The Elvis-Beatles Relativity Fallacy

"How would you feel if your teenagers started listening to music that openly and crudely posited blacks as subhuman?"

i am not rolling my eyes because you're talking about sex in music, i am doing so because in order to make your point you have to compare it to hate metal.

"Anyway, how would you feel if you caught your children listening to white supremacist rock (which exists in the neo-Nazi underground), and when you challenged them about it, they said, "Hey, your parents thought Elvis and the Beatles were offensive, so get off my back!"?"

i guess i wouldn't let my kid conflate the discomfort with sexual prurience of the 1950's or 1960's with the message of hate metal. and even if you think the messages delivered in music about sex are bad and can and will affect your children negatively, it doesn't follow that such messages are comparable to those of neo-nazis(!)

i mean, rod, it's a huge stretch to in any way substantively compare "let's have sex", however crudely put, with "kill all the blacks, catholics and jews", however well put. as you acknowledge, older music, in your opinion, woudl feature sex in a way that wasn't "no more than an animalistic act, one that debases the humanity of both the singer and his audience."

my counterpoint to your nazi music scenario would be that there is NO way one could present such a message of hate WITHOUT "debas[ing] the humanity of both the singer and his audience."

pretty weak. and, in my opinion, you do two things wrong here.

(1) you fail to note that NOT EVERYTHING IS FOR CHILDREN. this can include pop music.

(2) you ignore that there IS a place for a more raw sexual tone in music. it can be good, rod, and for grown-ups and older teens. this is nothing new. "whole lotta love" by zeppelin, rod? "gonna give you my love, every inch of my love." fairly raw sexuality, no? a clear reference to mr plant's "size", no?

again, pretty weak, rod.

What?: Thank you for this latest installment of your Adventures In Missing the Point series. Always entertaining reading.

Rod,
It comes down to moral judgment not to a logical fallacy. Hate is condemned while irresponsible and destructive sex is viewed as harmless fun. The bad logic follows from the bad judgment, not vice versa.

"What?: Thank you for this latest installment of your Adventures In Missing the Point series. Always entertaining reading."

hey, ad hominem walker, what point did i miss?

i reject rod's equivalency. the message of hate metal is substantively different than that of any sexual content in pop music today rendering comparisons about "debasing" effects inapposite.

in my opinion, rod fails because he even admits that older music's sexual messages were mentioned in less crude ways, that were less "debasing" to the singer and listener. i contend that there is ZERO way to convey the message of hate metal without such debasement, no matter how put. you disagree?

and if you're gonna try to support that equivalency, please do so with actual examples and not theoretical britney spears tunes about child molestation.

Um. Our grandparents objected to rock, because it was black music. They were listening to some pretty racy, sex-objectifying music in their time. The difference was it was cloaked in euphamism, churning the 'butter churn' until the cream comes out... for instance.

How would you respond?

"Because I said so."

What?
The equivalency you're condemning was not drawn. The post's point (which you did indeed miss) is that dismissing the aversion many feel to the sexual morality our youth are indoctrinated into by popular music with an argument of yeah-and-your-grandparents-hated-Elvis relativism is fallacious. Rod's not drawing an equivalence between hate metal and the Last Man sexuality that dominates our pop music. Instead, he's applying the same relativistic logic to the case of hate metal to show a reduction ad absurdum. He could have picked a better case and I'm doubtful that such an argument is ultimately fruitful, but your argumentation here is only reinforcing Rod's actual point.

"How would you feel if your teenagers started listening to music that openly and crudely posited blacks as subhuman? You would be worried, and rightly so, and you'd do what you could to put a stop to it, because you wouldn't want your children to grow up with that kind of moral poison suffusing their conscience."

I would argue that that is EXACTLY what hip-hop does, through sacrificing it's own self respect, that of the artist, and the subject of the piece. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but the likes of Jay-Z and Soulja Boy only exist to objectify women and promote an obscene lifestyle. It has nothing to do with music, or talent - and vicariously, has a negative effect on youth culture through their imitation of it.

I want to clear any ambiguity here, though. There is a specific subset of hiphop, which exists primarily in underground culture and serves as the political voice for those who have been abandoned by the mainstream establishment. It is primarily championed by unmade artists and hits the streets in the form of a mix-tape. These true artists use the vessel of lyrical prose to express dissent for the government, the state of violence on the streets, and provide at least some form of contemporary education and positioning on current social welfare issues to those who have access to none. In this manner, the proletariat has kept, in spirit, the incendiary skeptical nature of John Lennon and other Artist-Activists who came before him. (though if you ask Paul, John had nothing to do with it.) This is not true in any other form of music today.

As far as the "what if it was YOUR daughter" argument, I would probably say that any risk to my daughter being objectified in this manner speaks directly of my own parenting skills - and not popular culture as a whole.

Rufus Writes: "In much of hip-hop be contrast, it sounds like no fun at all ... which, sadly, it probably is for more and more of us every day."

Interesting position. That could be the embodiment of what it feels like to wake up as a rich rapper one day and realize, all the drugs and money, and all the adoring affection of the opposite gender has brought you no closer to fulfillment. In fact, you're even more empty than when you started. You probably should have listened to your dad and gone to college.

Success is a fickle thing, when measured against the values of others.

"there is no way marvin gaye could mention neo-nazi themes in a non-crude way."

I definitely have to disagree. These themes can take many guises.

The national socialist movement wasn't built on anti-semetic sentiments. Those beliefs were cultivated from the wounds of a war-torn and economically depressed country.

If Himmler would have simply come out and said "I want to kill all the Jews," the German people would not have bought it for a second. It was only though facade and deception, and suggestive legislation that those sentiments were allowed to rise, and that remains true in any ideology.

A simple, whimsical quip from a lyric can be (and often is) filled with mountains of hidden meaning and innuendo. It would be quite simple to disguise anti-semetic (or otherwise) oppressive views in popular music or culture. Just look at Disney. Everything they do is smothered in categorical racism and xenophobia, though often not purposefully. Ultimately it often relies on what the observer takes from it.

You're right that there isn't much of an argument in comparing Sexuality in popular music with hate metal, from this fundamental perspective; but the analogy still stands with regard to his primary point, which was articulating the absurdity of relativism in regard to the social "shock factor" that popular music feeds on.

This is the link that wasn't included in the above.

The candyman's stick, it don't melt away,
Jes gets better, so the sistas say

- Mississippi John Hurt

Ya gotta listen to the words.

The Beatles WILL most definitely be remembered 200 years from now, if the planet is still around. Talent like that never dies...

Um. Our grandparents objected to rock, because it was black music. They were listening to some pretty racy, sex-objectifying music in their time. The difference was it was cloaked in euphamism, churning the 'butter churn' until the cream comes out... for instance.

I maintain that there is some truth to this statement maybe in the south, but I don't think you can make a case for this being the main reason parents objected to Elvis on Ed Sullivan all over the USA. No the simple fact is that sexual innuendo was the main reasons for the objections in most of the USA, not racism. Watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show now is like comparing Mr. Rogers to "Lil Wayne". Also what exactly was the music that my grandparents were listening to, please enlighten me?

Def Leppard on VH1's top 100 songs of the 80's make the point that when they sing "you've got the peaches, I've got the cream", they "aren't singing about fruit salad."

These guys are still singing, too. And they manage to get suckers to go and see them. Can you imagine something more repulsive than watching a geriatric, has-been British rocker belting out "Pour some sugar on me"?

hattio, i couldn't have put it better.

"Yet, you compared rap music, which has as ONE of it's themes sexual objectification to hate metal which has ONLY one theme, the superiority of the white race and inferiority of others. That's the difference, you reject the entire genre, and everything good in it, based on one theme. And you try to justify that by comparison to a style of music that ONLY has one theme."

i'd point out that rod didn't even confine his criticism to rap. he condemned the music of an entire era or generation to that of hate metal. neo-nazi hate metal! words fail.

this is actually a really good demonstration of why entertainment is getting more graphic and prurient - those who oppose or lament such changes cannot come up with a good reason for why it's so awful beyond "i don't like it" and must therefore make absurd comparisons with those things they know no one will support - like neo-nazi hate metal. it's pretty pathetic.

One of the most disturbing elements of the devolution of popular music derived from black music--rap in this instance-- is a trend in songwriting that i have only noticed in the past year with the advent of T-Pain, the ubiquitous Vocoder-beholden rapper-singer. Though he has brought the *form* of the old romantic soul/r&b love ballad back, the actual content is thoroughly rooted in the love-em-and-leave-em mentality that plagues modern urban music. It's really quite perverse to hear someone croon about being in love with a pole-dancer in the musical modality once preserved for making sex sound, well, special. The scariest part is that there's no irony in his voice.

those who oppose or lament such changes cannot come up with a good reason for why it's so awful beyond "i don't like it"

And there's our MacIntyre moment for the day.

The reason I chose white supremacist metal is because it is the only contemporary example I can think of in which racism is explicitly part of the lyrical content (and indeed the point). Negative racial stereotypes of a milder variety used to be far more common in pop culture, and most whites didn't even notice it as abnormal. I was only trying to argue from analogy against the absolute relativism accepted for contemporary pop music regarding sexual themes that its defenders often employ, e.g.:

Premiss: Old people used to think Elvis and the Beatles, which were popular with young people, were vulgar about sex.

Premiss: We now know that Elvis and the Beatles were actually fine.

Premiss: Old people today think that [name pop artist] is vulgar about sex.

Conclusion: We have as little to worry about regarding [name pop artist] today as we had to worry about Elvis and the Beatles back then. Old people are worrying about nothing.

If you accept that argument, which makes the actual sexual content of lyrics of no importance at all, then what ground do you have to stand on if the argument were to be about race, not sex? I bring up an extreme example to show the flaw in the logic. The point to be drawn is not that kids should never, ever expose themselves to art that has troubling moral content about sex, race, violence or whatever; the point is that we are called to be discerning, and intelligent, and not excuse our individual and social responsibility to stand against something that's wicked on the fallacious grounds that by doing so we're nothing more than fuddies.

Yet, you compared rap music, which has as ONE of it's themes sexual objectification to hate metal

Exactly, rap ain't just about the ho. Unlike hate metal, rap is well rounded. Somtimes it's about bling or the benjamins or getting respect from the hood. Sometimes there is even some rap about puttin' a cap in someone. Hat buying is fun especially during the holiday season.

To me the saddest thing about gangsta rap in particular is the lethal sucker punch it delivers to the solar plexus of black manhood. Think about it. Many, many generations of black men strove to convince men of the Western world that they, blacks, were civilized men, too, not dumb animals to be either tamed or feared (and, if feared, then neutralized or eliminated). Against terrible odds, and to marvelous effect, they succeeded: They were MEN. Now look around today. Hordes of their descendants -- not just the rappers themselves but also the legions of deliberately illiterate, unemployable badass-wannabes who follow in their wake -- seem hellbent on reversing the hard-won gains of their great-great-great-great grandfathers. Turning back the clock, as it were.

I'm no racist, but when I see the undeniably apelike movements of gangsta "dance," note the babyish bearing of gangsta "fashions" and get aurally assaulted by the crude, infantile bravado of gangsta "lyrics," the words violent, horny primates certainly do go through my mind. Witness all this enough times, and see so few exceptions to the badass-wannabe norm -- even among those who make it to the ranks of highly paid professional athletes -- and the words don't just stream through my mind. They stick there.

Someone will call me racist for admitting this, but, in fact, I am no racist. On the contrary, I am deeply saddened by what I see in, and how I feel about, the state of so much of black culture today. Marvin Gaye must be weeping in his grave. Jackie Robinson too. And, Lord knows, Martin Luther King Jr.

No one needs more prayer right now than black boys.

Erin,
In defending Rod's point you make the claim that modern rap music the woman has no choice. I defy you to think of another reason the classic blues song "who do you love?" has just that as a chorus, nothing more, but the verses are all about what a bad mo fo the singer is and how many people he's killed etc. The violence and misogyny is barely disguised. And yet, the song is played on mainstream radio, it's a classic song which has been covered by tons of artists both in the blues tradition and outside of it. I get your point, I do. But the "older, purer" music is only older, not purer. Really listen to some of your old records. I don't think they hold up too well. The Police sing about stalking a former lover (I'll be Watching You). Numerous classic heavy metal hard rock songs have barely disguised themes of violence and revenge. Bluegrass and blues generally don't even disguise it. This was folk music made by mostly church-going god fearing folks. The fact is, you just plain don't like rap. That's fine. You don't have to put a moral imprimatur on your dislike. I don't like jazz after about the mid-40's. Not because it's immoral, but because it sucketh greatly. In my opinion, most, but not all rap, also sucks. That's a fine reason to not listen to, and even not expose your kids to, a genre of music.

stupid Chris,

You guessed at least half wrong.

I've listened to two OutKast records -- *Aquemini* and *Stankonia* -- all the way through more than once.

No Black Eyed Peas I'm afraid, though will.I.am's creepy sing-along with Dear Leader makes me think I haven't missed much.

OutKast at least is certainly less debased than most hip-hop, but, still, that said, it's hardly Marvin Gaye, let alone Al Green.

I'm afraid I'll still have to cast my lot in with the consensus that *most* hip-hop -- however diverting it may sometimes be -- is generally schlock that we'd be better off without.

If for no other reason, I think that future generations with more critical distance than we will look back at hip-hop askance for how it helped to kill old school r n' b and soul.

They will also look back askance at punk rock for how it help to kill off old school rock and roll.

As a broad generalization, American popular music began a long terminal decline at the point when it began to distance itself from the roots of most of it in the South -- black music without any gospel or blues (or country or folk) and white music without any country or folk (or gospel or blues) aren't really worth one's time in the big scheme of things. Hip-Hop and Punk fall woefully short on all these counts.

there was always in the poems and songs something which is essential to romance. I would identify that as a sense of mystery and a strong indication that the hearer, the "lady-love," is not the physical property of the man and can refuse and reject him whenever she likes.

Hate to repeat myself:

The candyman's stick, it don't melt away,
Jes gets better, so the sistas say
He's the candyman.

Who's exploiting who now? Because the sista has the choice doesn't mean she's going to exercise it in a moral way, still less in the service of "romance," unless you have a very unusual definition of that term.

Actually, hattio, I dislike most modern music and enjoy classical. But my point was that the decline of modern music's lyrics is the decline of lyric poetry in general. The one college class I regret the most was the Modern Poetry class I mistakenly thought I had to take; the departure from the highly-intelligent poetry of the eighteenth century and the somewhat more emotive but still enjoyable romantic lyric poetry of the nineteenth century to the twentieth century poetry that is often as hard and crude in its way as modern musical lyrics was jarring. You can almost see the point at which any notion of love and romance was rejected out of hand as nothing more than a cover for the "prudery" that kept people from realizing their sexual freedom to the fullest; romance and commitment were for the weak.

We see this today not just in the music, but in the hookup or "friends with benefits" culture. I think this traces back to the rejection of romance as mere sentimentality that interferes with the purely animal physical coupling which is divorced from any deeper meaning than the temporary biological impulse, as is logical in a sensate materialistic culture.

(The first three letters of my "captcha" below are "mp3." Funny.)

Zach, I definitely agree that a huge majority of the social issues here come from a lack of a significant moral figure. I feel there's more to it than that, though. If we consider the drive to succeed, however you want to define it for brevity's sake, there are many individuals who strive and excel in such a challenging environment. Moreover there are so many teachers throughout history one simply has to go to the library to meet thousands who have been better teachers than even my own father.

I have a hard time classifying it as simply juvenile behavior, which is a convenient excuse when trying to skirt responsibility for one's actions. It's so close-minded that it even pervades those who do have a guiding figure in their lives. I'm not really sure where to go with this :-p

Matt, you might spend a few minutes checking out this blog ...

http://blackwomenblowthetrumpet.blogspot.com/

... and seeing what some thoughtful and insightful black women have to say about fatherlessness and black men. (For a shortcut to some relevant passages, use your browser to search for the word "fatherless.")

Art, however beautiful or vile is parasitic upon the culture it is created in. When the greater culture was largely infused with Christianity, the art (often unconsciously) reflected the humanity of the Christian world view. Even a definitively non-Christian songwriter like Leonard Cohen who grew up in what was a Catholic-infused culture of Montreal expressed a tenderness within what are explicit lyrics.

As Christianity has declined across the board in our culture, the artists are left with a vulgar secular humanism that places man at the center of the universe. With that moral reference point, we turn further and further away from tenderness and more directly embrace the beast. Whatever the beast feels or wants is justified. Hence, we have coarse art for the coarse humans who consume it.

When the culture threw off the constraits of the Christian world view, there was a one-time free ride. The sacred and profane could coexist in a proximate intimacy. Highly potent stuff. So potent that it left the impression that it was leading somewhere liberating when in fact it was merely a dead-end. The wretched cold art that has followed is merely the natural off-spring of that delusion.

OTOH, it just occurred to me - Christians practice syncretism in the Christmas celebration, which has appropriated huge cultural elements from the northern European winter solstice Yule celebration. Most of what people think of as "Christian" elements in Christmas are actually Northern European pagan. This doesn't make them bad, of course, as some anti-Christmas Christians attest.

But there really were no holly and fir boughs, mistletoe, trees hung with lights, burning yule logs, drunken merry-making, "Misrule" festivities, wassailing and caroling traditions in the very early Church - I don't even think the Nativity was a feast until the 2nd or 3rd century. Even the idea of a savior God born to humanity was not unique to Christianity (wasn't Mithras's birthday December 25?) Even Tertullian complained about Christians who still continued to celebrate the solstice-related festival (way before the trappings of those festivities became incorporated into what we call "Christmas" today.)

I have NO idea why that Christmas-related post appeared above, when I tried to post this one instead. That's a new trick, I guess.

"Nazi metal" is just a red herring. I call Godwin.

Over the whole course of the West, from about 3000 years ago to the present, most *popular* culture was sexually focused. Ever look at the mosaics of Priapus on some of the walls of Pompeii public buildings? Renditions of Zeus and Ganymede on Greek vases? Christianity didn't manage to wipe it all out. (Much of that obscene revelry centered around Christmas - for instance, records of New England births in the late 18th century showed marked upticks in births - in and out of wedlock - nine months after the Christmas season.)

@Erin: "Romance" really has very little to do with it. "Romance" didn't permeate down to the popular/ common-man level until the 19th century, and in some parts of Europe it scarcely penetrated at all. (Read Vilhelm Moberg's scathing remarks on the culture of chivalry and how glad he was that southern-European style romantic love didn't really make it to Scandinavia, at least up till the 19th century, in his History of the Swedish People.) By contrast, most popular entertainment among peasant people just about everywhere was centered in one way or another around sex. For one thing, it's pretty much something even the very poor had "access" to. For another, the seasonal appreciation of sexual and fertility rituals never quite got stamped out of Europe.

I have to laugh at this idea of the "purity" of classical music. There was a whole faction of French opera-goers in the late 19th c. called the "Jockey Club" - they made a point of arriving at the opera right at the perfect timing for the ballet sequence (usually in the 3rd act) simply because they wanted to ogle the dancers' legs. "Breech roles" (like Stephano in Romeo et Juliette were developed so that, again, the audience could watch a young, cute, tightly-clothed girl behind on stage. People who could afford opera boxes used them as living rooms and more, if they were so inclined.

Does anyone else remember that scene at the opening of Amadeus, where Mozart is chasing Constance around under the table, and Salieri is so shocked? That's kind of emblematic of that particular time and place. Waltzes were considered to be "immoral" by some, and much classical music was derived from peasant tunes - many of which probably had bawdy connotations, and which were "appropriated" for the upper classes.

Part of our problem is that the Victorians *bowdlerized* (literally) enormous chunks of our Western European cultural past. Classics were deliberately censored in the translations. (Bowdler himself rewrote Shakespeare to be acceptable to his daughters. But Falstaff, especially, generated some serious obscenity - very funny, too.) Explicit classical artworks were put "in storage" in museums, available only to scholars. So to a large degree, our own past has been removed from our sight, in the name of prudery.

Add "black music" (jazz, blues, rap, hip hop) to the mixture, and it gets even more complicated.

As a side note, it's important to distinguish between (what I consider) the healthy bawdiness of Chaucer or Shakespeare and the viciousness of a Marquis de Sade soiree or a gang of college guys sitting around at a dorm party yelling "f her! f the b!" at a porn film on a screen. Read Guyland to get a hair-raising view of contemporary boy-girl relations...

Who said classical music was pure? I enjoy "Don Giovanni," after all.

Point is, kids didn't usually go around singing "Vedrai carino" to each other. It's not the fact that lots of art is about sex, it's the fact that this stuff is everywhere in our culture, and that much of today's music has little to recommend it in the way of aesthetic quality while being an endless droning of crude anatomical references with no coy euphemism whatsoever. It's "Insert tab A into slot B" set to droning rhythm, as ugly and pointless as most of what our culture produces.

As for the rest of your post, I think you might enjoy Sorokin's "The Crisis of our Age." It's not that cultures never focused a lot on sex before; they did. Usually in the later portions of the sensate stage, as they were declining.

Erin, coy euphemisms weren't always the rule. In Sturla Gunnarsson's 2005 movie Beowulf and Grendel, there's a lot of tossing of the f-bomb; it's all f- this and f-that. But *that's how people talked,* near as we can tell. Their songs were bawdy, too.

More thoughts on "romance," too. "Romantic love" at its inception in southern Albigensian France was not exactly what we think of today. The object of romance was always a married woman, and her suitor(s) didn't expect to have sex with her - although they sometimes would do everything but. The lavish poetry of the age testified to sexual frustration (which is why it later got "appropriated" for veneration of the Virgin Mary) but of a particular kind - the kind that can't ever be in a *relationship.* That's why Moberg hated 11th-12th c. French "romance," because in his opinion it really devalued the fundamental sexual energy between man and woman. But like jazz, we've changed the meanings of the word to fit in better with our own modern puritanism.

I have heard of Sorokin, but am not sure I believe his "rise and fall" model. To me, it seems more that cultures metamorphose into one another, such that in a sense Rome never really "fell" - it just morphed into European "Christendom," which looks as if it might be losing its millenia-long hold on Europe - with Europe returning to its pagan/Neolithic roots. Think of it as the Mughals entering India, holding it, then being forced to recede - and not really collapsing, just shrinking into what later became the Muslim cultures of Northern India. I also am not sure about his categories - I would say that America, for instance, is intensely "ideational" - it's just that we don't share the same ideas as 13th c. Europe.

Stefanie: The difference is that even that stuff had a particular creative /artistic subtlety and charm even in it's bawdiness. Current hip hop so lacks any of basic qualities that were a part of even the bawdy entertainment. Yeah sure sex was a part of those cultures and time periods but, I dare say if these guys came back in my time machine and heard and saw hip hop music, they may not be offended by some of the content of the music but they would be appalled by the absence of any artistic nuance and creativity that was at least a part of their songs back in their day. So much of this problem exists not just because of the sexualization but much of it is due to the dumbing down of popular culture in general.

Matt Hartford CT and Silicone Valley Steve Great posts I think you guys have hit the nail on the head more than anyone else today. Keep up the good postings.

I've been disconnected from pop music for about the last ten year (other than some lyric-less dance mixes, and the occasional diva, old or new, on the radio ) so I'm may not be the best person to comment on these trends. Still, as I remember, the pop music scene fragmented into different sub-genres quite some time ago (late 70s I think) and rap/hip-hop is hardly the universal music of youth. It depends very much on social class (not so much on race, though it used). I hated it when it first arose back into the 80s in my late teens, and I suspect a lot of kids today also hate it.
By the way, the Beatles or Elvis may have had a bawdy moment or two, but they were hardy the epitome of X-rated pop culture. I recall the first time I heard Frank Zappa's "Dynamo Hum" at a rather prudish phase late in my childhood, and I was shocked that my step-mother had such a album in her collection.

This is so stupid, I can't believe it actually needs to be said, but apparently it does:
The difference between all the sex found in songs and art back in the day and what our kids are often being fed today is the difference between making love and f**king. Sometimes it is literally the difference between making love and rape. Sex in the arts in the past, even illicit sex, almost always assumed at least of modicum of affection and tenderness. Sex in entertainment today is often not only denuded of any emotional attachment, but often hostile towards it. This is a difference so basic, so obvious and so substantive that only some sort of cultural insanity would delude people into thinking it's just the same-old same-old. It's sick that this is even a discussion, much less an argument. Vile, sick and completely deluded.

I also have to point out one of primary, most OBVIOUS reasons that objections to sex in music today are fundamentally different from earlier generation's objection to Elvis, the Beatles and the like; the objections to Elvis, the Beatles, etc. was the fact of sexuality being portrayed for the enjoyment of children at all. But the sex in question was essentially normal sexuality. It was the openness about sex and the placing of it in plain view for even young children which people were objecting to. What people are objecting to today is a depiction of sex which is not normal or healthy. It's not simply the fact of the sex which is the problem, but the fact that the sex being depicted is unhealthy, hostile, often violent and completely removed from relationship. Not on that, but this perverse, unhealthy, dysfunctional sexuality is being promoted as normal and desirable. It is the quality of the sex and not the fact of the sex which accounts for the difference between then and now.

And for the people arguing w/Erin over "romance": you're working with a much narrower view of the meaning of romance than the one Erin is basing her argument on. What you are talking about is romance being used as a means of choosing a spouse, which is not at all the same thing as inventing romance. Erin is talking about the affection and intimacy which have always been desired and idealized in male-female relationships - even those arranged for reasons of politics and money. Love stories have been around as long as people - they weren't invented in the last 500 years in France, for heaven's sake! I think some people must like to be contrary just to be contrary.

Robin,

To answer your question, Daniel is simply perverse.

Either that or perversely simple.

Your Name, your aspirations to musical snobbery might hold sway if your prose and punctuation buttressed your claims of discerning taste with commensurate literary precision and flair. Alas, no such luck, old chum.

Of course sex in the arts was depicted as brutish animal rutting in the past. The pre-Christian past.

And now, as we head gloriously into the post-Christian future, sex once again returns to being nothing more than brutish animal rutting. Don't expect affection and tenderness to be associated with sex outside the small enclaves of oogedy-boogediness where people still think it's possible for sexual intercourse to mean something more than a sneeze or a bout of diarrhea or any other merely physical act.

Since it's that time of year, it's helpful to point out that Dean Martin's classic "Baby its cold outside" is about date rape.

Actually, Dino only covered it, along with something like five hundred other crooners and chanteusies. Frank Loesser wrote the words and the music back in the 30s.

Funny how it is all connected. Because it was that same song that another one of Rod's obsessions, Sayyid Qutb, heard in that Greeley, Colorado church hall in 1951 while watching the kids slow dance, and helped him decide that Amriki was the Great Satan.

basically, what you are saying with your plea for "creative/ artistic subtlety and charm" is that YOU don't like rap. Yeah, so what. I understand you don't think it has charms. Lots of people disagree with you. That's saying you don't like something...not that it's intrinsically immoral. Again, it's fine not to like the music. But don't clothe your dislike of a genre in the robes of the morality police.

Umm no hattio. What I am saying is that as time goes on and the general moral climate gets away from it's Judeo/Christian moral philosophical infrastructure, even the once artistic elements of bawdy entertainment of the past begins to wane because of the general moral climate. In other words "why do I need a different adjective here when I can just use the word I used in every other line I've written, especially since that word encapsulates such a broad part of the life that I live and who I am. You know I keepin it real." In other words moral climate both the one that breeds this "art" and or the one that the "art" precipitates reduces life to animal (especially male) essentials IE: Money, f.......cking, and statas/teritoriality. Nothing else matters, not broader truth, not beauty, not charity and not dignity. All of these elements were still an integral part of the arts of the past cultures, even the bawdy ones. Even England in the early 1700's was looking a lot like our sexual climate until Wesley and Whitfield brought the evangelical awakening. Then people like William Wilberforce helped use these revivals to change the moral climate socially. Unfortunately England at that time still believed in an objective morality via the Christian faith, now most people believe absolute truth is silly. If you want a better articulated presentation of what I'm saying read Silicone Valley Steve's and Matt Hartford CT's posts above, good stuff.

Zach, thanks for the link - I'll be sure to check this one out and pass it around the office.

Michele writes about watching BET.

If you would like to see a piece of pop-culture that tries to right that wrong, check out the Boondocks. It's on Cartoon Network at nights sometimes, or is available on DVD.

Yes, it is based on the Sunday comic, and is probably one of the most intelligent and entertaining cartoons I have seen in a long time. It exposes the utter fallacy that is African American Youth Culture from frying veggies with pork, to getting your puma's stepped on. A primary villain in the show is the CEO of BET, who works day and night to make black people stupid.

The best part is Sam Jackson and Charlie Murphy voice the only two white characters - two thugged-out, rich boy, ex-marines who knock off liquor stores and get away with it :-)

once again erin manning swoops in to make the church lady comment of the day:

"It's not the fact that lots of art is about sex, it's the fact that this stuff is everywhere in our culture, and that much of today's music has little to recommend it in the way of aesthetic quality while being an endless droning of crude anatomical references with no coy euphemism whatsoever. It's "Insert tab A into slot B" set to droning rhythm, as ugly and pointless as most of what our culture produces."

ignorant! erin, "today's music" is a BIG category. i love radiohead. sometimes sex or sexuality comes up, sometimes swear words do. but it's the some of best, smartest stuff out there in my opinion. you're ignorant. you can stick to creepy pat boone stuff.

"Of course sex in the arts was depicted as brutish animal rutting in the past. The pre-Christian past.

And now, as we head gloriously into the post-Christian future, sex once again returns to being nothing more than brutish animal rutting. Don't expect affection and tenderness to be associated with sex outside the small enclaves of oogedy-boogediness where people still think it's possible for sexual intercourse to mean something more than a sneeze or a bout of diarrhea or any other merely physical act."

there is nothing sadder than right wing christians inventing a fantasy past where people suddenly became more moral because the local clergy pumped jesus instead of [enter god here]. or that because people no longer consider sex evil (and yes, erin, they did, to the point of fostering absolute ignorance about sex and sexuality of any kind in society, allowing the attendant myths and falsehoods to fester, and you know it), we're headed to some miserable "animalistic" future.

well, you're ignorant again, erin. i have had premarital sex. i am still capable of love, erin.

"Don't expect affection and tenderness to be associated with sex outside the small enclaves of oogedy-boogediness where people still think it's possible for sexual intercourse to mean something more than a sneeze or a bout of diarrhea"

what a nasty thing to say. you live in a cave in (what?) texas? you spend too much time with people exactly like you. you have these fantasies about "kids today", erin. i am still capable of affection and tenderness and associating them with sexual intercourse. grow up, erin. the world is not as awful as you wish it to be - it's somewhat ironic, that you sort of "get off" on these fears. time for less church lady.

Since we're playing name that tune, here's my current favorite set of euphemistic and bawdy lyrics, from Michael Franks's "Popsicle Toes":

You've got the nicest North America this sailor ever saw.
I'd like to feel your warm Brazil and touch your Panama.
But your Tierra del Fuegos are nearly always froze.
We've got to seesaw until we unthaw those Popsicle toes.

Diana Krall did a great cover of this song, and it always makes me smile. Reminds me of one of my favorite John Donne poems, "To his mistress going to bed":

License my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land!

Art will always be about sex (also, death) because art is about being human, and a large part of being human is about sex. Sure, sex can be dealt with in more or less creative and artful ways, but it will always be there. Especially in the best art, because the best art will want to account for the whole of life, and, so, will have to deal with sex (and death).

Now, whether or not we should let the children see all this, and when, is another question entirely. But they're going to have to see it eventually.

To all the knuckleheads who think that conservatives don't believe sex existed prior to the 60's -- you don't get it, and are missing Rod's point by a country mile. It's not about the mere presence of bawdy and sexually risque references in art, music, etc. We all know about Chaucer and Shakespeare and Burns. What it's about is the fact that today it's far more rampant, far more universal, far more available, and far more accepted by the culture at large. When in the past was porn a multi-billion dollar industry? When was sexually explicit material of the most vile sort (bestiality, coprophilia, sexual torture, etc.) readily available to all and sundry regardless of their age? When in the past was boffing the well nigh universal subject of popular art and music, even that aimed at kids? You need to get your heads out of the sand, if not out of another part of your anatomy.

"When in the past was porn a multi-billion dollar industry?"

grade-A idiocy at its finest.

"in the past", dude, there weren't movies or home video or the internet. if there were, there'd have been MORE PORN. one of the first movies ever made was... you guessed it, moral paragon, a porno. the fact that men (and sometimes women) would have to go to a theatre to jack off in front of strangers in public, combined with the fact that the porn theatres, shops, and strip clubs are PLACES where you could be seen patronizing them. porn streams onto your computer now. it's more private. hence more porn consumption, a larger porn market, and therefore, MORE PORN. that has nothing to do with people being less moral than "in the past". i cannot believe you just made that argument. it's idiotic. technology, dude.

"When in the past was boffing the well nigh universal subject of popular art and music, even that aimed at kids?"

"well nigh universal"? unsupported hysterics and nothing more. your ways and views are the problem, not any sort of solution to any invented problem.

this insanity began with rod equating talking about sex with neo-nazi hate metal. ridiculous to the last.

As usual, the secularists totally miss my point. Sure, lots of people behaved very badly as Christians. But they knew they were behaving badly. They knew they had to confess their sins and do penance for them--not wimpy little "five Hail Mary" penances, but stand-outside-barefoot-in-the-snow-giving-alms kind of penances.

Today, there's this idea that there's no such thing as "good." There's no such thing as right and wrong. The one night stand with a stranger means just as much--which is to say, just as little--as the relationship between a husband and wife celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The idea that people ought to stay together for that long is looked at as a bit silly--surely they've outgrown each other by now, and the secularist can only hope they've done enough shagging on the side with interesting people of both genders to make it easy to keep up the dreary and pointless charade.

The difference between the Christian past and the post-Christian present is that in the Christian past people knew they were called to something higher than animal behavior. In the post-Christian present the secularists shrug and say, "Of course we're not supposed to avoid acting like animals. That's all we are, and our lifetime is pretty short, so we might as well cram in as much animal pleasure as we can while we're still young enough to pick up hot young things at bars--because by the time we're older the only way we'll be able to keep doing that is by purchasing all those enhancement products out there, and by hoping our bank account is enough to make the bored blond hardbody of the moment pretend he/she actually enjoys our sexual endeavors."

I reject that secular nihilism in favor of Christianity's far more hopeful view. But I'm not surprised by the level of ugliness in the music, any more than I'm surprised by the ugliness of the philosophy.

Erin, I often agree with you in being floored by the ugliness of some human behavior, but I honestly think you're doing your cause a disservice by spending so much time contending against this phantom "secular nihilism" that I see as being a largely a figment of (some) conservatives' imagination.

When you say things like this, I have to disagree: Sure, lots of people behaved very badly as Christians. But they knew they were behaving badly. They knew they had to confess their sins and do penance for them

Maybe you'd like to give some examples of egregiously bad behavior by Christians that was followed by repentance and severe penance? I don't see that so much.

This morning, I had the dubious pleasure of a visit from a pair of Jehovah's witnesses. They are nice old guys--one of them is an ex-Catholic who used to go to my church, and I think the other guy is an Italian from a nearby town, so probably an ex-Catholic as well. Jerry, the first one, left the Church when he started reading the Bible for himself and found that his interpretation didn't match what he'd been taught. The first time he came by, I told him there was no chance in Hell I'd ever become a Jehovah's Witness, and the poor guy looked so crestfallen that I felt sorry for him and let him speak his piece anyway. Today I felt compelled to let them in because it was sleeting out and they looked cold. So we had a nice little chat about the dangers of saying "Lord, Lord" and not meaning it.

Richard, the wing-man, gave an example from his Italian Catholic neighborhood: guys he knows who, post-election, have said to him re our President-elect: "I hate that n****." He tells them they shouldn't talk like that about one of God's children, and they inform him that they go to Mass every Sunday and are just fine with God, but that the command to love everyone was never intended for those people. Do you really think that man knows he's behaving badly, and will confess and make amends? I doubt it.

The sad thing about religion is that it seems just as easy to use it to justify vile behavior as to inspire noble behavior. I wish that were not true, but it seems to me that's what history demonstrates.

siglaris i must commend your ability to sift through and find something good or worthy in posts by seemingly sincere, but profoundly thoughtless individuals like erin manning. i mean, reading through her diatribe against ??? (modernity? a non-theocratic society? "kids today"? impossible to really tell) is like taking a nightmare trip to the eleventh grade honors english class from hell. lots of decently logical statements that are hopelessly undermined by arguments from authority, unsupportable statements about history, and bald lies.

it's horrible. people like rod and erin manning and the rest here have this powerful urge to adhere to certain social/religious/historical memes that do not stand up under the slightest scrutiny, all in service of this idea that the world today is hopelessly fallen and evil, with the SOLE solace available being the intellectual, moral, and emotional straightjacket of conservative christianity. nothing, no fact, no logical inference, no education, can penentrate this. how the rest of us are supposed to even have a society with them, let alone value their opinions and mores, in the face of this persistent, aggressive, almost smug hatred of everything not having to do with right wing christianity is beyond me.

and yet in the face of them angrily tarring your views as the source of almost all our ills, you maintain composure and friendliness. towards them. even though that at best they find you hopelessly lost and at worst evil. hats off.

"As usual, the secularists totally miss my point."

Did I miss the meme where "secularists" is the new slur? Erin tosses around this word a lot, but without it having any real meaning or context. Is it the new pinko-commie?

Today, there's this idea that there's no such thing as "good." There's no such thing as right and wrong.

I know literally thousands of people who come in every political persuasion, sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion, size, age, intelligence, etc.

Your assertion reflects not a single one of them. Not. A. Single. One. "Some say" was the way Bush was able to lie without actually lying, "there's this idea" is just another way of doing the same thing. Who really has that idea? One of your friends? I assure you no-one I know would agree to the proposition, not the southern rednecks or the northern liberals, not the straights or the gays, not the men or the women, not the kids or the elders, not the Asians or the Africans. Not. A. Single. One.

If you know anyone who believes that idea you should take the advice the angels gave Lot and move away without looking back.

pentamom: Shakespearean actors didn't just get up on stage and say a string bawdy things and then sit down.

Uh, if they were playing Falstaff in, say, Henry IV, they did. Eric Partridge's book Shakespeare's Bawdy is almost a third made up of Falstaff. Also, a lot of it gets missed because the slang is archaic.

Erin, there's a whole lot of middle ground between the two poles you describe re: sex.

Ooops. Let correct a few things. Rape and incest degrade the sacredness of sex more than prostitution. Kinsey's data was from the 1940's.

This conversation is so dumb. I feel dumber just having read through the comments. OK the past was a dystopian Handmaiden's nightmare where people had group sex in the streets and taught their children to sing of the joys of anal intercourse in their nursery rhymes. Got it. No more arguing that point. WTF does that have to do with the fact that large segments of our population entertains itself with the most vile, mysogenistic, violent and degrading depictions of sex that the performers can think of? I mean people used to torture their children so does that make me taking my belt out and beating my 2 year old with it OK? When you panty-wavers protest do I get to insist that you can't say anything to me because people did much, much worse in the past? This is truly a dumb, dumb argument.

Since people 2000 years ago decorated their walls with what we'd think of as pornography render this whole conversation moot? Do you really want your 6 year old singing the latest Solja Boy hit that she's heard blaring from car radios? Do you really want our middle schools filled with kids who have memorized every violent and mysogenistic lyric that's been put out in the last 15 years and try to comport themselves accordingly? Really? It just means nothing because people like Rod don't pay proper homage to the evils of the past?

Singalaris: I too appreciate your tolerance and charitable attitude towards those of us whom you might disagree with, and I also appreciate your attitude towards the gentlemen who made that uncalled for racial slur. I don't think I would've been able to control my anger as well as you did. I enjoy reading and thinking about your input. Keep posting.

Z,

I'm on the Christian Left for the most part, and I agree with your general point about the hypocrisy of 1950s and neo-Victorian sexual morality, absolutely. (I'm not a fan of the other extreme pursued by too many people today, but let that pass.) However, _please_ don't use Kinsey's name as anything other than the punchline to a bad joke. It just discredits your case (and mine); you'd be better off using lists of brothels published in Victorian England or something like that. Kinsey's statistical methodology was abysmal, and bordering on plain and simple fraud- they were roundly condemned and mocked by the great scientists of the day, including by the great statistician John Tukey. His conclusions are less than worthless.

Shakespeare was as crude as many modern rappers. (The crudeness is usually obscured by the antiquated language.) He belongs with them rather than Cole Porter.