From ruck to rap
It was Auden who wrote, in 'Atlantis', that in order to recognise the true you must first become acquainted with the false. You don't have to look very far in our relativist world to spot what is false, base and squalid, assuming, of course, that you have lived a bit. But it must sometimes be difficult for young, unformed minds to absorb all that is thrown at them, particularly in the ever coarsening realm of 'entertainment'.
Last weekend brought a remarkable contrast between the true and the false. In Melbourne, England's magnificent rugby players, displaying the nobility of spirit and comradeship that have now brought ten successive victories in the last season, walloped the home side by three tries to one. It was the first victory by an England rugby team in Australia, and it makes them favourites to win the World Cup. which will be held in that country later this year. The players were modest in their hour of triumph, though they are beginning to understand just how good they are. It was a great moment for English sport.
Yet, as night follows day, the false was not slow to emerge, As people were raising glasses to our superb players, an American rap artist (though there may be a c missing) called Eminem was putting on a show in — of all unlikely places — Milton Keynes. Apparently this young shaver is in an awful bait about the hand life has dealt him, and uses the word 'fuck' a lot on stage, to the cheers of his largely adolescent audience.
This kind of stuff will always go down well with the bird-brains who pass themselves off as pop writers. They can never be seen to be siding with 'the forces of reaction', and so you end up with such aromatic manure as this: 'There is, to be sure [to be sure], a burning anger and emotional intensity at the core of his material [at the what?] that gives Eminem a palpa ble artistic and political edge. . ' No, I kid you not, it is there in black and white, the words supplied by one Neil McCormick, who sounds as if he is only just out of short trousers himself.
According to this dunce, the rapper's popularity 'make '; a mockery of those who would censor him'. I suppose that if our groovy pal pal had consorted with the Blackshirts in Nuremberg 70 years back, when an even more accomplished rabble-rouser was delighting cheering crowds on podiums bedecked with swastikas, he might have written similar things about that nice Herr Hitler. Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Rapper!
It is best to have a good old chortle at such buffoonery, and be comforted by the fact that most young people tend to grow out of the reflexive rebellion that accompanies the passage from youth to adulthood, which is not in any case rebellion at all but the clearest possible case of conformity. As they grow older, they will see for themselves that the qualities that have sustained the England rugby team through their year of years — loyalty, dignity, hard work — represent the values to which all sensible folk aspire. For the time being, therefore, let them play at being what Auden called 'one of The Boys, at least appearing to love hard liquor, horseplay and noise'.
Me? I must drive out darkness with light, so I shall listen to Schubert. You know him, don't you, Master McCormick? The one who didn't tell Beethoven to fuck off.
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