{"id":504,"date":"2009-02-15T23:26:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T03:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=504"},"modified":"2009-02-16T00:27:22","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T04:27:22","slug":"now-whos-being-naive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/?p=504","title":{"rendered":"Now Who’s Being Naive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Terry Teachout wonders<\/a> why music is sometimes used to torture prisoners, while other genres of art are not:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m . . . struck by the fact that music is, so far as I know, the only art form used for such purposes. No doubt it would be unpleasant to be locked in a windowless room that had bad paintings hung on all four walls, but I can’t envision even the most sensitive of spies blurting out the name of his controller to escape the looming presence of Andy Warhol or Thomas Kinkade. Yet I have no trouble imagining myself reduced to hysterical babbling after being forced to listen to shred, grunge and “I Love You” [as sung by Barney the purple dinosaur] for 16-hour stretches, a technique said to have been employed by Guantanamo interrogators.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Andy Warhol? Thomas Kinkade? What we need is not so much art that is bad, as art that is disturbing, and not just esthetically. I don’t know one-hundredth as much about painting as Teachout does, but I do know that there are some serious and not-so-serious works of art that would freak me out if I had to live with them round the clock: some of Lucian Freud’s nudes (Google “Freud nude shatters price record” for a disgustingly obese example) and one or two of Francis Bacon’s screaming popes, just to name two specific categories. Other possibilities that might well work on a fanatical Muslim terrorist, even if they don’t bother me much: some of Dali’s weirder paintings, almost anything by R. Crumb, the Pompeian wall-painting of Priapus with a set of scales and a big grin, weighing his enormous organ — I’m sure there are plenty more.<\/p>\n

There are also some movies that would be very likely to disturb the sleep of a high percentage of prisoners. I haven’t seen Freaks<\/em>, and terrorists would probably enjoy Faces of Death<\/em> (haven’t seen that, either) and even the bloodiest gangster movies, but Killer Klowns from Outer Space<\/em> seems like a cheap and easy shortcut to the confessional. Again, I’m sure there are plenty more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Teachout wonders why music is sometimes used to torture prisoners, while other genres of art are not: I’m . . . struck by the fact that music is, so far as I know, the only art form used for such purposes. No doubt it would be unpleasant to be locked in a windowless room […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drweevil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}