing to do, and I have nothing but admiration for those like your pastor who have the strength to try it.


As for music that 'speaks out against' this, it is no doubt going to have controversial content, but to ban it would be to sweep it under the rug. It would be to take everyone living in the midst of terror and abuse and tell them, we don't want to hear about it because it is 'unpleasant'. It would be to take a drug dealer, a hooker, an addict, like one of my brothers, or anyone and tell them you aren't a person to me, in need of love, and consideration and understanding. And who are we to decide who is worth 'saving' and who isn't. Let us not be so quick to judge, ANY music, rap and hip hop included, that denounces such things, is both necessary and ART! Deeply moving and beyond placing a value upon.

I am in complete agreement with this as well. I do not have a problem with lyrics that describe hard or "unpleasant" things in a serious way in order to bring these problems "into the light" as you might say. Thank you so much for this heartfelt and thoughtful post.

[jgx]

Jon1:

I am gaining clarity as this thread goes on. I do not have any problem with your passionate dislike of hip-hop music. I do not think anybody has attacked your personal take on that music.

Nor does anybody defended the violence that is glamorized in the songs.

Nobody has argued in favor of rape or other forms of mysogyny.

You certainly have an absolute right to your opinion, thesis, beliefs and perspective. And, if I may speak for the entire thread, we all defend your right to express your opinions.

What angers me is your absolute designation of those who create the music of violence as "other". You may not have written that but it is a fundamental pre-condition for many of your consequent positions.

I simply ask that you recognize the humanity of those who write the songs, sing the songs, buy the cds and go to the concerts. Hate them if you so choose. Loathe them. Buy 100 cds and smash them in front of some popular hip-hop store. I really could care less about how you personally feel about the music or even about the people behind the music.

I simply ask that you recognize that, in the most fundamental of ways, they are human beings. They are human beings who, in many peoples minds, have made and continue to make great errors. In fact there are many who would say that they are supportive of criminal acts or even that their music ought be considered criminal.

Believe it or not I would not have a problem with any of those positions from a(reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements) perspective.

I insist, though, that you cease in your repeated language of negation of soul/spirit/self.

I say this from a rather pragmatic position, believe it or not.

I do not see how your idea could ever actually work. And I do hope that you are willing to step into the dirty, messy, angry, passionated, lonely,terrifying, joyous, bloody, beautiful, piss,coffee,lipstick,make love concrete day to day world that is out there right now. In that world I see now way, short of some fascistic governmental policy and action, that any music could be censored.

Have you actually stopped and reconsidered what you have written. Do you believe that it is even possible to censor hip-hop. I am not talking about the possiblity that it would come back even if censored. I mean how? Would you suggest some long list of words and phrases that could never be used? Would you suggest some list of images that could never be represented? And if you could come up with some list would you insist that it be applied to hip-hop music and only hip-hop? If so then that does leave one wondering if you are dedicated to ending violence or simply dedicated to ending hip-hop? And how would it be enforced? Would musicians go to jail if they violated the lists? Would audiences be committing a crime if they listened to someone sing a blacklisted song?

And if censorship is not the way then we are right back where we are now and it thus demands a different approach.

You continually talk about those who strive for greatness and I sense that, in your opinion, there are artists of many different genres who have achieved such heights.

Well, I can not think of one, not one, whose greatness was not at its core the capacity made manifest to touch deeply the human. Now some touches have been quite challenging and others are more gentle. King Lear is not a picnic nor are the many operas of loss, regret and betrayl. Yet, from the pictures of Diane Arbus to the landscapes of Monet these speak in ways sublime.

If you want such greatness to increase and if you want others to, at the very least, strive for such then do you believe your current position calling for censorship and brazenly refering to a music that has both huge faults and important virtues "smut"...do you think that will be of any lasting benefit? Or are you actually as far from the aspiration of "art" as those you so easily attack. And if you are then perhaps that needs to be given as much attention as the faults and errors of others. Because, in that sense of having erred, we are all far more alike then apart.

If truth be told, when I am able to step away from some of your heat I can not imagine someone calling for what you do being a person grounded in the world around us all. I will say that I certainly struggle each moment with confronting and accepting the real. In fact even the feeling of confrontation must come after a prior acceptance.

I am happy in this one simple way. I have learned that turning others into an 'other' harms me at least as much as it does those who I objectify. And so with the knowledge my life is harder, messy, emotional, and even full of feelings of alienation and my own day to day neurosis. But when I look at others I do not see 'other' I actually see me. And in that one way I am blessed and, if I can say, even a bit proud. It is what I have worked for from my childhood in Harlem and I have come along way.

[dramasnot6]

may i commend you on your clarity of writing jgx? it has a nice flow and is very easy to read.

[Petrarch's Love]

This is a healthy discussion we are having. When all is said and done ending violence is the most important objective for humanity.

When you say that you can "only follow this philosphy of understanding to a point...when violence towards others is concerned" you actually illustrate the importance of working hard at building bridges between those who act violently and those who are the victims

The issue here is that most victims of violence would say what you have just said. The guy who got shot standing outside a corner store would say the same thing if another person wanted to figure out the deep reasons why someone shot him. I am a Jew and I know that on an emotional level I would not have too much patience for deep understanding of why the Nazis did what they did. And so women also fear that the effort to understand will turn into justification.

I won't quote your post as a whole due to it's length, but I'm taking the rest of what you said into account in my respose. I see what you're saying about there being a cycle of violence at work here. When I said that I would only take a philosophy of understanding up to a point in regard to violence, I did not mean to say that violence was the point at which an attempt at understanding should stop cold, but that understanding, especially where violence is concerned, should stop at the point at which it turns into justification. I agree with you that part of stopping this sort of thing would be that victims need to find a way of finding forgiveness within themselves rather than lashing out at others from a sense of retribution. I do not think that forgiveness on the victim's part necessarily means that he/she needs to fully understand the person who did them wrong and certainly doesn't mean that they need to think it was right or justified, but it does mean coming to peace with it within themselves in some way (which may mean understanding the other person in some cases).

At the same time, as you have shared from your own experience (and thank you for sharing how you yourself have worked through these issues), I agree that a whole human being can not be dismissed as bad because of a few thoughtless acts and that we should be able to recognize that there is at least a spark of humanity in everyone. This does get more and more difficult, the more violent and pointless the act is. The person who commits a violent act is most certainly caring a lot more about him/herself and thinking not at all about the suffering of others, at least at the time, so I think there is a great burden on the part of the perpetrator to understand the pain they have inflicted upon others and to go through some sort of process of contrition and penance (which would of course vary greatly depending upon what sort of act we're talking about) in order to insure that they do not continue to disregard the suffering of others.

In short, we should be able to acknowledge everyone's status as a human being and try to see them clearly for what is best and worst in them, but never condone inhumane behavior in any person.

[stlukesguild]

Boucher and Fragonard did paint pornography, it just is not at the same level of pornography that we acknowledge today. Their paintings were boudoir paintings intended to glorify the sexuality of a mistress or of woman with the thin verneer of occasional classical acceptability. Titian's Venus D'Urbino served the same purpose.

SLG- I suppose what we come down to here is a need to define "pornography". If "pornography" simply denotes any work (of art?) that arouses a sexual response, then I suppose just about anything might be defined as such. Certainly Van Gogh's paintings of his old shoes might arouse a someone with a hard-core foot fetish. If, we define "pornography" as any work having the intention of arousing a sexual reaction then things become more difficult. It is always a challenge to be certain of the artist's intention. For example, in the case of the Boucher painting of Mme. O'Murphy the first intention was to create a portrait of the likeness of the mistress of the King of France:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/boucherMmeOMurphysmall.jpg

Without a doubt it is rather unusual as a portrait... but then again... perhaps it was the young lady's... ummm... postierior that the King was most enamored with. Does the fact that this painting also has the intention of presenting Miss O'Muphy as sexually enticing immediately raise the work to the level of "pornography"? Then I might ask... in a like manner... does the fact that certain works with a religious intention also arouse erotic feelings immediately make them "pornographic"? What of this Saint Sebastian?

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/sebastian540.jpg

Does it matter that the artist was a notorious homosexual known as "Il Sodoma"? What then of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa? Endless writers and critics have spoken of the erotic nature of this work... on the manner in which she recieves God's love (thrust into her by a handsome angel with the point of his arrow that at once made her burn in pain and yet filled her with exquisite pleasure)?

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/teresasmall-1.jpg

Or perhaps we might describe "pornography" as something lacking any artistic worth with the sole intention of sexually arousing the viewer. Personally, I lean toward this final definition. Even certain works of a quite graphic (X-rated) nature can be quite artful (I think of Aubrey Beardsley, certain Greek and Roman sculptures, paintings by Boucher, Watteau, and Fragonard that are rarely ever on view in public galleries and are certainly far more risque than the works discussed here, and many, many prints (would you like to come up and look at my etchings? wink, wink) by Raimondi (after Raphael), Rembrandt, Picasso, etc...

Just because something is not x (pornography for example) as we recognize it today does not mean it is (what we call it today). The fact that their paintings were mostly made for pornographic purposes may or may not affect how you view them as art, and it may not dismiss them automatically as art, but everything must be looked at in its proper historical context in order to understand why it exists and what purpose it ultimately serves, in other words to get to the heart of the matter, and that means understanding why it was made. Boucher and Fragonard painted their greatest works to titilate their viewer, and such an action recieves the definition of pornography.

SLG- Again, I would question your assertion on several accounts. 1. I don't agree that the primary intention in most paintings by Boucher, Watteau, Fragonard, etc... was merely to titilate. Many of thes paintings were produced as part of decorative cycles to deck the rooms of the queen and mistresses such as Mme. Pompadour. 2. Even if the primary intention was to arouse a sexual response I do not see this as immediately qualifying such work as "pornography". certainly endless poems and poetic passages have the intention of singing the praises of someone's sexual attractiveness. Is Milton's description of Eve from Paradise Lost nothing but pornography? Eroticism, certainly... but "pornography"? 3. I question your suggestion that the definition of pornography has changed over time because of the fact that we, so you seem to suggest, are less likely to be aroused by the simple sight of naked flesh. I would suggest that in many ways the reverse were true. prior to the Industrial Revolution nearly 90% of humanity was involved in agriculture in some way or another... many living on the farms. Add to this the fact that the majority also lived crammed into small, one room dwellings. When you consider the lack of "privacy" and the continued exposure to the "facts of life" (in both human and animal form) you will find that many of our predecessors had a much more intimate understanding or relationship with the cycles of sex, birth and death. This doesn't even take into consideration the preliferation of state sanctioned or even state sponsered brothels intended to offset the "frustrations" of the younger male population which was unable to marry until they could support a wife... which usually meant well into one's 30s (if not later) when one inherited the farm or a master position opened up in one's field (carpentry, blacksmith, etc...). There are endless examples of "bawdy songs", filthy stories (prior even to the Marquise de Sade), and pornographic prints and grafitti that circulated. None of it, however, made the slightest pretentions toward "Art". Of course... in our time... when we no longer seem able to define ART at al, the boundaries between what is art and what is not have become increasingly blurred.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
SLG- Again, I have no qualms with death, violence, sex etc... portrayed in art. Art should be able to address all aspects of the world. On the other hand... the "meaningless" or "emptiness" needs to be trascended through the art. Goya, for example, presents images of horror and ugliness that he certainly lived through during the dark days of the Napoleonic wars. However, he attempts to transcend these... to give them some "meaning" if you will by giving them the beauty an artist can lend. The bravado and sexism and racism and anti-social behavior presented in a great deal of rap music is not the expression of an invented character... it is rather the rather mindless ranting of an angry and simple minded "performer". It has about as much artistic worth as the rambling and self-centered agrandizing affected in most teenager's diaries, the "stories" of familial dysfuctionality explored on Jerry Springer or even the hate-filled racism and sexism spouted forth by the unemployed drunk in the local bar.

Art, as I said before, is too meaningless a word to argue about its meaning. If we used the Webster's definition of the word art, which is

"The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principals, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance"

Then rap is art. It is a production according to aesthetic principals (granted a dark aethetic, but aesthetic is not necesarily beautiful as commonly precieved), which has for some people more than ordinary significance.

If we are going to get into a metaphysical debate about art, then I supose that would depend on your definition. I've never met two people who had the same definition of art, strange as it may sound, which is why I stopped caring long ago about what is art and am more concerned about what is significant, because almost everything is, in fact, art in one way or another, depending on your perspective.

As for the empty violence and pointless sexism I agree. I'm not arguing about that.

SLG- Again, I don't believe I stated that Rap/Hip-Hop was not art. As you noted, and I concur, ART has become far too difficult to define for me to exclude the whole of any musical form. On the other hand, I have no problem with defining the majority of it as crap... crap art if you will. Much of it is demeaning, insulting, misogynistic, violent and juvenile without any serious aesthetic worth.

continued...

[stlukesguild]

...continued from previous post...

Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
SLG- Again, the gratuitous violence alone does not negate our taking a work seriously as art. Certainly, Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel, Blood Meridian is disturbing in the extreme... and it is easy to understand why many balk at Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Nabokov's Lolita, or Gore Vidal's Myra Breckenridge. In all of these instances, however, there is an undoubtable artistic brilliance. There certainly may be many precedents in other forms of music and art for the violence inherent in Rap/Hip Hop. In most cases, however, these were not afforded the commercial support that establishes Rappers as role-models among society. As for the suggestion that there is no difference between violent hip-hop and violent close-minded calls to murder and torture a political solution and The Charge of the Light Brigade... I guess that such an analogy is only possible to one unable to discern the difference between Boucher's rather harmless (even... dare I say it?... cute) eroticism and pornography. The next step would seem to be to suggest that there is no actual difference between the real act of murder and Shakespeare's portrayal of such in his plays.
What is brilliance?

There is no functional difference between Boucher and pornography, the only difference is the value we currently assign to each. Boucher's paintings were intended to titilate in the boudoir, to illicit a sexual feeling, and pronography is intended to do the same. I'm not calling into question that value either, to tell you the truth I don't care much for Boucher or pornography, though I like Boucher more. We must look to what something is intended to accomplish before we can judge what it really is.


SLG- I'm sorry, but too much of this echoes 1990s "relativist" theories which put forth the notion that there is no good or bad in art... that Shakespeare and Milton and Dante and Michelangelo and Mozart have simply been acknowledged as "great art" by the power elite because they represent the values of a certain class and culture but the values of Joe-Sixpack who enjoys Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (or a good "snuff film"), headbanger music, and engaging in auto-erotic activites with a good porno mag should be taken just as seriously when defining what is or is not "significant" as art. Rap is art... its just that most of it is poor art. This fact on its own should not make us wish to censure or restrict it. On the other hand... the fact that it is blatantly violent, sexually explicit, hateful and misogynistic should most certainly give us the right to do so. I personally don't think that Lolita, Miss Lonleyhearts, Blood Meridian, nor certain films or works of art should be accessible to minors, let alone promoted as entertainment on public airwaves. While as an artist I am completely in support of the artist's right to express himself however he or she sees fit... I do not believe this supercede's the right of the public to deny support for works of art that do not meet the community's standards or to limit access to such works.

(ps. I don't go in much for rococo myself, although I quite admire the sensual and fluttering brushwork of Fragonard, especially.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
SLG- Certainly, I would not think to dismiss all such music out of hand... and certainly not upon grounds that it tackles themes which make me uncomfortable. On the other hand... I can dismiss a good deal of it as juvenile and rather uncreative... using violence merely for shock value... or because the "artist" himself is is simply a rather hateful person. As for the notion that the music represents what the audience wants... this has long been claimed by the music and etertainment industry. This may indeed say something about our culture. It may say more about the whoremongering industry that will provide whatever is desired for a price. Do we, however, allow for the lowest common denominator to direct our culture? Because there are many teenage boys who can think of nothing more to which to aspire to than becoming a pimp does that justify not merely providing images and soundtracks for this market, but the backing of a great commercial industry to publicize such work?

continued...
If the music were not what the audience wants wouldn't it stop selling? I realize there is a market that manufactures ideas and brands and markets 'cool,' but the fact of the matter is one way or the other people buy ever increasing volumes of this freely. What would you do about it?

SLG- Then we should simply give the public what it wants? Right now "the public" (or a certain portion of it) wants the mindless sex and violence of Jerry Springer, football, pro wrestling, a rap. There are many in the neighborhoods in which I teach that find dog fights to the death to be entertaining. The Romans loved their gladitorial bloodbaths. Do we reach a point where we are willing to suggest that simply because there is an audience for something does not mean we should be automatically filling this demand... all in the name of "freedom of expression"?

We do not have to allow for 'the lowest common denominator' to govern society, I never said we did. I said that the status of music is determined by its popularity. I would ask you, if most of America listens to rap, or at least a significant percentage of the youth population, a plurality I would imagine, are they then the 'lowest common denominator'? I believe that we may find ourselves soon in the 'lowest common denominator' if rap keep growing the way it does, and then what will we have to say for ourselves? That what we value is superior to the many? That the majority of society is trash? Society has no values, only individuals have values and the values respected by society reflect the values held by the majority of its members, in a democracy at least. The important thing to do is to understand rap, study it, so that you can understand what the phenomenon is as opposed to dismissing it off the cuff because its importance is measured in the quantity of its adherents.

SLG- Again, as an artist, I have no problem with the idea of proclaiming myself an "elitist". This is one of the reasons that art and democracy have long had an uncomfortable relationship. Art has never been about pandering to the values of the masses, equality, or egalitarianism. The aesthetic values of the majority ARE almost always trash and I see no reason to concern myself with exploring why a certain art speaks to them. In the field of painting the giant among the masses is Thomas Kinkade:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/File1792290926.gif

I see absolutely no reason to concern myself with why he is so admired. neither could I care less why Jackie Collins sold so many novels. She has nothing to do with quality literature just because she has a fanatic audience.
The aesthetic values of the masses are almost always temporal... a moment's infatuation with the latest novelty. Today it's Madonna, tomorrow it's Britney Spears, and then...? How many of this mass rap audience have developed their musical preferences after some serious exploration of a broad range of musical styles: medieval, classical, romantic, modernist, jazz, blues, etc... How many that acclaim the Harry Potter novels or The Lord of the Rings
as the single greatest literary work ever written have actually read (on their own and not forced through some school curriculum) Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Cervantes, etc...? The notion that because something is admired by the masses it must be taken seriously as art is absurd because the opinions of the masses almost never matter in the long run. They change. They are disinterested. The works of art that survive are those that continue to speak to later generations of serious art lovers... those who invest the time and effort into the study and appreciation of art. James Joyce is almost certainly not so acclaimed because of his appeal with the masses. By that standard, he is completely irrelevent. However, he has been a major impact upon many later writers; his work continues to speak to critics, literary scholars, serious lovers of literature. Certainly, some artists were quite popular during their time and have continued to remain popular (Dickens, Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Verdi, Ellington, etc...) I would never immediately assume that popularity equates with a lack of aesthetic worth... with having "sold out"... howver, the notion that popularity is in any way a standard to measure importance is purely absurd to me.

[stlukesguild]

quote: SheykAbdullah-
Popularity does not necesarily restrict itself to the mass population. Fame is dictated by the popularity not just of the public, but the popularity a certain work has with the intellectuals. If a work were not popular with them it would not be handed down as genius. It would become lost to time, rotting away on a shelf. Perhaps there are a hundred better (in either my oinion or yours) Shakespeares in such a state who were relegated to molder because the professors, academics, intellectuals, theologians and scientists of the time considered them to be terrible, base and uninteresting.

Again, what makes brilliant artistic form? Quantify that term. It is wishy-washy and easily bent into anything the speaker wants. Is brilliance allegory? Aethetics? Treatment? Color comprehension? Structuralism? Tonality? Pleasant manipulation of the scales? Intended disharmony?

SLG- Certainly, "popularity" applies within the field of intellectuals... and I would never suggest that within that group... or within those who have applied serious efforts to the study and appreciation of art that there is anything approaching a common mind. There are disagreements... but these are certainly based upon a good degree of experience. if I dismiss the paintings of Thomas Kinkade out of hand it is because of the experience I have with art that leads me to see nothing of any real artistic worth in the work. As such can I quantify what qualities are necessary to define "great art" or "artistic brilliance"? As much as I hate the aesthetic relativism that suggests that as there are no absolutes there is no way to truly assertain "good" or "bad", I will freely admit that ART always eludes any absolutes or objective standards. No matter what standards we establish we will find some work of art that subverts or avoids such will great result.

I don't know whether I would say popularity of the masses has never been the route to survival by great art. There are many art styles that have survived due to poularity despite having little real contribution to the history of art itself. I might point out styles such as Art Nouveau which continues to be popular, but gave us little in the way of new techniques or vision. The Pre-Raphaelites are another popular movement for their time that have little of great worth to communicate to use. Sometimes popular movements do die, and then sometimes they last. There is no explanation and no way to predict what lasts. It's just whatever catches people's fancy.

SLG- Certainly, it is rare. I might agree that the survival of The Three Musketeers or the works of Rachmininoff and Puccini owe more to the opinions of the public than to the scholars and critics. But then again... we're not exactly speaking of a mass public when we speak of opera or 1200 page novels from a century ago, are we? As for Art Nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites... how popular were they in their time? How popular are they now? Certainly Gustav Klimpt, who employed a great deal borrowed from Art Nouveau has maintained a greater popularity with the art public (again a rather limited... dare I say, "elitist?... group) than many far more important artists thanks largely to his famous Kiss and the recent $135 Million sale of the Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/klimt_kissss.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/PortraitofAdeleBloch-BauerI1907sm.jpg

On the other hand... I would say that the PreRaphaelites are seriously underrated if anything. I suppose there is a certain camp which hold Victorian painting in high esteem (as the last bastian of "real art" before Modernism) but I don't see all that many running out to purchase the poetry of Dante Rossetti (a shame... he's quite good) or William Morris' book arts.

You fail to understand what I said, I did not mean that I dislike Shakespeare
because he is not simplistic, perhaps I mischose my words. I dislike Shakespeare because (and I don't really dislike Shakespeare, but I don't really like him, this is for argument's sake a bit of an exaggeration of my actual opinion) he is not a minimalist and I like minimalists. I like authors who are, in the words of Sabatini;

"...the modern realistic school, by which I mean a synthetic author, an uninspired university product, a chronicler of unimportant and mainly sordid trifles, whose unimaginative and uninventive art lies somewhere between the arts of photography and journalism, whilst expressing, with that presumption which is the chief asset of his class, his contempt of the modern historical romance"

Which is a little unfair because while I revere those he derides I don't hate historical romance. In any case, Shakespeare is not one of those uninspired university products that chronicle unimportant and sordid trifles. It is the glory and scale of Shakespeare I object to and for that reason I say that Greene's The Heart of the Matter is infinitely better for its simplicity of both expression and theme. In accordance I will freely admit I prefer Charlie Parker to Mozart and Edward Hopper to Leonardo.

SLG- Of course, as I freely admit, even those who have spent the time seriously exploring this or that art form have their own preferences which do not always agree with that of the cognicienti/intellectuals/scholars/art lovers (whatever you will) as a mass. Personally, I prefer Shakespeare to almost anyone... but then again... in spite of my own Modernist/Minimalist leanings as an artist... I am also greatly enamored of baroque grandure... sensuality... complexity. As such, I prefer Proust to Joyce... although I might like Kafka and Borges even more. I would probably take Bach over anyone... although I do love my jazz as well (although I lean more toward Miles, Monk, Ellington, and Lennie Tristano). I might even agree with you on Hopper. His work certainly inspired me to a greater degree than Leonardo... much as I acknowledge him as one of the 4 or 5 absolute Gods of visual art. Michealangelo, Titian, Vermeer, Velazquez, Rubens on the other hand... I'm afraid Hopper had nothing on them.

[stlukesguild]

Art must be relative, else who are we to judge it? Who defines what 'art' is? How can that defnition be made when there are a thousand conflicting opinions even among the educated? If I were to make a definition of art, and I am educated on the subject, well-read, versed and spend a lot of time in the study of both literature and painting, I would say that almost every famous painter since and including Rothko with the exception of Botero, whom I do not like either, is the farthest thing from an artist and are instead mere opportunists, rogues, self-delluded or egoists striving for a piece of Modernism's greatness, but what would be the point in me saying something like that? Would it change how their art is percieved? Would it change what they did? I have studied Pollock, Rothko and Warhol despite the fact I find them no more interesting the the ingredients on the actual soup can one of them painted, but they need to be understood within their context and with their own unique ideas in the same way rap does.

SLG- As an artist I have certainly studied works of art that I did not like because I realized that those with educated opinions had deemed them "important"... "good"..."great". In some instances, my opinions changed. Certainly not because x, y, and z have deemed that such and such is great, but rather because I changed. You will never learn to love Rothko or Picasso merely because someone else has told you they were "great". There are artists who now rank among my favorites whom I was simply unprepared for upon first coming upon their work. There are others... Andy Warhol... whom I still find trifling, at best, in spite of... or perhaps because of all I have experienced as an artist and an art lover. As for the taste of the mass public dictating what I should need to understand. I will admit that I am amused by the publics obsessions with Britney Spears, Harry Potter, Thomas Kinkade, etc... however, I don't see that as any reason to spend time in serious exploration of such "art".

[stlukesguild]

Plato also suggested we have a philospher king. Would you agree to such a tyranny?

SLG- I doubt it would be far worse than the idiot "king" we now have. Seriously, I don't half disagree with G.B. Shaw:

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few".

I'm not certain that I neccessarily find one system inherently better than another. Rather, it would seem to me that the system is only as good as the individuals involved. American democracy has certainly given us Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, the "Bill or Rights", Jackson Pollack, Walt Whitman, Aaron Copland, etc... but it also allowed for slavery, the slaughter of the Native Americans, and inequality of rights for women. Italy under the tyrants such as the DeMedicis, Sforzas, Barberini, Borgias, etc... produced years of endless external and internal feuds... but it also produced Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, Dante, Petrarch, etc... Ezra Pound argued that the only true measure of a culture was its support for the arts. In the lond run this may be true. Certainly Egypt, Greece and Rome survive in our imaginations because of what they achieved artistically. Carthage and Babylon are mere footnotes. Still I don't know that I completely agree with Pound. A better measure might be the standard of living of the polulation as a whole. In spite of the wealth of the US (as much as the next 7... is it 8?... nations combined) we never fare well here. How do we fare against many of the monarchies and constitutional monarchies in the world, including those of Scandanavia?

Would you agree to such a tyranny? I never would. Even a philosopher king of art. After all, didn't the entire scope of modern art evolve from the necesity of breaking the dictatorship of artistic elitism? What was the cry of the Salon des Refuses in 1863? Didn't Manet, Cezanne, Whistler and Pisarro decry the dictation of the elite, the Academy, in marking the quality and veracity of art in accepting any who would submit? What would art be today if no one stood up to challenge the authority of 'legitimate' taste? What did Modigliani's entire life stand for if not an empahtic statement of the unacceptability of the dictation of taste? His empty eyes, his long necks?

SLG- Don't confuse the Modernism with some sort of populist rebellion against the old, entrenched aristocracy. If anything, Modernism was even more elitist (certainly less populist). What we simply had was the rebellion of one elitist camp against another. Clement Greenberg, at the peak of Abstract Expressionism and dominance of Modernist thought made it clear just how entrenched and "elitist" Modernism had become.

We have never had an academy in this country, not for language, art or les belles lettres, and we do not need it because we are a country where the aesthetic is not dictated to us, and nor should it be, because such dication necesarily means certain important movements and ideas will be left in the cold and progress prohibited.

SLG- And so you believe the academies of art and the ministries of culture are such a bad thing... in comparison to American democracy? Might I suggest that what we are really discussing here is the success of such academies vs that of capitalism. The opera, the orchestra, the theater, the ballet, poetry, literature, painting, etc... survive because there are a wealthy educated elite who believe in their worth and invest in their survival. These same institutions survive in other countries because the very government has taken the point of view that such cultural institutions are of great worth to the nation as a whole. On the other hand... how good is capitalism at supporting the new works of art that may challenge the views held by the masses or may lack great public appeal. Or perhaps we should frame the question historically: how well do the opinions of the De Medicis, Sforzas, Barberini, Borgias, the Kings of France, Spain, England, etc... stack up against that of American presidents. Are not our museums all actually endowed with monies and art works collected by such elitists as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, Hirschhorn, Frick, Getty, etc...?

Art, as it exists as an idea, must necesarily be unfettered. Movements must be allowed to run their course without intervention...

SLG- Certainly, to the degree that an artist is not above the law and as such art must abide by the same laws as that which is not art, I concur. However, as a society we do not abdicate our rights to limit access of certain art forms from public display. We can ban any "art" that meets the society's standard as "obscene" (child pornography, for example), and we can decide that other works of art should not be freely accessible to any and all (including minors) on public airwaves, etc... This is not akin to banning the artist's "freedom of expression". How quickly, we might ask ourselves, would the recording industry and the rappers churning out profanity and sexist-laden tunes change were they to suddenly find they had no audience?

[stlukesguild]

Ghideon- I would even suggest that when something becomes important to millions of people there must be depth going on.

I wouldn't.

[jgx]

Errr....folks. The thread here was entitled hip-hop. Now I recognize that there have been many many connected topics and issues that have been brought up in relation to the key subject.

However, at this point I would suggest that there be another thread with a subject such as: "what is art" or "what is pornography" or whatever...but do you get my general drift?

ghideon

[jgx]

Ghideon- I would even suggest that when something becomes important to millions of people there must be depth going on.

I wouldn't.



I wrote "there must be depth going on" now that is a rather abstract statement, yes?

I did not mean to imply that Britney Spears music is deep or that the Super Bowl is deep.

What I did mean is that if I were to throw a party next Sunday I don't suspect too many people would show up:(.

But a few Sundays from now millions or even close to a billion human beings will sit in front of a tv and watch two teams play with a small leather football.

From my perspective it would be only be fundamentally disrespecting those human beings to think that they are all chosing to stop and watch something for superficial reason. Propoganda, imho, is effective because of very significant dynamics involving all sorts of factors. Sporting events rake in billions and billions of dollars for important reasons (having do with everything from our need to watch violence to pervasive male conditioning towards competition).

I would say the same thing about any aspect of pop culture from bubble gum to hip-hop.

Humans are obviously very often misled, confused, told that they need things that they actually do not and then believe that...but none of these are unimportant nor evidence of shallow or unimportant phenomena.

How would you suggest we improve the shallow face of pop culture if we do not take its power seriously? Or do you think it lacks power? If it does lack power then please explain its incredible appeal?

And lets return to hip hop actually. Just because something looks, sounds superficial does not mean that the dynamics involved are also supeficial. If only that were true things would be so much easier to resolve. No?;)

[Yelena]

I agree about the "depth" part.
I can also admit that there are some hip-hop songs that have at least some meaning, but as far as I'm concerned, most of them talk about women, money and sex. No offence, but to me hip-hop isn't art, its a way to earn money by those, who have no talent but have enough gall to go out there and show off.

[dramasnot6]

Perhaps we can all agree that hip hop is perhaps too much of an umbrella term then one could expect and has a diverse range of content, just some of it covering very offensive topics and therefore being debatable to whether it can go up there with Shakespeare and Brecht?
boy, i can just feel the dirty look of my teacher after a run-on sentence like that :p

[jon1jt]

To begin, my compliments to St.LukesGuild for his depth and range of thought and evaluation expressed on this topic. people ought not be dissuaded from reading his rather long posts --- they're packed with "ideas."

abdullah: i want to read your posts again before responding fully. i know you noted questions, i'm not avoiding them. for now, you mentioned some confusion about the term "exploitation" as i used it to highlight that words have meaning when we want them too. a debate rages over the exploitation of foreign workers by no-good "American" companies, which set up affiliates overseas - e.g. bangladesh; others in mexico and latin america. relativist liberals argue that these workers are not paid a "living wage" but also that it creates the conditions for entire families to perform "sweatshop" labor, native parents forcing their children to work as well rather than allow them to go to the local school to be educated. multi-national corps have taken the brunt of criticism because they've created and in the process, arguably, furthered the conditions for illiteracy, subsistence wages, and fractured family life. some neo-con journals, like Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, have run articles defending MNCs on the basis that such workers are not "exploited" in the strict sense of the word -- in fact, without the added trade and work opportunities MNC's provide to these regions, the logic goes, workers would be far worse off. relativist liberals contend that 'exploitation is exploitation' - in that 'I know it when i see it'-justice stewart sense. and so then accuse MNCS and think tanks that the realities on the ground don't comport with MNCs suggestion that they are a galvanizing, region-developing force. i hope this clears up my point. and strike the "false analogy" claim you didn't make it - i had wanted to say i wasn't making one. sorry.

as far as the claim that i contradicted myself regarding my perspective of history, i meant that to be human is to breath value into the very "reading" i.e. understanding, the process by which we take in and assemble - historical fact. i'm tempted to go further on this point but there's already a wonderful thread on historical interpretation.


ghideon: your note about my bringing up class next to my remark about music: i used that term as a contrast to hip hop, not in the elitist you make me out to be. we're all self-righteous in some way, remember that.

ghideon
You bet there is, actually tendency is not putting it strongly enough, to distrust government...

ghideon
The "cursing in class" bit is close to sci-fi. My God have you even been in a HS class these days? Cursing? Folks are worried about bullets.

abdullah
You "think" he had it right but do you "know"?

abdullah
Society becomes a stagnant morass until someone stands up and fights it, and that person is ultimately labeled an unconventional, seditious, dangerous traitor by his contemporaries and a noble, moral, just man by the people of the next generation who want to impose the same restricting standard that he fought against.

abdullah
What is the 'public'?


perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is (was) a contributing factor in this nation's slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, at all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. another person - an adult who decided to go back to school and finish up her college degree, was shocked that one of her teachers had to actually ask students repeatedly not to talk during class. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for censorship to have any positive effect. America is slouching towards gomorrah. global warming, world hunger (yet US pays farmers NOT to produce), poverty, epidemics, terrorism, nuclear arms, weapons, guns, war, indiscriminate killing, etc. etc. are all sullen examples. i'll stop there.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal-free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave, nor you mine. twas always thus, and always thus will be. :)

[dramasnot6]

"perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is a contributing factor in this nations slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for it to have any positive effect --- America is slouching towards gomorrah and teetering on the horizon.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave."

Ill have to agree with many of your points here Jon. As a highschool student i experience first hand the effects of popular culture on my peers, and it isnt pretty. Issues like rape, racism, and mysogany are taken lightly and are often brought up in a joke or insult in almost every class or personal discussion. Girls dress and throw themselves at guys jsut like the objectified women sung about and shown on music videos. Art is meant to inspire, to provide beauty and comfort in a world already filled with too much pain and hate, not exacerbate it. I for one think we should be progressing from such blunt crudity and sexism, but instead we seem to be regressing and were probably better off as Neanderthals.

[dramasnot6]

Also, some people seem to be defending hip hop in saying the artist cant help what they are expressing because it is just their context. But large scale musicians dont simply jot down what comes to mind and perform it for millions. Teams of editors, songwriters, and publicists review the song many times over before it is performed and sold. They are aware of and even try to appeal to young people as their target audeince. Tis a dangerous and boling solution created by the media made of both shockingly crude content AND a direct appeal to the most vulnerable and gullible audience, youth.That is marketing and corruption, not art.

[SheykAbdullah]

This is a response to Stlukeguild's post. I am not going to quote it except where required to save on length.

Pornography is something whose primary intention is to titilate and arouse feelings in a sexual manner. Most of the works of Roccoco were intended as decorative cycles in boudoirs in order to titilate the viewer in a sexual way. That makes it pornography. Does that make it not art? No. You claim to think I've said that, but I never did.

As far as Il Sodoma there is no sexual intent there, as far as St Teresa in Ecstasy, while there is an element of sexual gratification in the piece that is not the purpose for which it is sculpted. That is the difference between it and most Boucher's work.


1. Whether you believe me or not, titilation was the point of most of Boucher's Fragonard's styles, which is why they were hung in the rooms of the king's mistresses. 2. Well, I do view a work that is intended to titilate as pornography. Is that a negative thing? No. 3. The definition of pornography has not changed over time, but the threshold of what is pornography has changed and that is undoubtable. For example, Madam X by Sargent, the so oft mentioned by me Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Olympia, and many others were considered pronographic due to the direct representation of the female nude outside of the established Academic conventions, which Boucher and Fragonard also violated.

Call it crap art, call it whatever you want. I've said I accept all definitions of art whatever they may be. Art doesn't exist independantly of man so it can be whatever we want it to be.

[SheykAbdullah]

I will admit an absolute definition of art if you can show unequivicobly what qualifies you to have one and why. I fail to see how art is NOT a relativistic term. I would also remind you that my defintion of art is not '1990's' relativism, but is related directly the Warhol's idea of art and the idea of art that pushed forward the Pop movement.

Sure, the piblic gets what it wants just so long as no one gets hurt as a direct result of their entertainment. No one goes out and kills someone JUST BECAUSE they heard a rap song. There are other influences. Maybe the music plays a marginal role in the mentality, but there are other factors involved in the ultimate decision. Now, I would ask you since you have labelled a bunch of things you consider inferior in value, for whatever reason, would you outlaw them as well? If you redefine the things people want by education, etc, then there is no need for the less agreeable aspects of rap. That is what I have been saying all along. The music exists to fill a need people feel they have for whatever reason.

Well, in that case, since you are so comfortable with elitism, let's set up an academy to dictate artistic tastes. If you are an artist and you don't meet the criteria you'll starve, never gaining noteriety, until a group of angry artists set up across the street and destroy your institution. You can not legislate taste like you legislate law. The establishment will only hold back the artistic surge. Inevitably freedom will produce forgetable, immaterial pieces, sometimes it produces greatness. You'll never know, but what is wrong with people thinking Harry Potter was the best book ever written? Or the Lord of the Rings, which I consider a fine piece of literature. Do people HAVE to listen to a broad range of musical styles if they have no interest in it? I don't like eating and am fine eating the same thing for weeks at a time, am I ignorant because I don't explore the greatness of various cuisines through out the world? I don't like dancing, so am I ignorant for not having explored the nuances of the jeter? As for Joyce, I'm sure he's great, but I really wouldn't know. never read him, not interested in it either. Does that make me a philistine? What is the problem with someone who thinks Harry Potter is the best thing ever written?

[SheykAbdullah]

I am sorry, but I seem to get the feeling you seem to think that I have no experience with art or anything artistic, and I assure you that would be a faulty assumption on your part. I may not paint, but I know art, and I say there are no absolute standards, and that if standards are impossible to define that indicates a need for a relativistic perspective.

There were thousands of 'the people' that read the Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo because when it was originally published it was NOT 1200 pages. It was serialized a chapter at a time, in popular magazines. In such a case we ARE talking about a mass public. It's not like the literacy rate in France a century ago was 12%. Art Nouveau was very popular, though more so in architecture than painting. The Pre-Raphaelites can be found in many museums and the movement is more popular than other ninteenth century movements such as Orientalism, which I think are superior. In any case I feel they aren't nearly as under-rated as they deserve, but I guess it's a good thing my opinions aren't absolute. Maybe they'll even be called uninformed.

And again, I would disagree with everyone you listed but Vermeer and Velazquez. I don't like Renaissance art and I don't like Rubenisme, so again, I guess it's good that art is relativistic. I have my reasons to like Hopper more than Michelangelo, you have yours for liking Michelangelo more than Hopper, just like some people like rap more than anything else.

[SheykAbdullah]

I suppose the reason we all study art is different. Some people see art as expressing individual, personal genius, others often see art as an expression of the society from which they came. Again, it's a good thing that no one view dominates. Otherwise there would be nothing to learn because everything would be the same, which is what has happened everytime art has been organized into cpncrete definitions.

[SheykAbdullah]

I don't want to respond to the political comments in your post because it can go no where but off course and result in nothing but mud-slinging. Suffice to say I disagree strongly. I think it is best left at that.

My point in citing those artists was that a dictatorship of taste does not promote change or improvement of an art form, and it is true. The fact that the impressionists were or were not elitists doesn't matter for the point I made, though I might point out that they accepted Henri Rousseau, le Douanier, or the tax-collector, who had no formal training and was an unabashed primitivist in his painting, and given their lives I find it hard to claim that they were elitists in refusing to accept the outside or the public. The important point I made was that the Academy tried to establish a standard for legislating taste, such as is being suggested, but it failed miserably and that for art to advance its restrictions had to be thrown aside.

As individuals we do not abdicate our right to freedom of speech, only our right to directly harmful forms of speech. I would direct you to my earlier comments that outlawing rap WILL NOT remove its audience. Rap is outlawed in Iran, but I personally have several songs that are rap produced in the country (I have them more as a novelty than anything else). Again, rap is a music form that wants to be viewed as illicit, if you actually make it illicit it will only grow in popularity.

[SheykAbdullah]

i want to read your posts again before responding fully. i know you noted questions, i'm not avoiding them. for now, you mentioned some confusion about the term "exploitation" as i used it to highlight that words have meaning when we want them too. a debate rages over the exploitation of foreign workers by no-good "American" companies, which set up affiliates overseas - e.g. bangladesh; others in mexico and latin america. relativist liberals argue that these workers are not paid a "living wage" but also that it creates the conditions for entire families to perform "sweatshop" labor, native parents forcing their children to work as well rather than allow them to go to the local school to be educated. multi-national corps have taken the brunt of criticism because they've created and in the process, arguably, furthered the conditions for illiteracy, subsistence wages, and fractured family life. some neo-con journals, like Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, have run articles defending MNCs on the basis that such workers are not "exploited" in the strict sense of the word -- in fact, without the added trade and work opportunities MNC's provide to these regions, the logic goes, workers would be far worse off. relativist liberals contend that 'exploitation is exploitation' - in that 'I know it when i see it'-justice stewart sense. and so then accuse MNCS and think tanks that the realities on the ground don't comport with MNCs suggestion that they are a galvanizing, region-developing force. i hope this clears up my point. and strike the "false analogy" claim you didn't make it - i had wanted to say i wasn't making one. sorry.

All right. I understand what you mean, and the point you raise is an interesting one now that I understand it better. I still disagree with the relationship being drawn. In one situation, art, there is almost nothing physical that defines it. Meaning, that unless you accept the primacy of convention adn tradition you do not have a measuring stick to use to ensure the rightness of a piece of art, but in exploitation there is a firm measure, there is a standard of living. You can compare the standard of living, the comparative wages and the conditions worked in with that of other countries and come up with nearly mathematical relationship and base your defintion of exploitation on those facts. Since I am unwilling to admit the primacy of any form of art over any other form there is no similiar measure for me to apply to art.

In any case, I don't see how that makes my definition of art defunct.


as far as the claim that i contradicted myself regarding my perspective of history, i meant that to be human is to breath value into the very "reading" i.e. understanding, the process by which we take in and assemble - historical fact. i'm tempted to go further on this point but there's already a wonderful thread on historical interpretation.

So you see history as having a 'value'? I assume that value in this sense means some kind of moral struggle, or maybe a struggle for justice? For you history is a dialectic of good vs evil or some such thing?

[SheykAbdullah]

perhaps my thinking is to many here anachronistic - offensive to others, both to free wheeling relativist liberals, but history will absolve me when the whole s***house goes up in flames, the day it's recognized that rap/hip hop is (was) a contributing factor in this nation's slow and inevitable decline. you can see it in pockets all over. in education, at all levels. i have a friend who has been teaching at a major university, a renowned (white) scholar in her field, and even she admited to me that if she didn't dumb down her course lectures and requirements, she'd lose 70% of the class and the administration would go bonkers. she also told of students who "earned" C's who after filed petitions and screamed, one who even spit at her. she's had to reprimand students with ipods in class (listening to hiphop??!)- an apparently widespread problem - and students who play on the internet in class. she's showed me incoherently written "research papers" and essays from students with an eigth grade writing level. another person - an adult who decided to go back to school and finish up her college degree, was shocked that one of her teachers had to actually ask students repeatedly not to talk during class. colleges are set up as a business and accept just about anyone with a pulse.

I will save the first part of the paragraph for the end of this response. I would prefer to address the college argument, because I agree with you. Education is terrible, and there are a number of reasons why.

The first is regarding college. It is inevitable, in my opinion, that a college education will begin to mean less as universities are democratized to accept nearly everyone, which is true. Anyone, regardless of how ill-prepared can go to college now somewhere if they can pay. I do not necesarily agree with this idea, and I think it is unfortunate.

The second thing is about lower levels of education, and much of the blame for ill-prepared college students rests here. Education in the US, and I would say the world in general, is terrible, not because of the quality of education but because of the skills emphasized. Students, on average, are not stressed to come up with their own answers to problems. Emphasis in the past twenty years in education has been placed on multiple-choice tests, which is mostly a test of data-retention and not critical analysis, which is the skill that needs to be stressed to create more intelligent individuals, and that critical thinking and analysis is engendered mostly by questioning the veracity of previously held assumptions, such as what is 'socially acceptable' and 'what is art' and 'what did Hitler REALLY think when he invaded Austria.' Those questions can only be answered in a free environment.

The knowledge base that evolved from a strategy of multiple choice testing and pre-formed essay response (many essays now a days in school are the bland five-paragraph approach which are nearly sppon-fed to students) is one where rhetorical skills are lost and one that tends to engender a natural respect for intellectual authority, which as I am sure you can gather, I disagree with.

Descartes never said anything better than 'question everything.' To me knowledge is a revolutionary prcoess and learning is a rebellion inside the individual against society and against what he used to be. In the end things may stand much like before, but stronger, with more integrity, or they may be toppled and changed, but it is almost always for the betterment of the person, provided the discovery is unguided and unhampered by outside requirements and demands. Guidance is not a problem, but rules are. Science, society and art never advanced because people followed 'the rules.' Advancement only comes when the conventional rules are either broken or bent.

A note here, I am not railing against teachers. They are as much victims of the system as the students themselves are.


hip hop contributes to the increasing lethargy, banality, sloth, and ambivalence in the United States.

waving the banner of unfettered first amendment speech and thereby turning a blind eye with your shoulder-shrug acknowledgments of its misogyny is sad.

I've said several times that I don't agree with the misogyny, that I think it should be fought. I have said several times that the way to fight it is NOT censoring it, but rather exploring the PHENOMENA that create the violence and then figuring out how to CHANGE that. Hip-hop is not our problem, it is a symptom.


the public IS democracy and the latter can't survive without a sense there's a common denominator. forms of totalitarianism already exist in America and yet you blow your trumpets of freedom, as if free press and free speech are real. i have not yet discussed that dimension of my argument. please do not in any way suppose that i suggest that censorship should be enforced under the present conditions---that is, this democracy. the public is too far gone for censorship to have any positive effect. America is slouching towards gomorrah. global warming, world hunger (yet US pays farmers NOT to produce), poverty, epidemics, terrorism, nuclear arms, weapons, guns, war, indiscriminate killing, etc. etc. are all sullen examples. i'll stop there.

I think it was William Penn who once said, "Let the people think they govern and they shall be governed."

and that's the illusion - the spell you relativist liberal-free speech folks are under. i will not be cajoled into your cave, nor you mine. twas always thus, and always thus will be. :)


Allright, to begin with you seem to think I don't believe that anything is wrong, and that is not true. As I have said before I am not completely a relativist, I know there are things that are right or wrong and I believe in a moral truth, but I do NOT believe that things such as art can be defined, because I do not believe that they can be VALUED (in a superior/inferior, important/unimportant, etc) sense. I believe in an absolute morality, namely that you must repsect the liberty of someone else so that they respect the liberty of you. People do not always live up to this standard and laws are required, but they must walk the thin line between enabling the individual and disabling him so that he is not restricted from too much. Banning hip-hop would be too much.

You believe you should ban hip-hop and certain undesirable aspects of history, just not in a democracy? It was ok under Socialism? I don't understand the logic of your argument.

The government is not some great caring parent that spreads its wings protectively over a civilization. You can't name a single government in the history of the world that operated that way without being a tyranny.

I normally hate this kind of thing but your argument just called for it. There was another country once, not too long ago, that was fighting rampant inflation, crushing social divisions and many feared that society had degenerated so badly that it could never recover, drastic measures would be required to purify the social hygenie, and, of course, ensure the future of business against the Communists. Because of the fear that the once glorious country would descend into the terrible reaches of leftist anarchy and the mass killing that would inevitably follow, along with the destruction of business, the gov't reached out to a person who promised to fix all the problems, clean out the scourge of political dissent that was affecting the youth, and ensure a great, glorious, continuous society. He would empower business, strike fear in the hearts of the evil-doers spreading propoganda in his society, and the people that appointed him thought he was a funny man they could countrol, whom they would ensure would only restrict things just enough, because, after all, he was better than a Communist. I will assume you know to what and whom I am referring. The man the government apointed to fix its social problems was the author of the book you want to ban. He saved not just Germany, but even Greater Germany from becoming a gemorrah. I should also add that if one reads his mannifesto he learns that one of the future-leader's biggest gripes was that a particular ethnic group controlled everything, including the art world, and was therefore stealing, by virtue of their aesthetic, the right of young German artists to create. Of course, the future leader also enforced his own standards for art just like Mao and Stalin.

You have ended this post with another quote, but why don't you explain yourself instead of only referencing great men. You say that the moral hygene of our country is bankrupt, but you do not say why YOU are qualified to judge it. you don't say what it's bankrupt against, Christianity, Islam, Capitalism?

Are you qualified to arbitrate because of what you've read? What is it that qualifies YOU as the person that has the asnwer to our society's ills? What makes YOU the man who can fix us, the one with the knife that can right the senate's wrong if you'll just be given a chance and a legion? You have said a lot of things, but you have not said, a single time, why you are right, how rap is destroying our country, and what makes me wrong. You have referenced a few SC cases, but for the rest you just respond that 'rap is full of misogyny,' 'your relativism is the end of our country,' and 'you need to read more before talking.' These are not arguments, they are declaritive statements from which arguments spring. The only one you've managed to prove is that rap is indeed full of misogyny, a point we all agree with.

[jgx]

To my community:

Does anybody have a problem with the statement: we are not moving forward here.

Arguments are made. Then the same arguments are made again and again. Examples are used to prove a point. Then other examples to negate them.

And this would be fine if there was some degree of evolution from one premise to another.

But I do not see that occuring.

I think it is time to end this hip-hop thread and, if folks desire, create some other thread that is broader, eg "Does art have a specific duty to society?" "Can art be judged as to its value/worth in absolute terms?" "Are there times when art should be censored?"

Those topics are acutally the ones being discussed now. Why not simply admit that and create a better context to discuss those specific questions?

ghideon
aka
jgx

[SheykAbdullah]

I think JGX has a point.

[Yelena]

"They are aware of and even try to appeal to young people as their target audeince. Tis a dangerous and boling solution created by the media made of both shockingly crude content AND a direct appeal to the most vulnerable and gullible audience, youth.That is marketing and corruption, not art" - thumbs up to dramasnot6!!!

[dramasnot6]

:) Thanks yelena!

[stlukesguild]

quoted: SheykAbdullah- Pornography is something whose primary intention is to titilate and arouse feelings in a sexual manner. Most of the works of Roccoco were intended as decorative cycles in boudoirs in order to titilate the viewer in a sexual way. That makes it pornography. Does that make it not art?


SLG- We merely dispute the terminology. What you call "pornography" I call eroticism. I certainly do not deny the erotic intent of such art.

As far as Il Sodoma there is no sexual intent there, as far as St Teresa in Ecstasy, while there is an element of sexual gratification in the piece that is not the purpose for which it is sculpted. That is the difference between it and most Boucher's work.

SLG- Personally, I find a good deal of eroticism and sado-masochistic eroticism within many of the numerous painted crucifixions and martyrdoms... something that the Japanese writer, Mishima tapped into:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Eikoh-Hosoe_Mishima2SS.jpg

Certainly, I have no doubt that religious images were seen by artists as just as much of a pretext to explore the subject which truly interested them... be it the human body, dramatic action, violence, etc...

The definition of pornography has not changed over time, but the threshold of what is pornography has changed and that is undoubtable. For example, Madam X by Sargent, the so oft mentioned by me Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Olympia, and many others were considered pronographic due to the direct representation of the female nude outside of the established Academic conventions...

SLG- Perhaps we might suggest that what changed was not pornography... but the openess of fine art to appropriating imagery and themes that were once seen as taboo or simply beneath consideration. Sargent's Mme X
(Madame Pierre Gautreau) shocked largely due to the context. The Gautreau was a young American beauty who had married into wealth and was now seen as flaunting it in Paris. She had the audacity to be involved in a rather steamy and quite public affair with the womanizing Dr. Pozzi, also portrayed by Sargent at the same time in a devlish fiery red guise:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Dr_Pozzi_at_Homesmall.jpg

The Parisian public became scandalized by what they saw as the brazeness of this American upstart... especially when taken with the rather sensual nature of Sargent's painting of Gatreau:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/300px-Sargent_MadameX.jpg

L'Dejeuner sur l'herb and Olympia were similar transgressions. It was not so much the nudity as the contect. In the case of L'Dejeuner... Manet had thought to simply reimagine Titian's famous Fete Champetre (in the Louvre). Titian's painting essentially presented what, at the time, were two young men in contemporary dress accompanied by two nude women sitting outside. The act of updating it to contemporary Paris with the two men in the dress of modern Parisians sitting in a Paris park with their two naked female consorts shocked because it seemingly stripped away the perfume of history which made Titian's painting acceptable. Olympia shocked in a like manner as Manet recast Titian's Venus D'Urbino... a portrait of a Venetian courtesan and her maid as a modern Parisian whore who like Titian's Venus had the audacity to stare at the male viewer and not turn her eyes away to allow for the male voyeuristic gaze without confrontation. Context can certainly make a painting shocking or not. Most recently I think of a nude portrait done by Lucian Freud. This painting, like most of Freud's work, might be disturbing in the degree of unattractive realism with which he scruitinizes his models. When we discover that the model was his adult daughter, however, calling the work "Freudian"... Oedipal... takes on a whole new level.

[stlukesguild]

I would also remind you that my defintion of art is not '1990's' relativism, but is related directly the Warhol's idea of art and the idea of art that pushed forward the Pop movement.

Ahhh! Warhol. Then nothing more need be said.:D

[Yelena]

To me, nude doesn't always mean erotic or pornographic. People in the Roman Impire created a cult out of a naked, good looking and healthy body. I imagine that everyone has seen those statues of gods and just ordinary people, with no clothes on. Is that erotic or pornographic?

[stlukesguild]

...since you are so comfortable with elitism, let's set up an academy to dictate artistic tastes. If you are an artist and you don't meet the criteria you'll starve, never gaining noteriety, until a group of angry artists set up across the street and destroy your institution.

Certainly such an institution will never guarantee the quality of the art produced and certainly some artists will either starve... give up... or conform. But how is that different from the current system of capitalism? I have the same possibilities. I can conform to the demands of the market... or I can give up or starve. What is the difference if I starve for the lack of the support of a single rich patron, the support of the academy, or the recognition of the masses?

[dramasnot6]

To me, nude doesn't always mean erotic or pornographic. People in the Roman Impire created a cult out of a naked, good looking and healthy body. I imagine that everyone has seen those statues of gods and just ordinary people, with no clothes on. Is that erotic or pornographic?

Nudity is known to everyone, when portrayed artistically i do not consider it pornography. Nudity can have connotations and contexts of many kinds, perhaps it is considered more pornographic with a more sexually graphic context. There are some hip hop songs with a very graphic sexual description that i would consider a form of pornography and not art for that reason.

[stlukesguild]

It is inevitable, in my opinion, that a college education will begin to mean less as universities are democratized to accept nearly everyone, which is true. Anyone, regardless of how ill-prepared can go to college now somewhere if they can pay. I do not necesarily agree with this idea, and I think it is unfortunate.

The second thing is about lower levels of education, and much of the blame for ill-prepared college students rests here.

Actually, many education scholars believe the reverse is true. Because colleges, which unlike the public elementary and secondary schools, are a business and in business to make money (one needs only research the percentage of college deans and prseidents who have no education credentials), they have loosened their standards in order to bolster the student registration. This increased dramatically when colleges were faced with fewer students to choose from toward the end of the "baby boomer" generation. Once students have been accepted, grades are often relaxed or inflated as a means of maintaining (and not discouraging) students. If the standards at colleges remained challenging and large numbers of students began to be rejected the parents and the country as a whole would undoubtedly find the resolve to fix many of the problems with public education.

Speaking as something of an insider in public education I will tell you that there are several major problems with the public schools and teaching "critical thinking skills" has nothing to do with any of them.

1. Lack of proper funding. When one compares the budget for public education vs that of the military we immediately see where the priorities lie. Certainly not all schools are underfunded, but the funding is largely inequitable and maintains the cycles of poverty in poorer districts. As school funding is based upon property taxes, the wealthier suburbs fare far better. The teachers are better paid; the schools are properly supplied with needed materials, books, etc... In poorer rural and urban districts, the reality is 100 year old buildings that are collapsing, libraries with history books that speak of how "one day we will walk on the moon", classrooms overcrowded or held in broom closets and windowless basement storage rooms. Even those urban districts that recieve more dollars per student than the average are greatly struggling due to the fact that they must often deal with a far larger percentage of "special needs" children (due to alchohol fetal syndrome, malnutrition, and other effects of poverty), extreme discipline problems, major transportation issues, and students who lack the support of educated parents and who come to school lacking the skills of many of their more well-off peers.

2. Waste. Many large urban boards of education are populated by business figures with political aspirations. Such positions offer publicity at little expense for someone with aspirations to city council, mayor, state senate, governor, etc... In many cases, however, such administrators lack any concept of the realities of managing such institutions. There is rampant graft and nepotism. In my own school system hundreds of thousands of dollars (per school) were spent upon new windows which were never installed (they sit in storage) for buildings slated for demolition in one or two years. Nearly every other year millions are spent upon training teachers to impliment the latest curriculum and the latest teaching strategies passed down from college education researchers. Any one of these systems might have the chance of suceeding... but they are never stayed with long enough before the next educational novelty hits. Teachers are themselves often expected (forced by their circumstances) to spend hundreds if not thousands of their own dollars to purchase the supplies that are needed to teach which should be provided by the school boards. They are also expected to continually spend money on CEUs (continuing education units)... classes taught by first year Phds. who have no concept of reality in the schools. These classes are required by most states thanks to active lobbying by... you guessed it... the colleges for which these classes are great money-makers. They have almost no costs: a single classroom, un underpaid first year Phd. employed part-time without benefits, and a few xeroxes. A great way to subsidize the sports programs.

I could go on with any number of other problems: parents, lack of respect and discipline, violence, the adversarial position of teachers and administrators, the ridiculous unfunded No Child Left Behind mandate, the attempts to privitize education, etc... Teachers would love to be able to teach "critical thinking skills" and such "higher order thinking" as analysis, synthesis, comparison, etc... but these are dependent upon the students having learned and mastered certain basic "facts" ... which certain educational gurus starting in the 1960s have decided are irrelevant. How does a student analyze why Hitler invaded Austria when he or she doesn't know who Hitler was, what WWII was, where the city they live in is to be found on a world globe let alone where Austria is, or even what the word "invade" means?

My... haven't we gotten quite off the main topic?
And so I will gladly move further discussion in this area to another thread.

[jon1jt]

I JUST CREATED A NEW THREAD LOCATED IN GENERAL CHAT TITLED,

"THE CLASH OF CULTURES AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IT?"

and i listed a bunch of thought-provoking questions that attempt to encapsulate some of the major themes here. i may have failed, but i tried! enjoy! :)

[SheykAbdullah]

Again I will respond in chunks, corresponding with the original posts.

Our definitions of pornography are indeed different. Like I said, I view anything created with the main purpose of titilation to be pornography. What you call erotic I call pornography. Now that doesn't mean I object to Boucher etc on a moral ground, I just call it pornography. One might say there is good or at least acceptable pornography and that pornography which shouldn't be tolerated (but not banned) by polite society.

We differ on our view of the sado-masochistic tendencies of certain religious tableaus, but that is our right. Often times in art, as I am sure you know, two different views simply can not be reconciled unless there is some example of proof aside form the painting to indicate the artists intent.

The change in the acceptability of pornography and eroticisms is what I have been saying all along. Things change with time and society rediefines certain aspects of its own culture.

[SheykAbdullah]

I don't like Warhol either, but the artistic elite generally accepts his vision as remarkable and revolutionary, changing what we view as art and allowing the emergence of post-modern definitions in art best defined in conceptualism, which I also don't like.

[SheykAbdullah]

Capitalism creates its own academy, that's true, but it is still looser than an academy of scholars dictating taste, and only theirs. In our market there is a chance a fringe movement will catch on with one collector and then be spread to others, but in an rigid academic setting vagrancies in art are squashed in the beginning.

I just want to reply to this in its original context, if for convenience of reference if nothing else. I will move my replies to a different thread. I agree with you comments on education one hundred percent. School boards like the easy way out and it is much simpler to plug in numbers to indicate successes vs failures. It's a shame.

[jon1jt]

throughout this thread and others during the time i advocated a position stating that censorship was a solution given the often vile content of rap music toward women and its glorification of drugs. most disagreed with my position.

i'm interested in what people have to say now, especially those who posted in here who made emphatic defenses against censorship, how they feel abot Don Imus being fired for making a couple distasteful (i.e. racist?) remarks given his intent.

Does the big network that fired Imus have the same responsibility to remove that sort of content from it's airwaves when it's made by rap music?

Imus' firing to me appears to be quite selective and grossly unfair if the same network not impose that standard universally---which is one of "content" not intention.

your thoughts, please.

[kilted exile]

I think this column (http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html) by Jason Whitlock, in the Kansas City Star, on the subject makes for great reading on the subject



"I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim."

[jon1jt]

I think this column (http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html) by Jason Whitlock, in the Kansas City Star, on the subject makes for great reading on the subject


that's a fantastic quote kilted!!! i thought i was the only person who felt that way for a second! thanks:thumbs_up
:thumbs_up

[Virgil]

That is a good quote, Kilt, but I still think Imus went over the line. Those poor girls didn't deserve anything like that. But given the context of what is said in rap music, then one can see how one can excuse Imus. For me, both are degrading and both deserve our condemnation. We shouldn't exceuse either.

[kilted exile]

That is a good quote, Kilt, but I still think Imus went over the line. Those poor girls didn't deserve anything like that. But given the context of what is said in rap music, then one can see how one can excuse Imus. For me, both are degrading and both deserve our condemnation. We shouldn't exceuse either.

Yes, that is really what I take to be Whitlock's point both are stupid but instead of introspection a lot of leaders in the "black community" are ignoring the hip-hop issue and going for the "easier" target instead of dealing with both.

[jon1jt]

imus should have done what howard stern did---go satellite broadcast, so then he wouldn't have to apologize a gazillion times when HE in fact is the victim of selective censorship. i see a HUGE double standard that nobody wants to talk about openly for the obvious, and i wont bring up here for same.

[Mortis Anarchy]

you know, i am beginning to feel a lot of love in this thread here. :D gimme big hugs you two! :D


VIRGIL: You are a mad genius where did you get this fine article?!?!?! Everyone following this thread should read that article in its entirety - it's just fabulous. the part i found especially interesting is how the hip-hop industry - which is comprised mostly of black rappers...i mean artists, objectifies women with their despicable portrayal of women as B***hes and Hoes and the industry's dumping millions into the making of cheap trashy videos that kids emulate and music award ceremonies worship with P-Diddy coronations circled by female dancers (aka performers) intoxicated with false hopes of launching a "real career" -- relegated to dance in sleazy outfits for back alley go-go's where, sadly, many will wind up hooked on heroin, after the conglomerates fold their tents and P-Diddys and J-Zs and M&Ms and Ludicrous's have long sunk deep into their Sodom and Gomorrah quicksand lives, alongside their money and bling-bling teeth and gaudy jewelry that i wouldn't let my cat wear; with stockpiles of drugs and cars, Cars, CARS and "Cribs" (it's all reported their videos and music, the art! :alien: )

the article's words:
"Black intellectuals, such as Cobb and Dyson, are enforcing that code of silence. They are also defending the sad status quo among poor black people. Added to the recipe is the intellectual defense of hip-hop — with music, videos and films — that excuses failure and even celebrates destructive, criminal "Gangsta" behavior such as violence, stealing to get 'bling-bling' and abusive treatment of women."

:blush:

ps
amen for women like Andrea Dworkin who continue to write fierce criticisms against the hip-hop and porn industries, institutions of domestic violence, etc.

Okay...here is what I have to say:

I do not agree with the constant name calling of women. Its wrong and disgusting. But a lot of that kind of stuff is just mainstream hip hop. The stuff that sells. Sex sells, there yah go.

Personally, I love the Urban kind of stuff. I love graffiti, not that I do it or anything, I love dancing (Even though there is better dancing music), I love the Bass...yep.

Okay, you say that most of the hip hop go-go lovers or whatever get hooked on heroin...well, lets look at this. Rockstars have a history as well of drugs, sex, perverted lyrics...look at the 60's, 70's actually, some even today. Sure its cleaned up a bit, but still. Artists have a history of drugs and sex and perverted images. Writers have a history of drugs, sex and discrimination against women.

So can you call all of this art?

Also, I don't believe in porn, I don't believe in discrimination against women, I don't believe in drugs. Thats why I boycott most of the really nasty songs.

okay, some of this stuff is repeated...I just looked at some of the latest posts. But thats just what I think.