Feeling The Season
Christmas music is emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health.
Yes, the Guardian’s signature inversion of the festive spirit has once again started to blossom:
‘Tis the season when you can recite every single word of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year because you’ve heard it 25,671 times this morning already and, let me tell you, there is nothing remotely wonderful about the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It’s extremely annoying.
To bolster those eye-catching claims of musical health hazards, Ms Mahdawi cites a report sharing the hitherto unguessed-at news that round-the-clock exposure to in-store Christmas songs can irritate a significant minority of retail staff. Yes, I know. I’ll pause while you steady yourselves. However, these anhedonic tidings extend beyond mere in-store playlist repetition:
The report [notes] that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26%, who I imagine all read the Guardian, said they the dislike the materialism of Christmas music.
Yes, people are buying their loved ones things that they might like. How ghastly.
It’s true that a lot of festive music is extremely materialistic.
It’s a “futile materialism,” apparently.
But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.
This, remember, is written by a grown woman.
And then there’s the 1944 call-and-response duet Baby, It’s Cold Outside, which is listed by Urban Dictionary under the heading “Christmas Date Rape Song.” It’s basically a man plying a woman with booze so she can stay a little longer because, baby, it’s cold outside, “what’s the sense in hurting my pride.”
We’ve been here before, of course, and will likely be here again next year, thanks to the tin-eared dogmatism of Guardian columnists and their readers, whose urge to signal disapproving wokeness apparently trumps all else, including the songwriters’ obvious intent.
Directly below Ms Mahdawi’s reminder that she, being progressive, is above such attempts to conjure jollity and goodwill, is another reminder. Specifically:
The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce.
I’ll just leave that one there, I think.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working for a budget retail establishment, which I’m not going to directly name, but it was along the lines of “QuidNation”. From September to mid-November, the music I had to listen to was dire. I knew I wouldn’t be listening to Beethoven symphonies or Bach chorales, but I thought that I could cope with the trite, cliched banality that in the main constitutes modern, chart-topping pop music, and which, I was sure, made up the background music of the store.
Alas, nothing quite prepared me for the sheer mind-numbing dreck the shop played. It appeared to consist of rejected band demo tapes – none of the songs were from the charts, or even bands my fellow workers recognised. Worst of all was the fact it played through in the same order each night, to the point where I was able to tell what time it was without even needing to look at my watch. For instance I knew it was eight PM when the song which began; “I am the voice at the end of the horse”, (and went both lyrically and melodically downhill from there) came over the speakers.
As a consequence, I was ecstatic when the Christmas playlist was loaded up. Wizzard, Chris Rea, the festive album Phil Spector produced in the early 1960s, even Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, among many, many others. It was a most welcome change from the aural drudgery I had become used to, not least because the Christmas songs were set to play on shuffle as they would have been on a proper radio station.
And so, Ms. Mahdawi, instead of being annoyed and irritated, I was relieved. Because there are song playlists out there even worse than constant Christmas music. And also because I’m not a constantly miserable killjoy who wants to ruin things for other people.
I have this theory that almost everything that is wrong with the left is basically a trained anxiety disorder.
My girlfriend suffers from bad anxiety. She believes that other people will think she’s behaving weird because she is terrified of behaving weird. So she actively scans for evidence that suppoets the theory. Cbt is training her not to do this, and to subvert the process.
The modern left actively train in the opposite direction. If you told a story of someone physically pushing you out of the way on a train the reason chamges depending on who tells the story. The person could be racist, homophobic, islamophobic or even perpetuating rape culture. Only if you dont belong to a victim group is it possible they could be a bit rude and in a hurry
This guardian writer has an anxiety disorder that causes her to see sexual violence in christmas songs. Instead of retraining her, our society is advocating this idiocy.
The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Someday, we may even let you see it.
The annual denunciation of Baby, It’s Cold Outside is pretty much symbolic of woke posturing more generally. In that, the people doing the denouncing are typically relying on a simplistic, tin-eared construal of the song, bleached of subtlety or historical context, and which actually inverts the intended sentiment. As when these progressive chumps bemoaned the song as “aggressive and inappropriate,” and were supposedly distressed by the fact that, despite all the lyrical and musical clues, they couldn’t discern whether the woman goes home or, in their imaginations, is drugged and sexually assaulted.
And yet they imagine they’re the clever ones.
And yet they imagine they’re the clever ones.
They do seem to struggle so when it comes to music. Who can ever forget this insightful feminist reading of Beethoven’s Ninth?
The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.
Feminist musicology. Where would we be without it?
Burnsie, that wouldn’t be from this broad would it?
MA & PhD from Harvard. In the 70’s. Over 40 years ago. I can’t imagine questioning the value of a Hahvahd education back then and still be taken seriously. And yet…
WTP, that’s our gal! A well-credentialed…loon.
With all the projection you get from liberals, you almost have to wonder what went on between the sheets with her hubby, Mr. Walser.
Oh, you gotta check out his book on Heavy Metal music. No time to extract it (can’t copy the text) but read the acknowledgements section of the book at this link and let me know if something about typical leftist behavior jumps out at you.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Running_with_the_Devil.html?id=_qEUBQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button
“almost everything that is wrong with the left is basically a trained anxiety disorder”
A sort of weaponizing of emotional or mental fragility, then. Why, that’s not cruel or vile at all!
That’s what has always bothered me most about the whole elaborate production. I wouldn’t mind so much being chastised by a wise old sage who was trying to help me understand things I was too immature yet to grasp, but being told that I’m stupid and horrible by the equivalent of Otto from A Fish Called Wanda really grates after a while.
That’s what has always bothered me most about the whole elaborate production.
You’re being condescended to by your inferiors.
Well put, Ben! 👏. Queen Pogonip hereby knights you into the prestigious Order of the Shiny Seat.
Alas, I can claim no credit – saw that at Instapundit & John Irving is quoted as saying “… the process of being reviewed is often an exercise in being condescended to by your inferiors.”
kicks rock, returns butt polish
“Wait, what?”
Oh, you know the one. It’s always next to When Shepherds Washed Their Socks By Night on the hymnsheet.
“And yet they imagine they’re the clever ones.”
Let’s just carve that in stone and put it above the door. I find myself thinking the same thing on a daily basis. It’s a clumsy construction, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb nailed it with “intellectual-but-idiot”. The Reynolds/Irving quote is a belter, too.
“Hark The Hairy Angels”
“Wait, what?”
Sorry. I was raised Liberal Lutheran. In the combined Christmas-Easter hymnal, this came right after “Gladly The Cross-Eyed Bear.”
@ Ben
“…the process of being reviewed is often an exercise in being condescended to by your inferiors.” — John Irving
Composer Max Reger’s scatological response to a harsh critic comes to mind.
“I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.”
“… the process of being reviewed is often an exercise in being condescended to by your inferiors.”
Well, that’s pretty much everyone’s story. Cute how writers so often think that there is something special about themselves.