> second only to people’s taste in music when it comes to being divisive

I’ve seen this written before. But why do you think people’s taste in music is more divisive than across any of the other arts?

> But why do you think people’s taste in music is more divisive than across any of the other arts?

I’d say that music is by far the most popular of the various arts - certainly more popular than comedy - therefore divisivness is much more obvious. Wouldn’t you say?

I’m not sure that the divisiveness of something per se is determined by how many people engage with it. Is music “more divisive” because it has a wider audience than avant garde performance art, for example, or cubist painting? Relatively speaking, I’d say that the arts are equally divisive - they each divide opinion equally amongst the people who engage with them.

I see where the statement is coming from now, though, so thanks for making it clearer. I just didn’t equate popularity and divisiveness as I was looking at each form relatively.

Yeah, I think Andrew meant how wide spread the divisiveness is rather than the strength of the divisiveness.

Divisiveness, there.

I think music (especially where teenagers are involved) can be rather more tribal than liking other forms of art* so I think calling music especially divisive is fairly sound.

*although given the levels of rivalry between fans of different sci-fi shows that’s possibly debatable.

Going back to “School of Comedy”, does anyone else think it might have worked better as a family (or even kids) comedy than an adult one. Most of the best jokes in the pilot weren’t of an especially adult nature and I suspect kids’ sketch shows are a bit thin on the ground at the moment.

> I think calling music especially divisive is fairly sound.

Yes. So long as “more divisive” concerns how widespread the artform is, rather than its strength, as Jonathan Capps has pointed out. Otherwise we should be looking at percentage of people divided across an art form, not the number.

Coming at it another way, if there were more bees in the world than wasps, you could put forward a pretty sound case for bees stinging more humans than wasps do. However I wouldn’t accept this as meaning that bees are “more stingy” than wasps in their nature. A different test would be required for this.

> *although given the levels of rivalry between fans of different sci-fi shows that’s possibly debatable.

I think this is the point. We’re talking about the arts, and there is no model of aesthetics that I’m going to accept that regards music to be more divisive than poetry, painting, theatre, literature or anything else in history that has emotionally engaged the person encountering it.

I’ll probably regret replying to this, but I personally think the perceived stubbornness in musical tastes (as opposed to poetry, painting, theater) is that music is, in a traditional mindset, more difficult to express opinions about. The visual arts, theatrical arts and literary arts all have very rich histories of exhaustive criticism, while serious music criticism is much younger.

Most people who listen to music don’t have a vocabulary rich enough to discuss it, and so it becomes difficult to express in any satisfactory way a subjective opinion. I’m not saying intelligent criticism or discussion is impossible. Far from it. But I am saying that it seems to be difficult for most people to articulate.

Which means you end up with a lot of “I just like/dislike it because that’s the way I feel.” (By no means is that argument limited to discussions of music but it certainly does recur there a little too frequently to be ignored.) Which obviously doesn’t leave much room for discussion.

> Which means you end up with a lot of “I just like/dislike it because that’s the way I feel.”

But it’s the same with visual arts… or any other form of art…

Here’s the situation as I see it - why I’m both comfortable with what I said, and not especially bothered if someone ‘won’t accept’ it.

Everybody likes music. Everybody does. It might be classical, it might be Bhangra, it might be rap, but everybody does. Not everybody likes poetry. Not everybody likes ‘art’. Hell, some don’t even like movies, or novels. All of which creates a filter right away - the debate is only among the engaged. It’s just that everyone engages with music.

More people. Then there’s more volume - songs are short, and plentiful, and ubiquitous. They run a song top 40, an album top 40, and even sub-divide charts by genre - but with movies it’s only the top ten that gets discussed. You don’t see a lot of art hung in WH Smith, but music will be playing. Nobody gets into the car and debates what poetry they’ll listen to.

You go through dozens or hundreds of songs a week - and free, if you use a radio - as opposed to one or two books. And you hit them more than once. There’s a pleasure in the repetition that is shared by very few media. Sure, I love Goodfellas - but have I seen it as many times as I’ve listened to I Want You Back? I’ve sung along to American Pie more often than I will ever read Frankestein.

Then there’s the personal relationship thing. Your iTunes (or whatever) collection becomes something very personal. Those songs, all together, somehow summarise who you are. People can usually name a favourite TV show or movie, but while they can maybe pick an artist, they can rarely land on a single song. The amalgamation has an importance, and the list is long. You own more songs than you own DVDs, or works of art.

All of which is kinda where Cappsy was coming from. But Phil’s nailed another thing, which is that the vocabulary isn’t there in the same way. Explaining that Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher puts a shiver through you is fine, but it’s hardly eloquent criticism. It’s hard to transmit. The critical vocabulary isn’t there for a vast majority of music listeners - whereas someone with an interest in art or literature is likely to have some sense of the critical language. (And the history, which is another thing - pop music’s so fleeting that every generation’s youth thinks it invented the cool stuff.)

Which leads to music’s more frequent ‘turn that off it’s rubbish’ response. Even if you hate Goya, nobody stands in the gallery and asks for The Third of May 1808 to be covered up. There’s an appreciation that comes from understanding, even if the thing isn’t to your taste. The closed system breeds a wider middle ground. If you’ve chosen to be someone who actively engages with an artistic medium - a fan of photography, for example - you also spend more time grasping the basics. You flip a switch.

Music’s different, in that everyone comes with their switch already on. The system is wide open, unfiltered and yet with a narrower middle ground.

Which is also true of comedy, obviously. No one factor here answers the original question, it’s a massive combination of factors. Not saying all of this applies to literally everyone, but the statement was a generalisation, and the justification has to be likewise.

>But it’s the same with visual arts… or any other form of art…

It is. But by digging a little further or asking more people, you’re very likely to discover an intelligent critique of literature, theater, the visual arts, etc. Because the vocabulary used to discuss them is, on the whole, commonplace among those who enjoy it.

You have to dig comparatively further to find truly intelligent criticism on music. (Most standard music magazines, for example, don’t go much further than describing things as “rocking” or “disappointing” or “all sorts of awesome!” You’d have a hard time finding a literary journal that would be satisfied with that.)

Also, Marleen, I hate to say it but my very next sentence after what you quoted expressed that it wasn’t limited to music. :-)

> not especially bothered if someone ‘won’t accept’ it.

It’s not that I won’t accept the view that music is a more ubiquitous art. And I’ve already accepted that what you’re basically saying is music is more ubiquitous than the other arts, and appreciation of it more widespread. The extent of the division it causes, or the unity it generates, for that matter, is being read as “the number of people that it divides or unites”. What I don’t accept is that an adequate case has been made for music being more divisive in its nature, amongst the people that engage with it, than any of the other arts. All I’ve had is opinion, and it’s based in your own appreciation of music compared with your reading of Frankenstein.

> I’ve sung along to American Pie more often than I will ever read Frankestein.

People who have ever cried reading Proust, or found the paintings of Francis Bacon to be a shock to their system, will argue that all the arts have the capacity to engage people on a very emotional and sensory level. This is what separates the arts out, and it doesn’t separate out music from the arts. The idea that you’re presenting is that somehow a more base level of engagement remains widespread in the appreciation of music, because its audience is generally one that hasn’t reasoned its way into understanding it in more critical and eloquent manner. But critical theory has never taken away the power of the arts to shock, to move or to entertain their audiences. It also, surprisingly, has never really enabled its audiences to understand why the arts are so compelling in this manner. Discussion begets more discussion, and it’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t objectively, universally solve any problems or take away the desire to pursue them.

> The visual arts, theatrical arts and literary arts all have very rich histories of exhaustive criticism, while serious music criticism is much younger.

I don’t know where this idea of music criticism being younger than the aesthetic criticism of “other” arts has come from. Plato and his contemporaries discussed music, didn’t they?

> Even if you hate Goya, nobody stands in the gallery and asks for The Third of May 1808 to be covered up.

Someone takes a shit in a gallery and someone else says “that’s not art”. Lots of people have been baffled by “paintings” that are “just” a single colour covering an entire canvas. What’s all this nonsense about a diamond encrusted skull by Damien Hurst selling for millions of pounds recently? People who read the Metro but have never touched an arts journal or stepped in a gallery can be found expressing an opinion about these things. Equally people who visit galleries all the time are capable of similar outbursts, even of vandalism, and always have been. So have people visiting the theatre and opera. If you want examples I’ll give them.

> Music’s different, in that everyone comes with their switch already on. The system is wide open, unfiltered and yet with a narrower middle ground.

This all comes down to semantics. You’re speaking about music being more widespread in its appreciation, not more divisive in its nature, than the other arts. To compare how the arts are more or less divisive than one another, you would need to look at percentages of people within that form, not the number of people you can witness that form dividing. Nobody is declaring the winner of the presidential race in the US on the basis of the delegate counts during the primaries, because these were separate Democratic and Republican processes and can’t be compared in that way. Similarly you wouldn’t say that the most ubiquitous animal in the world is individually more hungry than a less ubiquitous one due to the former eating more of the world’s resources as a species. It wouldn’t make sense.

> I’ll probably regret replying to this

I hope you haven’t yet! I love a good debate as long as it doesn’t descend into squabbling; so far we’ve managed to stay afloat and I’m enjoying the argument!

At the danger of sounding pedantic about a very interesting topic, some fundamentalist Muslims think music is offensive to Islam (the Taliban banned it when they ruled Afganistan, and Yusuf Islam, formally known as Cat Stevens, has talked about how his art conflicts with his religion), so not everyone likes music. However, I do think it has a more universal appeal than other arts, and feel very puzzled about the Taliban view, because it’s an activity humans have engaged in at just about every stage of their evolution.

> What I don’t accept is that an adequate case has been made for music being more divisive in its nature, amongst the people that engage with it, than any of the other arts.

And my point is - I’m not concerned about whether you accept it or not. I wasn’t looking to persuade you with that original comment. Disagree? Fine, you carry on.

> All I’ve had is opinion, and it’s based in your own appreciation of music compared with your reading of Frankenstein.

And this is exactly the kind of disingenuous misinterpretation/simplification that made me not want to reply.

Did I say one form was more emotionally engaging than the other? Or was I talking about volume and proliferation, and the fact that a direct comparison is problematic given that people absorb the various forms differently? If you took away the former, you misunderstood. Nor have I argued that critical reasoning detracts from emotional impact. The experience is neither all-critical, nor all-emotional, and neither is the divisiveness. Which is the only thing on the table - not how people feel, but how they deal with how they feel.

The way people feel about something isn’t always directly paralleled in their public response and articulation; it’s insanely more complicated than that. Is tennis less potent than football? One gets the riots, one doesn’t - does me saying that mean I’m calling one sport less emotive? Of course not.

But one does seem to have a place in the culture that encourages more extremism, more violent separation. A parallel that also, for me, applies to music…and one that is partially, but not solely based on volume.

> This all comes down to semantics.

Maybe. I think TV comedy divides people more than TV drama does. I think there are greater extremes in taste there, and a wider middle available in the latter. I also think the same can be said of other things. I am conformable that it is not just about the numbers, and I made my case. I don’t mind that you think differently, I mind that it comes with needless confrontation and manipulation.

> At the danger of sounding pedantic about a very interesting topic, some fundamentalist Muslims think music is offensive to Islam

I guess it’s easy enough to argue that religions tend to ban things people enjoy. A serious Catholic can enjoy pre-marital, condomed sex even as they hate themselves for it… :-)

> deliberate misinterpretation/simplification

> needless accusation and manipulation

I’m sorry that you’ve taken my post this way but I didn’t write it quickly and I was engaging in the debate, not trying to attack you as wrong from outside of it. By all means tell me I misunderstood you but it wasn’t “deliberate”, and nor have I “needlessly accused” or “manipulated” anything. I thought the debate was getting interesting. I put time into my response and thought I was being reasonable and democratic. I don’t understand this anticipation-in-advance that you’d regret replying, either.

Okay, so you’ve edited your post, so I’d better reply again.

> disingenuous misinterpretation/simplification

Alright, I’m disingenuous - that’s better.

> needless confrontation and manipulation.

Actually I was quite proud of the fact that I wasn’t being confrontational. I even said in the post immediately afterwards that I was enjoying the debate because it didn’t seem to be going down the route of squabbling. I’m not sure how it got derailed, to be honest, but I don’t particularly think I’ve done anything wrong.

Anticipation in advance? Anyone who starts out saying that they “Won’t accept” another point of view is asking for the debate to continue only on the understanding that it will confirm that they’re right. Who needs to get into that discussion?

I don’t believe for a second you think my entire argument can be reduced to my appreciate for music versus me reading a book. To think you did would be to call you stupid. I don’t think you are. I think you chose to over-simplify for the sake of scoring a point - which is deliberate, disingenuous and manipulative. As is ignoring the wider points I made in favour of putting words in my mouth about emotional reaction - stuff I never argued.

I did not say that I “won’t accept” your point of view at all. What I actually said was “there is no model of aesthetics that I’m going to accept that regards music to be more divisive than poetry, painting, theatre, literature or anything else in history that has emotionally engaged the person encountering it.”

This was, following Jonathan Capps, in the belief that you were not offering a model of aesthetics that took this stance at all, but a position that was concerned with the ubiquitous nature of music, and the number of people divided by the art form, rather than a suggestion that music is “more divisive” in its nature than other forms. I accepted this within my first response to him, and therefore, at the same time, your later clarification you were “talking about volume and proliferation, and the fact that a direct comparison is problematic given that people absorb the various forms differently”.

I also wasn’t reducing your argument to your listening to music v your reading a book. I certainly wasn’t attempting to score points; I find it difficult to comprehend somebody’s motive for manipulating content in this way and I wouldn’t assume somebody was doing it. I obviously misunderstood you, and I apologise, and I realise I should have been clearer that I was responding to the comments in the forum as a whole and not just you. Somebody else said that music is more “tribal” than other forms of art, while people are also saying that serious music criticism is younger than other art criticism, which I have argued I don’t think is the case. I think the points I made were valid in terms of the debate as I saw it.

Try registering, darling; it’s getting tedious having to approve your comments.

> What I actually said was “there is no model of aesthetics that I’m going to accept that regards music to be more divisive than poetry, painting, theatre, literature or anything else in history that has emotionally engaged the person encountering it.”

Thanks for telling me something I already knew and had read.

Your point being: if this was my perspective, you wouldn’t accept it. So, y’know, kinda what I said already. Twice. Thus: what’s the point of arguing the point with you about it? “I’m not prepared to accept God doesn’t exist.” Really? Then I should become embroiled in a theological discussion immediately. It definitely wouldn’t be pointless. Oh no.

> I accepted this within my first response to him, and therefore, at the same time, your later clarification you were “talking about volume and proliferation, and the fact that a direct comparison is problematic given that people absorb the various forms differently”.

Really? Because volume isn’t the same, at all, as the way one takes in the content. The repetitious convention. It’s unrelated to your acceptance and, bizarrely, I didn’t attribute to you anything you hadn’t said. Go figure.

> I obviously misunderstood you, and I apologise, and I realise I should have been clearer that I was responding to the comments in the forum as a whole and not just you.

So the line “All I’ve had is opinion, and it’s based in your own appreciation of music compared with your reading of Frankenstein.” was intended for everyone, rather than just me? Because ‘everyone’ might be a little confused by that.

Well I’ve apologised Andrew, I’m not going to do it again just because you want to keep sticking your boot into me.

> Try registering

I’m sorry I haven’t registered. I just might if I ever get the feeling I’m welcome here.

Fine. If you don’t want people to call you out when you say something they object to, bugger off.

It’s more the persistence of the objection when I’ve already apologised. I don’t feel I should have to keep contributing when a debate has been derailed and turned into a personal series of attacks against me and the motives somebody perceives me as having.

Andrew is “calling me out” on two sentences in my entire contribution to the debate, and ignoring everything else I’ve said since. This is despite the fact that his principle objection is that, in his mind, I simplified what HE had to say in order to hammer home some point or other that he feels I wanted to make. They were two sentences I half thought about not including, they really aren’t that important, but I left them in thinking they didn’t really matter, and they’ve become the whole focus of this thread now. I thought I’d made it clear that I don’t think he’s offering a “model of aesthetics” (how IS he offering a model of aesthetics? - why is he objecting if he is not?) that prioritised music above the other arts, and that I was open to what he had to say. But throughout his posts Andrew has felt the need to emphasise that he doesn’t need to appease me or accept my views or whatever, like the whole point of my post was to state my disagreement with him personally. I find this assumption of my motives objectionable, and the fact we can’t move on after my apology or attempts to explain myself ridiculous.

What more do I need to explain? I already said I should have been clearer in addressing the whole thread and not just Andrew. I take on board that I might need to look at my writing style and choices of words to avoid these kinds of conflicts in the future. But I equally feel that people should give others the benefit of the doubt when reading other’s text, and not confuse any tone they might have in their reading voice with the intention of the writer. I’ve checked out G&T and I notice that I’m not the only person who’s received this kind of nit-picking, passive aggressive treatment from Andrew, which is why I’m not that fussed about drawing a line under this thread (the debate has hardly remained interesting) and moving on.

Meanwhile, in other threads, people have made comments to me like “You were almost coping there too! Haha, idiot!” or whatever it was, just because what I said immediately before wasn’t very clever or funny. I’m baffled if this is how you feel a newcomer should be treated, and I think it’s absurd that I’ve been accused of having “confrontational” motives in this thread. I can’t tell whether this is just what you do to people to “test” them before they register, or whether you think you have a history with me (at one time with the sarcastic “love/darling” stuff I wondered whether Tanya has an ex-boyfriend called J Clark…?), but I don’t like it. On the other hand, I stay (lurking, tending not to post) because I find the contributors to both here and G&T generally witty and intelligent people, so long as personal attacks and bickering can be left at the door. Something I’ve so far failed to stave off, and once again I apologise.

I’m sorry, angel. Can we be friends?

You might not have noticed, but I’m keen to be involved in interesting debates and conversations where I can get them, not making friends, nor squabbling, nor “scoring points” against people. If you actually want to resolve this problem you think you have with me, rather than just give the impression that you have a bone to pick with somebody from your past who shares my name, you will have to be more lucid than simply determined in your attack. If you don’t give a fuck, then just don’t reply to anything I say, I don’t care. Since it is your own problem, don’t expect me to give it any more of my time if you don’t actually want to sort it out. In the meantime, assume that I’ve taken the perspective that as long as registration isn’t necessary to post here, I don’t see the need to do so. Like I say: if I ever feel genuinely welcome here, rather than confronted by a clique of people who are smug that they have known each other for years and have a language all of their own, then I may well do you the favour of registering so you don’t need to approve my comments. Otherwise, you’ve placed me as an outsider, and I can’t be arsed to attempt to ingratiate myself, so let’s leave it as that.

*cries*

Good lord, I’m sensing hostility.

Let’s keep the anger to a minimum, children. Bad for the liver, it is.

Aw fuck it. I’m a fucking child too. On with the show, then!

But why do you think people’s taste in music is more divisive than across any of the other arts?