In “Listening with Imagination: Is Music Representational?” Kendall Walton asks the question: “If music can be nudged so easily into obvious representationality, can we be confident that without the nudge it is not representational at all?”1 The answer that Walton gives, and one that parallels the question of the combination of music and video, is that music is expressive. The expressiveness of music makes it susceptible to “...being made explicitly representational.”2 Although Walton does not specific talk about video as a mode in which music is expressed, this does seem to point towards an “extramusical” meaning being represented through the video.3 Another example of where the combination of music and video can better explain the problem
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He is represented as a middle aged black man wearing a dirty blue shirt, and a bright orange stocking cap. His front teeth are missing, and he is awkwardly dancing to the rhythm of the music. The expressive idea embraced by this scene is that he is representative of black people in general.6 From this point, the video shows a young black girl in pony tails, and a simple white dress, running out to dance with the middle aged black man. This image is counter-imposed with scenes of the escaped white man being chased through neglected industrial areas by policemen with Rottweilers. The video ends with him being arrested, along with the white woman, who helped him flee, and then the realization that it was all a dream, as he gets a driving ticket from a patrolman.7 In the above example, it is only through the combination of music and video, that the problem of cultural appropriation seems evident. For ZZ Top 's “My Head 's in Mississippi”, as opposed to Coldplay 's “Hymn for the Weekend,” there are two elements of cultural appropriation happening viz, misrepresentational imagery and misappropriation of musical …show more content…
If, in issues of cultural appropriation, credit is given to the original performers, and if the work is performed in the right style, perhaps some of the issues would disappear. For the most part, the cultural appropriation argument is a cultural problem argument, and as long as credit is given to the original performers, then the argument kind of becomes a non-issue. Music, like all art, builds on art that happened before. Moral Dilemma
He is represented as a middle aged black man wearing a dirty blue shirt, and a bright orange stocking cap. His front teeth are missing, and he is awkwardly dancing to the rhythm of the music. The expressive idea embraced by this scene is that he is representative of black people in general.6 From this point, the video shows a young black girl in pony tails, and a simple white dress, running out to dance with the middle aged black man. This image is counter-imposed with scenes of the escaped white man being chased through neglected industrial areas by policemen with Rottweilers. The video ends with him being arrested, along with the white woman, who helped him flee, and then the realization that it was all a dream, as he gets a driving ticket from a patrolman.7 In the above example, it is only through the combination of music and video, that the problem of cultural appropriation seems evident. For ZZ Top 's “My Head 's in Mississippi”, as opposed to Coldplay 's “Hymn for the Weekend,” there are two elements of cultural appropriation happening viz, misrepresentational imagery and misappropriation of musical …show more content…
If, in issues of cultural appropriation, credit is given to the original performers, and if the work is performed in the right style, perhaps some of the issues would disappear. For the most part, the cultural appropriation argument is a cultural problem argument, and as long as credit is given to the original performers, then the argument kind of becomes a non-issue. Music, like all art, builds on art that happened before. Moral Dilemma