Ch 15

[Joseph Tracy]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 8:50 AM, Henry Musikar wrote:

> Fol-de-rol, and fiddle-de-dee!  Nonsense! Huxley was right.  In the  
> quoted
> passage, Huxley was not suggesting that novels are pure, but only  
> that music
> could be absolute, sheer "nonsense," and still be enjoyed and even
> respected.  And in my opinion, movies and TV are not too far behind  
> in that
> respect.
>
> Na-na-na, na-na-na, hey-hey, goodbye!
>
> Henry Mu
> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20/
>
I hear him saying it is particularly easy to attach  nonsensical   
commercial propaganda to music and have it retain "intellectual   
conviction" .  I think this is not a meaningful insight. There is no  
important intellectual conviction that Pepsi's got a lot to give, and  
what you end up with is a rather more obvious argument  that  
commercial appeals are enhanced by aesthetic pleasure.  OK and what  
does this say about music?   What is the meaning of the word advantage 
( put in a favorable or superior position) . Advantage over what?  
What is shameful to write or express  in music that is not also  
shamelessly and successfully written or expressed in essays,  
speeches, graphic  imagery, poetry,  stories etc.?  Nonsense is  
enjoyed and respected by many in every medium, written, spoken,  
heard  etc.
> And in my opinion, movies and TV are not too far behind in that
> respect.
In terms of money invested, movies and TV are way ahead, for the  
obvious reason that they can use all the  aesthetically pleasurable  
elements of graphic design , story, dramatic action, dialogue and  
music in a skillfully arranged package.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy
>
> On Apr 13, 2009, at 12:03 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:
>
>> "For the commercial propagandist, as for his colleagues in the fields
>> of politics and religion, music possesses yet another advantage.
>> Nonsense which it would be shameful for a reasonable being to write,
>> speak or hear spoken can be sung or listened to by that same rational
>> being with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual
>> conviction...."
>>
>> --Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1959)
>
> I find this a bit snobbish on Huxley's part, since novels  often
> serve the same propagandistic purposes, and nonsense is foisted in
> every medium. My POV would be that the problem he describes is more
> about the different motives behind art  or commercial
> entertainment.   Kinda weird that Huxley has this classical wariness
> of the ecstatic, but ends up writing a book length commercial for
> mescaline.
>
>