Well at some stage my childhood love of Looney Tunes had to emerge, and come up for discussion so here we are…
The Rabbit of Seville
“[Music] takes leave of the earth, as much in order to drop us into a black hole as to open us up to a cosmo” (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 348 )
D & G’s argument is music has the capacity to rupture all the codes, which trap us, thus opening our prehension beyond the code. However, it is also one of the most heavily signified, categorized and bounded mediums. I don’t think there is a possibility for free music, and I’m going to use an anecdote below to discuss why.
the fabulous episode above, is a parody of The Barber of Selville, a 19th century opera by Gioachino Rossini. Now I’m sure someone has already written on parody in Looney Tunes, so I won’t concern myself with that today. My question is what happens if our only encounter with this music is through the form of parody. The first time I heard the Rossini’s score was during this episode. Thus whenever I hear the those few notes being plucked, the image of Bugs bunny massaging Elmer Fudd’s head is immediately invoked. I would suggest the only truly free music, would be what we compose ourselves, and encounter as individuals.
We rarely ever encounter anything before it has been mediated, or transposed/appropriated by someone else. Is there a possibility anymore for Deleuze’s idea of cosmos reaching music?
Also how did Bugs Bunny escape the censors! Cross-dressing, murder, and beastiality! It’s pretty insane.
Anyway at the very least enjoy the clip.
Lovely post, Steph — that clip is freakin’ awesome. The massaging bit is pure hilarity.
My problem is, how are you defining free music? What exactly makes a piece of music put us in touch with “a cosmo”? Let’s say that there is a scale of “free” music. One end occupied by endlessly regurgitated, mindless, limiting pop music — actually, let me be more specific: one end is occupied by Kmart radio, where not only is the music shite, it’s totally regulated by the corporate body, and designed to make customers buy things and workers work more effectively. On the other end of the scale is the music that you make yourself, or that is made by someone in your family, etc., which is liberating and beautiful and pretty free indeed.
How do we mark the transition from “bounded” to “free” music? It seems difficult because there are so many factors to take into account. Music, like everything else, is so intensely contextual. I might hate Fallout Boy, but if someone listens to Fallout Boy and is inspired by the beauty of the music to write a poem or become a singer themselves, isn’t that them moving along a line of flight towards the cosmos? I’ve had plenty of intensely transformative musical experience over the years, yet another person could listen to the same songs as I did and decide that they were whiny, boring or stupid, and completely shut themselves off to them. It’s all so transient.
I think the issue is that you’re establishing this idea of a free, unblemished, “primary’ music. There are only twelve notes in the Western musical tradition, and as they say, there’s nothing new under the sun — but does that really matter if someone feels freed by a piece of music?
What do you think?
Well there’s only 12 notes according to the construction of music we encounter. I wouldn’t ever suggest there is a free ‘unblemished’ music.
I would argue any moment someone has though with a particular fall out boy song, will always be subject to limits and code, no matter how astonishing it may seem to them. They will listen to that music in a particular environment, in a specific format designed to codify and reterritorialise the music. You might have had transformative experiences, but were you free to see it as music a complete listening experience, that goes beyond any possible image? At the very least, the music has been produced. It applies to at least some of the preconceived ideas of song formulation and structure, thus it’s been reterritorialised quite a few times, before it reaches you. While we all love this music, it’s not deterritorialised. I’m not making a moral judgement about the types of music we listen to. Though i am trying to point out how any music we listen to no matter what it makes us feel has the capacity to fulfil D&G’s discussion of music.
Maybe I shouldn’t use the word free, because it’s getting me into trouble.
I get what you mean. And indeed, we have to ask the question of what codes Radiohead has manipulated and employed to make me fall so deeply in love with their music. But the issue for me is I really can’t agree with D&G that any music which is codified or mediated will be dropping us into a black hole irrespective of any other factor. Maybe that’s not what they’re arguing, maybe I’m misinterpreting, but if that’s what they’re saying, I just can’t agree with it. Probably because I’m just happy being a comfortable bourgeouis subject of the capitalist machine.
Hey aren’t we all! Actually I heard a very amusing comment the other day that i think you’d appreciate. Someone said Pink Floyd were the radiohead of their day. I found it bizarre cause usually you say ‘oh they’re the new …’ but we’re employing radiohead to redefine our musical history!
Yeah, I’ve heard that before … actually I think I’ve probably said it myself! It seems to correspond to the experience, which I’ve had, of rebelling against, or just being ignorant of, a cultural past. Things have to be given to us when we’re young. Then, as we get older, and particularly in our ‘information age’, we can branch out and discover things for ourselves … not in their true historical order. So in my case, I started listening to Floyd because I listened to Radiohead and Floyd were compared to them and recommended to Radiohead fans. Similarly, I recently started to listen to Neutral Milk Hotel because they were recommended to me as a fan of The Decemberists — even though NMH were one of The Decemberists’ progenitors. It’s funny!
All about recontextualisation, I guess. Anyway, I don’t know. All I know is I enjoy listening to Radiohead and Pink Floyd.
The offending sentence is: “Is their a possibility anymore for Deleuze’s idea of cosmos reaching music?”. You mean ‘there’.
This area is incredibly intriguing, I’m more than a little obsessed with trying to understand the mechanisms that come into play when you (or rather I) listen to music. Especially music that has such a strong de/reterritorializing effect that it can actually be unpleasant to listen to. Like Proust’s madeleines, but taken to an evil extreme …forcing you to relive physical and emotional experiences whether you want to or not!
And I agree that music is hugely coded and mediated and all that, but the individual de/reterritorializations it enacts can be so individually specific and unpredictable that I think D&G have a point about music’s capacity to rupture and disrupt codification.
The offending sentence has been altered. Have your eyes stopped bleeding?
That’s an interesting point, if we’re listening to the same piece of music, but have infinite possible reactions, then music will constantly result in deterritorialisations and reterritorialisations at a micro level. Also, every time the individual encounters this music, they may have differing reactions. Therefore does music always inadvertently rupture the codes, it (or the capitalist commodification process) tries to impose? Or more likely, the mild (or extreme) variation in experiences is an inevitable byproduct of all coded objects/mediums/things.