Recently I read a terrifically depressing article called Weaponizing Mozart at Reason.com about some rather bizarre and frankly unfortunate means of social control in use in the UK. Apparently, ‘anti-social behavior’ among teens is some sort of ongoing blight, and a variety of high tech nanny state solutions have been deployed to combat it. My favorite would be the Mosquito, a device that emits an extremely unpleasant noise that is apparently inaudible to people over about 25 — but gratingly irritating to kids. Sounds like something from a dystopian black comedy, Brazil perhaps.
Ah, but the main thrust of the article is straight from the prescient mind of Anthony Burgess. No, it isn’t the Ludovico Technique (yet), but almost. Seems not only has playing classical music in school detention as a form of punishment and discouragement come into use, but playing it in public places in an effort to keep children away is also being tried. So, like the induced nausea of Ludovico’s aversion therapy, a whole new generation will associate beautiful music with punishment, anxiety, and their own inadequacy and undesirability.
The author of the article, Brendon O’Neill sums up the two-pronged effect nicely: “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.” He also brings up A Clockwork Orange (how could he fail to?), and I’m reminded again at how much that novel speaks to our own time — a time in which kids aren’t taught or disciplined anymore, only told how entitled and exceptional they are and then blasted with ear piercing deterrents and beamed with monster halogens from helicopters when they inevitably become the ‘hooligans’ they were engineered to be.
Poor, poor victims of the modern age . . . as are we all.
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It’s hard to believe this is actually happening, somewhere, in our world. Frightening. It does seem as though the UK is slouching inevitably towards some dystopic future.