For some reason, it caught on, was accepted much earlier in books and movies. Violence. Vulgarity. Not so much sex, because as everyone knows, sex is drugs is rock and roll.
But even today, I feel myself spending far more mental energy justifying why I listen to “obscene music” than why I watch obscene movies or read obscene books, and I think society’s similarly stratified.
What made me think of this most recently is an album I’ve been onto by an 18-year-old kid from SoCal who goes by Tyler, the Creator. The record’s called Bastard. The lyrical content, layered over unbelievably rendered, thick, abrasive homemade beats and delivered in an almost too-deep sneer of a flow, mostly covers fantasies of patricide and drugs, misogyny and self-doubt. Remarkably self-effacing and raw to the point of exposure, Tyler almost dares the listener to buy into the extremes of his behavior.
But let’s face it, you can’t. He’s a kid who skateboards; he’s younger than I am. Yet, here he is, leading a crew of kids like him who go by Odd Future Wolf Gang, a seemingly inexplicable concentration of precocity that features the talented Earl Sweatshirt, Domo Genesis and Hodgy Beats alongside Tyler, among many others.
Does it make it worse that he’s young? Better? I don’t know, but I think this trait helps tap into why others are suspicious of contextually dangerous music to begin with: they see lyrical music as child’s play—the medium of self-destructive youths and so-called rebels, whether it’s anarchists and punk or drug-dealers and rap or stoners and psych-rock.
To really nail down the discrepancy, you have to think about it in comparisons. My favorite novel, The Tunnel by William H. Gass, is narrated by one of the most depraved and flawed characters ever created, and at the same time, it’s an impossibly beautiful, triumphant attempt to confront humanity in its own constant debasement, more reflective of life than any other art I’ve seen to date. One of my favorite films, Blue Velvet by David Lynch, has sex scenes shocking in their cruelty and visceral almost beyond belief, but the film is commonly recognized as a masterpiece and its maker an auteur.
Few would balk at either of these choices, though those who have read The Tunnel and reacted in disgust, as some reviewers did, might take up their critical cross against me. And it’s important to draw a line here: I’m not talking about pornography, or snuff, or artless carnage; I can’t watch Saw or Hostel or torture-porn, and I’m pretty easily freaked out.
It’s something about hearing words, just words and music, stark and naked in their sharpness, that allows them to hit people with an emotional bluntness more acute than any message augmented by visuals or needing to be pulled from a page. And they pervade. Society can slap an R on a gross movie, but somehow nothing can dam up the trickle of music.
I could probably write a book on this subject, and there’s a bunch of other sub-topics I wish I could cover in the span of this Editor’s Note. There are elements of racism in these reactions, and ageism and class bias and the most basic simple fear, the fear of words so forcefully delivered into one’s head, the fear of their power. But it’s art, and art’s scary.
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