Has there been a historical event equivalent to #GamerGate? Actually, yeah. --- I grew up in the evangelical Christian subculture, among the people on whom Ned Flanders and the Veals on Arrested Development were patterned. So the infamous bonfires where conservative Christian teenagers would gather up their “sinful” media, throw it in a pile, and burn it while singing hymns were a part of my childhood lore. And, of course, I condemn the right-wing cultural paranoia that leads to people supporting such nonsense (even if all the kids re-buying their sinful albums two years later when they went to college probably boosted net profits). I condemn them for burning heavy metal albums in the 1970s, for burning Harry Potter books in the 2000s, and for supporting Jack Thompson’s moral crusade to get all game designers thrown in jail for “causing school shootings” before he got disbarred in 2008. I’m against all of that crap. But it doesn’t particularly worry me. The Maude Flanderses were never going to win. The idea that religious conservatives could take down Black Sabbath or take down J.K. Rowling or that Jack Thompson could take down EA and Take Two Interactive was always ridiculous. Because they knew even as they succeeded in hogging the spotlight people were snickering at them. They knew that as much as they tried to make up for it with brute force, their cultural power was nil. They knew that preachy “Think of the children” types weren’t cool, and the more they attacked Ozzy Osbourne the cooler Ozzy got and the less cool they became. You know what kind of thing does worry me? The biggest 1970s music bonfire was not done by a church, and the records they destroyed weren’t metal records. And they didn’t use kerosene and a match, they used explosives. And rather than singing hymns and being quietly self-righteous, the event erupted into an orgy of violent rage. I’m talking, of course, about the ill-fated promotion the Chicago White Sox ran on July 12, 1979, known as “Disco Demolition Night.” Yes, in an era where Christians literally believed rock bands were Satanic cults who used backward masking to hypnotize people, the worst violence against music was wrought by guys who just didn’t like disco.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:51:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015