Hahaha, fann þessa grein á netinu,
lesið þetta:
"How can good
people listen to death metal"
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~crm281/badmusic.html
"I've known a number of people who, like myself,
enjoy listening to bands whose imagery, lyrics and general persona
are bound up with death, darkness, suffering, despair, etc. (I'm
thinking more of heavy metal than - say, gansta rap. Since I don't
listen to the latter, I won't even pretend to have any insight into
what appeals to people about this music). The vast majority of
these people are perfectly nice - some might even be called
virtuous. But then there is a sort of puzzle: how can a person be
good when they enjoy something bound up with things that are about
the clearest imaginable examples of bad things?
There's a more general question about such music that I want to
set aside - namely, does this music have negative effects on the
world? With the people I have in mind, the answer is clearly 'no',
but that doesn't entail that the overall effect of this music isn't
a negative one. I'm inclined to deny that there is such an effect,
but if it turned out that there were, that wouldn't answer the
question with which I started. Nor would solid proof that such
music has a neutral or positive overall effect address the
question, since the good people who like the music don't like it
because of its overall effect. The issue is how these people can
like the music for the reasons they in fact do.
There seem to be two sides to the issue. On one hand, the
question is how it is consistent with being a good person to enjoy
this music. On the other, the question is what there is in the
music that a good person could enjoy. I'm pretty sure that a good
answer to the second question will work as an answer to the first,
but it's not obvious that this should be so. For example, one might
say (falsely, I think) that what good people enjoy is just the
ideas of death and suffering the music conveys. Given this, the
first question would still be pressing - so it would be nice to
find an answer to the second question that did all the needed
explanatory work.
That said, here goes: what I think is appealing about this music
is that it captures a certain emotional element which we imagine
being part of certain activities, while at the same time using the
aesthetic context to keep that element isolated from certain other
parts of their activities. For example, when I'm enjoying Cannibal
Corpse's tune, "The Pick-axe Murderers," with its bouncy
dissonance, what I'm enjoying is a certain adrenaline rush which (I
imagine) would be part of doing unspeakable things with a pick-axe.
But I wouldn't be able to enjoy this rush if I were too closely or
realistically associating it with other parts of such action - such
as actually inflicting pain. Were I in a virtual reality device and
having the visual experiences that would go along with such acts,
the rush (if it even occured) would not at all be pleasant, but
instead sickening. As another example, with many Morbid Angel
songs, the experience is something like the sense of power a
world-destroying demon would have, but removed from any sense of
destroying actual people. Note that I'm making a distinction
between the actual experience of listening to the music (which
involves the emotion) and the ideas that might float through one's
head while listening to the music (such as those involving the
sight of blood). Were the objects of the ideas to enter into the
experience, the enjoyment would collapse.
Now for some objections. First, I've just assumed I can take
myself as an example of a good person. That's more than a little
presumptuous, and I think there are some disturbingly strong
arguments for claiming that I am not a good person (e.g. I know
that instead of writing silly essays on music now, I could instead
be outside picking up garbage or writing a check to Planned
Parenthood, and that either of these things would be a better way
to spend this evening, but I'm not doing either). But I'll just
have to leave this objection and move on. Second, one could point
out that there are plenty of good people who like bloody slasher
movies, where there is a full visual experience of the acts
mentioned above. And it isn't inconceivable that some moral saint
might someday spend his or her downtime playing Doom XXIV, which
taps into one's sensory systems to create a maximally realistic
simulation. In any such case, however, it seems that a good person
could only enjoy such experiences as long as he or she maintained a
clear sense of separation from reality. If our future saint said
something like "My, that chainsaw and kitten level was fun. I even
forgot it was a game!", we would be strongly inclined to remove the
title of 'saint.' Taking this objection another way, even though
these people might be enjoying more than the core emotional
experience (e.g. the slasher-film fan enjoys the images), this core
is what I think is essential to enjoyment of the music.
The case seems to be fairly different with music where the
emotions conveyed are those of suffering. In such cases, the
question is less how it is compatible with being a good person that
one could enjoy such music, since few have seen any clash between
being good and suffering. The question here is one of motivation.
Now, it would be implausible to say that in such music (an
especially clear exmaple would be Bethlehem's 'Dictius Te Necare')
the emotional element is itself enjoyable, though it does seem that
the element is isolated in a way similar to that described above.
So what would motivate someone to listen to something which
conveyed a purified emotion of suffering? One possibility is that
the experience of the emotion as coming from something external
source is in line with the dictum that misery loves company. This
doesn't seem to get to the heart of the case, though, since
sometimes one listens to such music and identifies with the
suffering perspective. Another possibility is that there is
something fulfilling or satisfying about pure emotional experiences
(where this doesn't mean 'enjoyable,' in the normal sense). One
might think of cases, e.g. the death of a family member, where one
feels some desire to mourn and feel sad.
I think I'll stop here - I suspect that this is venturing into
territory that some people take seriously and don't just make up
when they're bored."