STUCK BETWEEN A ROCK AND CATHARSIS: Two (belated) replies to my post about Allan Bloom and rock&roll.; First, from someone who prefers anonymity (she’s in bold, I’m in plain text): Although I don’t share Bloom’s distaste for rock ‘n’ roll (I’m a product of my age; for better or worse I’ve been formed by the stuff, like you), I don’t think that he would find the case you make convincing, as it doesn’t address his real concerns.

Like Plato, Bloom believed that all the arts were potentially dangerous. Not because they necessarily threatened the status quo, but because they threatened the principle virtue admired by philosophy: the virtue of reason. Wanting to create a virtuous and democratic state, Plato feared that the passions stirred by the arts (but most of all by music), undermined the citizen’s commitment to rational order and aroused the “pity and terror” that could be so usefully exploited by demagogues, kings, and other forces hostile to democracy. Strike up a patriotic anthem; sing a sentimental ballad about your mother; and you can persuade an audience to do almost anything. He thought that music, in short, was anti-democratic.

Aristotle’s theory of art, his view that it could be a means of releasing and resolving the passions through catharsis, and not simply

stirring them up, was intended as a defense of the arts and an answer to Plato’s criticism of their demagogic character.

Bloom, learning from both Plato and Aristotle (and Nietzsche) saw rock music as an art form that stirred up passions WITHOUT subsequently calming them. And I don’t think you’ve addressed this issue in your blog comments. However pleasurable it may be (and it is to our generation) you can’t deny that rock music, and in fact all the popular music of our culture, does exactly what Bloom feared.

What Bloom was really trying to argue is that our culture is musically obsessed to an unprecedented degree; that many people link their very identities to the music they listen to (people choose their mates according to the bands they prefer, for heaven’s sake!); and that this is a sign of something larger, a sign of the weakening hold of reason upon our personalities. A society composed of such personalities is one in which the democratic virtues are bound to grow weaker.

The fact that rock music usually (but not always) deals with sex and aggression is really only one of Bloom’s criticisms of it, and not the most important one. What matters is that the driving rhythms of rock (whatever the words may say) banish thought in favour of emotion, in a way that the more complex rhythms of baroque music, or even the cathartic story-telling musicality of opera, do not attempt. Bruce Springsteen could do anything with his audiences: it’s only our good fortune that he hasn’t tried (and not everyone would agree that he hasn’t tried).

I’m not exactly disagreeing with you, believe it or not. I’m only saying that if you want to argue with Bloom, you have to tackle the issue of whether rock music is really as anti-cathartic, stirring up dangerous passions without resolving them, as he seems to have believed. You cannot do so simply by insisting that the songs are sometimes more intelligent than he realised.

Fair enough–all good points and very well put. Let me lay out what I see as the six basic points here, and throw out some scattered thoughts on them, from last to first. (Oh, and for those playing the St. Blog’s Drinking Game: vast post ahead!) PLATO: 1) Art is dangerous because it replaces reason with passion. 2) Passion is the tool of demagogues and proto-fascists. (Points off for ahistorical reference, I know.) ARISTOTLE: 3) But art that provokes a catharsis can ultimately calm the passions, cleansing the soul and clearing the way for the unopposed reign of reason. BLOOM: 4) Rock stirs passion without catharsis, and thus is anti-democratic and generally bad. 5) We’re musically obsessed, and we lack reason. 6) This passion-vs.-reason conflict is a bigger part of Bloom’s criticism of rock than the sex/aggression or masturbatory qualities of (some) rock.

Now: 6) Hm. It’s likely that I am simply misremembering The Closing of the American Mind (which is where Bloom’s attack on rock appears), but certainly the most memorable passages in the section on rock are those dealing with the mind of the typical teenager plugged into his blaring Walkman, and those passages focus on the stuff I talked about rather than on a general critique of art-as-such. Bloom also praises some experiences and literature that themselves privilege passion over reason, poetry over philosophy (I’m thinking specifically of his praise of eros and his lament that so few of his students have read the Bible). So that’s why I focused on the sex/aggression stuff. But that doesn’t matter so much since the rest of this post will address the larger questions about the relationship of art and reason.

5) Criticism of American contemporary response to/use of music. I largely agree with this; see previous post. However, our society is so complex, and we have our faces pressed so close against it, that we can’t really see it well enough to discern internal conflicts as well as we might. We certainly have an oversupply of Oprah-esque “feelings worship” (vote Bush–for the children!), but we also have a strong streak of bureaucratic intellectualism–why aren’t we more upset that we’re ruled by self-crowned philosopher-kings? We have an astonishing tendency to abstract and intellectualize (she’s not a child, she’s a choice) at the same time that we accept anecdotes as data in public debate. So I’m not sure how to describe the peculiar problems with the American passion/reason imbalance.

Partly this is due to my confusion about the use of the term “reason” here–throughout this post, I will be using “reason” to mean “ratiocination” (is that the word I want?), syllogistic reasoning, the standard stuff you find Socrates unleashing on everybody except Parmenides, who opens a big ol’ can of syllogistic whoop-ass on Socrates (to the gleeful Schadenfreude of millennia of philosophy students). I know there’s also an understanding of “reason” that is more like what I mean by “right reason” or perhaps “prudence,” in which reason includes only those processes of ratiocination that actually lead to true conclusions–in other words, reason includes both the process and the necessary true premises. Thus Communism would be irrational, say, or Objectivism, even though both philosophies obviously make use of syllogistic reasoning. ANYWAY, like I said, I will be using “reason” to mean “ratiocination” and not “prudence” or “right reason.” Thus reason, too, can be misused, misdirected, or misleading. Apologies if that definition obscures rather than clarifies matters.

A further complication, of course, is that passions themselves can spur rationalizations. (Chesterton’s line about the man who says he disbelieves in the Trinity, but what he means is that he’s sleeping with his neighbor’s wife.) I’d rather not even get into that for now.

4) Rock is catharsisless. (Try saying that three times fast.) The boring response: This isn’t true of all rock. Elvis Costello’s “Little Palaces,” which I listed in the earlier post, has a degree of catharsis; so does “99 Luftballons.”

More interesting response: Catharsis is very rare in rock. Does that matter? I’ll get into a more vigorous defense of the passions later, but for now, let me just point out that rock songs tend to be short. Expecting catharsis from a single song (an album might be different; and many do, in fact, provide some degree of catharsis) is like expecting it from a Weegee photograph. Rock songs are snapshots, not movies. Again, this is only a problem if a) exciting passion is always bad, and b) your society, as ours does, favors rock/pop intensely as vs. other forms of art or communication.

3) Catharsis is the justification for art. I think there are others, of which more below, so I will avoid taking issue with Aristotle in order to skip directly to taking issue with Plato.

2) Passion is anti-democratic. This Glenn Reynolds column on Elvis Presley might make an interesting contrast here: Reynolds lauds Elvis for inventing the rock star–providing, basically, a way for people to feel part of something larger than themselves and bond with others. Reynolds’s column is too quick-and-easy, and the thread of the argument gets a bit lost, but some relevant good points stand out: You can’t ignore, suppress, or dissolve the passions. You can only guide them. Even catharsis doesn’t really do the trick–first, because catharsis can sometimes be simple exhaustion, but second and more importantly, because catharsis must somehow appeal to the passions while drawing them toward reason. Thus the end-result of reason must be continually supported, either by an ebb-and-flow cycle of catharsis, or by a more constant attraction toward reason and self-government. In other words, we have to keep wanting self-government; if we reason our way there without any emotional forward thrust, the reasons alone simply won’t motivate us enough.

Similarly, democracy and freedom (very different concepts!) require emotional support. If they are to stand against (often very persuasive) counterclaims, and against the always-persuasive claims of our emotions, they need to be supported by other emotions themselves. This is one of the many ways rock music can operate: It can oppose one passion with another. The example that springs to mind is using pity to oppose lust. This is one reason I kept yammering about the dialectical nature of rock; it often embeds a critique and a conflict. It often expresses a conflict within our own souls, generally coming down on one side or the other. That dialectical and passionate approach is often more effective than a purely reason-based approach, since it acknowledges and respects our experience of the passions rather than simply dismissing it.

And finally, 1) Art is dangerous because it replaces reason with passion. Earlier, I discussed possible confusion about the word “reason.” A parallel confusion has probably seeped in with regard to the word “passion.” I’ve been using it as a strange medley of “emotion” and “motive.” There are emotions that are obviously motives–like anger, sexual desire, or adoration–and emotions that are less obviously motives–like resignation, hope, or regret. Rock is just as good at expressing the latter kind of emotion as the former. (In fact, this whole thread started because Unqualified Offerings pointed out that rock’s bluesy lineage makes it especially well-suited to expressing resignation and endurance.)

I’ll defend both kinds of emotion as legitimate. Reason (/ratiocination) isn’t the only means of attaining wisdom. Ecstatic experience is one terrific way of gaining insight, even if one needs to return from the ecstasy in order to articulate the insight. Rock, like other art, is able to “take you places.” Art often offers insights even when that wasn’t the artist’s explicit or acknowledged intention; you can put a lot more in a piece than you intended. (I write fiction, and that’s definitely true of my experience.) Rock is non-rational, no kidding. No matter how “intelligent” it is, most of its appeal will always be non-rational. (The earlier post includes some thoughts on why this is especially true of music, but it is really true of all art, as my correspondent noted.) I don’t view the emotions as opposed to reason such that stimulating one necessarily reduces the other. So perhaps much of my disagreement with Bloom should be traced to that disagreement.

I’ve been focusing on art’s effect on its audience, partly because I’m being too clinical, and partly because I really don’t want to open yet another area of inquiry in a post that is already too complex and too long. But the reasons artists do their thing should also be taken into account. The whole notion of art as “sub-creation” is really interesting. Art (including rock) is also a means of distilling the world, simplifying and intensifying it, responding to our belief that the world and its events and inhabitants mean something– that they are, to some degree or another, allegorical. But this post is probably not the best place to get into that whole discussion.

As I said before, there’s also a lot of rock that’s just fun. Some of that fun comes with an admixture of raunchy or critical or regretful or resentful elements; I don’t ultimately think that matters too much. Rocking out is about pure physical joy. It’s like running or eating chocolate. Sometimes there’s also a strong element of aesthetic wonder, making the experience more like watching a tiger’s fur shimmering over its muscles as it leaps, or like looking out from a rock promontory, or like touching or tasting rough icicles. The combination of that pure pleasure with perhaps less pure pleasures doesn’t necessarily bother me–the Cramps, for instance, are fun not just because they’re inherently fun but also because they clearly have loved much of the same music that I love, and because bawdiness without grossness is always fun (maybe a later post on this). And because of a lot of other stuff. No pleasure is really “pure” in the sense of “unmixed.”

Anyway, it was a good letter. Don’t blame my correspondent for provoking this (drink!) vast post.