To what degree will you support musicians who (openly, possibly or jokingly) include racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted messages in their music, or who privately hold such beliefs?

(it's not an innate virtue, either; it's just something everyone does already, for entirely idiosyncratic subjective reasons, so I don't see why holding it up as a potential bugbear in order to shame someone into listening to a racist is a useful thing to do)

xp: lol then perhaps you are not actually understanding aero's post

Aesthetic pleasure is a complex thing tho. It's pleasure, sure, but you're also engaging with a complex of ideas or discourses.

Yeah, this. I try to avoid results-based criticism, but who knows? Maybe I do it. I've had to deal with my own revulsion this week at The Singles Jukebox, where we're reviewing a bunch of old Nate Dogg collaborations with Snoop and Dre which, after several years' distance, still sound as clumsy as they did in 1993. So dismissing the misogyny was even easier.

And what's wrong with self-censorship?

whoops -- this was covered already

and yeah deciding you don't want to listen to something because its politics are icky doesn't "lead to censorship" on any planet I've visited

"it's a bourgeois privilege to be able to overlook racism."

I always feel it's awfully bourgeois to worry about bourgeois privilege.

Anyway, Nazi metal and Wagner are two different things to me. Nazi metal is just ridiculous; the Nazis would have hated such entartete shreck and any German nationalist venerating the Nazis is even stupider than his grandparents, assuming they were Nazis, of course. Wagner's celebration and romanticisation of Germanic folklore is no more blameworthy than the Jews holding on to their culture and folklore (or any ppl doing so for that matter) and I have a smidgen of sympathy for the Germans in the 19th century (though, to be quite clear, not for any anti-semitism); the Italians, the French, the English, heck, even the Spanish could be admired but, apart from a few left-handed compliments from Tacitus, early German history and folklore was supposedly the history of barbarians who destroyed Rome. Germans weren't supposed to have much to be all that proud of and the sooner they adopted French or Italian ways, the better. That they tended, like pretty much everyone else, to take pride in their heritage in a way that denigrated people not from their 'tribe' is deplorable but no more so than most other countries.

That said, Wagner isn't even in my top five 19th century German composers.

If people decide they don't want to listen to something because of its content, that is not censorship; that is supply/demand.

If an external actor is keeping you from listening to something because of its content, that is censorship.

I don't see anywhere where aero is advocating having a board set up that polices people's music/musicians for offensive; I do see him saying "I think it's a good idea to reflect on the source".

what I was getting at was that the alternatives - refusing to commercially support or read/listen to/watch anything that is morally questionable - if carried to their logical conclusions, result in some very, VERY undesirable scenarios. On the one hand, if everyone adopts this position or is enforced to adopt this position, um great we are living in a police state where ideas are forbidden. awesome. Similarly, if you start parsing who/what institutions hold/support beliefs you disagree with, pretty quickly you find that this will preclude you from engaging with the vast majority of art. Most of it, at one time or another, has passed through the hands or bank accounts of those with ideas you disagree with.

xp

btw my own reaction to death certificate when it came out was "well, shit - my favorite rapper seems kinda like a dick now," not "this anti-semitism is really complex"

"whelp...I dig it, so who gives a shit what the content is, or who might be impacted by it*,

lol come on dude

Michael White wow you'll jump through any hoop to excuse Wagner's anti-semitism, won't you?

btw Police For Offensive is the name of my white-hating minimal techno side project

On the one hand, if everyone adopts this position or is enforced to adopt this position

can you spot where you are making a ridiculous, unwarranted logical leap? (HINT: it is here or is enforced to adopt this position)

lol come on dude

dude even though I know you & me are like nearly identical animals politically afaik that really does sound like what you're saying to me

One of the problems with 19th Century Nationalism is that it comes generally out of an Enlightment culture. It would be one thing to be an anti-Semite in 13th Century Europe where the prejudice was so ingrained as to be almost unnoticeable as a prejudice, and quite another thing to be Wanger and to have friends telling you to your face that your prejudices are idiotic and evil and going "hey ho" anyway.

and yeah deciding you don't want to listen to something because its politics are icky doesn't "lead to censorship" on any planet I've visited

Not to engage with a work of art because its connections or associations is precisely what I don't like about ppl like the Nazis. "We can't like Mendelssohn - he's Jewish," isn't music criticism, it's just categorical refusal based on broad prejudice. I prefer to judge the art on its merits and if I have to castigate the artist for being a doofus or worse, so be it; the work, if good, will long outlast the artist.

can you spot where you are making a ridiculous, unwarranted logical leap? (HINT: it is here or is enforced to adopt this position)

as soon as you say it's okay to ban ideas, this is the road you're heading down

pretty quickly you find that this will preclude you from engaging with the vast majority of art.

I wanna bee 1000% real with this: I think it's more important that people respect one another than for me to have engagement with any art no matter how great, and I feel that saying "these guys music is kinda good but you know what fuck them they're nazis" is a more positive gesture culturally than "these guys are nazis but I enjoy their music so I'll put that aside"

There is a categorical, non-negligible difference between "I don't want to engage with this because this person is of a particular ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation" and "I do not want to support an artist who is championing my extermination/oppression".

I dunno DJP it's a slippery slope lol

Michael White wow you'll jump through any hoop to excuse Wagner's anti-semitism, won't you?

I'm not even a big fan of Wagner's! I just think the devil is in the details not in broad, sweeping judgments.

Anyway, shouldn't we leave this all to Nietzsche contra Wagner?

but not non-negotiable. I think it's my duty to explain my responses to offensive material; however, I wouldn't begrudge someone else for not bothering.

xpost to Dan

(@djp that was a joek btw)

unless I run out and buy the entire Skr3wdriver catalog we're going to have thoughtcrime legislation within the week

but not non-negotiable. I think it's my duty to explain my responses to offensive material; however, I wouldn't begrudge someone else for not bothering.

I don't think either aero or I have said anything remotely to the contrary of this!

Or at least I haven't; aero came close.

part of my rancor on this is that i routinely have the experience of starting to like a metal band and then finding a picture of them & oh guess what swastika tattoos. which does not make me try to arrive at an aesthetic that will allow me to enjoy & support their nazi music. it makes me think "fuck this, there's other music to like, I don't need this in my head/heart." garbage in garbage out imo and my lifelong goal is to become a decent person, and I think step one toward that is avoiding the intake of hateful crap.

dude even though I know you & me are like nearly identical animals politically afaik that really does sound like what you're saying to me

no I'm saying you should engage with a work and if it sucks dismiss it - but if it's interesting and challenging and absorbing then hey yes you should think about why that is. I'm not on some popist "lol it sounds great I love it who cares what it is/where it comes from/what the context is!". you're kinda just being insulting with that shit.

xp

lol Shakey, how do you think we are identifying the racists here

"oh that band is from Montana, seems fishy..."

come on

I think it's more important that people respect one another than for me to have engagement with any art no matter how great

I know you hate bringin yr dayjob into things, but this is a very... odd position for a professional artist to take.

gotta go but it just occurred to me when someone asked for good "Wagner substitutes", besides Bruckner I should have piped up about Liszt's 13 Symphonic Poems; Wanger quarried many many of the musical building blocks for his mature operas from these (and a lot of the other blocks from... wait for it... Mendelssohn!) and good grief we even talked abt Liszt a bunch and it didn't come to me.

anyway, I'm out, going to see Agalloch tonight!

I don't see anywhere where aero is advocating having a board set up that polices people's music/musicians for offensive

This is pretty much what ILM is tbqf.

^^ was gonna say

which does not make me try to arrive at an aesthetic that will allow me to enjoy & support their nazi music.

maybe you should think about why you were attracted to music made by nazis in the first place lol - like maybe there's something valuable for you to learn by considering, y'know, what you have in common with them

"these guys are nazis but I enjoy their music so I'll put that aside"

also nowhere have I said anything should be put aside - if it's in the work, and the work is good, it should be dealt with and acknowledged

if it overwhelms the work and poisons it, then the work isn't any good and isn't worth your time

the thing is, unless it is excoriating Nazism, I will not find the work to be good

I can appreciate and enjoy fictional, non-reality based fascism because in my mind you are all little puppets for me to play with anyway, but when you start linking to actual historical atrocities in an approving "thumbs up! :-)" manner, I get off the bus.

For some people its very presence in the work is probably sufficiently overwhelming xp

It's not like there's this objective scale of "good <--------> not good," and you weigh it on there and THEN deal with the Nazi stuff.

look this is precisely why these debates about Dick Wanger are good and healthy and interesting - on the one hand there are people who cannot stand his work, the associations are too strong, the implications of anti-semitism in his work too much in the foreground, they ruin it. But others, on this very thread even, can argue against this and delineate how it ISN'T in the work, how the themes and ideas in it can be effectively separated from Wanger's personal views and the music can be enjoyed on a level that has nothing to do with anti-semitism. It comes down to a battle of aesthetics, of interpretation, and this is okay - it is productive to have these arguments. I don't really see how it can be any other way. But as soon as you start saying WAGNER'S MUSIC IS ANTISEMITIC AND SHOULD NOT BE PERFORMED you are on the way to sharing some very unsavory company, far worse than the kind you find in open societies.

Wagner did nothing wrong apart from being enjoyed a lot by Adolf Hitler after his death.

the thing is, unless it is excoriating Nazism, I will not find the work to be good

that's all fine and good, a line in the sand and one I agree with (I can't really think of any explicitly pro-Nazi works I've found to be engaging. I mean Triumph of the Will is fascinating in an academic sense, but I don't really think it's any good. It's clumsy as fuck).

But this is just one line among many. and is also quite a different line from refusing to listen to/read/watch works by people who were privately racist/sexist/homophobic but managed to keep it out of their work

you are saying wagners anti-Semitism is "nothing wrong?

xp to geir

dnftt

XP I suppose it was, but wasn't virtually everyone in Europe an anti-Semitist in the 19th century?

guys can we not

(I continue to be amazed, btw, by the fact that Geir has never been sb'd)

Anyway

Geir stop fucking up this thread. Seriously.

Oh, not the "he likes melody and doesn't care about rhythm so he must be a racist" again.

But really... There is absolutely nothing wrong about Wagner at all. Except Hitler loved him 50 years later. Which he couldn't really help.

http://www.mineralatlas.com/mineral%20photos/A/antimony158a.jpg

Just like it is also wrong to give Nitzsche the blame for some fucked up thoughts by a sick German painter 50 years later as well.