[R]ock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire—not love, noteros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It acknowledges the first emanations of children's emerging sensuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.—Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, pg. 73 (softcover)
5/06/2005
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So... um... now what?
Not really sure what to say to that one.
I could argue with his point... but he doesn't make much of one. I could argue his observation about rock music, but that won't get me anywhere. I could say that he's scapegoat hunting... but that doesn't get me anywhere either.
I could argue with you, but you didn't deliver any associative comment on the quote either way. Do you agree? I'd wager yes, because otherwise you'd have been more likely to deliver some manner of comment with the quote. I cannot tell how much you hold with it, though, and thus cannot effectively argue with you.
From this quote, and the additional excerpt from his book, I find Bloom to be somewhat too impressed with himself. This is a critique of the author and his style, though, and not the message. I have not read enough of his book to speak fully on that, but what I have seen I have, for the most part, disagreed with.
Gah... that all sounds rather pompous and rude, though doesn't it? ^^;;
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