Comment on the following quotations

1. "[Rock music is] junk food for the soul." Allan Bloom.

2. "After science that which comes nearest to expressing" the inexpressible is music." Aldous Huxley.

3. "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." Walter Pater.

4. "Music is essentially useless, as life is." George San-tayana.

5. "Is not music the food of love?" Richard Sheridan.

6. "If a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language." Henry David Thoreau.

Write a paragraph on the topic. Use extra material

8. Work in pairs. Role play. Your friend invites you to a recital of a famous pianist. Chopin and Liszt are on the program. You’d better prefer to go to a rock concert

UNIT 14

THE OPERA

Read and translate

You are going to read a newspaper columnist’s opinion of Jerry Springer – The Opera, a controversial musical which was recently broadcast on British TV.

We need more good sense, not censorship

Mary Kenny.

The Opera, which was screened on BBC television recently despite, apparently, 45,000 protests from Christian groups, did not "offend" me, from a religious point of view. But then I take the attitude that God is big enough to look after Himself. I did, however, find it both lowering and snobbish.

Essentially the production is about smart folk sneering at the lives of trailer-park trash. In the original Jerry Springer television shows, although they can be ghastly, there is a certain poignancy about the complexities of people's lives. Despite the cringe-making confessions, there can be a certain sincerity. But the opera is without that: it is pitched in a register of smart-arsed "irony", and it laughs at the sort of people who appear on the TV shows. And although I don't have strong feelings about blasphemy myself - Catholics are used to being scoffed at, and learn to be robust about it – I am glad that many Christians did make their feelings known about the transmission. Any complaint from a Christian group that does not care to see Jesus Christ mocked or criticized is immediately rebuffed as "censorship”. Hundreds of mentions of the f-word and the c-word on the public airwaves are permitted, indeed celebrated. But what is "censorship" and what is judgment and good manners? Promiscuous swearing on the public airwaves should be penalized. Not because such words are inherently wicked, but because coarse language is lowering, and violent talk often feeds into violent actions: the constant description of women as "bitches" in some forms of rap music, for example, will have some spillover effect. The Jerry Springer opera broadcast is over, but the questions it provokes will run and run. There is still a big debate to be had on how a society combines freedom of speech with respect for the values of others. An artist has to push boundaries and offend sometimes, but the artist also has to recognise that there will be consequences of his actions. One of the consequences of the freedoms that TV has enjoyed over the past few decades is a dismaying dumbing down of cultural standards. In such a debate we should also stop throwing around the word "censorship" in an adolescent way. Censorship means that you absolutely cannot access a particular text or piece of material because the authorities withhold it. But choosing not to broadcast something coarse and foul-mouthed is not necessarily censorship; it may also be called exercising editorial judgment.

2. Answer the questions

What do you think about censorship?

Which of these programmes would you object to, and why?

1. A soap opera that glamorises drug use.

2. A drama with a lot of nudity.

3. A programme with a lot of swearing.

4. A movie with a lot of violence, in which many people are shot and killed.

5. A comedy that makes fun of religion.

6. Does Mary Kenny, the writer, think that Jerry Springer – The Opera should have been banned?

7. Does she think that it was a good decision to show the programme?

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1345