Words Mean Things: One Root Word

As I listened to the third hour this morning of Glenn Beck's radio show, he referenced the ruling party as the National Progressive or National Socialist Party. As Mr. Beck made the reference, I thought that Mr. Beck had referenced the modern rulers as Nazis.

Now before you go ballistic over that comment, people should understand the reference the root “Nazi” itself, as it means “National.” Such was used in venues as Italy's Autodromo Nazionale di Monza (The National Autodrome of Monza), the home of the Gran Premio Santander d'Italia. But the most infamous “stereotype” of the root “Nazi” comes from the shorthand abbreviation of the entire name of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.

In light of the move of this nation to the socialist utopia, when looking at the entire Nazi reference from a literal standpoint, this nation is truly run, as Mr. Beck would reference, by the National Socialist Workers Party of America – Nationalsozialistische Amerikaner Arbeiterpartei. It is truly “Nazi” when considering the history of words and the meanings.

Here's an interesting take from The American Spectator. ◙

Failure to Communicate

By Drew

Friend of the Hadleybloggers Terry links to this article by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand entitled “The Moral Weight of Words.” Terry uses this as the basis for a discussion of Dawn Eden and her youth-oriented (i.e. talk to them in their own language) approach to chastity. And from this, I propose to talk about the future of classical music. Well, we’re nothing here if not eclectic.

But there is a method to this madness, and that method lies with the topic of communications. How do we communicate – across generations, across cultures, across racial and ethnic divides? In an age where we as a society have become increasingly fragmented and isolated, how do people of different tastes communicate?

Exhibit #1 is this fine piece by Terry Teachout, commenting on the recent death of Beverly Sills. Teachout underscores, in so many words, a point I made last week in my own notice of Sills’ passing: that Sills came from an era in which classical music was an established, accepted part of popular culture. That doesn’t mean it was the most popular type of music out there (even if Leonard Bernstein lived the life of a rock star), but it does mean that, through exposure on radio and TV, it was part of the mainstream. By this I mean that even people who didn’t consider themselves classical music fans were still expected to be familiar with particular singers and pieces of music. And so, as Teachout says, Sills’ (and others, such as Robert Merrill and Roberta Peters) appearances did not create as much as they did reflect reflect the popularity, or at least acceptance, of opera. By bringing it to the people, in the medium the people enjoyed, these stars kept opera in front of the people in a way that (with the end of variety shows and other forms of “middlebrow” programming) would be impossible today.

The mention of “middlebrow” culture leads me to this post by Donald Pittenger at 2Blowhards, in which he laments the disappearance of that middlebrow area in which classical music was so firmly established. Donald voices a guarded optimism over the return of high culture, in the cyclical ways such things happen. Donald points to what passes for pop culture today, and suspects that such “crudeness in the form of Rap, Concept Art, mindless action movies and the rest of current popular culture will become boring because it will have been around too long.” I can only hope he’s right.

However, perhaps voicing a note of caution is Greg Sandow, who argues that classical music is at a crossroads unless it faces up to the fact that its audience is daily growing grayer, older, and smaller. Unless classical music engages the modern culture, it will fade away. Far easier said than done for, as Sandow points out, “it's fairly hard to address some huge problem like the aging of the audience, because the most direct solution -- start doing things younger people might like -- seems to conflict with the untouchable core mission, and therefore can't be contemplated.” A more casual atmosphere, shorter pieces, not being so prudish about applause, more direct interaction between the orchestra and the audience – these are merely some of the ideas that Sandow proposes as a way for classical music to regain a foothold in popular culture.

Now, note that none of these are diametrically opposed. Terry has, in the past, shared Sandow’s concern about the future of the classics (as he points out, recordings can often be a more satisfying experience than live attendance in the orchestra hall). And Donald’s optimism in the return of high culture doesn’t necessarily preclude the implementation of Greg’s suggestions.

But at some point in this discussion we have to confront the question of the future identity of highbrow culture – what does it mean? Do we want our high culture to be a little more special, a little elevated, from the rest of pop culture? Should we be looking to elevate people to this height, rather than bringing it down to their eye level? In other words, should we really be trying to make it accessible, or should we be expecting and demanding more from the public, asking them to make an effort to better themselves?

This question isn’t a new one to me, insofar as I’ve been reading these writers discussing the topic for some time. But I wrestle with it, because there is something – I’d call it purifying – about dressing up in suit and tie to go to a concert hall, about sitting in dignified silence and listening to music, about behaving – perish the thought! – like ladies and gentlemen instead of punks. We’d have called that “civilized” or “cultivated” behavior once upon a time, although I suspect both of those words are on the outs nowadays. And yet Sandow is right – without some way of engaging today’s culture, it’s going to be an uphill battle to continue to grow the classics. And the way this culture is laid out makes that task even more difficult.

So with that we return to Terry’s original post on von Hildebrand and the morality of words. (See, I told you we’d get back there eventually.) And this, for me, crystallizes this whole issue: how far do you go to evangelize – whether we’re talking about religion, art, politics, or anything else that might require persuasion? There’s always a fear of “going native,” of losing your way amidst the dangers of modern culture. Equally, there’s the threat that in speaking the language of those you seek to convert, you water down the message to the extent that it loses its true meaning and power. And there’s the question that anyone faces – that of preserving your own dignity and integrity.

Von Hildebrand speaks powerfully of the dangers of using the popular language to express divine concepts:

The choice of words in such work is crucial. When referring to her previous life — before she was converted to the beauty of chastity — a young woman appearing on television and addressing millions of viewers, kept saying, “when I was sexually active….” The question that I raise is: Will not her choice of very graphic words inevitably bring to the minds of the viewers images that the phrase “sexually active” triggers?

Perhaps this is overstating the case somewhat in terms of classical music (my first thought was to entitle this piece “Alice von Hildebrand Explains Classical Music to You,” but I thought that might be a little obscure even for me), but I’m not entirely convinced of that. As Rush Limbaugh often says, "words mean things." And the central question remains the same: how to you communicate your message to a generation that, in some cases, is barely literate – unable to write in cursive, using the shorthand of text-messaging, increasingly isolated in that fragmented society, with common cross-boundary frames of reference becoming less and less. In this relativist age, how does one get the message across?

My first instinct is to say that one has to speak the language, that in a pop culture society you'd better know something about that pop culture in order to communicate. Certainly this entails risk, with faith and education being your prime defenses. But it'd be foolish to do business in France and not know how to speak French, right? Being familiar with is not the same thing as being a part of, after all.

And, as everyone in business (and entertainment) can tell you, the first secret of success is to know your audience. A friend of mine works at a non-profit that also provides services to the public. Try as they might, the public isn’t interested in hearing about the group’s mission – all they understand is the service provided. And so this organization, despite a mostly heroic mission, is reduced to hawking the service – they have to speak the language of the public. You can tell the public about the wonders of classical music until you're blue in the face, but if they don't speak the language - if they don't share the values that you know are enhanced by classical music - then you might as well be speaking to a brick wall.

But there has to be more to it than that. There's always this stiffing of the spine when it comes to compromising your ideals. You can go only so far, no farther. Where do you draw the line? Maybe, as von Hildebrand suggests, you don't speak the exact same language, you parse your words carefully. While it doesn't mean the same thing as denying the culture altogether, it does imbue your words with a certain dignity, something that others will definitely notice, one way or another. (Incidentally, this also makes the case for elevating the liturgical language above that of the normal vernacular, but that's another argument for another day.)

I’m always reminded of the story about Mrs. Robert Taft, whose husband ran against Eisenhower for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1952 When asked if her husband was “an ordinary man,” she replied, “I should hope not!” Ordinary men need not apply for the presidency – it takes an extraordinary man to lead.

And I confess that this is my feeling regarding classical music as well. I cringe every time I go to the orchestra and see people dressed in untucked shirts, jeans and tennis shoes. Don’t dumb it down to the public – educate them, elevate them instead. Make it special, something transcendental, out of the ordinary. How, of course, is the question. And I’ll be damned if I have the answer.

What's In a Name?

By Drew

Mitchell’s article last week about The Mikado brought to mind a number of connecting thoughts, or at least thoughts I'll try to connect.

According to my Dover edition of The Mikado, there are two lines that were altered in the 1940s “to avoid giving offense.” In one, during the “little list” song, Koko refers to “the nigger serenader and others of his race” (in reality, Gilbert was referring to blackface minstrels). In the “more humane Mikado” song in Act 2, there's a reference to one who is "blacked like a nigger" (same point of reference). Traditionally, these are now rendered as “the banjo serenader” and “painted with vigor,” respectively. (Interestingly enough, there is also a line early in Act 1, referring to Japan, stating “For where’er our country’s banner may be planted,/All other local banners are defied!” One wonders if this were considered offensive in the 1940s as well.)

It makes sense to change these lines, not only because they’re anachronistic, but because they have nothing to do with the general plot. They’re lines which simply give color to the songs (no pun intended) but don't affect the story.

Now, the reason I find this interesting is that last week there was this story about a parents’ group in St. Louis Park, Minnesota trying to get Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn removed from the high school’s required reading list because of repeated references to the “n-word,” which, because we’re all grown-ups at this blog, we can categorically state was “nigger.” Ken Gilbert, one of the parents pushing to have the book removed from the reading list (he was careful to point out that he’s not trying to ban the book), says use of the word should not be tolerated “in informal conversation or popular entertainment.” According to Gilbert, "There's no word that brings you to a lower level. ... It makes children feel less than equal in the classroom." Predictably, the whole thing has found itself if court, where so far the school district has been successful in keeping the book on the list.

A group of teachers, parents, administrators and community members examined Gilbert’s request and ruled in favor of the book, determining "the literary value of the book outweighed the negative aspect of the language employed."

This may be true as far as it goes, but it also misses the larger point. Twain’s greatness stems not merely from his literary prowess, but his ability to paint a historical picture of America and her people as they were at a given time. And in that period of time, “nigger” was a word that a whole lot of people used, many of them without prejudice. In our more enlightened times we can understand how offensive that is today, but that isn’t how people saw it at the time, and if we’re not going to engage in revisionist history (one of the liberals’ favorite techniques), we have to understand that we can’t use today’s standards to gauge yesterday’s behavior. It just doesn’t work.

Twain’s book is not just entertainment – it’s a historical document, a portrait of our heritage. Take away that aspect and you remove much of Twain’s significance – or any great artist, for that matter. Many’s the bad joke about the abstract painter who just “paints what he sees,” but nonetheless that’s an essential part of art – to hold a mirror to society and reflect it back.

Let’s consider more contemporary examples, starting with Norman Mailer’s World War II novel The Naked and the Dead. In that book, Mailer (at the behest of his publishers) used the euphemism "fug" in lieu of the f-bomb (hey, we may be adults here, but even we have our limits). The substitution has been a source of much humor over the years – it drew far more attention to the word, making it stand out, than would have been the case if Mailer’d simply used the f-word as it was.

Contrast that to a movie like The Departed (or almost any movie rated PG-13 or below), where you’re going to hear the f-bomb all over the place. The defense of the use of this word usually consists of something like, “this is the way people talk in real life,” which I can verify to be substantially accurate. Some of it is gratuitous, some the result of lazy writing. But there’s no doubt that, however distasteful, using the word in context serves a purpose. To have a gangster, in the heat of the moment, exclaim something like “darn” or “shoot” just wouldn’t be believable. The audience wouldn’t accept it, nor should they. And that’s just a part of life – you can hear language worse than that at any school playground.

Perhaps some time in the future we’ll have reached a point where words like that aren’t used in polite company anymore, but does that mean we’d be going back and changing movies like The Departed? Not if we’re smart, because in doing so we’ll be destroying that looking glass that shows they way we were at a given point in time. Whitewashing everything that’s gone before us, trying to protect people from seeing the truth as it was, is not only fruitless, it’s dangerous. It doesn’t give us real life at all, just some sugarcoated fairytale impression of life. It prepares our young people poorly for facing a world that isn’t nearly as genteel as we’d like to pretend it is, and it makes a joke out of the idea that we can prevent the errors of the past by learning from them.

To wrap this up, let’s take a look at a discussion last week over at Amy Welborn’s blog about Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In this case the controversy is not over racism, but anti-Semitism (which, I suppose, is a form of racism, but of a different kind). Is Shylock, as portrayed by Shakespeare, an example or an indictment of anti-Semitism? As one of Amy's commentators pointed out,

[Isaac] Asimov argues that as offensive as we might find this, it simply isn't "antisemitic" in any modern sense of the term, because for Shakespeare and his audience, Shylock was simply a *literary* stereotype, not a jab at anyone whom they expected ever to meet in real life. In other words, the "Jew" was a stock villain for literary and dramatic purposes, the same way the "Soviet agent" or "Commie spy" was a stock villain in so many Cold War-era movies and novels.

Another commentator, friend of this blog Tim Ferguson, mentions “If it makes us uncomfortable, then that is a testament both to the realism of the play and also to the societal and individual growth we have undergone as we continue to digest the Gospel generation to generation.”

We should remember that the word “kike,” which is (rightly so) deeply offensive to Jews, was in fact coined by American Jews in the 19th century to refer to those Jews who had immigrated more recently than themselves and were less educated. Wikipedia says it was used with affection; other accounts I've seen suggest that it was a somewhat derisive term, meant to draw a distinction between the Americanized Jews and the less-assimilated newcomers, whom they would try to help out.

The point here is that words mean things, particularly in specific contexts. To try and separate that word from its original context is not only wrong, it's intellectually lazy. As I pointed out in my Leni Riefenstahl piece last year, one must have the ability to separate the morals of the artist from the morals of the art. In the same sense, one must take works like Huckleberry Finn and view them not with contemporary values but as living witnesses to a time past. That's what makes them timeless - Huckleberry Finn tells it like it was; maybe we wish it hadn't been that way, but there it is. The inability to understand this - make that the refusal to understand it - shows that we are still a young, and immature, country.