Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: Illiteracy as pop culture.

Renaissance fans of Latin killed it as a spoken language.
Mary Anne — (archived)

They wanted to make it "pure", to return it to the language of Cicero and Virgil. The only thing they succeeded in doing was to exterminate the vibrant spoken Latin of the time by replacing it with an antique version that hadn't adapted to contemporary needs. Spoken Latin was the international language of Europe up until that time. Purity is a terrible thing outside of the laboratory.

Now we have a new international language. The flexibility and fluidity of English makes English the international language that it is. It has adopted and adapted words and phrases from all kinds of cultures, it makes words up to describe new things, and occasionally collects different grammatical structures as well. Growth is only debasement if it inhibits the fundamental function of language. Does it get the point across? Yes? Then it's healthy growth.

Aesthetics are another whole issue. e.e. cummings's poetry was the end of the world. James Joyce's Ulysses was the end of the world. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood was the end of the world. All different worlds, all speaking English. And yet, here we are, not speaking Mongolian or Basque. Art is never the end of the world. Some art endures and some dies. Some only lives on in literary histories, to show how we got from Q to T. It all depends on what value the art has, and the caliber of the artists attracted to it. It's too early to judge hip hop. It's too raw. It needs time to age.

Who remembers -- well, who has read about the reaction of respectable society to jazz? Being black has been fashionable for some time, especially among young people who wanted to irritate their parents. It was fashionable when the hillbillies picked up the blues. It was fashionable when Gershwin wrote "Porgy and Bess". It was fashionable when Pat Boone, and then Elvis Presley, covered black popular songs. Some of America's finest music has come from black musicians. They taught America how to get in the groove. They invented the phrase "in the groove" too. Groovy, man, groovy.

Hip hop culture is young. It's angry. I suggest we should look to the economics of the society that gave birth to it to understand its coarseness and its anger. As we are concerned with the violence in rap and hip hop, we need to keep its violent elements away from children. I agree with that. I don't think children should go to movies rated R for violence, either.

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