|
Post by km on Nov 2, 2009 14:33:09 GMT -5
Anyway... Sorry, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. Now, I'm a pop culture fanatic. I subscribe to Entertainment and Rolling Stone, and I make sure I know what's going on now. I dislike the Twilight series because they're poorly written, not because I have no idea what they're about. And I *love* television, absolutely love it. I would write for television if I could (maybe some day I will). I love silly television (like Bones) and violent television (like Sons of Anarchy on FX) and Scifi (Damnit, Dollhouse ratings are down this season! What if they cancel? To rent or not to rent that new BSG straight-to-DVD movie?) and John Stewart and Stephen Colbert and... I just love TV. And I wonder what my family and family friends were all so scared of?
|
|
|
Post by mompom on Nov 2, 2009 16:53:37 GMT -5
I remember both churches I attended in junior and senior high showed, "Hell's Bells the Dangers of Rock and Roll". I think it's things like that the led to the misinterpretation of songs like Hotel California, but I could be wrong.
|
|
|
Post by km on Nov 2, 2009 18:18:34 GMT -5
No no, I really remember seeing the Eagles interviewed and talking about what Hotel California is about. It *really was* about a Satanic group that Don Henley knew of at the time. So, I think that's kind of the *one time* in which it's not a misinterpretation.
|
|
|
Post by mompom on Nov 2, 2009 19:19:39 GMT -5
www.snopes.com/music/songs/hotel.aspWiki seems to back this up too. Perhaps they changed their story? Anyway, not a big deal, I just remember thinking the Eagles were evil because of it.
|
|
|
Post by jemand on Nov 2, 2009 19:37:41 GMT -5
I thought it was about addiction.
|
|
|
Post by km on Nov 2, 2009 20:02:34 GMT -5
I thought I'd read it in an interview they did in, like, 2008. I could be wrong... *looking for it online*
|
|
|
Post by kisekileia on Nov 2, 2009 20:03:04 GMT -5
I first saw Dirty Dancing relatively late in my teens, and then saw it again recently with closed captioning. (I miss a lot of dialogue in movies and TV if I don't have closed captioning on.) I love it, partly because I identify with Baby, but my parents had the soundtrack when I was a kid, so it wasn't totally new to me.
|
|
|
Post by km on Nov 2, 2009 20:08:41 GMT -5
Here's what Rolling Stone says. I can't find the longer article: www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595894/hotel_california"Hotel California" was rumored to be about heroin addiction or Satan worship, but Henley had more prosaic things on his mind: "We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest," he said. " 'Hotel California' was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles." (That doesn't preclude heroin or Satan.) A problem arose when the band, recording in Miami, was unable to re-create Felder's twelve-string intro and twin-guitar coda. Panicked, Felder called his housekeeper in L.A. and sent her digging through tapes in his home studio so she could play his demo back over the phone.
|
|
|
Post by km on Nov 2, 2009 20:13:00 GMT -5
Oh, well, so now I can't find it. Sorry I derailed, Erika. I'm almost a little disappointed that it's maybe not about Satan after all.
|
|
|
Post by amyrose on Nov 3, 2009 15:22:41 GMT -5
This post leaves a sick feeling in my stomach.
When I worked at the "Christian" school (always in quotes because nothing that went on there had any relationship to the Jesus of the Gospels), they had a "Spiritual Emphasis Week" once a year when we had some speaker come and do two hour chapel/assembly services every day.
The third year I worked there, some wealthy parents paid for a guy to be brought in from the Twin Cities. I do not remember his name. At the time (this was the spring of 1997), this man was making a very good living travelling around the country to "Christian" Fundie/Evangelical churches, schools and colleges to preach about the evils of rock and pop music. He had an elaborate PowerPoint and Audio show of sorts each day with technology that was really on the cutting edge at that time. He wore designer clothes (Armani--he told the kids), a Rolex watch, and had to be flown to Omaha first class and be put up in the nicest hotel in town. One student questioned the amount of money it cost to have him there and his obviously wealthy lifestyle during one of the assemblies. His answer was a convuluted excuse about how musicians have lots of money and so he has to in order for his message to compete with theirs. Most of the stuff he told the kids about music was BS, the bands and lyrics he cited for examples were mostly from the 80s--this at the end of the 90s. When he couldn't find lyrics to prove his point he fell back on "unGodly lifestyles"--Elton John is gay so The Lion King is evil. The members of U2 drink alcohol so their (very Christian) music is all evil. And on and on. By the end of the week, some of our very devout students were insisting that they could not read certain things in literature class because the authors had some sort of "unGodly lifestyle".
The worst of all of this was at the end of the week. On Thursday, he announced that the culmination of his week of talks would be a massive record burning in the school parking lot. The principal, the parents who paid the bill, the school board and staff had had no idea this was part of his schtick. He had, in fact, only tried it once before. He did not warn any adults, instead announced it to the student body.
On Friday morning, he informed us that he had also called local news outlets and invited them to come. Television cameras showed up and impressionable teenagers brought records and cassettes by the hundreds. Unimpressionable ones brought ones they didn't like anyway in order to not be judged for not participating. One student took, without his father's knowledge, his entire collection of original Beatles LPs.
The press coverage was outrageous and hurt the school's reputation immensely. The AP picked up the story and my relatives read it in places like Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio.
I was among five high school teachers who refused to participate in this event. We stayed in the teacher's lounge the entire time and loudly voiced our objections to the administration before, after and during the fire. The principal, for her part, was distraught by a situation that had spiralled out of her control and was supported by a small group of parents and several local pastors who came to "encourage" the whole thing.
I have not thought about that incident in several years. I think I blocked it out because it went against everything that I have always believe.
|
|
|
Post by Angelia Sparrow on Nov 3, 2009 15:36:38 GMT -5
I got the "rock music is evil" message sometime in the early 80s. I listened to classical out of The Unbearable Burden of My Own Genius (I was an elitist emo), and country because I liked it.
I never did a musical purge, never had to. But I still haven't seen Xanadu.
These days (I'll be 42 soon), you can find anything from Kipling's Recessional to Nine Inch Nails to Waylon Jennings on my MP3 player. The only thing I'm embarassed about is how many Bangles songs I have.
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:05:07 GMT -5
haha, good for you! I actually listened to Bill Gothard once and got rid of everything secular myself. We burned our own trash, and I just threw all of my CDs on it myself. My parents were so proud! I wish I had been more of a rebel like you. My brother was, but I bought everything hook, line, and sinker. (Until Gothard's principles didn't work for me and I hated him the second time my parents dragged me to his seminar!)
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:08:39 GMT -5
There is so much I could say about music.. I was in a very abusive relationship and not really allowed any music. Even the praise and worship music I would listen to my husband would trash. I went into that marriage with no actual music so I had nothing to get rid of when I descended into fundamentalism (unlike books). But I missed out on a whole era of a music, an era I was attracted to (the 80's +) but could not access. I made up for it by going insane buying music once I was out of all that. OMG I bought so much music.. Have your parents returned to any of their old music Erika? I did the same thing with movies/television. I got lucky there: my parents pretty much left our music up to us, though not without a fight. I can't imagine someone even trashing the praise and worship. What, was he afraid that you were going to start worshiping God more than you were worshiping him? b
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:11:49 GMT -5
So, this is something that I'm always curious about because my own parents sheltered me from much of what was happening in popular culture during their charismatic years... Do some of you find that you're missing entire eras of what happened in popular culture? For me, it's the '80's and early '90's that are totally missing from my consciousness. So, I often come up blank when people my own age make cultural references to things that happened during those years. And I *still* get on my parents for not letting me watch Dirty Dancing when it was The Big Thing that all the kids in school were talking about. YES! When Steve and I first got together, I we played a game of Trivial Pursuit. He made it to the very end while I was still stuck at the beginning. I CRIED! Hahahaha! We laugh about it now, how silly I was, but it was right after I separated from my husband. I know very little about what happened in the world before I was 23. My parents thought the news was too scary for us, so we didn't watch (of course, they had no problems shoving Revelation down our throats!). Anything I do know about current events came from Weekly Readers in school. If I had been homeschooled, well, I can't even imagine. My poor younger brother, on the other hand. . . I feel sorry for him. And even after trying for several years to catch up on music, television (yay for DVDs!), and movies, people are still amazed at what I haven't seen. It's a full time job trying to keep up with current culture while catching up on the past.
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:17:21 GMT -5
So does Dirty Dancing when you see it for the first time in your 20's. It just seems stupid, as in, "wtf?? Nobody puts Baby in a corner??? Who wrote this dialogue?" haha, I know! Somehow, it's just not the same as watching it as a teen and being able to participate in the discussions about it the next day at school.
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:19:57 GMT -5
Does anyone else find themselves entranced by movies others are making fun of? Horror/scary movies especially, for me. While others are laughing about how poorly made or unreal it looks, I about jump out of my skin. I never get to make the snarky comments others make. I just don't think about it.
|
|
|
Post by redheadedskeptic on Nov 3, 2009 16:21:37 GMT -5
I remember both churches I attended in junior and senior high showed, "Hell's Bells the Dangers of Rock and Roll". I think it's things like that the led to the misinterpretation of songs like Hotel California, but I could be wrong. My church had that movie! I watched it when I was too young to understand it, and it disappeared when I was old enough to get it. Geez, sorry for my bajillion posts on this thread. I am late to the party!
|
|
|
Post by rosa on Nov 3, 2009 16:48:52 GMT -5
When I was in highschool (1988-1992) our sunday school had a series of movie/discussions about the evils of popular music. One was about rap and it totally focused on casual sex & the song "knockin' boots", one was about heavy metal music and probably Satanism...I just remember arguing how much Christian Metal sucked and sucking was worse than being immoral, and one of the guys in my Sunday School class gave me a Cinderella cassette that we'd specifically talked about being misleading because the song titles were innocuous and the lyrics were evil...
They never attacked oldies or mainstream pop, though, and NEVER went after Country music. I used to keep a list of popular country songs that were as violent, misogynistic and sexual as rap songs but I never did win that argument with anyone.
|
|
|
Post by kisekileia on Nov 3, 2009 23:54:07 GMT -5
I didn't get into secular music until university, really. My parents listened to secular stuff while I was growing up, but I started getting into my own choice of music at about the same time that I got into evangelicalism, so I only got rid of one album (MuchMusic's Dance Mix '94) for being ungodly. However, I'm still catching up on secular music--I didn't even branch out into U2 until university, and it took a few more years before I listened to much other secular stuff.
|
|
|
Post by km on Nov 4, 2009 0:06:26 GMT -5
I just remember arguing how much Christian Metal sucked and sucking was worse than being immoral, Ahahaha! Christian metal *really* did suck.
|
|
|
Post by asteli on Nov 4, 2009 0:42:46 GMT -5
After that comment, I'm almost embarrassed to admit I liked Stryper. My best friend & I were "bad" girls in our tiny town (her a lot more than me), but we'd hang out in her room listening to Stryper I can't imagine being forced to give up books or music. My parents were pretty strict with curfews, etc, but censoring books & music was never on their radar.
|
|
|
Post by rosa on Nov 4, 2009 11:15:56 GMT -5
Asteli, looking back, I don't think Stryper was any worse than any other hair metal band. It pretty much all sucked, once I got to listen to other kinds of music than 80s country, MC Hammer, metal, and Starship (the 4 radio stations in my hometown back then.)
|
|
|
Post by cereselle on Nov 5, 2009 11:48:17 GMT -5
I? Have never seen E.T. My mom saw an interview with Steven Spielberg, who (she says) said "I believe that there are aliens out there. And what better way to spread that message than through the minds of children?" So no way were we allowed to see it. Neither could we see Dirty Dancing ("it's DIRTY dancing!"), and we were allowed to watch Pretty Woman only if my mother was available to put a pillow over the screen during the sex scenes.
We also had Hell's Bells in grade school AND high school! That stuff screwed me up like you wouldn't believe. I had hysterics in the car one time because my parents were listening to Olivia Newton-John, and IT WAS ROCK AND ROLL.
|
|