[Infowarrior] - Weaponizing Mozart

[Richard Forno]

Weaponizing Mozart

How Britain is using classical music as a form of social control
Brendan O'Neill | February 24, 2010

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/weoponizing-mozart/1

In recent years Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control,  
churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for  
policing the populace. But our weaponization of classical music—where  
Mozart, Beethoven, and other greats have been turned into tools of  
state repression—marks a new low.

We’re already the kings of CCTV. An estimated 20 per cent of the  
world’s CCTV cameras are in the UK, a remarkable achievement for an  
island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world’s inhabitable  
landmass.

A few years ago some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a  
gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over  
the age of 20 but which is so high-pitched, so piercing, and so  
unbearable to the delicate ear drums of anyone under 20 that they  
cannot remain in earshot. It’s designed to drive away unruly youth  
from public spaces, yet is so brutally indiscriminate that it also  
drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers, and wakes sleeping babes.

Police in the West of England recently started using super-bright  
halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From  
helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or  
loitering in parks, in the hope that they will become so bamboozled  
that (when they recover their eyesight) they will stagger home.

And recently police in Liverpool boasted about making Britain’s first- 
ever arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by Britain  
and America’s robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a  
remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car  
thief.

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth  
listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny.  
And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a  
way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined  
for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the  
midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved  
children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children  
are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant  
(the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against  
future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has  
fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart  
authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical  
commentator said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating  
great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a  
punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in  
Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear  
Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

The classical music detentions at West Park School are only the latest  
experiment in using and abusing some of humanity’s greatest cultural  
achievements to reprimand youth.

Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play  
recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking  
lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they  
think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are  
uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty  
youngsters flee.

Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of  
the UK to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local  
railway company decided to do something about the “problem” of “youths  
hanging around” its train stations. The young people were “not getting  
up to criminal activities,” admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they  
were “swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers.” So the  
railway company unleashed “blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi.”

Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. “They seem to  
loathe [the music],” said the proud railway guy. “It’s pretty uncool  
to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing.” He said  
the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by  
Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by  
Shostakovich. (That last one I can kind of understand.)

In Yorkshire in the north of England, the local council has started  
playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at “troublesome  
bus-stops” between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Shops in Worcester, Bristol,  
and North Wales have also taken to “firing out” bursts of classical  
music to ward of feckless youngsters.

In Holywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused  
with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the  
council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters  
who were spitting in the street and doing graffiti. And apparently  
classical music defeats street art: The graffiti levels fell.

Anthony Burgess’s nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a  
“punitive slap on the chops” for low youth has come true. In Burgess’s  
1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley  
Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to “the  
Ludovico Technique” by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs  
that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two  
weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly  
rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of  
classical music as punishment.

Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that  
“Ludwig van” did nothing wrong, he “only made music.” He tells the  
doctors it’s a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his  
love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no  
longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling  
distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his  
fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.

The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British  
elite’s authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They’re so  
desperate to control youth—but from a distance, without actually  
having to engage with them—that they will film their every move, fire  
high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and  
bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young  
people’s intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their  
willingness to engage with humanity’s highest forms of art, that they  
imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young  
ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The dangerous message being sent to young people is clear: 1) you are  
scum; 2) classical music is not a wonder of the human world, it’s a  
repellent against mildly anti-social behavior.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked in London.