Critical Thinking & The Arts

[LettristLoon]

Hey, all...

Maybe this should go in the Arts & Lit section, but I am in need of lots and lots of critical-type thought here, so hopefully this thread's presence on this page will help things in that regard.

Okay. So, in the second half of the twentieth century especially, art--and, especially, popular music--has largely been a voice of social conscience, and a voice for social change. That the results of various artists' endeavours haven't been quite as firmament-shaking as perhaps they wished, doesn't, it seem to me, invalidate the forms involved.

But a look at the history of "art as a weapon of social reform"--and, again, especially in music--seems to point to some trouble.

For example: Buffalo Springfield can get to the nitty-gritty of social consciousness with something as simple and hollow as "For What It's Worth." Buffalo Springfield, of course, don't know their heads from holes in the ground.

On the other hand, someone like Dylan, who might, in the subtexts of his work, present a world-historic cleansing of old values and old beliefs, winds up being hugely popular, but only half-understood.

On the third hand (I've got lots of hands), someone like Elvis Costello, who very explicitly explains his ideas (and who almost never fails to be prescient, human, and correct), winds up enjoying fairly little wide-spread popularity. He preaches to the choir, or to punks, but what's said is very rarely grasped and the ideas espoused are hardly ever taken by the listener and put into practice as touch-stones for day-to-day experience.

Some artists actually do manage to affect world-historic purges of old values and ideas--Elvis, The Beatles, and to a lesser degree, The Sex Pistols. These guys are all white, though, and again--the real ideas hinted at by their work and their success (or failure) have been ignored.

My questions to you all, then, are as follows:

1. Is art, and especially popular music, still a viable instrument for bringing about major shifts in public consciousness?

2. If so, what would you like to see it do?

3. Aesthetically, how do you make it do that?

Thanks,
- B

 

[Cleopatra]

1. Is art, and especially popular music, still a viable instrument for bringing about major shifts in public consciousness?

Hello LettristLoon.

I don't think that I am in agreement with your premise that art is an instrument to wake the public consciousness especially if we are talking about the popular music the way it was developped during the last 50 years.

The reason why I do not agree with you is because I believe that art is a way to explore the world, in terms of personal and social experience and it's not a way to pass a political or social message. If your goal is the later then we are not talking about Art since committed art is not art at least in my book.Also,if an piece of art managed to change the world is something you can judge only in posterity.

The reason why I doubt the effectiveness and the sincerity of the forms of art that mean to awaken the general public or to pass a message, especialy in USA is because in order an artist manages to reach the public he has to pass through every single wheel of the most conservative and ruthless establishment.

What sort of pure message can pass through the multinational companies of music production and advertisment? For those mechanisms, art is a product and if the "protest" sells as a product then how honest is that and what profound an impact can it have to the historical process ( historical process? I haven't used this term since I was debating marxists at the university... oh well).

The classical music though is more open to such explorations.

3. Aesthetically, how do you make it do that?

Ha! Interesting question. I leave it for later though.

Thanks for starting this topic, it's quite interesting I wonder if we could expand it in the conjectural arts.

 

[Suggestologist]

1. Is art, and especially popular music, still a viable instrument for bringing about major shifts in public consciousness?

Artists have their causes. Look at Bono of U2. But music itself is not a viable means of distribution; radio stations aren't gonna play political (or related to a particular cause unpopular with 80% of the country) music, unless they're in the context of a political radio show.

Music is used for pleasure and relaxation; people don't want to think while listening.

2. If so, what would you like to see it do?

3. Aesthetically, how do you make it do that?

Comedy. If you can frame the message comically, it might get played and exposed to a large audience. It has to entertain first.

 

[Robin]

Perhaps art only reflects social change rather than being an agent of it.

For example Satie's unresolved dissonances in a world about to go through social upheavals. Leadbelly's complaints about being sidelined by the political elite reflecting the change of mood that was to blossom into civil rights.

Australia's most political band Midnight Oil has championed various causes throughout the years but I am not sure they have made any difference.

On the other hand sometimes artists spark things by accident, like John Lydon causing a renewed interest in anarchism when he went looking for a rhyme to 'anti-christ'.

 

[Meadmaker]

My questions to you all, then, are as follows:

1. Is art, and especially popular music, still a viable instrument for bringing about major shifts in public consciousness?

2. If so, what would you like to see it do?

3. Aesthetically, how do you make it do that?

Thanks,
- B

1. Yes. Art, through the manipulation of symbols, can be very effective in reaching people's "hearts and minds". Let's be real, most people don't respond well to intense, thorough, reasoned arguments. There's a reason that "a picture is worth a thousand words".

Music can be effective, because it's easier to strike up a tune than to think something through. Try to explain the economic and social impact of American militarism in the world, and you will get blank stares from the crowd. Strike up "Give Peace a Chance" and you'll probably get a bunch of swaying, singing along, folks who feel like they are part of the movement.

2. There are as many answers to that as there are political agendas. But you might be dismayed to know that a lot of young people are very influenced by Christian Rock music. (I'm assuming that you would be dismayed, based on messages you have posted in other threads.)

3. To work as an agent of social change, people have to feel a connection to the art or music. In the case of music, specifically, if it is the kind of thing you put the CD into the player and just listen to, it won't go far. You have to either make something that people can sing along with, maybe dance to, or at the very least, provide quotable lyrics that people can pop up with when they want to make a point in a conversation.

 

[DrMatt]

I'd like to address not all of art but just music. I tend to think that music (and, to a lesser extent, dance) are fundamentally different from prose and other forms of storytelling (e.g. film) precisely in that the greatest strength of music is its meaninglessness.

How's that again?

Yes, music can be paired with meaningful words, and even short-lived and local conventionalized sound codes, but the appeal of music cuts across all sorts of interpersonal, intercultural, and inter-era boundaries because the meanings attributed to music are projective, i.e. they're supplied by each individual listener. Attentive listeners get the opportunity to make the nonsense-sounds of music "mean" something personal to them. "Deep meaningfulness of music" is an illusion, just like an 8-ring linking routine is an illusion, and the skillful carrying out of the illusion is something that we value, even when we mistake the illusion for real.

 

[LettristLoon]

Hello, all...

I agree with you (most of you), in saying that the way popular music is paired with a desire for social change usually winds up making both the music and the message impotent.

But to return to the example of Elvis Presley: He had an enormous impact on the socio-political consciousness of America, and ultimately, the civilized world. He didn't have any particular message he was espousing, yet somehow he managed to make it work in a way, say, Midnight Oil couldn't dream of.

Ditto the Beatles. It seems as though there's a certain element of "right time, right place" that allows certain implicit statements made by a performer to really take wing. What are those special conditions of "right time, right place?"

Someone brought up Leadbelly. Unfortunately, at the time of Leadbelly's greatest recordings, there was no white market for his tunes--therefore, he was stuck preaching to the (disenfranchised, lower-class) choir.

On John Lydon: I'm pretty sure that he wasn't just trying to think up a word to rhyme with "anti-Christ." Most of the philosophy winding its way through The Sex Pistols' behaviour, dress, and music came to them by way of Malcolm McLaren, who had his roots in the Situationist International, lead by Guy Debord, which traced its own roots back through Isidore Isou's Lettrist International and all the way back to the early days of the Dada movement in the Cafe Volaire, in Zurich. Those early Dadaists--Richard Huelsenback, Hugo Ball, etc--had marvelous ideas, that they just couldn't seem to get across to any decently-sized audience.

It took sixty years, but finally The Sex Pistols did just that. All over the UK and the States, in the wake of The Sex Pistol's first and only tours of those countries, people who went to the shows had epiphanies and started up their own groups, trying to find their own voices. What they did was echoed the sentiment expressed by Huelsenback many years before. I forget the exact quote, but it was something like...

"The search for a genuine communication is what it was about. The search for our own story, fuelled by the belief that ordinary language could not tell it."

Great idea! And the Sex Pistols, not through any particular thing they said, but just by virtue of their existence in contrast to the times in which they were existing, finally gave sentiments like that one a chance to be explored by larger numbers of people. The circle widens, huzzah.

It makes me think that lyrics or explicit messages can't do so much, in the context of a popular artistic medium. If any kind of shift in public consciousness is to take place as a result of some kind of art, it has to be a result of implicit messages, coded into the form. Or at least it seems that that's how it's worked in the past.

Thoughts?

- B

 

[crimresearch]

"1. Is art, and especially popular music, still a viable instrument for bringing about major shifts in public consciousness?"

"If you want to send a message, call Western Union "

Sam Goldwyn's line is still applicable today.


When you say viable instrument, I get the sense of something that can be controlled, and made to produce a desired result.
Artistic endeavors are supposed to be achieving artistic results instead of social ones, and any societal consequences are likely to be different from the original intentions.

I would cite those anti-establishment rockers who generated the profits which paved the way for the greatest corporate mega-conglomeates in the history of the world.

And don't even get me started on the suitability of artists, especially musicians, to decide which way society should be directed.