THE LITTLETON TRAGEDY: should popular culture be blamed?

Social Issues | Jonathan Day - 03:03pm Apr 21, 1999 PDT (# 10 of 140)

Actually, blowing away the school =ISN'T= new. This is, what, the third US incident in how many months? School shootings in general aren't new, either. I shouldn't need to mention Dunblane.

Blaming popular culture is always the easy way out. It never explores WHY things happen, what causes people to behave like that, why they cease to see the other people as people but targets. Popular culture, IMHO, may reflect those attitudes and the underlying cause, but is not, in itself a cause.

I don't think there are any easy answers. Limiting gun access WOULD be a sensible course of action, so will never happen. Neither will parential responsibility, or any other possible beneficial thing. Everyone'll just point fingers at everyone else, and nothing will ever change.

(That Dunblane DID cause things to change in England makes it memorable, in the fact that people didn't just wave fists at each other, they stood up and did something. Never mind whether you agree with what they did. Change happened, and that, in itself, was good. I just don't believe anything comparable will ever happen in the US. There will never be anything so horrific that it'll shock the whole of the country into doing something more than tuning into the next episode.)

Rock Critics Killed Rock 'n' Roll

Music | ted burke - 08:42am Apr 16, 1999 PDT (# 36 of 155)

What stinks, it seems, is the obnoxious certainity in the use of the word "dead": rock and roll is as its always been in my experience, mostly "trendy assholes" and an intriguing swath of credible acts, bands and solo, who keep the edgy rigor of the music in tact, and vital. The dustbin of history is always full, what survives the clean sweep is anyones' guess. In the mean time, I reserve the right to be excited, engaged but what is honest and, to whatever extent, original.

If I'm tired of dead things, I should leave the grave yard.

Rather, I think it's criticism that's ailing, if not already deceased as a useful activity. Rolling Stone abandoned itself to gossip magazine auteurism, Spin gives itself over to trendy photo captions, and for the scads of "serious" commentary , much of it has vanished behind faux post- structurualist uncertainty: criticism as a guide to larger issues at hand within an artists work is not being done. Rock criticism, taking its lead , again, from the worn trails of Lit/Crit, has abandoned the idea that words and lyrics can be about anything.

But rock and roll, good and ill, cranks on. The spirit that moves the kid to bash that guitar chord still pulses. To say that bad, abstruse writing can kill that awards too much power to what has become an inane, trivial excercise.

But this aint the Summer of Love. The sooner I accepted that, the easier it became to listen to music I didn't grow up with.

movies/books/etc.: protection and censorship - where do you draw the line?

Mothers Who Think | Kevin M - 10:42am Apr 19, 1999 PDT (# 3 of 39)

I refuse to explain certain New Yorker cartoons: it is usually a fruitless and exhausting process anyway, but even if they did understand I think some levels of irony and cynicism is best left to form naturally during the teenage years.

Mindless violence is out, but this has been a non-issue so far. Anything that repeatedly causes nightmares.

I'd like to draw the line on drivel (like the berenstain bears) but once they get it into their hot little hands it is so hard to pry out again. We usually lose on that one.

Good books, videos or music are in. I've not yet applied any content screens to good stuff.