The Civic Ethicist's Journal: ETHICS ROCK

By BARCODE 2x

I got into a huge argument at a dinner party. A young woman spoke out against rock n' roll. She spoke specifically about the Rolling Stones, and how they do nothing for her. Rock music, in her esteem, was unimportant and unappealing. Fine.

So why did I leap out of my seat and throw the table over, sending salad bowls and plates flying, wine glasses smashing red against the walls, my own dining room suddenly resembling a blood-spattered murder scene? Why? Because this young woman's opinion on music is much more important than anyone else's in the world. I am not being sarcastic. She works in a record store.

And not some corporate media super box store. A real-deal used record store. It is problematic, and sent me into a rage, because she is more than a store clerk. She is the curator of a new kind of music museum. As an ethicist, it became my job to challenge her claims against rock n' roll.

As I prodded her on, she began saying that she even likes Country music better than rock. Like what?, I howled. Johnny Cash, she said. I asserted that the only reason she likes Johnny Cash is that she thinks she is supposed to. Furthermore, Johnny Cash, I declared, is rock n' roll. Electric guitars, blues and folk roots, no cowboy hat. He has been co-opted by rock n' roll culture. He is cowboy rock.

I stumbled across the room, over broken glass and piles of smattered casserole, over oil slicks of salad dressing, to the stereo, and promptly turned on the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. The lyrics, I stated, are as significant and profound as anything Shakespeare ever wrote. "I rode a tank, held a general's rank/When the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank".

A collage of Stones lyrics poured out of me. Most importantly, I caterwauled, "I'm free, to choose who I please, any old time/I'm free to please who I choose, any old time." I theorized that living theatre genius Tom Stoppard, Mick Jagger's best friend at the time, had a hand in writing some of this. It is divine, too brilliant. Rock n' roll is the greatest achievement of Western Civilization. I defy anyone who tells me different. I told my guest that she is full of shit, and that she simply likes what she likes. Arguing about musical taste is like arguing your favorite color. It is like arguing about what is the best season of the year. It is subjective. She told me that I, also, have a right to like what I like. I howled "Oh, do I? Hey, everyone, I have the right to like what I like!"

I have decided to lay off the absinthe for a little while. The stuff makes you ugly. As my dinner guests emerged, crying, from my home, my wife and I discussed the ethical problems of rock music.

She feels strange, she tells me, that she can love Mick Jagger's music as much as she does, knowing that he is part of the misogynistic rock culture. He is the King of Rock n' Roll, one could argue, and he is a loveable, charismatic genius. In another age, he would have been like a Byron or a Blake. I told her okay, you have a few options to make yourself more comfortable:

1. Stop listening to the music. Boycott it if you feel uncomfortable, as a woman, enjoying the music.
2. Learn to separate the music from the musician. The artists who create the music are no longer in the same world with their creations. When the music is recorded, it slips away into another dimension, and becomes a subconscious, independent entity. They own it, but no longer are responsible for its life.
3. Seek out the work of artists whom you deem ethical and proper. Seek music created by people living a responsible life. We came up with no names.

These solutions are unsatisfactory to her. She said that musicians need to take responsibility for their work, and come clean and enter a dialogue about the destructive power of the music. I argue that the music itself has no power. We give it all its power, and we have the right to take that power away. Music and art are byproducts of the culture. The art of the times is raucous and irresponsible, so let that serve as a reflection of ourselves. If we choose to listen, then we should appreciate the verisimilitude, the truthfullness of the work. Whether it is the poetry of the Romantic Age, or the art of the Renaissance, the values of the culture are what fills the art and give it power.

I am on a vast, years-long journey to understanding art and ethics. It begins at home. It was not until the next day, after seeing Pirate Radio, that I began to see my wife's point. The music, I still believe, is not the problem. It is the culture that surrounds it. Rock n' Roll has its ethical pitfalls. It has its dangers. Not in the music itself, which is an ethereal creation of the artist. The way it is packaged, sold, and disrtibuted. The way it is used. The psy-ops of it, the lifestyle that accompanies it. This is problematic. And yet, why are we so drawn to it? Is the danger part of the appeal?