Focus on the Family’s Plugged In magazine takes a lot of pop culture (movies, TV, and music), seeing how it fits together with a Christian/family values perspective. Plugged In is much quicker to cast something aside, probably not agreeing with my liberal use of worldly music in order to understand life. Yet, it also saves me from having to buy R. Kelly or Brittany Spears albums in order to know what the youth in our ministry are hearing.
The June issue’s cover article, “Movies Don’t Affect Me: How Recent Films Have Changed Young Lives,” tackles a complex subject of the connection between pop culture and teen violence, students, poor choices, etc. Author Bob Smithouser writes, “While no one would argue a direct cause-and-effect relationship between watching a scene and imitating it (there are always other factors at work in a viewer’s life), denying the ability of film to leave a mark—even a scar—is equally irrational,” (p. 3). Smithouser then goes on to cite numerous incidents of teens getting hurt or killed or inflicting harm on others, showing the similarity to scenes from movies. In contrast to the above quote, the bulk of the article seems to be an argument for a direct cause-and-effect relationship.
Seeing how many have argued for this same direct cause-and-effect relationship between music and teen violence, etc., I found the following quote from July’s Uncut article about the Pixies to be equally telling about how what we watch, read, and hear affects our understanding of the world.
Uncut’s Chris Roberts says, “The Pixies’ blasted mix of surf-pop-punk, coupled with Frank Black’s twisted lyrical preoccupations (UFOs, classical mythology, Old Testament horror stories), created something dark and twisted, like the baby in Eraserhead; a primal and terrible thing.” Roberts writes that in 1986 he and “one other journalist flew to Boston to see [the Pixies] play the Rat Club, and returned raving about this crazy grunge-garage-glam band who sang about incest and disease.”
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Uncut then quotes a Melody Maker interview from the past where MM asked: What brought your early lyrics about incest and religion? Frank Black (a.k.a. Black Francis) says, “Oh, that was me being obsessed with the Old Testament characters. Look, I don’t have any sisters, OK? All brothers. And all very hetero.”
[This is a reference especially to some of the songs on Surfer Rosa with songs like “Broken Face” (“There was this boy who had two children with his sisters/They were his daughters/They were his favorite lovers/I got no lips, I got no tongue/Whatever I say is only spit/I got no lips, I got no tongue/I got a broken face”).]
It is important to remember that even the Bible could be a source for images of violence, harmful acts, etc. We might not have expected that the Bible was the source of Black Francis’ strange world, but then again, we shouldn’t be surprised either if pop culture, movies, music, books, and TV, might be the source for images of redemption, hope, forgiveness, and new life.
And indeed, in the Pixies’ twisted world, I do find those images of the need for redemption, the ultimate heart cries within our broken world—a world that we should never sugar-coat as if life is hunk dory. It ain’t hunky dory, and that’s why we have such a need for Christ.
Going back to my Top 25 Albums list, the Pixies came in at number 18: Surfer Rosa – scratchy lyrics, distorted guitar, pounding bass, and trashy drums—and the melody was easy to find; an album which combined thrash, rock, and pop.
More reviews at musicspectrum.blogspot.com.
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