"We're talking about words...

...and I don't believe that there is any word that needs to be suppressed." -- Frank Zappa, Crossfire, March 28, 1986

In that fascinating clip that echo posted, Zappa takes the position that there's no combination of words that would need to be censored. He's absolutely right.

The panel on the show repeatedly dances around the issue of Prince's "Sister", without ever referencing it directly. In 1986, Prince singing about his 'lovely and loose' 32-year old sister seemed outrageous. That's only two years before Straight Outta Compton, and six years before Ice T would sing about killing cops. For entertainment's sake, I wish we could have reconvened this panel twenty years later to get their reaction to Eminem's "Kim", wherein he depicts the brutal murder of his wife. Novak & Co. would probably be stunned to learn that TIME would name The Marshall Mathers LP one of its All-Time 100 Albums.

What really fascinates me in that clip is how cyclical the arguments are. At one point, Zappa says that he's more concerned with America's progress towards becoming a 'fascist theocracy' than he is with dirty pop lyrics. Great minds think alike! In 2005, Harold Bloom would say to Charlie Rose in all seriousness, "I'm a very frightened man. At 75, I find that increasingly I'm living in a theocracy." Both men would have done better to stick to the subject at hand, which brings me back to this old chestnut of censorship.

The 'X-rated' music of David Allan Coe couldn't be more obviously offensive. A song like "Nigger Fucker" is so thoroughly racist that, though it was recorded in jest, it's relegated Coe to the dunce's corner with all the other problematic artists like Wagner. Discussion of these artists apparently must never forget to reference whichever issue it is that got them in to hot water: Stockhausen will never escape reference to his comments about 9/11; Sinead O'Connor's brilliance will always be qualified by her stunt on SNL. Before the arguments run their course, there's a good chance Hitler will have been referenced and someone will posit that the only responsible thing to do is ban or boycott their work.

These cyclical arguments are more appropriately considered thought ruts. As an optimist, I tend to imagine these perennial debates as a car trapped in a snow bank. To free the car, you have to rock it back and forth over the same ground for what seems like an eternity. Hopefully, retreading these arguments decade after decade ends up getting us somewhere.

The goal for those of us on Zappa's side of the argument, or at least for me, isn't to get to a world that openly embraces offensive art. The ideal would be to get to a point where such work isn't sequestered artificially. Let the work sink or swim on its own merits.

Stravinsky in Bayreuth

Two recent Wagner stories had me thinking of poor Stravinsky's experience at Bayreuth. The first was Justin Davidson's story in New York, with its great opening line:

Here’s a timely operatic plot: When the mortgage on an oversize dream house proves unaffordable, the owner has no choice but to raise more cash by plundering little people, triggering a tsunami of greed that eventually results in global calamity.

He quotes a Wagnerite who says the music is 'addictive', and another who described feeling 'dead drunk' after her first Die Walküre.

Davidson admits to his own confliction over Wagner's music, which I had in mind when I read Roger Bourland's post about suffering through Walküre in intense physical pain. Roger also admits to an ambivalence about Wagner, and cites a friend who echoed the notion that Wagner is addictive. Roger's experience just struck me as a dead ringer for the passage in Stravinsky's autobiography where he describes his experience at Bayreuth:

From Paris I went as usual to oustiloug for the summer, and there I quietly continued my work on the Sacre. I was roused from that peaceful existence by an invitation from Diaghileff to join him at Bayreuth to hear Parsifal on the stage. The proposal was tempting, and I accepted it with pleasure. On the way I stopped at Nuremberg for twenty-four hours and visited the museum. Next day my dear, portly friend met me at the Bayreuth station and told me that we were in danger of having to sleep in the open, as all the hotels were filled to overflowing. We managed, however, with great difficulty, to find two servants' rooms. The performance that I saw there would not tempt me today, even if I were offered a room gratis. The very atmosphere of the theatre, its design and its setting, seemed lugubrious. It was like a crematorium, and a very old-fashioned one at that, and one expected to see the gentleman in black who had been entrusted with the task of singing the praises of the departed. The order to devote oneself to contemplation was given by a blast of trumpets. I sat humble and motionless, but at the end of a quarter of an hour I could bear it no more. My limbs were numb and I had to change my position. Crack! Now I had done it! My chair had made a noise which drew down on me the furious scowls of a hundred pairs of eyes. Once more I withdrew into myself, but I could think of only one thing, and that was the end of the act which would put an end to my martyrdom. At last the intermission arrived, and I was rewarded by two sausages and a glass of beer. But hardly had I had time to light a cigarette when the trumpet blast sounded again, demanding another period of contemplation. Another act to be got through, when all my thoughts were concentrated on my cigarette, of which I had had barely a whiff. I managed to bear the second act. Then there were more sausages, more beer, another trumpet blast, another period of contemplation, another act - finis!

I do not want to discuss the music of Parsifal or the music of Wagner in general. At this date it is too remote from me. What I find revolting in the whole affair is the putting a work of art on the same level as the sacred and symbolic ritual which constitutes a religious service. And, indeed, is not all this comedy of Bayreuth, with its ridiculous formalities, simply an unconscious aping of a religious rite?

For the record, count me down as a total sucker for Wagner: hook, line and sinker.