Thinking about the current trends in music, and where the roots were, the old blues songs with their references to jelly roll, backdoor man ad infinitum, the logical progression through ‘up against the wall ************’ in the sixties, and into rap and its incessant banging on the obscene and misogynistic, one can’t help but wonder if we set something in motion that has begun to eat itself from the tail up. The idea that censorship was bad, that people needed to be able to express themselves artistically has gone on to new heights of strange and incredible behavior from the ‘artistic’ community. The roots of rock of course, are ‘bad behavior’, though mild in comparison, the antics of Jerry Lee Lewis, the hips of Elvis, and the strangely trans-gendered expressions of Little Richard were the harbinger of Marilyn Manson, Kurt Cobain, and Green Day (not necessarily in that order, or of any particular relevance) .
The last fifty years has brought a total revolution in artistic expression, from the quiet beginnings of the late fifties and early sixties through the turmoil of the late twentieth century. We have gone from censorship on all levels to the complete abandonment of all sensibility of gangster rap, and one-word-script movies like ‘Scarface’.
The recent Super Bowl mishap and Imus faux pas have begun a rethinking of the need to put some limits on creativity, to make things ‘respectable’ once more. There is a certain amount of desperation in the need to do something that is truly new, not to mention the need to get attention. Artists find themselves searching for something that hasn’t been done a thousand times before, and we find them reaching into the unknown, which often involves that which has been taboo in the past.
They find themselves being outlandish in order to garner an audience, doing something shocking to be noticed. Where it will go from here is hard to say, the piercings and tattoos have been carried to such heights that its hard to see how those artifices could be escalated. And when you get right down to it, the adoption of those practices by the general public have made it almost beyond a fad to the commonplace. Lets hope the censorship crowd doesn’t limit creativity and artistic freedom, and that the artists don’t lose touch with the difference between creative freedom and complete abandon.
Hi,
Liked your entry, but it took me a bit to find it, on my browser the first large part is just black. I had to scroll down quite a way to find the content. You might want to look into updating your template so that the article is more clearly visible.
Hope this helps.
Brad D.
Left by Brad D. on May 22nd, 2007