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Using Classical Music As a Form of Social Control
cyberfringe writes "Classical music is being used increasingly in Great Britain as a tool for social control and a deterrent to bad behavior. One school district subjects badly behaving children to hours of Mozart in special detention. Unsurprisingly, some of these youth now find classical music unbearable. Recorded classical music is blared through speakers at bus stops, outside stores, train stations and elsewhere to drive away loitering youth. Apparently it works. Detentions are down, graffiti is reduced, and naughty youth flee because they find classical music repugnant."
You are aware that A Clockwork Orange was fiction, aren't you? It was a movie and not a documentary.
John
from A Clockwork Orange:
Alex: No. No! NO! Stop it! Stop it, please! I beg you! This is sin! This is sin! This is sin! It's a sin, it's a sin, it's a sin!
Dr. Brodsky: Sin? What's all this about sin?
Alex: That! Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music!
Dr. Branom: Are you referring to the background score?
Alex: Yes.
Dr. Branom: You've heard Beethoven before?
Alex: Yes!
Dr. Brodsky: So, you're keen on music?
Alex: YES!
Dr. Brodsky: Can't be helped. Here's the punishment element perhaps.
Groups of retired people, hanging around busstops.
Pestering innocent by-passers...
But it's attracting the Calculus Gang and the Bach Gang. They wrote 30,000 digits of pi all over the bus stop last week. Cost the city 20 grand to remove it all.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't agree with this at all! How many of these kids who may have grown up to enjoy classical music are turned off by it forever? How many children will avoid their school music programs now, which have positive effects on everything from social development to grades? This makes me so angry.
Don't worry. If this method is continued then, by natural selection, more and more young people will stop hating classical music and may even start liking it. The cool guys will be those who can finish the graffiti or whatever before running away.
graffiti was written in special glow in the dark compounds all over london tubes in klingon, ancient greek, hieroglyphics and linear-b soon after.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
A new renaissance will be born!
One might ask what the artists would think of this usage?
Fortunately, we have a pretty similar situation with more current music being used a torture device against Guantanamo detainess, and the rock musicians who protested against that usage:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,672177,00.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Children perform the bad behaviors because of file sharing and disrespect of copyright. Playing music in the public for free only gets things worse.
Will someone please think of the children?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
"Youths" don't stay young forever. Before very long they'll be adults, with legitimate reasons to be at stores and train stations and bus stops, but they still won't like the music. Any place that continues to play it will be driving away a whole lot of customers.
Most adults I know can't stand classical music either, so I doubt this will have a long term effect on listening habits; who knows, being exposed to it might actually get more kids interested in it. And as someone in their late 30's who can still hear frequencies up to 20kHz I'd much rather this than those buzz generators, as long as the sound quality isn't too bad and they don't play too much Satie (I don't want to fall asleep and miss my bus).
Blank until
Where I live there is a notorious corner for crack cocain, prostitution, bloody fights, and anything you can imagine.
Despite constant city owned surveillance equipment the activity continues.
The local Diner installed speakers and pipes out jazz, classical, etc. I find it to be kind of nice mood music, for an elevator.
It has cut down on the drug dealers, kids hanging out, street performers, and the homeless who are normally sitting on the sidewalk asking for change. Apparently the softly played music is enough of an annoyance that they go away.
Miles Davis - 1
Bach - 1
Panoptic sort - 0
Still, classical music as a weapon is far inferior a choice compared with The Funniest Joke in the World, especially considering its application history in the WWII.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I wonder what they'll think of Video Games Live. Will "repugnant" classical music + awesome video game tunes make their heads explode?
Whoops, didn't mean to post that as an anonymous coward...
As if that was YOU! You're just trying to take credit for my insightful comment. :)
Why do Brits keep reading dystopian fiction to get ideas? Why aren't we bombing them for it?
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Op. 49. I'd like to hear them play that on the 5th of November at the Houses of Parliament...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Hamburg central station started playing classical music about 10 years ago. The reason was to drive off junkies; there's a saying thay certain drugs in combination with classical music lead to a bad trip.
There's only one solution. Bring a boom-box to the bus stops, and start blasting Dr. Dre like it's 1992.
Take that, old farts!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
The operators of a shopping centre near my home have started doing this in an area where teenagers tend to hang around outside. The thing is the spot the kids are using is ideal for the purpose. Its out of the way and a bit dirty. Nobody else goes there and its not really a place people walk through. So I don't really see a point beyond a vague "we don't like them" sentiment.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Classical music is quite enjoyable. You can point to plenty of musical/acoustic reasons why this is the case, as in the songs feature things that people find pleasing to hear. It is not the sort of thing that you require intense training to appreciate because it is all intellectual or something, and the actual sound is awful, it is simply nice to listen to.
The primary reason that youth seems not to like it is a cool factor thing, not because the music itself is in some way offensive. When you grow up, you hopefully realize that is pretty stupid, and can enjoy it.
When did our kids becomes our enemies? It seems the UK do about everything in their power to alienate their youth. I really don't know about the UK, but is there really such a big problem with "unruly youths" that you have to bombard them with "deterrents" that seem to come from the privy closet of Marquis de Sade?
What sadist comes up with those things? And why do I have the gut feeling that the only reason this is targeted at kids is just that they can't vote and thus can't kick the bastard off his comfy chair?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Compare this to what they do in Venezuela... teaching classical music to poor kids from the ghettos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema
If being put in a room by myself with hours of Mozart was a punishment, my teacher's pet self would quite likely have started causing problems.
I wonder if, to counter that, they would have the same consequence be a punishment to one kid and a reward to another.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
blasting death metal
You mean shrapnel, right? Or perhaps that would be "blasting metal death"...
I've been living in a flat at a park near a train station (Bielefeld, Germany, if anyone cares) for over a year. All kinds of shady people hung out there day in and day out, drinking tons of alcohol, taking drugs, on sunny days it must've been 150 people and still around 10-20 regulars when it rained. Worst thing, when it rained they used to hang directly before my house because it had a small porch, with the result of having one or two of those dunkards stumble into my house each time I opened the front door because they leaned against it. Well, annoying, but I didn't pay too much and the proximity to everything in inner city was excellent (it basically was at the midst of inner city), so I didn't care.
One day the town officials decided that it would be a *great* idea to shun away the bums with classic music, so they played Beethoven's Für Elise in an infinite loop. Worst. Idea. Ever. The drunks didn't care at all, nothing in their numbers changed, they even seemed to like it. On a lot of occasions one could hear them loudly bawling the piano refrain melody of the song, but even more of the time you would just see them standing there, eyes all empty and being heavily drugged. They just did not care. I, on the other hand, got pretty annoyed after a few weeks. Even today I can't stand the Für Elise melody, pretty bad, considering it's one of his most popular works. I assume the only people annoyed by that were the sober people who had to pass there every day to go to work, shop, et cetera.
In my home town, about 10+ years ago, they tried the same tactic to get rid of the teenagers that were eternally hanging out in the town square. Trouble was, the teenagers in question were mostly goth/vampire types and they actually liked the classical music. It still makes me laugh...
Knowledge != Intelligence
Absolutely correct. I'm nearly 60 but this also means that I can remember the 60s (vaguely, if you know all those jokes) when we were 'allowed' (with guitars, sometimes) into public space.
The current UK trend is to deny youth any use of public space (we've just locked a churchyard because of the occasional bit of trouble), remove benches and exert social control on all gathering youth. Where are these guys and gals supposed to go? Oh, I know, to McDonalds or some place where they spend money, that's OK.
We badly need to get back to a mixture of tolerance, being less fearful and, on the other side making kids aware of how to use and co-exist in public space (we managed, with on/off brushes with the police) with the 'olds'. All this repression is idiotic, ineffective and counterproductive (because it alienates rather than teaches).
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Classical music when live is even more dynamic than it is on the highest end speaker system. That's because you have 100 simultaneous devices generating sound and it is quite exhilarating whereas 100 instruments coming out of 2 speakers is garbled. The problem is that classical music e.g., 1812 Overture presents some extreme engineering challenges to sound systems in that it produces extreme clipping/distortion in just about any speaker system especially when the cannon go off.
Yes, and when Tchaikovsky wrote 1812 he intended the canons to be about as loud as the triangle.
Anyway, if you do not like wide dynamic range in a recording, you can get a player that has integrated compressor or get an external compressor. It is much easier to compress than to expand, meaning that while I have an expander (dbx 3BX-DS) I cannot restore the dynamic range back to original if I have a crappy compressed CD.
While we will never know how Mozart intended his compositions to sound (unless someone invents a time machine, goes back in time and asks him) I prefer higher dynamic range over lower. Yes, when you are listening to music as a background while doing something else it may be better to compress the dynamic range and play a a consistent, but low level, but if you are listening to music not as a background, wide dynamic range is much better.
Tricking me into cranking up the volume with quiet parts just so that you can hurt my ears with other parts is childish.
See, the quiet parts are supposed to be quiet. You have to set the volume so that the quiet parts can be heard, but not be loud, then your ears won't hurt when the loud part comes. The dynamic range of human hearing is 120dB, the theoretical CD dynamic range is 96dB, tape and records have lower dynamic range and CDs usually are recorded with lower dynamic range too, so it shouldn't hurt your ears.
I heard one youth on a London bus recently, encouraging his friend to play out loud some trip-hop piece with violins and a drumbeat. "They can't tell you to turn it off, because it's Classic, innit?"
But I don't think this is much to worry about. How many of us have instantly hated the music of our fathers when teenagers, only to discover its charms later in life?
These Brit hooligans should be thankful. At least they're not being subjected to Metallica. Oh the humanity!
http://www.object404.com
It moves the problem, it doesn't solve it.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
They've bene using this in the UK for 7 or 8 years at least now. I used to live near a railway station that played classical music in the evenings to deter the drug dealers etc that were hanging around or the kids that trashed it most weeks.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Trust New Labour to turn Art into a means of oppression.
groups of retirees
loitering around bus stops
Vivaldi's bullies
"Britva" means "razor".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If they showed a video of Renee Fleming (or Anna Netrebko)singing Mozart opera, the yobs would have to be forcibly moved on by the police. She (Renee)is the most beautiful opera diva in the world. Go look in YouTube if you don't believe me. Mozart a punishment? - hardly. If these yobs are repelled by Mozart then I fear for the next generation of Brits. I live in Vienna Austria now - not 5 mins. walk away from where Wolferl Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Get a life you uneducated british generation.
You can talk about classical music to kids until you are blue in the face, but "when the cannon goes off" tends to be the seller :P
Oh, proper musical experts might scoff at it, but it sells the stuff to the crowd, and who knows, they might sit through the rest because of it. It also makes death metal seem tame. Biting the head of a chicken vs artillery.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A lot of people here argue that somehow, people will be people, young and old, and if you're going to ruin it for them now, you'll have ruined it for them forever. A lot of this commentary is made from the preconception that the youths targeted here are of the sort that will eventually land on their feet, live in the adult world, and be responsible citizens. I would like to point out (much in contrast with my own ideas on how society ought to function) that this is Britain we're talking about. I know this is difficult to imagine for someone not from the Perfid Albion itself, but there you have it. So no, these youngsters aren't innocent, just a bit under-educated little angels otherwise full of promise - these are wilfully malevolent, purposely stupid little monsters, only good for the dole and the pub. They will not have a job that pays taxes in their lives and they will probably die from something crime-, smoke- or alcohol-related. Sure, someone let them down along the way: their parents, the government, their infrastructure, whatever, but by the time that these boys start hanging out on street-corners, it's already way to late to do anything about it. They're a lost cause, and they know it, and the people who play classical music in order to get rid of them, know it. So stop arguing like they're being treated too harshly - if you want them treated with a pussy-glove, it should have been done years, years ago. Considering the alternatives, playing classical music to them *is* treating them softly.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
General social mores in the United States may give you 'fascist right-wing wackos', but they also give you kids who aren't feral.
Hardly. Vast swathes of the south side of Chicago, Eastern LA, Salt Lake City, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Miami, New York, Philadelphia, etc. etc. have "ferel youth" running rampent. The middle class doesn't acknowledge this as they are safely tucked away in their gated communities, but anyone who has lived downtown knows this, even without seeing newscasts of this or that drive-by shooting.
And that doesn't even begin to touch the spate of school and university killings in the middle and upper class campuses that have blighted the US, usually in the heart of these so-called "moral" communities you talk about (and the so-called "gun rights" they support).
I do prefer the government in the UK over that of the US (the country is, by and large, more governable, and better governed, than the US) ... but the country here is by no means perfect, and out-of-control youth are a big problem. Too many of them watching the wire and trying to mimic American kids they think are cool, perhaps. What is telling is that they have found an effective, non-violent solution to the problem (playing classical music), and folks are comparing it to the Marquis de Sade for crying out loud -- probably some of the same folks who would favour calling in the police to crack heads if it were happening on their side of the pond, or in their neighbourhood. And then go to church on Sunday and expound on America's "moral superiority" while decrying any kind of sane healthcare system and lamenting the current administration's reversal on the use of torture against "foreign combatants."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Public Space?! Public Space?!? The young ones doan't know nought aboot the 'ardships of life these days. In my day, in my day, we; we 'ad to make do with the radio and telly and videyo games. We stayed indoors we did, playin' Super Mario and Sonic the we 'edgehog. Proper pastimes those! Taught us 'ow t'entertain ourselves they did.
'angin'g about in Public Space?! What kind've a pastime d'you call that?! Now'days with d'Internet and mobile phones, there's plenty 'nuff t'do indoars for the day without clatterin' about outside loitrin' on street coarners. Ger'roff of it ye layabouts!! Get a game handle!
May the Maths Be with you!
May be it was more or less innocent in the 60s (except that Manson bloke) and that may be was one of the reasons it was allowed and now it is not allowed because it grew to much sinister things.
The curbing of any freedoms start with the most obvious cases supported by everybody (forbidding "fire!" in the theatre free speech, e.g.), then goes to less popular cases ("pedophilia"), then it could be a ban on making photos of police (UK), then it could become a ban on foul language against government officials and it could end up with a system of bans on almost any speech (like in Northern Korea).
But same is true for the movement in opposite direction as well: first freedoms that are allowed are the most obvious ones, then less obvious and then you can end up with ridiculous "freedoms" that end up harming the society.
Sustained society (with healthy reproduction of it's core defining tenets from generation to generation) implements some sort of balance between allowing and curbing of freedoms that was achieved during decades of trial and error.
The understanding of what constitutes freedoms and what not constantly changes in Western society. It is obvious that every current snapshot of currently allowed freedoms is not some kind of scientific truth, but a result of social agreement, social contract.
In the Western model there is no right and wrong except what is defined by some kind of core (majority, powers to be, media, charismatic figures, celebrities, some kind of elite, etc. - very vague and hard to define group really) of society.
So getting back to your observation: in 60s it was that way, now it is this way, tomorrow it will be a different way - but what is clear that it hardly affects the principles of Western society.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Kids have been doing this to adults ever since the invention of the transistor radio...
The researchers also confirmed the existing data that classical music improve mental function, rendering the kids who could tolerate far better at committing mischief. The old tack on the teacher's seat has been replaced by pay-for-play extortion and grade inflation schemes where students deliberately throw the curve.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I live in Hamburg, Germany and we have had this feature on some Subway stations for some years now. It definately works, also against bums and junkies, but not against the pocket-thieves.
Politicians these days have no ideas on how to solve the enormous problems society has. They can only think of solutions that treat the symptoms and not the cause. The cause for civil unrest is, of course, the economic situation. It is bad, and it will only be worse in the future...and then no music will save us from the urban "terrorism".
Just a quick note - Mozart never published the "Lick Me In the Arse" piece while he was alive. He widow sent a manuscript to a publisher, which "cleaned up" the lyrics prior to publishing. And the "Lick Me In the Arse Nice and Clean" piece is no longer believed to have been written by Mozart. A quick trip to Wikipedia would have revealed this. Sort of undercuts your argument a bit. Mozart may have been rebellious in certain ways, but it was hard to be so egregious and be successful in an era when you required patronage and support from the upper echelons of society to make it as an artist.
You've got to be kidding me. I've lived in the DC area my entire life and visit Baltimore quite a bit. The number of "gated communities" I've encountered could be counted on two hands. They're much more common out west, particularly in the Southwest like Vegas or Phoenix.
You really don't know what you're talking about. There are "bad" neighborhoods near DC (mostly in MD), but they are immediately adjacent to middle class neighborhoods with no barriers between. There are gangs and crime just like any urban area, but they are addressed with policing, youth centers, neighborhood watches, etc. Most of the cities you mention have seen dramatic drops in crime rates over the past 10-15 years.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This is absolutely disgusting, regardless of its effectiveness. Using Pavlonian conditioning to undermine free will is beyond inhumane.
Not only that, but they are also abusing these ancient and highly-prized works and further destroying anyone's interest in them in the future.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"