When Was The Last Time You Were Offended By Music?

Part of the reason this question interests me is that I feel like I'm searching for something that will offend me. Maybe if I'm looking to be offended it doesn't count, but I like the idea of envelopes, even personal ones, being pushed.

Eminem doesn't cut it. Certain people talk about how offensive Eminem is, but then critics kiss his ass -- what would it take to offend these critics? That's why I wish Eminem wasn't such a coward & that he'd use his position to make some observations about race relations in the U.S. Instead he says "Nigger isn't even in my vocabulary." It's a good thing Lenny Bruce didn't thin

I kinda like the album though, and am hardly ever offended by such nonsense in other songs.

Uh, offensive -- I can think of plenty of *people* in music who offend me, but the music per se? Cripes, I dunno -- white power crap offends me by existing, but at the same time I can't say I've ever listened to it, to my knowledge, so it's a conceptual if understandable offense. Contemporary Christian music, meanwhile, just makes me giggle. Etc.

With people like Eminem, I don't really feel offended at all. Listening to Kim, it's pretty obvious it's about someone who's pretty weak and powerless who just comes off as pathetic creature in the end.

What I find it pretty rich when these aging boomer critics can get up in arms over him. Can they honestly say Under My Thumb is any more worthy or admirable? Many of the songs during the rock era have been deeply misogynistic, but suddenly people become outraged because Eminem goes into the specifics instead of sticking to the general.

Trouble was one of the singles of the decade.

I'm not *sure* that's how he's thinking, of course, but I think there'd be something in it if he was. Clearly certain kinds of 'irritation' are *not* the point here. If I'm 'offended' by the fact that not all Lloyd Cole's songs of the last decade are equally up to scratch, that's not relevant to the question. What are relevant, I take it, are matters of 'content' - politics, world- views, etc.

And it seems to me that we (or I) don't get so offended as we might expect, maybe because: 1. We don't feel that the offending music has power over us; we feel secure in our own beliefs; 2. maybe, alternatively, we are no longer so bothered about our own 'beliefs' as we were.

In a word, these things don't seem to matter quite as they did. But that's possibly a purely personal response, which I seek to foist on no-one else.

Still, I have tried to think of what 'content' I still find offensive, and come up with two answers in the work of Belle and Sebastian. These seem to matter because it's a body of work that means quite a lot to me.

a) the excess of 'smut': 'it was the best sex that she ever had', etc. Lines like that make we wince. Put it away! In fact, *swearing* in songs offends me, 'aesthetically' at least. There is room for another thread here: should swearing be banned from pop?

b) the excess of religiosity. To ageing atheists like me, endless references to 'Jesus', 'the Bible', etc from the very talented but god-bothering Murdoch are an irritant at least.

unfortunate since it was the one memorable-sounding song on _bona drag_.

http://members.aol.com/blissout/fave2000.htm

Personally, I like the Ween tracks and don't think there's anything in a song that could offend me. It's a tricky area though... any comments?

pissed off both because of the length of it, and because the music was so simply godawful...

At first, I was appalled...then I remembered how Cronenberg made a movie about people who get turned on by the idea of car crashes.
I can't wait to hear Depeche Mode do a cover version.

I'm personally fascinated when music offends my sensibilities. Maybe thats why I enjoy Zappa. Maybe thats why I have to throw Trout Mask Replica on the turntable every couple months. Maybe that's why I'm listening to the No Wave collection No New York right now. It'll bother me and I want to know why. It makes me think.

Now there is music so predictable and poppy, music that lacks any sort of real emotion that offends me and is not in the least bit interesting. I call it MTV. 30 second sound clips of horrible pop hooks is not interesting or listenable to me.

Overall I think Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music is the most offensive thing I have ever heard. I can sit through Trout Mask Replica or most No Wave banging on instruments, but I have yet to make it all the way through Metal Machine Music and I don't really intend to. I got the point I think about 35 sec. into it.

offended? -- don't don't think so

Gangsta rap offends me. It offends me that kids in my area (Scotland) dress like them and imitate them when I can't see how middle class high school urchins can possibly relate to life in the ghetto. I also think the misogyny and homophobia expressed by this genre sends out a horrible message, as does the imagery of guns and drugs. It just sits uncomfortably with me.

50,000 Scots will cram in Glasgow Green in August to watch a line up comprised of Red Hot Chillis and Foo Fighters. That kinda offends me. I mean, what can THEY possibly say to ME about my life? I'm not from their side of the ocean, and most of the people watching them will only know about California from movies.

(I'm pretty sure Ms. Peaches is a man in drag, but that's neither here nor there.)

Bryson: No, I wouldn't be as offended. I'd probably just uncomfortably laugh it off and tell them they were acting stupid.

how does it compare to 'eat that chicken'

I do think it's worth pointing out that I've only ever encountered this song as a video - viewing the song as a "wacky children's character" is a little less of an immediate impulse when you're dealing with the kind of visual signifiers the video offers up, some of which (sign reading "getto", incongruity between setting and kids' clothes) draw an awful lot of attention to the racial component.

Yeah, but the video doesn't exist in a vacuum--anyone with even a passing knowledge of race relations in America recognizes "Black people love fried chicken" as, like, the number one stereotype about American blacks. It doesn't take a dirty, racist mind to make the connection.

And when it comes down to it, the stuff Ms Peaches is playing with is really not stuff to be worried about: the character is a nice lady! There's nothing really bad or vulgar about her: she sings one song about making a tasty fried chicken dinner and one song about how it's fun to take baths! And yet that kind of twists up people's stomachs and makes them uncomfortable, while the Billboard top 100 is full of people playing out and playing with versions of blackness (especially black masculinity) that are surely way more damaging and problematic.

I don't know that I can defend certain abhorrent facets of the versions of blackness we see on the Sucker-Free Countdown, but I can at least say that many of those characters are presented as intelligent and "strong." The woman in "Fry That Chicken," regardless of how nice she might be or how good a cook she might be, is dumb and subservient--maybe not explicitly, but the stereotypes she's playing on (Mammy!) imply those.

So I'm not sure how offended we should be by Ms Peaches; I'm not sure what's in there that's so damaging, apart from the fear that white people might actually take this stuff as a representation of what all black people are like. (Which would be their fault, really -- plus, as a vision of What Black People Are Like, taking care of kids and being proud of your ability to make tasty southern cuisine is really not so terrible!)

I do think you're right; in a perfect world, Ms. Peaches isn't offensive, and among a group of people well-versed in the complexities of American race relations, and who can themselves claim a complete lack of racism, maybe it would be funny. But it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable, as a white person, to watch something like this--especially along with other even more clueless whites. Why? Because of the racial power dynamics in this country, couple with the uncomfortable feeling that a similar scene--a set of upper middle-class whites laughing at a black stereotype--would be entirely, unambiguously racist fifty years ago.

Now, obviously the situation is more complicated than that, especially considering the complex nature of self-stereotyping and the questions regarding the relationship of humor, power and stereotypes. And I don't think we necessarily disagree. I just think it's worth pointing out the worrisome implications of this video, and its popularity among--well, among whoever.

In a weird coincidence, after having this arguement, the exact same issue, came up in my AfAm Lit class today regarding Countee Cullen's criticism of Langston Hughes' "jazz poems".

FFS, that's sub-Momusian at best.

"advocate"

For instance: it's interesting to me that a lot of people seem to initially assume that Ms Peaches is supposed to be a joke -- that someone's being made fun of. But based on what little contextual stuff I've seen -- and based on her other video, about taking baths -- it would appear that these are low-budget children's entertainment, aimed very specifically at southern black children. And as a crazy children's character, Ms Peaches isn't really that weird: it's not hard to imagine how a child might relate to her as a sort of wacky, tacky, aunt-like figure. On that level, she's not much stranger or more insulting than any number of white children's characters, and the guy's camp version of femininity isn't really much more extreme than that of many white drag queens.

So I'm interested in people's responses to it, because there's this assumption that there's something ugly and wrong about Ms Peaches. And that frightens me, a little, because there's technically nothing ugly or wrong about the character. We hear up above that she's "dumb and subservient," but in the videos she's neither of those things: she's witty, funny, and confident in her cooking skills, and she cares for children, and the children enjoy playing with her. We hear that the video somehow plays into notions of black people as lazy, but this is a video that depicts a lone woman cooking dinner for dozens of hungry children! So surely when an image somehow reminds people of the exact opposite of its content, there are some questions to be asked?

So as much as I totally understand people's concern about this -- I feel it too, Timmy -- I still want some sort of justification for why we're all set to read Ms Peaches as ugly, as negative, as a problem, especially when the whole point of the videos seems to be for her to be a positive, child-friendly character. (I mean, a song about taking baths, for god's sake.) The assumption of ugliness here seems important to me, too, because the fact is that this country contains plenty of wonderful black women who maybe dress and talk a little like Ms Peaches, and they go around with people looking at them as some kind of problem -- like there's something ugly and embarrassing about their whole existence -- even though there's nothing necessarily wrong with them: for the most part they'll be nice people and mothers and grandmothers and dealing with their lives like anyone else.

None of that is to say that I'm that fond of the character, or that I like a lot of the details. (But even in defense of like the "GETTO" sign, nobody raises these complaints about the Geto Boys, and nobody raises these complaints about Fat Albert hanging in a junkyard setting, and I'm generally in favor of black Americans having the leeway of self-definition in acknowledging and joking on and toying with the long history of enforced poverty they'll be dealing with whether they toy around with it or not!) I guess I'm just surprised by people's readiness to see Ms Peaches as a thing of horrific ugliness, which she's really not.

So if I'm going to choose to be worried about representations of What Blackness Is, and arguments for What Blackness Can Be Next, gosh golly wow should I probably be more worried about million-selling films and records that make much more virulent and actively negative and problematic ones! Cause I think be prouder of an America where every black person was like the character "Ms Peaches" than one in which every black person was like the character "50 Cent."

this has always been true. embarrassed by the country cousins. you can't kill the good stuff though. their is still a thriving moonshine business in philadelphia.

But to me what matters a lot less than the video's intent is its effects. I'd like to believe that it's a video aimed at southern kids (although what I've heard is that Jadakiss--a New Yorker--is behind the whole thing, which, if true, adds atop of everything else the complexities of regionalism), but regardless of its intended audience, the video's been received on the internet as an adult attempt at humor--either as an explicitly/implicitly racist creation or as some kind of representation (regardless of how accurate) of how southern Blacks act and/or live.

So I'm interested in people's responses to it, because there's this assumption that there's something ugly and wrong about Ms Peaches. And that frightens me, a little, because there's technically nothing ugly or wrong about the character. We hear up above that she's "dumb and subservient," but in the videos she's neither of those things: she's witty, funny, and confident in her cooking skills, and she cares for children, and the children enjoy playing with her. We hear that the video somehow plays into notions of black people as lazy, but this is a video that depicts a lone woman cooking dinner for dozens of hungry children! So surely when an image somehow reminds people of the exact opposite of its content, there are some questions to be asked?

Maybe I was being unfair by calling her "dumb and subservient." But I don't think it's unfair to say that Ms. Peachez is pretty clearly engaging (lightheartedly) with the "mammy" stereotype: cooking fried chicken, good-nature, good-hearted. But what comes along with the "positive" aspects of Mammy is the rest of the baggage: the subservience and the ignorance. Regardless of whether or not she displays those in the video, those aspects of the stereotype exist, and it's difficult not to associate her character with them. I mean: stereotypes are easy shortcuts; stereotypical characters don't have to reveal all of their characteristics because once they've been identified as members of stereotype A, the characteristics are implicit. The mammy character doesn't have to show subservience for us to see it in her. So yeah, she's not being explicitly, obviously subservient--but I don't think it's ridiculous to infer that about her character.

Now, yeah, you're right: there's nothing "technically" wrong about the video; and I feel fairly confident that the intentions of the filmmakers weren't explicitly (or even implicitly) racist. A close watching obviously reveals what you've said--Ms. Peachez is a total sweetheart and, it seems, a very good cook. But really, I'm troubled not by the video. I'm worried about its reception on the internet and among my (college-aged white) peers, for whom the character and the issues raised are far less complex than they deserve to be. (I'm very purposefully not making any judgments about black people's feelings regarding the video, which are themselves quite complex and manifold and not something I feel comfortable extolling on).

So if I'm going to choose to be worried about representations of What Blackness Is, and arguments for What Blackness Can Be Next, gosh golly wow should I probably be more worried about million-selling films and records that make much more virulent and actively negative and problematic ones! Cause I think be prouder of an America where every black person was like the character "Ms Peaches" than one in which every black person was like the character "50 Cent."

Well, "negative" in the sense that they go against prevailing white middle-class values, right? Not that as a white, middle-class college student I don't secretly subscribe to those values, but I think we should be up front about the reasons why we think Ms. Peachez is "positive" and 50 Cent is "negative." (N.B. Obviously that's a more complicated question than the easy postmodern spin I put on it. And not really one that we're talking about. But I couldn't resist.) (And again, for me, Ms. Peachez is simply an updating of the Mammy character, and with that carries Mammy's baggage of idiocy--50 Cent, too, is arguably an updating not of a specific blackface character but of the stereotype of American blacks as violent, sexual thugs & predators or whatever. But at least 50 Cent is master of his own destiny to some extent. Again, another argument for another time.)

One thing, though: when I say something is "negative," I do not mean "goes against prevailing white middle-class values" -- grant me the credit of believing that I mean "goes against my own values." My own values put childcare ahead of violence whether middle-class white people agree or not. (And judging by middle-class white reception of 50 Cent versus Ms Peaches, it's kind of an open question which one white people prefer to watch black people do!)

By the way, I don't really like fried chicken. Or baths.

white people everybody prefers to watch people of all races act like violent buffoons.

Rodney OTM way up thread "It's not really the idealogical content of the song (that fried chicken is good) that bothers me, but the way that it's presented."

i totally see your points, nabisco, but seeing this video divorced from the accrued stereotypes of generations requires me to travel to some vacuum-sealed realm of pure reason that is beyond me, and probably most people (but that abstract reason thing is totally your deal anyway)

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn

OTM. Very.

[Chorus]
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late and to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When the head of state didn't play guitar,
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and when radio was king,
When accountants didn't have control
And the media couldn't buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didnt know everything

[Chorus]

When popstars still remained a myth
And ignorance could still be bliss
And when God Saved the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale
When my mom and dad were in their teens
and anarchy was still a dream
and the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail

[Chorus]

When record shops were on top
and vinyl was all that they stocked
and the super info highway was still drifting out in space
kids were wearing hand me downs,
and playing games meant kick arounds
and footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face

[Chorus]

I was born too late to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

Haha: would you let your kids hang out with a filthy, embittered monster who lives in a trash can, or drop them off at a day-care center run by a dinosaur?

two weekends a month

"Some of my best friends are bastards like you;
At least they're not neurotic too."

If Bright Eyes delivered those lines, I'd shrug them off as run-of-the mill emo fluff. But Rose Melberg has such a sweet, naive voice that even the most mild curse word falls from her lips like a grenade from the hand of a child soldier. Profanity and tweeness are uncomfortable allies.

HORSESHIT.

Fuck this. Fuck it right in the eye. Ugh.

Somedays I don't know what's worse: ironic faux-appreciation for things past, or over-earnest lionization of things that never fucking existed in the first place.

"reminiscent of the closing scenes of Bunuel's L'Age d'Or" - bag up whatever you're smoking or snorting, flush it, get a pint of tap water down your neck, and go to bed.

I can't remember ever being morally offended by music, really. Although it's very often that I find things to be artistically offensive shit.

Thank you for the powerful and unique perspective that necessitated the revival of this thread.

I get offended by music all the time, and I find it unneccessary. Music in 2006 shouldn't have to offend.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 4 November 2006 23:58 (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You are a very confused/confusing person.

Thank you for the powerful and unique perspective that necessitated the revival of this thread.

However, I do find your moral indignation about someone reviving a message board thread without sufficient gravitas for such a major occasion pretty pathetic. Maybe offensive.

When was the last time you were offended by a sock puppet?