The Progression Of Violence In Music Essay

, Research Paper

A Condensed Progression of Violence in Music

In the late 1950s, Elvis Presley revolutionized the music industry and took the world by surprise. His rock-and-roll rhythms and gyrating style dance fascinated many teenagers yet disturbed many parents. When the singer appeared on Ed Sullivan’s variety show, Presley’s hips were kept out of the camera range because his movements were considered “too suggestive”. Reflecting on the Presley-Sullivan incident, numerous people are amused at the innocence of the time and the severity of the situation. Since the Elvis age, society has witnessed the correlation of music and violence and this trend is escalating at a quick rate. Today, people are increasingly concerned about how music might affect individuals and society as a whole; however, we can observe past trends, seen in 1969, to help determine the progression of violence generated from the music industry. In retrospect, 1969 was a year that possibly initiated the concept of using music to corrupt social values and employed music as a motive for violence. These trends, established in the late 1960s have heightened in severity and are partially responsible for today’s violence in music.

It is apparent that music has the power of influence, for the act of listening indirectly takes the listener away from other activities. The Parents Music Resource Center reports that American teenagers listen to an estimated 10,500 hours of rock music between the 7th and 12th grades alone – just 500 hours less than they spend in school over twelve years. It is clear that their listening time could be put towards other productive means, but the listener chooses to listen rather than engage in other activities. The frequency of exposure to music may create immediate or long-term effects. Immediate responses encompass emotional reactions during listening, and respective repercussions may take form in dreams or unnecessary excitement. The long-range effects concern the learning that is produced. One could learn from the song content, such as vocabulary or beliefs, and may result in the strengthening or weakening of certain personality traits including aggressiveness. Listeners actively select what music materials to which he/she will expose him/herself and will absorb material accordingly. The listener may appear calm while listening to stirring music but the fact is that he/she is sharing the musical experience with the musician to some extent. This allows the listener to identify with the artist. Since listeners tend to differently interpret musical experiences, the impact of music varies from one listener to the next . It is proven that music can assist in child development by creating distinguishable matter in which the child can further recognize as its repeated. Similarly, a grown adult can experience stability in music and if this music stimulates aggressive behavior chances are that repeated listening will heighten the aggression. Music’s power also resides in its lyrics. Lyrics can often penetrate the subconscious and this often creates unintended hostility. As psychologist, Linda Rocco once noted, “All societies are bound by the need to differentiate between assertion and aggression. Song and play bind individuals to predictable and discernable structures, while providing the brain with a necessary societal map for the practice of localized and globalized cooperation and peaceful interaction.” This verifies that music is an important factor for personal growth and if used incorrectly, can be detrimental to one’s sense of “peaceful interaction.”Many listeners have distorted interpretations of the musical experience. One of the most notorious examples of such listeners involves Charles Manson and his followers. Their story began on the morning of August 9, 1969, when a Beverly Hills housekeeper telephoned the police to report a murder at the secluded hillside residence of her employer, Hollywood starlet Sharon Tate and her husband, movie director Roman Polanski. She had come to clean up the house when she discovered the bodies of five people including Miss Tate, who was eight months pregnant. The word “pig” was scrawled in bold across the front door of the luxurious home. When the police arrived, they found what one called “a bloody mess.” Twenty-six-year-old Sharon Tate’s body lay in the living room of the house, a nylon rope tied tightly around her neck as though in preparation for a hanging. She had been stabbed sixteen times. Next to Tate on the floor lay the limp body of her close friend, 35-year-old Hollywood hair stylist Jay Sebring. He had been stabbed seven times and shot. A towel partially obscured the rope that had been tied around his neck and then had been draped over a beam on the ceiling.

Two more bodies were found on the front lawn of the house, some fifty feet apart. Thirty-seven-year-old Wojiciech Frykowski, a friend of Roman Polanski, had been shot five times, stabbed fifty-one times, and bludgeoned thirteen times on the back of the head. His girlfriend, 26-year-old coffee heiress Abigail Folger, had been stabbed twenty-eight times. Both Folger and Frykowski had apparently tired to escape, but were caught while running away form the house. The fifth body, that of 18-year-old Steve Parent, was found slumped over the wheel of an automobile parked on the narrow road leading to the entry gate of the property. He had been stabbed once and shot fou