Melody Kneezel
May 3, 2014
Reflection Post: Music and Morality
Music
and morality is an interesting topic that has been argued as early as Plato in The Republic. Other folks have since argued the topic as an
important part of the reasoning behind providing music for students in the
public schools. “Tipper Gore Widens War
on Rock” and “Music and Morality” are two articles that provide interesting
insights into the modern thoughts about music and morality, and the two
articles can easily be compared and contrasted with Plato’s comments about the
importance of music and its relationship to morality.
The
first article, “Tipper Gore Widens War on Rock,” published in 1988 in the New
York Times, primarily discussed the (at that time) current issue of censorship
and warning labels on explicit music.
According to the article, Mrs. Gore had previously taken a stand on
censorship claiming that music should be labeled so that parents and children
could be warned about lyrics being explicit.
At the time the article was published, the discussion was being extended
to MTV music videos as well. The Recording
Industry Association of America had adopted Mrs. Gore’s proposal to provide
warning labels on explicit music. The
unnamed author of the article implied that Mrs. Gore’s project was reaching an
end in the media attention that it was receiving, but her desire was to also
extend the warning labels to any videocassettes. Although the article did not explicitly state
it, it seemed to imply that the reason that Mrs. Gore was striving to censor
explicit music was based in the belief that the type of music that a child
listens to influences his or her character.
The
second article, “Music and Morality,” by Roger Scruton was published in 2010 in
The Spectator. The article discussed an interesting
perspective based on Plato’s belief that music could promote both good morality
and poor morality depending on the style of music. Scruton quoted Plato’s
desire to forbid certain kinds of music by law.
The idea was that changes in musical culture directly apply to changes
in the laws of the culture. According to
Scruton, current pop music is much more based in rhythm, which promotes movement. In contrast, older music was more based in
lyrics and melody, which promoted listening to learn.
In
the current culture, it is considered inappropriate to be judgmental toward
people, so you must appear that you like all sides. However, because pop music is something that
is more about an experience than a lesson, it is must that is performed at
people instead of with people.
Therefore, pop music is forcing others to see the opinions that are
expressed in the music, which is contradictory to an idea of being judgmental
or not. Interestingly, this makes the
morals of music vanish behind the experience of music, which has made our
culture unable to communicate to one another in a civilized manner.
From
the discussions in these articles, it seems that Plato’s discussion about the
right kind of music providing the right kind of morals is still a hot topic
today. In the 1980’s, Mrs. Gore’s
concern with censoring music seemed to be based in the idea that certain music
made children behave in certain ways, which implies that she agreed with Plato
that music influences people’s morality.
Scruton’s article outright stated Plato’s belief, and although he did
not claim it directly, he seemed to imply that today’s culture is less moral
because of its enjoyment of less moral music.
If this was a concern in the 1980s and in 2010, it is certainly a
concern today, as music becomes steadily more immoral and, many times, rather
disgusting. Perhaps popular music should
rethink Plato’s philosophy and apply it more carefully to the music it makes.
References
(1988, January 4). Tipper Gore widens war on rock.
Retrieved from
Scruton, R. (2010, Feburary). Music and morality. Retrieved from
spectator.org/articles/40193/music-and-morality
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