“The Commitment to Pleasure” – Hanif Kureishi
“This pop-porn will ruin a whole generation” – Mike Stock
“Is Lady Gaga a Contemporary Feminist Icon?”
1. Summary of “The Commitment to Pleasure”
In his essay, “The Commitment to Pleasure”, of the British author Hanif Kureishi, who writes about the special nature of pop music and tries to describe the pleasure of listening to music and the liberating feelings it gives. After taking his sons to a rock concert, he starts reflecting on the role of pop music in British society. He sees and thinks pop music and the culture that goes with it as an important part of British culture and history. In his opinion, pop music is liberatingly broad-minded, multicultural and the “outsider’s”, who has done more to remake British identity and the genre of punk, still inspires it. The Britain of pop is the country Hanif understand and like, because it’s music which never quite been domesticated. Finally he tells us how British pop is in direct correlation to patriotism, also love of one’s country, as it carries with it an immense sense of nationality.
2. Outline of the various attitudes to pop culture
In Text 1, “The Commitment to Pleasure”, Hanif Kureishi shows his love for the pop genre and absolutely no fear or anxiety about the sexualization of it. Instead, pop music calls forth a deep feeling of love of one’s country also called patriotism inside of him, when he said music has been the most interesting significant, liberating and sexually compelling cultural force of his life and the liveliest.
Another attitudes, according to Hanif Kureishi, will be he thinks pop is the “outsider’s” which has done more to remake British identity than any other form and the spirit of punk still inspires it.
In Text 2, “this pop-porn will ruin a whole generation”, Mike Stock also shows us a deep-seated love for the pop genre, but is outraged by it’s evolution. Also the sex sells and Mike Stock believes that pop music has gone from being a family-friendly genre, to a sexualized product focused on children, when he said it’s time to put the lingerie, the stilettos and the mucky lyrics away – and to rediscover the simple pleasure of pop.
In Text 3, “Is Lady Gaga a Contemporary Feminist Icon?” the writers at feminism website discuss the feministic values of the pop-icon who is Lady Gaga. They believe Lady Gaga to be representing their ideal values, that her lyrics and clothing choices are her way of “sticking it to the man”, expressing her dislike of women in the media, when she speaks out against discrimination by drawing our attention to it, she said women are still seen as a piece of meat, hence the dresses as one. So she means women are only good for sex, therefore she sings about sex. Another attitudes according to Lady Gaga, will be the feminism website said something with Lady Gaga has tried to copy the styles of for example Madonna who were truly pansexual feminist icons – but Lady Gaga has been described as an asexual fake.
3. Comment on from text 2
When Mike Stock says he believes that “society is waking up”, he means that the general public has been ignoring the increasing sexualisation of the media. I agree to some extent, but we’ve caused it ourselves. Sex is selling, there’s nothing we can do about it, as it’s human nature to desire the satisfaction of our needs. But we’ve planned it on to ‘age of puberty generation’ ourselves, and that is our greatest mistake.
Most children today have computers and cell phones with Internet that without proper supervising, are a way to smut. But even the most innocent Google-searches today can lead to mature results, so children are basically having pornographic content thrown in their faces. The media is not to blame, but we are.
4. Essay
The teenager who grew up around the 80s and 90s listened to punk music, where many people heard the music because it had a message. In comparison with today listening young people generally prefer music as “bass power” with no message to the people, but more or less indifferent songs that have no value, it also says something about how the society in recent generations has evolved over time. The music is today also more based on sexuality, and generally worded more sexually than in the past, but since it is the music the youth of today will choose this music rather than something else music, generally. It will of course be the music, which is noticed, and therefore there is so much of this music genre. On the other hand, underage children who are affected by the music, where they get kicked in the head in an early age when the most of all children today, have both iPad and smartphones. So todays the pop music seems to go to a dangerous path and have a negative effect on children and teenagers.