← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 18924 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-06-30
2005-06-30 20:53 | User Profile
[I]Somewhat interesting musings on the "fascist nature" of heavy metal music from the boys of Frankfurt School...[/I]
[url]http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/hm.html[/url]
[COLOR=Indigo][FONT=Arial][SIZE=5]THEODOR ADORNO & HEAVY METAL[/SIZE]
[--1st half of essay only--]
On your feet! Or on your knees! Here they are, the amazing Blue Ãâyster Cult!
--Blue Ãâyster Cult, On Your Feet or On Your Knees
The purpose of the Fascist formula, the ritual discipline, the uniforms, and the whole apparatus, which is at first sight irrational, is to allow mimetic behavior. The carefully thought out symbols (which are proper to every counterrevolutionary movement), the skulls and disguises, the barbaric drum beats, the monotonous repetition of words and gestures, are simply the organized imitation of magic practices. . . .
--Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment 184-85 [henceforth DE] [/FONT] [/COLOR]
2005-06-30 21:03 | User Profile
Heavy Metal is dead, except in tiny, tiny and marginalized remnants.
The Heavy Metal/Hard Rock world was just a small step away from organized Whitedom....a big no no for the Cabal. Aside from some Satanic references, most Heavy Metal/Hard Rock was about White Superiority....a big no-no for the Cabal.
Enjoy your Dave Matthews and U2 concerts.
2005-06-30 21:57 | User Profile
The essay contains an interesting assertion:
[COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial][B]"25 Metal's general tendency towards messianism probably has Christian roots: "The Christian signifiers in which metal is steeped may not function the same way that they do in the discourses of mainline churches, but they are not arbitrary. A significant part of metal's mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelations" (Weinstein 129). "[/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
Petr
2005-06-30 22:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]The essay contains an interesting assertion:
[COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial][B]"25 Metal's general tendency towards messianism probably has Christian roots: "The Christian signifiers in which metal is steeped may not function the same way that they do in the discourses of mainline churches, but they are not arbitrary. A significant part of metal's mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelations" (Weinstein 129). "[/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
Petr[/QUOTE]Well actually the same might be said of most present forms of occultism, Satanism, even Marxism in a limited sense. But the general tendency of rock music is as this essay notes well known. Its interesting that the late Adorno disputed this occultism, [QUOTE] Adorno's various statements on "myth" in general reveal a rationalism steeped in the values of the (historical) Enlightenment. He has no time for "those who prate about the New Mythos and the irrational powers of community" ("OPM" 48; see also Quasi 51), or for contemporary non-Christian "obscurantist systems"--including many "sects" now associated with the New Age movement--that "do just what the satanic myth of official religion did for men in the Middle Ages" (DE 196). What religion and myth have always done, obviously, is deceive, a "trickery" that "elevates the frail individual to the status of a vehicle of divine substance" (51); and contemporary appeals or attempts to do the same through art are but "afterimage[s] of magic as consolation for disenchantment" (ATh 18).
Adorno's "Theses Against Occultism" ("TAO") is especially revealing of the theoretical underpinnings of his revulsion. His particular targets here are the worst "crystal-ball" sorts of charlatan occultism, and yet his arguments intimate his views, I think, on human irrational impulses in general. Occultism is, of course, "a symptom of the regression in consciousness" (128) and the "metaphysic of dunces[!]" (130); au fond, like all spirituality (one would presume), it entails a fundamental confusion--a false merger--of subject and object, performing as it does a blithely blind subjectivization of objective reality (129, 132). (To accept Adorno's critique, however, one must accept that there is a dualistic distinction between "subject" and "object," and that there is an "objective," presumably material, reality independent of the "subject." But I wander perhaps towards some mystical monism for which Adorno would, no doubt, beat me with a stick.) [/QUOTE] but this writers perspective hints that basically Adorno's antogonisms probably tended toward he general jewish kneejerk tendency to see all evil ultimatey coming from majority Christianity, as the FS influenced writer basically hints as to the real thrust of Adorno's message.
2005-07-01 03:48 | User Profile
[COLOR=Indigo][B][I] - "but this writers perspective hints that basically Adorno's antogonisms probably tended toward he general jewish kneejerk tendency to see all evil ultimatey coming from majority Christianity,"[/I][/B][/COLOR]
Well, let's face it - it was the Gothic church music with its choirs and organs that was the first predecessor of heavy metal. FSers would surely see some "fascist aesthetics" in Bach's [I]Toccata and Fuga[/I]...
Petr
2005-07-01 04:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]Well, let's face it - it was the Gothic church music with its choirs and organs that was the first predecessor of heavy metal. FSers would surely see some "fascist aesthetics" in Bach's [I]Toccata and Fuga[/I]... Petr[/QUOTE]Undoubtedly. I can see though from reading these exerpts from Adorno why he was booed by the 60's radicals and in his college classes in Germany. For a revolutionary ideologue he could sound an awfully lot like an old fuddy-duddy.
2005-07-01 08:10 | User Profile
[FONT=Arial][COLOR=DarkRed][I][B] - "I can see though from reading these exerpts from Adorno why he was booed by the 60's radicals and in his college classes in Germany. For a revolutionary ideologue he could sound an awfully lot like an old fuddy-duddy."[/B][/I][/COLOR][/FONT]
A similar case was the famous anti-comics crusader of the 1950s, Fredric Wertham, who was actually an assimilated German Jewish immigrant originally named [B]Wertheim[/B], and who denounced superhero comics, among other things, for their "fascist aesthetics."
[COLOR=Sienna][B]"Dr. Wertham does accuse Superman of being a fascist, Batman and Robin of being a homosexual fantasy of a man and a boy living together, and Wonder Woman of being just plain kinky (judging from the early years of that strip, with all the downright astonishing emphasis on bondage and submission, I'd have to say he called that one pretty well)."[/B][/COLOR]
[url]http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html[/url]
Yes, ideologies are not always so clear-cut simple. For example, one of the pioneers of heavy metal was Jimi Hendrix, who in turn expressed his admiration of people like Richard Strauss and Wagner:
[COLOR=Red][B]"And there would also be a classical component in the future music of Jimi Hendrix. “Strauss and Wagner are going to form the background of my music. Floating in the sky above it will be the blues.” [/B] [/COLOR]
[url]http://www.richardnathan.com/walk/hendrix.html[/url]
Petr
2005-07-02 10:18 | User Profile
[I]More on this subject: the latest JEWSWEEK issue contains a classically paranoid Jewish article on the current popularity of a German power metal band "Rammstein":[/I]
[url]http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Article%5El1754&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Articles&[/url]
[FONT=Arial]
[SIZE=5]Rammstein's rage [/SIZE]
[B]If a nation's pop music is any indication of the "soul" of its people, chart-topping Industrial band Rammstein raises disturbing questions about the endurance of neo-Nazism in Germany.
by Claire Berlinski [/B]
A nation's music, it has often been remarked, expresses its soul, and bears an important relationship to its social, moral and political life. Thus did Plato devote great attention to the subject of musical education in The Republic, warning that "styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions."
His views were echoed by Aristotle, Rousseau and Nietzsche, all of whom acknowledge the unique capacity of music to stir human emotions, for good or ill.
Nowhere has the relationship between music and the soul been more evident than in Germany. The historian Edward Gibbon observed that the barbarians of Germania were fascinated by music. The German, Nietzsche remarked, imagines even God singing songs, and Wagner believed that the German approaches music as "the holiest precinct in his life."
These days, Germans are listening to Rammstein. What that says about the state of the contemporary German soul might give us cause for pause.
Rammstein is comprised of six working-class musicians, all born and raised behind the Berlin Wall. Their music blends metal, industrial, techno, and classical music techniques, employing a vast range of sound effects, from sampled ghostly wailing and chanting crowds to instrumental passages played by one of Germany's best full symphony orchestras. Every one of Rammstein's albums has topped the German charts and set unprecedented sales records. They are the best-selling German-language band in history.
In both form and imagery, Rammstein's lyrics have distinct roots in German poetry. One source is the new concreteness of the 1920s, of whom Georg Trakl is the best-known exponent.
These poets aimed to represent reality in concrete images, and their reality, as it happened, revolved around a preoccupation with blood and smashed faces. This influence can be seen, for example, in the band's eponymous song "Rammstein":
"Rammstein/ A man is burning/ Rammstein/ The smell of flesh lies in the air/ Rammstein/ A child is dying/ Rammstein/ The sun is shining," and in songs such as "Do You Want to See the Bed in Flames," and "White Flesh".
Rammstein's lyrics also have something in common with the poetry of Gottfried Benn, the Berlin venereal disease expert expelled by the Nazi party for perversion: "Red welts on white skin/I hurt you/and you cry loudly/Now you are scared and I am ready/your white flesh becomes my scaffold/in my heaven there is no G-d."
Of course, these images have a far more obvious historic antecedent in German cultural history: The fascination with occultism, death-worship, blood, ferocity, nihilism, powerlust and sadism found its fullest expression, as everyone knows, in the Third Reich.
The band's concerts have a familiar aspect, too. When lead singer Lindemann hisses hypnotically, "We want you to trust us/ We want you to believe everything from us," the crowd responds to him in frenzied but perfect unison: "We hear you! We see you! We feel you!" while pumping their fists in the air.
The song "Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier" (Left-Two-Three-Four) is introduced by the sound of marching jackboots. During the refrain, Lindemann urges the crowd to "Think with your heart." The Nationalist-Socialist Speaker's Corps used those words exactly when addressing their audiences. The video that accompanies this song depicts ants marching and assembling in an animated homage to the famous Nuremburg rally footage in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Another Rammstein video features scenes from Olympische Spiele, a documentary commissioned by the Nazis in 1936 as "a song of praise to the ideals of National Socialism."
The musicians claim to be incensed by the persistent intimations that their music has any political resonance at all, no less a sinister one. "It's just reverse discrimination because we're German," said keyboardist Lorenz. "If we were Spanish or Dutch, there would be no problem."
"Our music," guitarist Kruspe-Bernstein told me, "is German, and that's what comes through... No other Germans do it the way we do it. We're the only ones who do it the way Germans should. We're almost too German for Germany."
The musicians say they're fed up with national soul-searching and self-reproach. "It's time to stop being ashamed about what comes out of Germany," said guitarist Landers, "and to establish a normal way of dealing with being German."
After all, added Kruspe-Bernstein, "the Americans aren't ashamed about the fact that they killed the Indians." If the Germans had killed the Indians, he complained, they would have to be ashamed."
"Our music," Landers concluded, "is about the revival of a healthy German self-esteem."
The members of Rammstein reveal in these comments both the never-ending guilt of anyone born German, and the growing, peevish disgruntlement that guilt provokes. Rammstein captures perfectly the sentiments of a nation at war with its forbidden impulses.
But is this music genuinely dangerous, as Plato warned? Perhaps these men are nothing more than harmless German clowns. It is hard to say. Certainly, Rammstein has returned the aesthetic of the far Right -- once completely taboo -- to German pop culture. Last September, far-Right and neo-Nazi parties scored major victories in Germany's regional elections, particularly in the formerly Communist East. Perhaps the cultural transformation associated with Rammstein's "new German hardness" helped these parties return to the mainstream.
The assertion is impossible to prove. But if you listen to Rammstein's music, you will suspect that it didn't hurt.
[I]A longer version of this article appears in the current issue of Azure.
Claire Berlinski is a Paris-based novelist. [/I] [/FONT]
2005-07-02 12:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Laughable as such a rumor is, its very existence is significant, revealing a desire on the part of the band's fans [u]to be mystified[/u]. (And oh, yes, I have tried playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards, in search of Satanic messages: but all I did was ruin my turntable's drive belt and stylus.)[/QUOTE] I have no idea whether they are intended or not, but if those who do hear them are mistaken, they were not being totally unreasonable.
Sample for yourself:
[url]http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/stairway.php[/url]
And scroll down for a few more here
[url]http://www.wootang.net/backmask/classicrock.html[/url]
2005-07-02 16:31 | User Profile
So, is Uncle Ernie the band manager? :tongue: This comes straight out of The Who's rock opera "Tommy."
[QUOTE=Petr][font=Arial]The band's concerts have a familiar aspect, too. When lead singer Lindemann hisses hypnotically, "We want you to trust us/ We want you to believe everything from us," the crowd responds to him in frenzied but perfect unison: [u]"We hear you! We see you! We feel you!"[/u] while pumping their fists in the air.
*Claire Berlinski is a Paris-based novelist. * [/font][/QUOTE]Hmm, wonder if her dad was a rabbi. I also wonder if the Rammstein groupies play pinball to "complete the scene." The author obviously fears Rammstein as a proto German new Messiah. I wonder why Germans not being ashamed to be German bothers her so. Doesn't she like beer, wurst, and kraut? I sure do.
"See me, feel me, touch me, heal me."