The Smiths- Paint a vulgar Picture

If you look at the history of man over the centuries, you can see a history of progress. Each generation has been slightly healthier, richer and less exploited by those in power than the last. At the same time there has been a similar development in art as great composers and writers have built on the achievements of their predecessors to produce work that has made all our lives richer. the two have always gone together- great art improves the minds of those who learn to appreciate it. It produces elevated thought which has led people to strive through the years to improve society.......until now that is. The twentieth century has seen this process which once seemed inevitable halted and reversed so that society has produced monstrous regimes like the Nazis and culture has been destroyed and replaced by mass- produced trash. It is important to try to find the root of this crisis in all our lives.

The root is in the media- in the good old days art was produced by individual craftsmen who strove always to be original and always to be as good at what they did as was humanly possible. People who came into contact with the art they produced became better as a result- the great works of art of the past force us to think more deeply and more carefully about the world around us and people who have learnt to think more deeply can not be fooled so easily as they were by the Nazis.

The media has changed al of this. As soon mechanisation allowed art to become mass produced, originality and high standards lost their importance and instead art became yet another factory production line where profits are more important than quality. This leads to the evil we call genre.

genre is entirely a matter of economics- it is easiest to understand if we consider the media the same way that we think about a company making cars. Cars, like genres are standardised products- for a start all cars basically do the same thing and to make it easier to produce them they are standardised even further into the models that we are familiar with. Of course these models are often very similar to each other, but if the consumer realised this no-one would feel the urge to buy a new car until their old one was completely unusable. To stop people from becoming wise to this, the car makers and their advertisers create an illusion of difference- each model, however similar it really is to the competition is marketed as being unique and the few tiny differences between it and other cars are highlighted.

The same process of an illusion of difference being created within a market where everything is basically the same can be seen in popular music. All pop records sound basically the same and the best records have already been made so it is vital that the people marketing popular music create the same illusion of difference- Kula Shaker sound exactly the same as seventies bands like Led Zeppelin so they are given an image which makes them seem different and up to date.

Think about it. You can probably count the original records you have heard recently on the fingers of no hands. Everyone is judged on the basis of who they sound like, rather than any originality they can offer and as a result the records of the last forty years are indistinguishable from each other- Oasis sound like the Beatles, Suede like David Bowie and so on. If a band does come along that doesn't fit into the currently popular genres, they either don't get signed by a record company or if they do, their originality is toned down until they sound just like everyone else.

You might ask why originality is so dangerous for the record companies- it is because it would allow people to think about what they bought. A truly original group, sounding like no existing genre, might make people realise that the rubbish they had been listening to all these years was not what they wanted at all - they might stop buying!

At the same time, the marketers are keen to keep their audiences happy. The established genres in their predictability are comforting to listen to. So that we don’t get bored they can always change a few small features of the music while still keeping the basic formula intact and easy to produce. Think about all of the cover versions filling up the charts where virtually nothing is different from the original- the illusion of difference.

This has a frightening effect on the minds of the audiences- unlike the audience at a classical concert, rock and pop fans do not need to think as they listen to this music that does not challenge them in any way. Stupid, meaningless lyrics seep into their brains and force out any intelligence. The process is never-ending, the more standardised and repetitive the musical genre becomes, the stupider its audience gets so that we end up with a situation where the year's most popular record is completely meaningless:

The sad fact is that the modern pop audience has become so numbed by years of this rubbish that they don't even notice anymore. As a result, the next generation of musicians who come out of this audience will be even more inane and ludicrous and so the process will continue. As the mass media organisations streamline their production methods further and the genres become even more standardised, audiences who take in these messages will lose more and more judgement and our society will lose out as a result- people who do not learn to think become apathetic about all serious matters and allow themselves to be led by dictators or exploited by bosses. What seemed like unimportant genres will bring the end of centuries of progress. The story of pop is accompanied by an identical process in television and film- genres numb our brains everywhere we come upon them and turn all but the most discerning people into the morons we see all around.

1. Do you agree with their idea that genres are becoming more streamlined as time goes by?

 

2. Are there examples that you can think of in music of people like Tarantino in film who either mix genres or play with an audience’s expectations of genre.

 

3. The Frankfurt critics were implying that listening to modern music was a brain destroying process- what do you think? Can records or genre texts in general make you think- give examples

 

 

4. From what you know about the world today, has the decline that the Frankfurt critics were talking about in society continued? Are we less free and more oppressed?

 

 

Do you think media texts have this much effect on their audiences? You will be learning more about this next term.

 

6. Are there any of their ideas that do seem sensible?