Posted on 03/04/2010 12:46:31 PM PST by ShadowAce
In recent years Britain has become the "Willy Wonka" of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for policing the populace. But our weaponization of classical music - where Mozart, Beethoven, and other greats have been turned into tools of state repression - marks a new low.
We're already the kings of CCTV. An estimated 20 per cent of the world's CCTV cameras are in the UK, a remarkable achievement for an island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world's inhabitable landmass.
A few years ago some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over the age of 20 but which is so high-pitched, so piercing, and so unbearable to the delicate ear drums of anyone under 20 that they cannot remain in earshot. It's designed to drive away unruly youth from public spaces, yet is so brutally indiscriminate that it also drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers, and wakes sleeping babes.
Police in the West of England recently started using super-bright halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or loitering in parks, in the hope that they will become so bamboozled that (when they recover their eyesight) they will stagger home.
And recently police in Liverpool boasted about making Britain's first-ever arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by Britain and America's robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.
Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny. And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.
In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was "subjecting" (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In "special detentions," the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)
One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably "go into adulthood associating great music - the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth - with a punitive slap on the chops." This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think "Danger!" whenever they hear Mozart's Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.
The classical music detentions at West Park School are only the latest experiment in using and abusing some of humanity's greatest cultural achievements to reprimand youth.
Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee.
Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of the UK to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local railway company decided to do something about the "problem" of "youths hanging around" its train stations. The young people were "not getting up to criminal activities," admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they were "swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers." So the railway company unleashed "blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi."
Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. "They seem to loathe [the music]," said the proud railway guy. "It's pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing." He said the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich. (That last one I can kind of understand.)
In Yorkshire in the north of England, the local council has started playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at "troublesome bus-stops" between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Shops in Worcester, Bristol, and North Wales have also taken to "firing out" bursts of classical music to ward of feckless youngsters.
In Holywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters who were spitting in the street and doing graffiti. And apparently classical music defeats street art: The graffiti levels fell.
Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a "punitive slap on the chops" for low youth has come true. In Burgess's 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to "the Ludovico Technique" by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.
Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that "Ludwig van" did nothing wrong, he "only made music." He tells the doctors it's a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.
The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite's authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They're so desperate to control youth - but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them - that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young people's intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their willingness to engage with humanity's highest forms of art, that they imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The dangerous message being sent to young people is clear: 1) you are scum; 2) classical music is not a wonder of the human world, it's a repellent against mildly anti-social behavior.
Exactly.
I also remember reading that if you play Mozart in your dairy barn, the cows are more contented and give more milk.
"Passions, whether violent or not, must never be expressed in such a way as to disgust, and music must never offend the ear."
Families can raise good children, not "villages". Hillary was wrong.
Clockwork Orange anyone?
This from the place that produced Tallis, Byrd and Taverner. Proof they are now nothing more than a bunch of moronic boobs.
“music must never offend the ear”
Good thing he never heard rap.
When the shock value of classical music wears off, they can try reading scripture over the speakers. Godless youth would find that very repelling.
Ain't that the truth? The observation also applies to American pop music. What melody-free crap that is.
Don’t tell me you actually classify (c)Rap as “music”...
Variables, variables. Shheeeesh! By the way, they loved Joni Mitchell. There’s no accounting for taste.
When I started reading this I thought of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
Years ago a store owner found that by playing Mozart, and other good music at the entrance of his store, he could get rid of the rif-raf in the area.
I love clasical music!
Some of these kids got detention almost every day and it had started turning into "the screw-up club" by the time I got there -- almost like a badge of (dis)honor for the kids that they were enjoying. That changed when I started playing 5 minutes of Wagner when they seriously misbehaved.
OK, I admit it -- when you have no other tools available to keep them in line, this kind of programming works. The problem is that I had to endure it too, and I detest Wagner!
***some of those old yodeling cowboy songs (the song used against the Martians in the movie, “Mars Attacks”).***
Ohh! visions of Andy Divine playing his harmonica and frightning away outer space aliens in the TWILIGHT ZONE pops into mind!
I had the exact same thought.
I cannot listen to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony without thinking of A Clockwork Orange.
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