Benefits of Non-Production: Part One

by Theodore Dalrymple (December 2017)

Son of Man, Réne Magritte, 1964

 

 

He who expresses his opinion in public must expect public criticism in return: but, speaking personally, I have found that the only truly hurtful criticism is that which is justified.

 

Some subjects provoke more criticism than others, if outright abuse can be called criticism. Among these is rock music, which is the nearest to being sacrosanct of anything that we now have in the western world. If you suggest that its ubiquity is anything less than a cultural triumph—that, on the contrary, it is a cultural disaster—you will soon be the object of execration the like of which you will never have experienced before.

 

 

But of all the forms of music that I abominate, rap is by far the worst. (Incidentally, I dislike rock music not from snobbery, in case anyone should think it: I like popular music from many other parts of the world, most of which strikes me as less intrinsically savage, less nihilistic and uncivilised, more refined in emotion and attitude towards the world, than Anglo-American rock music. Popular music seems to me the one genre in which sentimentality is not only acceptable, but positively beneficial.)

 

Niggers With Attitude. I am not in favour of the use of inherently insulting appellations, very far from it; but then I do not claim to be against taboos, because in my view taboos are both inevitable and beneficial. Therefore, we should choose our taboos with care; if they do not attach to one thing, they will attach to another. They can, in short, add or detract from the sum-total of civilisation.

 

as follows:

 

I got a case of spittin’ in a motherfucker’s face.

 

I chose this line not because it was the worst available, but simply because it was more than sufficient to capture the nihilistic coarseness that I was after.

 

The line is worth some analysis: not in the sense that a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example, is worthy of analysis, but because it reveals a mentality that is by no means confined to listeners (if that is the word for them) to rap music.

 

I got a case of: what does this imply? The locution suggests that the person using it is not in control of himself, that he suffers from something akin to a mental disorder, as defined in the ridiculous Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. One can just imagine the criteria for diagnosis Facial Expectoration Disorder (the word ‘expectoration’ being so much more scientific than the word ‘spitting’), known also by its acronym, F.A.D.:

 

F.A.D. is diagnosed when at least two of the following are present:
 

v) It is not a response to delusion or hallucination.

 

 

That its meaning is not really ironical anyway is suggested by the fact that the person spat at is a motherfucker. In other words, he deserves to be spat at, he is really the one to blame in the situation, not the spitter, and to spit at him is not really a choice but a kind of automatic, quasi-physiological response to him.

 

This is made virtually certain by the other words and lines of the ‘song,’ which is actually but an incantation to self-pity as a justification for gross criminality.

 

If every nigga grabbed a nine

And started shootin motherfuckers it would put them in line

 

This is an incitement to race war, since the motherfuckers in question (a charming way to describe people, not far removed from describing them as vermin) are, ex officio, white. And so the obvious and oft-repeated, but nonetheless salient, fact that young black men in America are many times more likely to be killed by a peer from his milieu than by a white, is conveniently glossed over: for such a fact is an implicit call to painful self-examination rather to the self-indulgent pleasures of angry self-righteousness and total self-exculpation.

 

That all whites are motherfuckers is implied in the following beautiful stanza (if the word stanza does not over-dignify the lines somewhat):

 

So I’m letting them know how a nigga’s living

Taking from motherfuckers cause nobody ain’t giving

A damn thing to a nigga, a real nigga,

So I’m living by the motherfuckin trigger,

Cause a nigga ain’t afraid of being locked up

I’m out of luck, so why should I give a fuck?
 

This is a fitting and possibly predictable, though no doubt unintended, denouement of the Great Society: a thwarted sense of entitlement used as a justification for armed robbery and crime conceived of as rightful restitution. 

 

 

There is probably no one alive who could not find cause for resentment which is in some sense justified: for no one can get through life without suffering some wrong, some injustice or unfairness (between which, incidentally, it is important to make the distinction). But the fact that resentment may be justified does not make it healthy or wise, or conducive to a proper or constructive engagement with the world, and is often itself a cause of much worse wrongdoing than that which occasioned it. To appeal, then, so brazenly to the resentment and sense of thwarted entitlement to a group already more than averagely susceptible to them, is about as irresponsible as it is possible for a writer to be.

 

But even without its extremely psychological harmful effect, even if it could be be shown that it had no such effect as I have imputed to it, the ‘song’ would still be unutterably disgusting in its crudity. That people should use their freedom of expression for this! It is enough to make one long for censorship: the censorship under which most of the world’s greatest art has always been produced. This is a subject to which I shall return.

 

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