Feminism: chat
Popular or classic music - do you still enjoy?
Tophatorangebear · 25/06/2021 21:37
As a GC feminist I feel there is pressure to only like like songs, writers who are of the same ilk.
Yet this is very narrow minded and fails to take into account the power of music, history and the all pervading pop culture. So how do you reconcile the two?
I could and do quite happy sing along/dance to and enjoy songs from 1950s onwards - Elvis, R&B, Soul, Motown, Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Hip-hop, Eighties pop, Oasis, Blur, Suede etc.. that I know are misogynistic.
That said Billy Bragg can do one and I don't particularly like artists "just because they are female.
GNCQ · 25/06/2021 21:53
In this day and age Beethoven and Bach and Scarlatti will all be cancelled for vague connections to misogyny and the slave trade.
I also admit it, I liked Bon Jovi as a teen and still get a warm feeling for things like living on a prayer but I don't condone American imperialism.
We should judge people based on the standards of the culture they were immersed in at the time not today's woke standards.
GNCQ · 25/06/2021 21:56
I'm never going to be listening to Gary Glitter. Thankfully I never liked him anyway.
Quaggars · 25/06/2021 23:34
Yes, I do.
There's so many questionable (for want of a better word!) people and attitudes in the past, and I try and separate the art from the artist.
There'd be nothing left to listen to/read if we applied today's standards to the past.
SmokedDuck · 26/06/2021 03:37
I don't generally try to judge people by modern standards, but even when an artist was basically a shitty person, I don't really see that as a reason not to listen to their music or whatever. Horrible people can make great art - sometimes I think being an egoist is a positive help to making great art and egoists can be quite awful people.
On the odd occasion I find knowing about something shitty a person has done turns me off their work, though I don't find there is any real rhyme or reason to when that happens - it doesn't seem to especially correlate to the worst sort of people.
NiceGerbil · 26/06/2021 03:46
I feel like there are way more important things TBH.
I would never watch a Polanski film though.
In the end who is left if you ditch everything with misogyny/ a dodgy person involved?
Very little tbh
And no Bowie is not going to happen!
ShowerOfShite · 26/06/2021 06:14
I don't listen to Bowie anymore (and can't understand the adoration tbh)
Also ditched The Who.
Was watching a Paul Weller concert last night and was dismayed to see Boy George as a guest, but I didn't turn off.
I agree with PP, there would be nothing left to listen to 
AuntieStella · 26/06/2021 06:18
@NiceGerbil
But you hear him all the time if you watch the major US arena sports - they dont seem to object there and there are a couple of tracks of his that are widely played.
'Rehabilitation' cones faster than expected - I thought Ballroom Blitz' by The Sweet would be unplayable on air after Bataclan (lyrics 'And the man at the back said everyone attack and we'll turn it to a ballroom blitz') but it was on Dancing on Ice this season.
I don't really look at author's character (part of the way I studied Lit Crit) and even author's intention was usually given little weight. But I think it's quite unusual to separate the nature and value of the work from the nature and character of its creator
AuntieStella · 26/06/2021 06:20
PS: I wouldn't describe myself as GC, so perhaps that's one reason why I don't feel the same pressure like that described by Tophatorangebear
AssassinatedBeauty · 26/06/2021 08:15
@AuntieStella
Being "GC" or not has nothing to do with anything regarding whether or not you feel you can listen to certain artists or not.
IMO there's a massive difference between not wanting to listen to a paedophile singing about do I want to be in his gang, compared to a song like Ballroom Blitz which wasn't written by the terrorists responsible for the Bataclan attack, and was written decades earlier, and clearly isn't about mass murder.
somethinginoffensive · 26/06/2021 09:04
As a GC feminist I feel there is pressure to only like like songs, writers who are of the same ilk.
Where is this pressure coming from? I mean, I like Grace Petrie, we have completely opposite views on whether transwomen are actually women, but that doesn't stop me enjoying her performances.
MrsSteveMcDonald · 26/06/2021 09:06
I listen to music I like, not just music by 'approved artists'. It's the TRAs that push the narrative of who it is and isn't permissible to enjoy their work and I won't go down their route.
DinosaurDiana · 26/06/2021 09:10
Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year old cousin yet you still hear his music.
MotherOffCod · 26/06/2021 09:12
I’m not so bothered by established music and whether or not one should listen to it based on liking or disliking the artists actions or views.
But I do struggle with some genres where I love the musicality and the grooves, but the lyrics are just awful misogyny to my middle-aged ears.
It’s just not what I want to hear, and there’s no way to stick a filter on apple music for “please nothing describing women as bitches who need a good seeing to”
QuentinBunbury · 26/06/2021 09:32
What's the deal with Bowie?
I can't listen to Michael Jackson any more.
Floisme · 26/06/2021 10:14
Back in the 80s, when the only shame involved was in going to see a faded glam rocker, I went to a Gary Glitter gig - and it was one of the best live acts I've ever seen. It did feel very weird when it all came out but he was a great manipulator - that's kind of the point.
Furthermore I think it's a lesson we need to try and teach children: that human beings are complicated and that just because someone sings a song you like or makes you laugh it doesn't mean they're a good person.
I'm GC and it makes me even more wary of 'approved' art. I'd have thought this last week or 2 would have demonstrated why.
mollythemeerkat · 26/06/2021 10:36
Where is this pressure coming from? I mean, I like Grace Petrie, we have completely opposite views on whether transwomen are actually women, but that doesn't stop me enjoying her performances.
Yes, I enjoyed her live performances too - disappointed to read that as a lesbian woman she is into the gender ideology but not every performer is going to allign with my views and as a previous poster said - we would be left with nothing much to listen to if we scrutinised everyone.
Tanith · 26/06/2021 10:51
It’s often struck me that we hear so little about female composers, many of whom seem to have lost confidence following their marriages.
Clara Schumann, for example, before her marriage wrote: "composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound".
In later years, she wrote: "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?"
Perhaps the saddest story is that of Morfydd Owen, a young composer who would have been one of the best known composers of her time, had it not been for her very unexpected marriage and death:
www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/flamboyant-society-rising-star-mystery-15604843
MotherOffCod · 26/06/2021 10:56
Imagine for a moment the music lost to humanity through the suppression of women’s talents over thousands of years of composition….
It’s so very very sad.
SmokedDuck · 26/06/2021 19:43
@QuentinBunbury
I can't listen to Michael Jackson any more.
Do you mean why do people like him, or why are they upset with him?
As far as the latter, like a lot of rock acts at the time, he had flings with teenage groupies that people would now consider way way too young for that sort of thing. At the time, among that part of the culture, the idea was that if a teenager was old enough to be interested in sex, then it was fine and good that they should have sex, which after all was no big deal and natural and shouldn't be repressed and was all just meaningless fun anyway.
Of course lots of adults thought it was bs but they were considered square.
newnortherner111 · 26/06/2021 20:43
Surely the best thing is to listen to and support women in music?
QuentinBunbury · 26/06/2021 23:50
Oh I'd missed that
I think unfortunately a lot of teenage girls were raped and sexually assaulted in the 60s because of the attitudes at the time
MissTrip82 · 27/06/2021 00:29
@GNCQ
I also admit it, I liked Bon Jovi as a teen and still get a warm feeling for things like living on a prayer but I don't condone American imperialism.
We should judge people based on the standards of the culture they were immersed in at the time not today's woke standards.
I think you need to have a look into just what kind of people are not only not ‘cancelled’ but in fact make huge profits from their music/films/stand up comedy, right now, today, despite being truly despicable people.
I’m afraid your ideas about ‘cancel culture’ (a ludicrous term) are simply not borne out, no matter what Piers Morgan et al might have told you.
FYI, using the term ‘woke’ is always a red flag that one is a massive tool.
SmokedDuck · 27/06/2021 00:38
@QuentinBunbury
I think unfortunately a lot of teenage girls were raped and sexually assaulted in the 60s because of the attitudes at the time
It seems to have been one of those things where some people thought, yeah, what a great idea, groovy, and then after a time it became obvious that maybe the old people weren't just squares after all and knew what they were talking about, and people kind of backed away a bit.
That being said, my mum who was a teen in the late 60s, and who is generally quite sensible and even seems a little conservative, looks back on that period quite fondly - she sometimes makes comments these days that make me raise my eyebrows more than a little.
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.