A Modest Proposal by
Mr Julian Gough.
Truth in Pop.
The Soviets and Chinese used sinister, hidden messages, buried in continuous,
repetitive sound, to break the will of prisoners and spies. Such techniques
were known as "brainwashing". We would be more familiar with
them today by the name of "daytime radio".
There are two components to daytime radio: advertisements, and (as a
kind of filler to keep the blocks of adverts apart) a thing called "pop
music". The effect of the advertisements is straightforward and
uncontroversial: they tell us to buy their biscuits, we buy their biscuits.
The government is well aware of the danger of abusing this power of
suggestion. Thus, radio
advertisements are strictly controlled by law. All claims made in advertisements
must be honest, and capable of proof. What is madness is that the far
more insidious and dangerous "pop songs" between the adverts
escape this simple and effective law.
You may well have heard these "pop songs" without paying them
much attention. I have listened to and studied them at length on your
behalf. The results have been fascinating, and frightening. There is
a single subject about which pop songs wish to brainwash us. They are
obsessively and repetitively concerned with selling us love. The type
of love is referred to as being "eternal" , lasting "forever",
or "always". This, it is emphasised, is "true love".
The dramatic physical symptoms of "true love" are listed.The
effect on the listener of such a message, repeated many times a day
for year after year, is catastrophic. Whatever love the listener feels
for their girlfriend, boyfriend or spouse lacks the symptoms of true
love. The listener becomes unhappy and dissatisfied with his or her
love, which is obviously untrue, or false, love. These dissatisfied
listeners postpone their marriages, break off relationships, refuse
dates, and grow miserable in the vain pursuit of a love that will last
forever, while making their heart go boom. In fact, all the symptoms
of "true love" as illustrated in pop lyrics, are those of
obsessive compulsive disorder, or mild psychiatric illness. The belief
that one "cannot live" without this other person, often after
only one "look" or "glance", is delusional, obsessive,
and close to psychotic. The pop lyric is the language of the stalker.
Indeed, the physical symptoms of true love include not only "feeling
my heart go boom", but being "brought to my knees", and
"breaking out in a cold sweat". These are the physical symptoms
of a panic attack. It is scandalous that a major industry, such as the
pop music industry, should actively push its consumers toward psychiatric
illness. The devastating effect on the humanpsyche is obvious. As recent
surveys show, people are marrying later and later. Many are not marrying
at all. An entire generation, bombarded all their lives by propaganda
pushing "true" love and "perfect" happiness, have
remained single well into their thirties. Truely, pop music has, as
it were, put the disco into discontent. As for the effect of this propaganda
on vocations to the priesthood, it has been shattering.
There is, thankfully, a solution. We must take the rigorous existing
laws covering truth in advertising, and extend them to cover everything
broadcast on daytime radio, including the songs.
The results would be immediate and beneficial. Currently, 17 year-old
boys such as Westlife can promise to love any random girl "forever".
Under the new regulations, they could only promise to love her for up
to eighteen months. "Forever" would be defined in law as an
unbroken period of thirty or more years. In practice, such lyrics would
quite correctly be restricted to happily married couples in their fifties.
Likewise, teenage men who promised to give (or make) good (or sweet,
or hot) love to young women "all night long" would be restricted
to promising to give, or make, love to them "for up to five minutes"
unless a doctor's certificate could be produced to vouch for the fact
that they could indeed maintain a continuous, overnight erection. Any
use of Viagra to gain the certificate would have to be mentioned in
the lyric. Likewise, for every song about sex, bands would be obliged
to release, nine months later, a song about babies. Bands would be exempt
from this obligation only if some form of contraception was used in
the original lyric.
The tricky problem of the lyrical metaphor would be dealt with by having
an approved board of linguistic philosophers turn all metaphors into
similes. Thus Westlife could no longer claim to be "flying without
wings" but could legitimately claim that "The subjective feeling
of loving you resembles, in certain aspects, the sensation of flight."
Taking these changes as a whole, we would soon see a certain thoughtfulness
entering the pop lyric which has been absent these many years. We need
considerably less true love in pop, and more love of truth. Petition
your MP today.
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