* If you don’t get the title, don’t worry, it’s in nadsat, the language from A Clockwork Orange. It might make more sense by the end of this article.
People who see both sides of the argument are almost always ignored. In a battle of black vs. white, grey gets no air-time because grey is not interesting, except when it signifies a Middle Earth wizard who has come to steal your jewellery. If you’re someone who frequently sees the merits of opposing ideas, then stay out of the way of those who have passion, for they will shout louder than you and will knock you over in the process.
There is another category, mind you. A fourth category that has largely gone uncategorised. And that is someone who is not passionately arguing either point of view, nor diplomatically balancing the two. This fourth person is the one who sees no merit in either side, and will happily explain, in long and deceptively insulting words, why everybody else is stupid.
I’m frequently fascinated by these people, for I am so rarely one of them. Like most people, I’m usually either arguing one side of things, or being frustratingly diplomatic and seeing all the angles. Only occasionally do I get to be the guy who thinks that both sides of a given battle are full of utter garbage.
This is one of those times.
When a local council announced its groundbreaking plan (which was, actually, a plan that had been tried and tested by other councils, so not really all that groundbreaking), I was a little dumbstruck. We’re all used to it now, but when the original idea of dispersing “undesirables” and “loitering delinquents” from the public places they would traditionally congregate, and doing so by pumping classical music out of speakers, well, it seemed like a scene from a social commentary-filled science fiction movie set in that oft-fabled not-too-distant-future.
The council was, in my mind, full of idiots who were using cultural snobbery (instead of actual culture) as a weapon (instead of actual weapons). This idea was no doubt concocted by people who would, themselves, never be caught dead listening to classical music. Surely, anyone who has actually listened to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony or Brahms’s Hungarian Dances or Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor (Op. 16) or Fatboy Slim’s remix of the Beastie Boys classic Body Movin’ (I know I’m stretching the definition of “classic” ever-so-slightly there) would never actually consider these pieces to be so abhorrent that they’d be ideal as musical water cannons. I don’t care if the idea stems from a basic low opinion of people who stand around outside train stations, because you can’t come up with such an idea without also having a basic low opinion of the music you’re planning to use.
My contempt for those people was matched only by my contempt for the actual undesirables and loitering delinquents, who eventually did what was expected of them, and dispersed once the music began playing. Congratulations, guys! You’ve not only shut yourself off from something you might have, with a bit of exposure, enjoyed, but you’ve also confirmed everything everybody always suspected about you. Nobody respects anyone who lives up to their own stereotype.
I couldn’t understand it. What, dealing heroin at 3am means you can’t appreciate a bit of Mozart? There’s nothing mutually exclusive about it, as far as I can tell. One lifestyle gives you a dizzying, mind-blowing, incomparable high, and the other requires you to check into a methadone clinic for rehabilitation. If you want to know which does which, you’ll have to try them for yourself. (Onya Magazine does not condone drug use, so just listen to the Mozart.) Why do they have to go hand-in-hand? Is the only thing more awful than a small-minded cultural stereotype the frightening reality that most of them may actually be true?
It could, as always, be worse. Imagine these kids actually stayed where they were and got into the music, developing a creepy appreciation for the works of Beethoven, Saint-Saens and Bach. Suddenly, they’re dressing in white, drinking milk, and speaking in nadsat, and now we have a Stanley Kubrick film coming to life before our very eyes. And not one of the fun ones with pathological computers or Sydney Pollack orgies, but the frightening ones that forever ruin Gene Kelly musicals.
So excuse me if I begin a petition to replace these speakers with actual remote controlled water cannons, because despite the threat to personal safety and possibility for physical harm, it’s a damn sight preferable to sullying the legacy of the greats.