What could Aristotle and Lynne Cheney (former vice-president Dick Cheney's wife) have in common. Well, it turns out they both feared the effect certain types of music had on youth. While the music was obviously not the same, both seem to feel that music was especially powerful on young people.
According to Jeffrey Walker's article, Aristotle says young people "become habituated to the moods such music enacts, thus distorting their own souls into banausic and thetic vulgarity." Walker continues to explain Aristotle words as "he says that only the "ethical" types of music, ta ethika, are ethical for kids to learn".
Cheney's big issue centered around mostly the artist Eminem, whose lyrics portrayed violence against his wife among other things. She said, "Eminem is not the first rapper to revel in violent misogyny, but he has taken hatred of women and depictions of degrading and violating them" She feared that young people would be influenced by the violence in the lyrics. She goes on to point out the Columbine high school murderers were fans of Marylin Manson.
Aristotle point is about the type of music young people should learn to play, whereas Cheney railed against the type of music kids listen to. This distinction between playing and listening does not disrupt the similarity of their message. That young people are influenced in a negative way by certain types of music.
I am not sure if I can agree with the direct correlation that Cheney presents with her Columbine point, but I do agree that music affects the young more than most. How else could the popularity of Beiber fever be explained.
This is just one of those things that we always see popping up in popular culture. It's usually forgotten and written off shortly after, but every once in a while it's dredged up. "Music is corrupting the youth", "Dimestore novels are corrupting the youth", "Movies are corrupting the youth", "TV is corrupting the youth", "Comic books are corrupting the youth", "Video games are corrupting the youth". And on and on it goes for eternity. These things effect the youth more than other groups because youths are impressionable and lack the experience of their older counterparts, so it's not an unreasonable statement in that regard, but when people like Lynne Cheney start drawing causality the arguments presented are generally very frail, almost impossible to prove or even fall apart under any serious study.
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