There are many lenses through which to evaluate art. Asking why something is being created, and by whom, is an important part of enjoying, appreciating, and judging (yea, verily, judging) art. It was the fashion for a time to judge art in a vacuum, as if its merits should be appreciated only if it and you could float three feet above the ground.That was a stupid fashion, since art is people making things, and people and things tend to stay on the ground.
Art imitates life. Life imitates art. And Phil Rudd, drummer for AC/DC during their heyday, looks to hire Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. The sixty-year-old has been arrested in New Zealand for hiring a hitman. And that makes sense to me. The man's life has become a work of art reflecting the art of his youth. This, as the kids used to say, is so meta.
I would not suggest that a normal housewife or the pope would would never hire a hitman. But such people
would be falling, while someone who would sing a song glorifying murder and mayhem would have about as far to fall as a drunken pirate would off his peg leg. We become like the gods we make.
This has been my rock music is of the devil moment. Enjoy, kids.
It's funny (well, not really "funny," since there's nothing terribly amusing about murder) how wildly different the two big rock meets crime stories I've seen recently are, since one is this, and the other is about a supposedly Christian college student hacking off some metalhead's head.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big proponent of blaming aggressive music for aggressive behavior, given my own experience of it as a harmless cathartic outlet, but that's just me.