Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968) • Hacker News Board

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#71

Post by bee_rider » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:36 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #47

bee_rider wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really didn’t know what they were doing back then. Art so obtuse you ned to be educated on how to enjoy it. Modern stuff is much better, you don’t even need so much as an instruction manual. We’ve come quite far really. I think the problem is that they didn’t produce enough culture. So, they had to stretch each bit out by pretending the process of sitting around and trying to figure out how to enjoy it was in an…

Why, Taylor Swift and Nicky Minaj which you don't need any education to enjoy, is so much better than Mahler or even Bach.

I sort of assume any classical musician I’ve ever heard of would be regarded by somebody like Adorno as popular tripe.

I dunno. I don’t like either of those artists, Swift or Minaj, but I’m sure they’ve brought a lot of joy into people’s lives. By what metric can we call them not good? Happiness provided? They score quite well. Some kind of complexity? Sure, not great… but if we pick that metric the high scores list will presumably be dominated by nonsense jazz inspired electronics artists with super fast drum machines, or something like that.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#72

Post by jrm4 » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 3:49 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #70

rpdillon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I wasn't clear; I was referring to the modern usage which seem to mean "a thing that I see problems with". I'm unfamiliar with the original definition and have never heard it colloquially, so I'm not sure how it's used. This is an old discussion now, so I won't post too much more here, but in responding to this, I decided to do a bit of research on "problematic", and it seems (from Merriam Webster) that the first…

> "What are you really trying to convey here?" I don’t think you’ve articulated a reasonable or valid complaint against the word “problematic”. Words convey very little in isolation. When somebody uses the word “problematic”, it’s only in a larger context—sentences and paragraphs, just to start with. > …I still think there's ambiguity. I don’t see how this complaint applies to “problematic” but not, say, your use of…

Again, to jump in here -- I mean "problematic" as you usually see it on social media/pop culture today. And the issue is that it's kind of a cowardly word. The person wants to make a serious accusation without being too open/bold about it; they're implying, but not saying outright, something potentially damaging/devastating if true, but a bad look for the accuser if false.

Thus, they often should say more precisely what they are implying; often e.g. this person is racist, or a pedophile, or homophobic, etc.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#73

Post by klodolph » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #72

klodolph wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What are you really trying to convey here?" I don’t think you’ve articulated a reasonable or valid complaint against the word “problematic”. Words convey very little in isolation. When somebody uses the word “problematic”, it’s only in a larger context—sentences and paragraphs, just to start with. > …I still think there's ambiguity. I don’t see how this complaint applies to “problematic” but not, say, your use of…

Again, to jump in here -- I mean "problematic" as you usually see it on social media/pop culture today. And the issue is that it's kind of a cowardly word. The person wants to make a serious accusation without being too open/bold about it; they're implying, but not saying outright, something potentially damaging/devastating if true, but a bad look for the accuser if false. Thus, they often should say more precisely w…

You’re referring to some usage of the word “problematic” and you’re making an assumption that we have enough shared context that I can understand what you’re talking about—but honestly, no, no, I do not understand what you’re talking about.

I think you are just complaining about some specific usage of the word, and there are a lot of words which happen to be used poorly—like “dopamine” which people use to talk about the feeling of scrolling through social media. This isn’t a complaint about the word “dopamine” but a complaint against its misuse!

> And the issue is that it's kind of a cowardly word.

I think, at the core, complaints against the word “problematic” can be boiled down to emotional sentiments like this.

> Thus, they often should say more precisely what they are implying; often e.g. this person is racist, or a pedophile, or homophobic, etc.

Usage of the word “problematic” to describe people is somewhat minor, I think. I definitely didn’t think of this usage. I see the word “problematic” used to describe practices, processes, ideas, situations, etc.

Sometimes, a problem is complicated and multifaceted. You can’t boil it down to a single thing like “pedophilia”. The word “problematic” is there to say “there are problems with this, but those problems are many and don’t boil down to some simple, other word.”

We need both broad and specific words. The correct, specific word does not always exist.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#74

Post by jrm4 » Fri, Jun 07, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #73

jrm4 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, to jump in here -- I mean "problematic" as you usually see it on social media/pop culture today. And the issue is that it's kind of a cowardly word. The person wants to make a serious accusation without being too open/bold about it; they're implying, but not saying outright, something potentially damaging/devastating if true, but a bad look for the accuser if false. Thus, they often should say more precisely w…

You’re referring to some usage of the word “problematic” and you’re making an assumption that we have enough shared context that I can understand what you’re talking about—but honestly, no, no, I do not understand what you’re talking about. I think you are just complaining about some specific usage of the word, and there are a lot of words which happen to be used poorly—like “dopamine” which people use to talk about…

Sure -- to refine even more: I mean "problematic" as it is used in pop culture, social media, today -- often among generally "liberal" leaning folks (which I'd include myself in) and again, I can tell you what they're trying to say is in reference to a public figure or situation that has the appearance of supporting a currently taboo person or subject. And when it's done, I find it to be the kind of thing that SHOULD have more discussion, but doesn't.

I believe the most common example is probably "enjoying art made by someone who did ostensibly bad things," especially where the range of "bad" here is kind of broad.

Like, Dave Chappelle, JK Rowling, Kid Rock, Louis CK, R. Kelly, Woody Allen, Diddy etc. are all people who someone might say it's "problematic" to enjoy their art, but that's a WIDE range.

Re: Televised Music Is a Pointless Rigmarole (1968)

#75

Post by musha68k » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 1:25 AM UTC

ano-ther wrote: post #66

musha68k wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They regularly transmit live concerts and music features on many genres even. Can you be more specific in your critique? Why were the documentaries not honest in your opinion? Which one(s)?

Am not GP, but my experience is that the deeper I know a topic, the more uninformed and slanted any reporting / documentary / media article becomes. It’s probably natural, because (1) journalists only have a given amount of space to convey an idea, (2) need to capture a non-expert audience, (3) are usually working across a broad range of topics.

Extrapolating from my specializations I can say that most documentaries on arte.tv - even while having to compress and simplify by necessity - had been pretty poignant actually. German and French documentaries for example also tend to be pretty "dry" from the edutainment perspective. I'd call that a feature.

I don't agree that any reporting / media gets it overly / inherently wrong the deeper your knowledge is. There are plenty of great journalists out there that often have varied and deep backgrounds on topics and / or interface well with top experts for the given material they are publicizing.