Tom Waits/Pusha T

Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.co​m find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.

All our attempts to have this number revised have been fruitless but rather than detain you with tedious arguments about morality, panache and book-keeping – when there are really bigger fish to filet these days – we are taking the following unusual step.

If you should really want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we can whole-heartedly recommend, “Ambassador Of Jazz” – a cute little imitation suitcase, covered in travel stickers and embossed with the name “Satchmo” but more importantly containing TEN re-mastered albums by one of the most beautiful and loving revolutionaries who ever lived – Louis Armstrong.

The box should be available for under one hundred and fifty American dollars and includes a number of other tricks and treats. Frankly, the music is vastly superior.

imagine my consternation at not being taken seriously as the sole young lady commenter in these parts. 

Prelude: Somewhere Thomas Aquinas (perhaps cribbing from Aristotle) noted that all acts are moral acts, although some—perhaps many—are simply morally trivial.  I think that’s basically right, but I think it needs to be qualified because of our different context.  Modern Western society tends to think of ethics as a matter of issues or quandaries about which we have to find the right answer.  Thomas, following Aristotle and much of the ancient Western heritage, had a more organic conception.  (It’s a sign of this difference that many of us think of Jane Austen as a romance novelist and not as a moral philosopher, which she is.  We simply don’t recognize what she’s doing as ‘ethics’.)  All that to say, art—both the creation and the enjoyment of it—is moral, as is any human activity.

My point: Even if we don’t know anything about the ‘moral life’ of an artist, art still has moral import.  The general dislike I expressed toward classical music many, many threads ago was, in part, moral.  Orchestras in classical music seem to embody a bad hierarchy to me: conductors, first chairs, etc.  (I’ve never played in an orchestra, so my outside observations could be rubbish.)  Jazz represents a better hierarchy, with players taking turns in the spotlight, but even here it can be a bit too meritocratic, too individualistic for my tastes.  Pop/rock—or at least the pop/rock that exists in the platonic ideal of my mind—is my favorite in part because it is so communal, yet so egalitarian even as the hierarchies that are unavoidable in life are still in play.  (For instance, Page and Plant are clearly out front in Zep, but anyone who really listens hears how Bonham and Jones are just as integral—just as equal—in the sonics of that band as the glamor boys up front.  They never sound merely subordinate to guitar and voice.)

If we do know something about the moral life of the artist, it can shape how we interact with the work, which can alter its moral impact.  But it doesn’t simply determine the moral import of the art.  Michael Jackson may have been a pedophile (to select a moral failing many find particularly wrong), but it doesn’t erase the good in his life or the good that was his music.  If he was a pedophile, he wasn’t a monster; he was still a human being and, just like any of us, capable of good and evil acts.  Good art—morally, aesthetically good art—can transcend the moral limitations of the artist, but it also doesn’t erase the moral complexity of the artist (which is to say the moral complexity of any human being).  Reading the Fela biography included in the box set I mentioned yesterday, I was put off by the hagiography.  Fela was merely the hero; his problematic sexual politics, which are part of his music, were, at best, merely implied.  But even as I acknowledge problems in Fela’s ‘moral life’, I also see tremendous heroism.  And knowing both those enriches my interaction with the music.

I was rereading Cam’s Brazil project posts on Tom’s website yesterday.  He noted that the cover of Ze’s Todos os Olhos was one of the greatest album covers ever.  (For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a marble stuck in a rectum so that it looks like an eye.)  I agree.  But the reason is contextual, not merely aesthetic.  It’s a coded middle finger to a repressive regime.  In another context I might find the picture annoying or bratty, the kind of false rebellion, shameless shock showoff that one sees in too much recent art.  But knowing the risks Ze is taking, his political intent and how he pulls one over on a regime that deserved nothing but contempt changes the interpretation—the moral significance—of the cover.

Sorry for the lengthy diatribe.

The morality in art in question has always been a minor irritant to me, which is why I reacted the way I did to Milo's post.  This may seem odd from someone who others might regard as a little overly "politically correct" (I've been told more than once that I taught them the word "misogynist") but it bothers me for the following reason:

To give you the best example, I once had a conversation with a friend of mine about Picasso, who is one of my favorite artists, in part because I believe his aesthetic breakthroughs forced us to look at the world a little differently.  Her response was: "I don't like the way he treated women."

Now, I agree that Picasso treated women abysmally.  I also know you can argue there are some heavy misogynist undertones in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (in which five naked prostitutes are given the Cubist treatment, in a manner that makes them menacing).  But this is one painting in a diverse body of work, and even so, that one painting is fantastic.  This is slightly different than someone like Axl Rose or Hemmingway, people in which a hatred of women seems to inform their entire body of work. 

In the course of this conversation with my friend, I rattled off a list of other famous artists with woman problems: James Brown, Sinatra, Al Green, etc.  Are they on the list, too?  (My friend wasn't aware that Sinatra hit women, which I have to admit, bowled me over.)

Too often, people treat artists as their mirror: they must reflect the social conventions of the beholder.  This is ridiculous.  Artists should be judged on their art.  Their moral lives is an entirely different discussion altogether. 

I remember a professor of mine attended a conference on the 18th century literature.  One of their objectives was to figure out if there were any writers of the period who "weren't racist."  The only author they came up with was Voltaire.  Now, as a jaded optimist, I love me some Candide.  But am I going to live without Fielding or Sterne because they were lacking modern enlightenment?  Uh, no.

I am hoping the discussion about morality in art that began on the preceding thread can continue here.

Okay, I'll put a small stake in the ground. One, because I think this is very well said by Irene toward the end of the Loudo thread,

For a critic, though, I still think there might be more specific and discerning criteria in mind. I suppose in my mind the responsibility of a critic is to inform a readership what is worth their contemplation, even if that audience won't end up personally identifying with (and thus enjoying?) everything there. So even if a critic takes issue with some aspect of the moral content of some work, if the music itself is aesthetically important for a subgenre or mini-epoch of pop music, it is still worth informing the people about.

And two, a small stake because every minute I spend doing this is a minute I'll have to apologize being late for at my next location, but since that's a way of life for me, I'm really good at it.

You can capture some elements of the very last sentence in today's Pusha T review, as in when "every mean word delivers" and when the moral contradictions of "the volume dealer who raps for pocket money" is observed or even honored, although dissed with the Dictators reference. I get that Bob disapproves personally but recognizes some artistic worth, ergo the A minus, but even more, the concentrated attention on the artist's work.

Me, I can't get there. I'll go ahead and own being one of the most strait laced here, a product of growing up in a small town in Oregon in the 50's and 60's I've always thought, who can't abide intentional meanness wherever I encounter it and harbor a life's work aggression against America's drug life. So when music bumps up against that, I spend my time elsewhere.

I think that means I'm making a moral judgement. Doesn't mean I'm right, doesn't mean anybody has to agree with me, just means I'm opinionated and yes it significantly influences what I like and listen to.

I'm really late now so let me stop with these last two --

I wouldn't even mind the mean, profane and thuggish if the same genre had a platform, a campaign even, that was public and intentional and star powered to provide a balance. Why that hasn't happened is shocking to me. And yes I love K'Naan and Shad, but I'm also talking about country music as long time witnesses will note. Of course, Dolly Parton got blasted for trying exactly that on her last album, which proves to me that 1) it's a long road, mostly uphill, and 2) the cynic will always win the argument (not meaning that they will be correct, just be more influential) for reasons of either human nature or current culture I can't tell which.

And last,

I am a public figure who's held accountable for all his published words, I have to be sure I get mine right

This amounts to a moral code as well and is one of the most compelling reasons we are here on this site with Bob. Thanks.

I'll be back. Gotta run.

Michael--I don't think it's very interesting to simply write off someone solely because of her or his personal behavior, but it's one of the factors that informs how we interact with the art.  In some cases, Miles Davis or Picasso, the failings seem less central, as you point out.  In others, Riefenstahl, the failing is central to the art.  (Heidigger is an interesting and difficult case here.)

Sinatra's an interesting case.  About six months ago, I listened to him for the first time in, gosh, years?  Much to my surprise and contrary to previous experience, I didn't enjoy him very much.  I kept listening.  I read some Xgau.  Listened some more.  Finally decided that it was the macho that informs his singing and his treatment of women.  Don't misread me: he's a magnificent singer.  But I couldn't hear the vulnerability Xgau mentioned that undercut the macho.  In the end the macho overwhelmed the pleasure of his singing.

Maybe six months from now, I would hear it very differently.  And that goes to the other part of the equation: the moral lives of the audience.  How we interact with the art also says something about us that's potentially interesting.  All this may be morally trivial in the sense Thomas meant it, but maybe not.  (Does someone love Sinatra because he captures some lost fantasy about manhood?  That might bother me.)

The challenge, personally and intellectually, is to figure out what the art we cherish says about the lives we (and the artists) live.  And such an investigation, in my experience, enhances pleasure.  Should it ever devolve into a mere boycott of those not deemed perfect enough, count me out.  Let he without sin....