Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Constants and Variables 161, not so new, so simple edition
Following from this.
Looking through the latest listings at American Radio History, ran into a 1939 issue of the British Radio Pictorial, including an interview with a "noted philosopher" named C E M Joad.
Instant example of Constants and Variables in the area of Rule By Experts.
Not so new:
Variable: The press RECOGNIZES THE CONFLICT and ARGUES AGAINST THE EXPERT.
Couldn't possibly happen now.
So simple:
As for C E M Joad's "worthless dance tunes" of 1939, Wikipedia lists about 200 hits, and half of them are still instantly familiar and still performed. That's 80 years, not 80 hours.
Did the fame of C E M Joad last as long? No need to ask the question, but the answer is still DELIGHTFUL. He spent his whole life issuing ABSOLUTE DICTATES and then disobeying them. Even the BBC finally got tired of him.
Calibrating: C E M Joad is correct that the media always try to create tastes, but their power is limited. When media depend on profit, they have to follow pre-existing opinions to some extent. In the last two years we've seen this process with BLM riots. All media and corporations "took the knee" and stated categorically that Riots Are Health And Police Are Disease. The public provided quick and powerful negative feedback, and the corporations untook the knee.
Following from this.
Looking through the latest listings at American Radio History, ran into a 1939 issue of the British Radio Pictorial, including an interview with a "noted philosopher" named C E M Joad.
Instant example of Constants and Variables in the area of Rule By Experts.
Not so new:
While we are discussing intolerance," I suggested deferentially, "don't you think that the objection you expressed in a recent lecture to the broadcasting of dance music represents the very intolerance that you condemn? If the public want to hear dance music... "Constant: Experts are tyrants who break their own rules. Always the same.
"Exactly," interjected the Professor, "if, as you say, the public want to hear dance music. It is just a case of that. I don't believe there is any native desire on the part of people to listen to stupid words and trivial wailings; they have been conditioned to 'enjoy' this artificial rubbish by the people who profit from its production. Broadcasting and the other mediums of entertainment do not cater for a pre-existing taste; they create that taste."
Variable: The press RECOGNIZES THE CONFLICT and ARGUES AGAINST THE EXPERT.
Couldn't possibly happen now.
So simple:
"But if," I objected, "as I'm sure you'll agree, the deliberate imposition of absolute standards is a form of tyranny, the treatment of dance music as an inferior thing is only an opinion, and who can say that dance music really is worthless?"Here C E M Joad simply shows C E M Joad's own abject ignorance of music and culture. The pieces we now consider classics were mostly written as routine dance or theater pieces, not intended to be "classics" that would last forever. Bach and Purcell wrote music in assembly-line style. Bach had a full-fledged music factory with his dozens of sons and daughters all slaving away. Most of Purcell's work was done for the equivalent of movies and Broadway.
"I think the first guarantee of quality is that a work of art survives for two or three hundred years; and while the music of Bach and Purcell for example, falls into this category, it cannot be said that any of your ordinary dance tunes last the same number of hours."
As for C E M Joad's "worthless dance tunes" of 1939, Wikipedia lists about 200 hits, and half of them are still instantly familiar and still performed. That's 80 years, not 80 hours.
Did the fame of C E M Joad last as long? No need to ask the question, but the answer is still DELIGHTFUL. He spent his whole life issuing ABSOLUTE DICTATES and then disobeying them. Even the BBC finally got tired of him.
Calibrating: C E M Joad is correct that the media always try to create tastes, but their power is limited. When media depend on profit, they have to follow pre-existing opinions to some extent. In the last two years we've seen this process with BLM riots. All media and corporations "took the knee" and stated categorically that Riots Are Health And Police Are Disease. The public provided quick and powerful negative feedback, and the corporations untook the knee.
Labels: #bluelivesmatter, Answered better than asked, Constants and Variables
¶ 2:02 PM
