A while ago I had heard and enjoyed this song called “Hey Man Nice Shot”, without really knowing what it was about. Later, I learned that it was about a well known public suicide. I’m still not sure whether the song is meant as some kind of tribute to R. Budd Dwyer, or is just exploiting his 15 seconds of bloody fame, but no matter how repugnant the actual subject matter may be, should that have any effect on how I regard the song as a song? (After simply mentioning the song in a recent thread–not even saying that I liked it–another poster stated that my “remark about the tragedy of a human being’s death [was] totally tasteless” and implied that I ought to commit suicide myself. One of those things that make you go, hmm.)
Other works of art that I’ve heard mentioned as presenting the same conundrum:
Film Birth of a Nation Triumph of the Will
Song
“Under My Thumb”, by the Rolling Stones
“The Horst Wessel Song”
Anything by Wagner?
Literature Huckleberry Finn (though it’s a matter of opinion, and I’m sure it isn’t the best example)
I’m not necessarily talking about things that are deliberately designed to offend or be controversial, like Piss Christ or whatever it was called. That kind of work would seem to have an aesthetic impact that’s dependent upon most viewers’ outrage. No, what I’m interested in is whether works of art have an aesthetic that’s independent of the morality of the day, and if so, how should we treat the ones that espouse a morality with which we disagree? If you’re Jewish, can I expect you to respect my enjoyment of “The Horst Wessel Song” just because I think it’s a catchy tune?
What’s your opinion? Can you think of any (hopefully better) examples of what I’m trying to get at here?
It was about the suicide NOT of Budd Dwyer but of Kurt Cobain. The lyrics which say things like:
“I wish I could have met you, but now it’s a little late”
and
“I think that you’re early ending was all wrong. For the most part their right, but look how they all got strong, that’s why I say ‘Hey man, nice shot’”
If you just listen to the chorus, it could be of ANY shooting suicide of a public figure from Hemmingway to Dwyer. But the verses clearly indicate that it was about Cobain. The idea behind the song is that Cobain’s death was tragic because it robbed the world of a musical genius, but in the aftermath of his death numerous other groups got to share some of the spotlight. Walker, in penning the song, is trying to find some positve aspect of a public tragedy.
The link I just posted said that the band issued this statement directly:
I’m not sure if that means they do admit that it’s about Dwyer, or they’re just expressing their condolences as an aside.
Anyway, what interested me wasn’t so much the song itself but rather the reaction to it, which started me thinking about whether the aesthetics of a work of art can be judged independently of whatever moral context they inhabit.
Zarathustra, to hell with what anyone else tells you. Regardless of what it’s about, as a song it’s still a good song. Tell whoever says the song is offensive or tasteless not to listen to it if they don’t like it, but you have the right to listen about whatever the hell you want to listen to.
Filter’s song isn’t the first about suicide and it won’t be the last, and there will always be people
who think that writing a song about an actual person’s death is just a way to make a buck off other people’s pain. In a free society however, we have the right to listen to and like the song just as much as they have the right not to listen to it. Next time someone disrepects your rights to like a song or speak your mind, remind them how they are disrespecting the memory of the people who died on the battlefields to preserve those very rights and maybe they’ll realize which act is more offensive.
Huck Finn doesn’t present a dicotomy. The language is only offensive now because we are reading it 100+ years after it was written. Shakespeare has some scathingly anti-semetic remarks in Merchant of Venice. But does that mean that it presents a dictotomy? Hell, no. The book is one of the only examples of literature of that time period that dealt with the race/slave issue in a positive light. (Uncle Tom’s Cabin would also be in that category.) In the end, Huck has come to the realization that even though Jim is black and a slave, he’s also a human being.
I’m a bleeding liberal, but to dismiss pieces of art, literature and music because the subject matter is uncomfortable is censorship at its worst. Hell, even Birth of a Nation is useful to truely understand the levels of accepted bigotry and hatred that was alive in our country. If you pretend it never happened, I promise you, it will happen again.
However, I did enjoy the Ben Folds Five song “Brick” until I realised it was about abortion. “She’s a brick and she’s drowning me slowly…” Oh, really? Maybe you should have protected your assets better, ya ass. She’s the one who’s going through an emotionally and physically painful medical proceedure, whiner. Feh.
Then there’s the story about how I realised what the Violent Femmes’s “Blister in the Sun” was about…
I’ll bite. What is it about? I always figured it was about a guy who was out walking and strutting his stuff while high as a kite. If you can shed some light on “big hands I know you’re the one” please do.
Goddamnit, Jayron…you must be the only person left on this earth who still thinks “Hey, Man” is about Kurt Cobain. It’s about Dwyer, and blatantly so. The message inherent? The people who tied you up and forcibly sent you down Shit Creek sure fucked your life over, Budd, but damn, in death, did you ever show teach them a thing or two. It’s the prevailing opinion now, in retrospect, that Dwyer was wrongly accused, railroaded into a conviction by his political enemies, a claim he maintained up until the moment he depressed the trigger, and a truth reflected in the lyrics “you were right but they were just too strong” (I’m paraphrasing, here). Besides, Cobain’s death wasn’t even public. He was a PUBLIC FIGURE, but his suicide wasn’t. As to whether the song is tasteful…well, if addressing the problem of suicide open and honestly and unflinchingly and unpretentiously is tasteless, then Filter is guilty as charged.
To get back to the matter at hand, I find that despite my opinions on religion and Christianity in particular, I like a few obviously religious songs. “40 days” by Jars of Clay, and more than a few from Creed.
Tool has an interesting song which seems to address this issue. It’s called “Die Eier von Satan” and if you don’t speak German it sounds much like the clips of Nazi hate speech that we’ve all seen. However, if you listen to the actual words (in German), it is actually a (cookie?) recipe. It really points out the dichotomy between content and form, and people’s reactions to each. I for one was laughing my ass off.
Heck, I don’t really need to quote here, but with your username, it’s just too good to pass up :
While I think it’s fair to say that aesthetic value is inherent and independent of moral/cultural implications, to ignore the context and the history of the song (or to be indifferent to it) is a mistake. Primarily because you can learn something from the song. Some songs are better examples than others, of course, and with many there’s an intentional association (either written in or not). Art can be enjoyed for the aesthetic side only, but downgrading them to ‘mere works of art’ does a disservice to them as part of culture. Often, art is the best way to learn a culture, since it is the expression of culture (in aesthetic form, of course.)
One example of a song that springs to mind is “Mack The Knife” (Moritat von Macheath Messer). The song is well-known, even very popular in America. Yet not only do the song lyrics speak of a murderous criminal, the mention of the shark hearkens to Brecht’s anti-capitalist piece “If sharks were people”. Some of this can be attributed to Kurt Weill, whose music is catchy and often contrasts with the lyrics (there’s much better examples, e.g. das Kanonenlied, Ballad of Pirate Jenny). Are we to be surprised or even more offended when McDonald’s gives Brecht’s coffin a few more turns by using his song to sell hamburgers?
Maybe we can’t always know what’s behind every work of art, every quote we use, but that’s no excuse for ignoring it. The very purpose here is to fight ignorance, not acquiesce to its spread. I play with a group (marching band) that plays “Children of Sanchez”. Nice song, we all think. Once it was played for a Christmas parade/rally in town. The mayor approached our director and mentioned that “Children of Sanchez” was from a movie with rather unpleasant themes (starvation), and requested us not to play it in that context again. To do so in ignorance is forgivable, to do so knowingly would smack of insult. Not that I suggest we ignore the ideas suggested, I’m saying that it would be improper to shove it in the mayor’s face in that context unless we intended to do so.
I think by far the best example of a problem piece is the national anthem of Germany. Most are familiar with the opening lines of the first verse, “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, über alles in der Welt”. Though written in 1841 and intended to signify a single-minded devotion to the establishment of a German national state rather than world domination, it contains enough pious nationalism and ambiguity that it could be interpreted as such. More importantly, it essentially was. The third verse, which contains the best sentiments, was chosen after WWII as the national anthem, and still remains. (Other national anthems, notably God Save The Queen and the Marseillaise, contain even more gruesome verses not sung either).
To sing the song in Germany today with all the verses is often a sign of a neo-Nazi movement. Those who do so are proud to do it, claiming that it is only proper with “all the original” verses in it. This is one thing often mentioned in reports from extremist websites.
This is clearly a case in which it would be wrong to say, “It’s only a song after all.” Enjoy the song, yes, perhaps, but don’t ignore the fact that there are other elements around it, even ambigous ones. To attempt to apprehend it in both senses seems the best way.
panama jack
Einstein : “The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analysed.”
Tagore : “Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.”
Wagner was not a Nazi. Wagner may have been an antisemitic bigot and was certainly the 19th Century German equivalent of the flag-waving jingo, but his music is no more offensively patriotically German than Grieg was Norwegian, or Tchaikovsky Russian, and considerably less so than Shostakovich was Soviet (Wagner did not write for Hitler; Shostakovich wrote for Stalin and wrote themes that were supposed to celebrate the Worker and the Party).
I understand how many people find it impossible to listen to Wagner after having heard it as musical accompaniment to the Third Reich and the shoah, or holocaust. But that isn’t Wagner’s fault and no reason why you should feel morally ambivalent about listening to it if you like it.
Think about it. What does a blister do in the sun? Pops. It gets hot, and pops. “Let me go on/Like a blister in the sun/Let me go on/Big hands, I know you’re the one…” More evidence? Second verse: “Body and beats/I stain my sheets/
I don’t even know why.”
It’s about spanking the monkey when you’re high, my friend.
Tool’s Aenima album is one of the best albums, lyrically, in the past 20 years. You could write dissertations about “Eulogy” and “46+2”, and any album that has a love song about fisting (“Stinkfist”, or “Track 1” as MTV would call it) is all right by me.
Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay!
I think the song is more about how a traumatic event, like an abortion, can rip apart a couple. I don’t see it as him blaming her or being wimpy about anything.
And, finally, Creed is nothing more than the new Stryper, without the nifty bumblebee outfits.
What about the song… umm… shoot. Forgot the name. It sounds like a love song, but it’s in reality a song about a girlfriend who dies from a Meth overdose, and her boyfriend is saddened by it, but can’t quite kick the habit anyway?
That Die Eier von Satan is verry funny to think about. I like Nena’s song “99 Luftballone”, which I sing along to in the street (in a sort of spastic, ich-spreche-kein-Deutsch kind of German), and get weird looks. If I thought twice about it, I’d want to look at them funny and go “It’s an anti-war song, folks!” Fortunately, the tune is cheerful enough that I don’t think it sounds too dubious.
So what are the other verses? All I know is the one I had to sing in grade school (yes, I had to sing God Save the Queen in grade school; in French no less. Never mind.)
This is all I know:
God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen.
Now this is, granted, assez bombastic. But not bloody at all, especially compared to the other “we only sing one verse of this anthem anymore” anthem you mentioned, La Marseillaise, whose first verse (translated) runs as follows:
Onward, children of the Fatherland!
The day of glory sounds reveille!
Against us by Tyranny
The bloody flag is raised!
Do you hear in the fields
The roaring of those fierce soldiers?
They come almost within our arms’ reach
To slaughter our sons and comrades!
To arms, Citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march, march,
That an impure blood
May irrigate our fields!
OK, I just found the other verses, and still, they’re not that bloody. All I can find is a reference to scattering her enemies in the second verse and saving her “from every latent foe, from the assassin’s blow” in verse 5.
If that’s the one you mean, I never got the sense that she OD’d. I got the sense that he became a messed-up addict, and they lost their relationship.
As for the OP, I think one of the best things about art in general is the freedom of interpretation it allows the experiencer. Some people enhance their enjoyment of a particular work by factoring the history, the times, the artist’s personality, the message, etc. But it’s not a requirement. Other people are just as content and achieve just as much satisfaction taking it at face value.
For example, I think “All Lit Up” by Buckcherry is one of the most kick-ass hard rock songs of the last two years. Thinking that doesn’t necessarily make me an advocate for illegal drug use. (The song includes a repetitive “I love the co-caine, I love the co-caine.”)
My apologies to Britain, mattmcl. I wrote ‘gruesome’ where ‘violent’ would have been a better word. I’d only heard about the other verses (for the U.K. and France) last weekend on NPR; an expert on national anthems (he was British) was talking about SSB (and its infamous melody) and other anthems. I think I confused the reasons in my head, mostly remembering the French bloodiness and the relative tameness of the British one. I might also mention here that my own country’s national anthem (the US) has some bloody bits, too, saying that those who thought the nation would not survive have been killed or run off (“their blood has wiped out their foul footstep’s pollution”).
The ‘anthem expert’, as I recall now, mentioned that GSTK/Q was written with the Scots in mind as enemies; and that’s a good part of the reason it’s not sung all together. He also noted that the Israeli national anthem is quite beautiful and non-marshal, though “Baa-baa black sheep” in a minor key.
The place I found the anthem at also had the Scottish national anthem, and some interesting Loyalist songs (from the American Revolutionary period.) That brought up a new question : Given that the song anticipates the restoration of a scottish state, is it still sung? Is it a similar situation to that of Germany, where those singing it are regarded as extremist?
panama jack
maybe the world’s nicest anthem, Slovenia’s :
God’s blessing on all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o’er earth’s habitation
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all man free
No more shall foes, but neighbours be.
