From a historical context, today’s music isn’t really that bad…music in ancient history has a reputation for being extremely bawdy, emphasizing lots of sex, violence, etc. Canterbury Tales, anyone? Beowulf?
It seems that oday’s social dysfunction is more an issue of people remaining immature for much longer, while they can understand and absorb the less wholesome aspects of culture, and then go act on them.
During 99% of human history, people in their early to mid teens were considered young adults and were quickly pressed into hard labor, babymaking and battle. They were exposed to raunchy poetry and music, but it was nothing compared to real life. However, they were mature enough to deal with it.
Many 22 year olds in 2011 are the rough psychological equivalent of a 12 year old several thousand years ago. We’re raising a whole generation of late-blooming babies and treating them like adults.
Well of course there is more usage of “bad words” in music today than in music in the 1950s. My point was that music and art in general has included adult and possibly offensive themes for quite some time now. I certainly don’t think songs like “Bitch get in my ride,” are great works of art. But then again I rarely hear songs like that on the radio. Hell, I’ve heard radio stations that censor the word “gun” by replacing it with a record scratch.
People are exposed to more media of every kind in contemporary society. But I’m not buying the claim that sexuality is more explicit or ubiquitous in modern American society than in any society anywhere, anytime. Is sexuality more explicit in modern American society than in many Classical Greek societies? Women in Ancient Greece generally did not enjoy a ton of sexual freedom, but male sexuality was very much out in the open, and they were generally quite proud of it. The Ancient Romans didn’t have the technology to get HBO period pieces full of topless woman broadcast into their homes. They did however produce quite a bit of nude and erotic themed art. Oh and they also thought raping slaves was completely acceptable. Prostitution isn’t even legal in the United States (except parts of Nevada).
People are exposed to more sexual media today for the same reasons they are also exposed to more comedic media. But mainstream society (what exactly counts as mainstream society again?) could be considered quite prudish compared to many cultures of the past.
I was pretty surprised by a song included in the soundtrack to the video game Fallout 3. It’s a song called “Butcher Pete” by Roy Brown. This version of the song is from the 1950s but I have no idea whether the song is actually older or not.
The song uses violence as a metaphor for sex, or, perhaps more accurately, for rape, and includes a knife as a replacement for Pete’s penis. I was really surprised when Pete was in jail and “They found him choppin’ up his cell mate.” That’s a pretty explicit song from where I’m standing even if it doesn’t use any curse words.
Some of Kenny Roger’s songs could be really dark. In “Don’t Take Your Love to Town” the narrator expresses his frustration at his inability to grab his shotgun and gun his woman down because she’s sleeping with other men. In “Coward of the County” the coward retaliates against the four men who rape his girlfriend. It’s not explicit, I suppose, because the song never actually uses the world rape but on the other hand it’s quite clear what happened.
Lou Reed’s “walk on the Wild Side” back in the early 70’s had the line about “giving good head”.
The other point, I suppose, is that modern urbanized folks are so much more removed from real life. The 12-century kids probably lived in a 1-room hut with the parents and 6 siblings and a new one on the way every year; plus they fed farm animals that reproduced frequently, and learned about life from being around everyone else. Privacy is a modern conceit. Or, as Mad Magazine pointed out in the 60’s, “anyone who had a dog and saw what it did, did not need as much sex education in school.”
One item I read said that european peasants were a rowdy bunch, May festivals and Oktoberfests and such were pretty uninhibited, and it was only the fun-squelching “going-to-hell” protestant revolution that really put the damper on european libidos. The Victorians simply clamped the lid down shut.
So books like Canterbury tales, the Decameron, etc. and presumably songs as well, were only carrying on in the fine early european tradition.
As I explicitly stated, you can’t keep sex or other explicitness out of any society. The only question is the expression of that explicitness.
In most societies of the past, the upper classes, however they were constituted, allowed themselves privileges that they didn’t offer to the masses. When you talk about Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome (cultures that spanned 1000 years and multitudes of internal variations) you are talking about the smallest slice of the historical remains of high culture: the culture of the upper classes. We don’t have much evidence of what the lower classes and slave classes thought, read, saw, spoke, or drew. Some dirty graffiti, sure. But explicit art does not seem to be a normal part of the entire culture. Pompeii and Herculaneum are often used as counter-examples, but it’s their contrast with the rest of what we’ve uncovered that makes them so special. They seem to be resort towns, as if you used Las Vegas for what a typical American city looks like. (There’s also a scholarly dispute over whether the houses that have been uncovered - a minority of the whole town - are even representative.)
As for mainstream vs. underground. Anybody who pretends to cite history knows the distinction. The underground in western societies has been evident and interestingly consistent since the beginning of Victorian times when a backlash among certain strains of prudish Christianity began. That drove even upper class perversion underground. But that’s the only real change from earlier times.
I think it’s interesing how you can take a song like You Were On My Mind, and have it performed by the original Ian & Sylvia and then have it covered by We Five or Crispian St. Peters.
Granted the latter removed the references about being drunk, but just the way Ian & Silvia sing it compared to We Five, gives the song a whole new meaning and direction. We Five being clean cut Califonria folk/rock verus the more gritty folk sounds of Ian & Sylvia
Once again, I’m not buying it. How much art in general were lower class people exposed to throughout history? Ancient Roman pantomimes were a popular form of entertainment for the Roman lower classes (which no, did not last from the Rome’s founding to the fall of Constantinople, but were popular for centuries) and they were notoriously vulgar and sexually themed. Your average Roman probably couldn’t afford to have naked statues in his house (although wealthy Romans frequently did) but he certainly enjoyed his bawdy theater.
