There’s nothing more slapstick than a mainstream media’s half-witted
demonizing of a music genre with the usual associations of free-sex,
serious drug abuse, suicidal and self-destructive tendencies. What makes
the idiotic comedy worse is the fact that the boogeyman this time is a
genre that isn’t even rebellious to begin with.
Emo. That blatantly obvious abbreviation of an adjective for a genre. That radio-friendly, MTV endorsed, Channel [V] cultivated realm of the first-world youth’s interpretation of “emotional problems”, of coarse-made-smooth hooky guitar lines, verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus screaming vocals and endless, repetitious, dribbling lyrics of love and loss and every menial thing that purport to represent the psyche of this millennium’s youth.
A genre whose only “crime”, if it is even possible to associate that
word, is shallow self-indulgence of the basest interpretations of the
human psyche, (in other words, “whining”) actually held in such
insidious regard as to become the prime cultural factor that destroys
our youth.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like a serious total non-existence of imagination.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Emo, despite my criticisms of its
musical and “philosophical” nature, do have great bands and musicians in
its vein that are worthy of mention. Local giant Love Me Butch for one
is not just a sight and experience to behold, but also one to
continuously push the envelope of Malaysian music in terms of cultural
attitude and spirit.
It is also true that any form of music can be interpreted as a
response, reaction or representation of current everyday conditions or
an escape from them, and therefore, carries the power to influence.
Yet, Emo, a genre that is created from the commercial vats
of corporate labels do not exist to subvert or rebel. Instead, like any
watered-down, made-for-the-market music, it is made to relate purely on
the surface and be consumed by a specific target market, in this case,
the early consumerist adolescent.
Personal, indifferent and largely ignorant of deeper insights or
contemplations, it is a million light years away from being capable to
associate with the liberating chaos of punk, the dark echoes of goth, or
even the outlandishness of rock kapak.
How can anyone suggest that My Chemical Romance is a revolution or a
deep plunge to the dark side? Slitting wrists and licking blood to the
lines of “And though you’re dead and gone, believe me your memory will
carry on”? Are you serious? A line that is so painfully cliché, it’s
used in almost all languages to describe any death of any person? Plus,
to begin with, it’s apparently about the death of Gerard Way’s father.
How could a song that celebrates the memory of a father be the anthem of
suicide and depression is completely beyond me.
Rituals? My Chemical Romance played both Singapore and KL, where are
the reports of crazy ritualistic stabbings between gig-goers? Where are
the blood stained floors and blood-covered pictures? And how on earth
did they even get past Malaysian immigration to play here if that is
indeed true?
To even suggest that Emo is capable of invoking suicidal
depression is a mockery to the state of depression itself. For living in
the state of capitalism and decades-old consumerism with
self-proclaimed benign “moral guardians” in our culture and media is
depression enough.
Do we not have divorces since before divorce was legal? Do we not
have troubled youths since time-memorial? Do we not have “career-driven”
parents who ignore the emotional needs of their children and pile on
heaps of materialism to pacify them? Are we not living in a society that
promotes financial success as the only success beyond anything else?
Yet, instead of devaluing the obsession with capitalism, we encourage
more of it, and then when kids relate to even the manufactured
interpretations of today’s “youth emotions”, as sanctioned by corporate
labels, we describe them with the usual imagined “negative” behaviors.
That, to me, is the real hypocrisy at work here. A society of elders
and self-proclaimed “guardians” that do not seek to understand nor
respect the youth by communicating, researching or experiencing the
culture itself, but publish blatantly ignorant, single dimensioned
perceptions concocted from insubstantial fears that has been drummed up
since the 70s.
On the one hand, the mainstream media seeks to “promote a healthy
youth culture” through staunch conservatism. On the other, the very same
media plays unnecessarily self-indulgent products of entertainment to
appease the so-called “youth psychology” on its airwaves.
Need I state the examples of superficial tele-dramas, reality shows
and half-baked coverage of musical acts and gigs? Need I lament the
cringing repertoires of mindless, meaningless songs of unrequited love
and lame pickup lines? Raps about wooing tons of chicks and wearing
bling-bling? Shouts and screams about boy-girl issues?
Yet here we hide behind our fake moral veils and accuse “foreign”
music for “poisoning our youths”, washing our hands clean of the
emotional and cultural injustices we pile on our young by passing the
buck to shelved-products of entertainment we leave them to and summoning
the decades-old imaginary demons of sex and suicide.
How convenient.
As published in:
http://www.the-wknd.com/features/articles/how-convenient/