christian@topaz.UUCP (04/15/87)
>I have seen a videotape, entitled "Rock-N-Roll -- A Search for God," which >contains examples of records with embedded satanic messages. The messages >are quite understandable when the music is reversed. There is no question >of their satanic intent. The other day, I wandered into the local Christian book emporium and happened upon their version of the "Rock is Bad" shelf. I was reminded again of the intense hold that this particular subject has on some segments of the Christian subculture. Seems to me that I posted something like this last time around, but hey. Never hurts to do it again. There are some interesting features about the whole analysis that are worth considering that persons like E. Holmberg and the Peterson brothers make little (if any) mention of at all. That among these are: There is absolutely no experimental data *at all* to support the notion that persons can decode even simple sequences of speech with *any* success when they're presented with them with an accuracy that would allow one to talk about "effect." Most people aren't even very good at doing that with even the simplest information-say, a sequence of tones and durations. That effect has been discussed by musicologists for some time (cf Bach's horseplay with "crab canons" and the serialists' use of retrogrades and inversions as part of a formal musical grammar), and even studied. If such an effect *were* to be observed, it would be studied to death by not only psychologists and persons interested in perception studies, but by linguists as well. If you know even the slightest amount about linguistics and/or speech pathology, you'll know right away that the reversal of common speech sounds are often nothing at all like the naive construction of a backwards message. A look at the common morphemes for spoken English in their reversed form might be an enlightening experience for the next time you're stuck at a church potluck next to a Wycliffe linguist (that's how I started my investigations, anyway. Oh yes-I checked the Wycliffe woman's comments out with the next linguist I ran across and it was all corroborated, too.) and cannot find anything else to talk about. The incidence of these morphemes in their reverse order go a long way towards suggesting a statistical explanation for words like "we" and "satan" and lots of words with "s" in them (serve) (sons) (sing) show up in these blistering exposes. Likewise, there's a good reason why something you'd say sounds like "Beelzebub" or "Devil" or even "Jesus" or "Christ" just doesn't show up much (although one *might* hear a word like "Messiah", since it's got the right phonemes in it). But you know what there *is* all sorts of clinical data to support? The notion that a person will tend to try to "find" meaning in almost anything they hear, and the fact that what they hear will be strongly influenced by a) what they're told they'll hear (or what is sugggested in context). b) their predisposition to organize sounds that fit their own back- ground and their experience ("say ten" instead of "Satan", for example). That experimental data should surprise no one. But the claim made (at least in the Peterson brothers' literature) is that this reverse stuff *does* affect our subconscious. Proof? Well, they trot out the old "subliminal cutting" experiment where the movie house spliced in pictures of popcorn [it's the WORD "popcorn" in some of the references] and watched their sales go up. Trouble is that the first person who claimed to have done the experiment (it's first referenced in Jerry Della Femina's books on advertising, I think) couldn't produce any hard data and couldn't repeat the experiment. Besides, this is an experiment which involves *unambigious* *visual* information. The notion that there are perceptual situations in which some information processing happens at speeds which exceed "recognition" is documented, but there's no evidence that it always works. let alone on *aural* information *done backwards. What evidence I've seen cited about using subliminal sound (stuff about broadcasting shoplifting information at very low volumes in department stores to discourage theivery) isn't even well-documented. But again, the information being used is clear and intelligeable English in its good old forward form. Now. There's a whole 'nother issue about the incontrovertible presense of *real* backwards intelligeable speech on some rock albums. Yep, people who talk on the multitrack tape while it's running in the opposite direction from the other recorded tracks. It's an old and venerable technique that goes as far back as the early days of "musique concrete" inthe classical world. Heck, there are even cases in which an artist takes *forward* lyrics, plays them backwards, and then imitates the sound of them sung *backwards* and then plays that *forward.* Whew. Where do you suppose they got the idea? In a number of interviews, some of them (ELO and Cheap Trick) simply said that some wacko told them that there were secret messages on their records. They thought the whole idea was as humourous as it was ridiculous and actually started doing it. Prince does it, Bobby Fripp does it (*he uses a quote from Monty Python-"one thing's for sure. A sheep is not a creature of the air.", etc.). There's even a punk album in which the satanic backwards message is "Jesus is our friend. God is cool because he made puppies and kitties" or something like that. But the notion that this backwards message stuff was some Satanist's idea that a clever True Believer came up with (and tacked on the subliminal stuff to) is, I think, backwards. We gave them the idea, and they though it was stupid and funny. So where did all these Fundamentalists come up with the idea that evil stuff is often done using "backwards" formulae? Whoops, they got it from (gasp) the *Catholics.* Worse, it's from *Medieval Catholic Cosmology,* which posits that since Satan wanted to set up a kingdom against the Almighty, his kingdom *must* be a *literally* reversed one, where the rats are huge and hunt the cats and the Mass is said *backwards.* Venerable notion, but I'm not sure that the Peterson brothers would be entirely happy with the hocus-pocus surrounding its origins. Besides, I find the whole notion that intoning some awful words backwards having a compelling influence on the poor unsuspecting chump who buys that next "Scrambled Debutante" album smacks of a kind of ah...magic. The same sort of whoopteedoo that they *loathe* liturgical churches for believing in (the efficacy of the Sacraments, for example). In short, it's muddled. Finally, we just gotta ask the *first* question that comes to my mind whever this comes up: Why not concentrate on what's objectionable about the *forward* part of the stuff? Since most of these "the truth about rock" crusades seem to assume that we spend all our time listening to Heavy Metal of the absolutely most charicatured sort, it's a convenient muddle. It's not like they're going out of their way to malign Elvis or those country singers. There's this ferocious adherence to this kind of Manichean notion of evil in some cartoon world. And what's the response to all this stuff about half the time? "Learn to think Christianly?" "Assume that the cultural products you acquire and consume bear some resemblance to the *rest* of your life as a Christian?" "Think a little bit about a world in which youthful rebellion is used as a marketing tool with little regard to the targets the potential little consumer is encouraged to rebel against?" This liturgical refugee from that subculture has sat through going on a half-dozen of these crusades and then gone down to counsel the kids to come forward (and they do, people). That's not the message they're getting, folks. It's that the whole world is out to get them in ways that they're not going to be able to know about or control and the only way to deal with it is to not think about those ideas at all-even from a Christian point of view-but to BURN THE RECORDS like the nice man up front says. Oh yeah-there's lots of "helpful" materials on sale at the back (random clippings from the mainstream rock press about all those bands that you never hear about except at these crusades, photocopied without permission and run off at instyprints on the cheap and then sold) for 15 or 20 bucks. And one other question: Do you find it strange that some segments of the Christian subculture would be busier hunting for shadowy cabals of backwardmaskers and burning their records than actually spending time with their kids and talking about their choices with them? Do you find it curious that it's easier to believe some kind of poorly researched cockamaimie tale of remote control rockstars in a pact with the father of lies (companies with lots of gold, more likely. Controversy sells, niet waar?) than face up to the face that-even in adolescence-the freedom to choose *for* God MUST entail the freedom to choose *against* God (and one's parents, presumably) I find such conspiracy theories an affront to any orthodox Christian formulation of either the omnipotence of God or the notion of Free Will, and just one more of those little indication to the world at large that one takes leave of one's senses or consents to some kind of metaphysical lobotomy when one confesses to Faith. It deserves rebuke.. XAIPE, G