Polish culture versus rotten West

The Mohawk might be gone Roger but I bet you can still launch yourself into the 'pogo' when the mood is right! Carry on as long as your knees can take it, that's what I say!

Thanks. I never was much into the physical side of the genre, but I still play the Clash's first album in the car. You can take the man out of punk... (enjoying Dublin very much btw)

You're stereotyping people Polonius. Long hair, leather jackets, tattoos, these people must be the spawn of the devil right? ;)
I grew up listening to heavy metal as my brother was always playing it. I love it.
I don't think there's much wrong with my manners and I like to think I'm considerate towards other people.
So judgemental Polonius!


What you're really talking about here is censorship.
You're like a male version of Mary Whitehouse, she's dead now but you two have loads in common.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitehouse


Yes! One of my all time favourite bands.


I would love to know what music he listened to, if any.

Not at all. I never suggested the government, parliament, police or whoever should get involved but more in terms of a grass-roots movement. More people seeing that the run-away profit motive which will sell anything (drugs, porn, guns, terrorist suggestions, etc.) to anyone just to make a buck is detrimental to families and society as a whole. A groundswell of public opinion can work wonders, so education is the main tool required. And in a serious discussion on any subject let's rise above "self" and anecdotal evidence ("my brother used to listen to metal and now he's a successful doctor and family man"). This is not about "liking" of "disliking", not about personal preference, but about the content of commercially-driven popculture and its social consequences.

Do you really believe that rap music which glamourises and normativises drug dealing, violence, theft, vandalism, woman beating and other offences has absolutely no effect on anyone?

Seriously Polonius, if I didn't know any better I would think you are a bitter old maid hating youth.
I know that the average age on here is pretty high but it seems like some ppl don't even remember how it is to be young.

I listened to hip hop and I'm not violent at all, never took drugs or anything of that kind.
And suggesting you know what impact something will have is ******** because art (the same as everything else) is filtered through unique minds of the audience and no one knows what will happen with it then.

Let's go beyond the "I listened to" and "my aunt knows a bloke who..." To what do you attribute today's high rate of crime, juvenile deliquency, violence, family break-up, fatherless kids, substance abuse and OD deaths? Does the glamourisation of the pathological and dysfunctional or the example set by celebrities have absoltuely no impact on anyone?

Would you want your 5-year-old to learn about love from Internet porn? Do films dripping with graphically saddistic cruelty including decapitations and cannibalism not affect young minds? That's what the discussion is about, not that this one likes techno and someone else prefers Pepsi.

The problem today is not the culture but the parents. The lack of conversation. Even if a kid saw a bit of porn (of course not shown by an adult because that's perversion) if the parents knew about it and talked with the kid and explained it's not how it is in real life than I doubt it would make that much harm. Probably similar to if he saw his parents having sex.

You are like the parents that want to change the ending of Red Riding Hood because it's too cruel. The thing is you cannot protect ppl and kids from different harms and especially from themself so the only thing you can do is try to give them the sense what is right and what is wrong. It's obvious you don't spend too much time with young ppl otherwise you would know that they are not much different then the kids in the past. The culture maybe changing but the aspirations, dreams and dramas are basically the same.

That isn't only the problem today, that's been the problem for decades (or even centuries).

But it is commerpop (not real culture but gabagey fly-by-night popculture) that drives a wedge between parents and kids. Just imagine if someone launched a fashion fad where the left buttock was fully exposed, how many parents would be happy about that and rush down to the shops to buy such a thing for a 12-year-old boy or a 14-year-old girl? Years ago commerpop urged kids to have long hair, now they want to shave their again thanks to some commerpop-driven fad. Being a parent in the commerpop era (which began in the mid-1950s) is no picnic.

The introduciton of outrageous lifestyles antagonises the generations and often brings two-way communication to a halt.

I just googled 'commerpop' and as expected it's only actually used by yourself, here and elsewhere.

And you still fail to explain what you are trying to mean by the ridiculous term.

Commerpop = Commercially driven pop culture whose sole purpose is to achieve maximum profits by downdumbing and exploiting the gullible massses and cleverly convincing them that this is what they should want.

That definition doesn't make any sense at all. It just refers to mainstream cultural output since the industrial revolution.

Basically a crabby and emotionally loaded phrase that is judgemental about so much music, literature, film etc as well as ignoring the fact that the profit motive has led to so much high quality arts output.

And probably suited to a better thread, since Poland and the "rotten west" are no different whatsoever in this respect.

God save western culture! Glory to NATO!

Long live Queen Elizabeth and Kim K!

Long live Elizabeth and Kim K, the queens of the civilized world.

The use of that phrase means you also differntiate between true art which enriches, inmspires and broadens one's cultrual horizons and popcultural tripe & crapola which downdumbs and caters to the lowest common denominator.

No it didn't. I know you tend to think only from an American perspective so let's look at American culture. What about Vaudeville, Ragtime, the Flappers of the 1920s, the Boogie-Woogie music of the 1940s (that's where the Jive of the 1950s originated). Glen Miller and the Andrews Sisters were the acceptable face of it but have you seen the old film footage of real dance halls and the wild dancing that went on, nothing modest or sedate about it. What about P T Barnum and the Freak Shows, what about the Dime Museums, the Burlesque shows and the other cheap, popular entertainment for the masses that existed from the 1800s onwards.

And you still fail to say what is 'true art' and what isn't.


Or cheap (and very much popular culture) printed ballads from a century before that. Po would probably want to ban Punch and Judy shows for being too populist.

Yes, I mean if you take the example of the nude in the Victorian era. It was ok to paint a female nude as long as she was some mythological figure thus a depiction of a Goddess bathing in a marble pool was acceptable but a peasant girl skinny dipping in the local river was vulgar and pornographic. Talk about double standards. Both female nudes, one is 'art' the other is porn.

You're confusing entertainment which has always existed from today's all-pervasive popculture which goes beyond simple amusemetn and impacts peoples' entire lives. Entertainment was kept in its place like work, meals, family life, worship of other human activities. It was not all-pervasive or ubiquitous nor 24/7. Nor as extreme as commerpop. Punch did not drop his trousers and take Judy from behind! And the foul language and coarse jokes heard in a seaport tavern were not broadcast countrywide.

Commerpop as the expansive, ever-present commercial brain-washing and exploitation machine is a post-WW2 thing that really started in the mid-1950s with the emergence of rock'n'roll. (One of he first was Bill Halley & His comets). It still was pretty tame back them but it gradually grew in intensity and prurience all the way to today's rap music that openly advocates hatred, violence, vandalism, crime, drug-dealing, promiscuity, woman-beating and the foulest imaginable language. A great example for young children and a great rearng aid for parents, innit?

In what way is anything "all-pervasive"?


What's wrong with rock music?

Perhaps this might explain?
youtube.com/watch?v=NeoP05-9crY

Either you're pulling my leg or I've overestimated your intellectual capacity. Unless you're just taking the stuffings (which I strongly suspect), you've consigned yourself to the ranks of ignoramuses who say things like "my aunt liked Red Zepplin and she turned out OK." Anyway, it's too naïve to reply to.

Where have you been sexy Lenka? You and me one day... we have to make that rendezvous but we meet on my thread in the meantime.To be honest your comments here are almost always off the mark, I think I'm younger than you but my approach is more in depth, try to follow my lead sometimes. You blame the parents? Are a complete westerner or what? That is a typical western bs you shoving into the brains of the youth you proclaim to represent so much. It is not the parents that are at fault, it is the system that ties the hands of the parents and lets kids run wild, I am disappointed with you, I thought you were more open minded. Have you asked yourself the question "what if the parents are too stupid or just simply incapable of knowing everything in order to explain everything properly to a child?" It is a possibility, so the responsibility must also be taken up by the broadcaster, it is a collective responsibility, the parents and society working together, not just the parents or just the society. And what society are you talking about where parents are not communicating with their children? Polish society? You confused Anglo-Saxon heavily westernised society with not quite yet westernised Polish society. In Anglo societies everything just about is taboo (they claim to be so flexible and open minded though), we Polish are more flexible when confronting sexual matters with the youth. Yes, kids are different today because our society is becoming more westernised = more wild and things are taken out of parental control. It would be different if children were taught to be more obedient like before (not to be confused with being less sexual as some western short sighted individuals would like to describe us as).

What?


Don't be silly. Especially as you seem to senselessly condemn the entire (vast) corpus of rock music while at the same time failing utterly to suggest what might be of more artistic merit.

And still nothing to do with Polish culture (which includes a lot of popular music) vs 'the west'.

@Polly, let's not forget that it was your detested Rock musicians and their fans, under the leadership of Irish singer Bob Geldof who were responsible for Live Aid raising between 40-50 million pounds on the day, for the starving of Ethiopia and the figure eventually reached around 150 million.

Bog Geldof used Live Aid for self promotion let's not forget that, even some British musicians said so, he took away initiative from Africans and made Live Aid into a business venture where the proceeds never reached the poor. Like Bog Geldof would care about Ethiopians. Yet another example of western bs , turning seemingly charitable event into business - disgusting. Similar thing happens with Polish WOSP but here at least people are criticising it.

you know what Ktos, that is the first post of yours that I agree with 100 per cent.
"Live aid" was a self aggrandising scam...:)
I actually doubt if any of the money went to the 'right' places.

It's an ongoing problem with Africa that money sent as aid gets syphoned off by corrupt governments and the Live Aid money was no different. Some of it got through, some of it didn't. I know Geldof isn't a shrinking violet but I don't think it was about his ego, I believe he was genuine. I think quite a few who performed there did it for the publicity of course, but is their motive important? I'm not sure. The point I was making is that it was the kind of people, musicians and their fans, whom Polly despises and thinks are responsible for all the evils of society, who raised that money.

Bob Geldof is Irish and Ireland has a very long history of helping the people of Africa. In the days before the concept of racism children in Irish schools routinely brought 'a penny for the black babies' every Friday. Irish people, even during their poorest times, have given to charities. In fact at the time of Live Aid Ireland was in a deep recession and yet the donations from Ireland were the highest per capita of all the nations who donated. Sorry to be banging on about Ireland again but you need to learn Ktos that countries are individual, with their own identities and characteristics, not just some lumpen mass called the West.

...And they got Harrry Belafonte of calypso fame to deliver the amount which was confiscated by the Ethiopian Marxist government. Hell is paved with good intentions, innit?

But I'm surprised that someone as intelliegtn as you is usign such simplistic arguemtns. This is not about liking or blanket condemnation of anything but focused on the bad exmaples commerpop sets and I specified concrete examples..

Mentioning that commerpop as we know it today was launched in the mid-50s is not a blanket attack on rock'n'roll. Actually it was originally quite tame ("Love me tender" set to an old German folk song), melodious ("I'm sorry, so sorry") or lively ("Rock around the clock"). But this is not about asesthetics, but about the influence on today's aggressive, brash, high-decibel and foul-mouthed commerpop on young, impressionable minds. As an educator, you must also be concerned about that.

Beyond content, one should also consider the potenetial physical impairment of high decibels (it'd be just as bad if it were Bach or Mozart) blasting the ear drums and rattling the nervous system of those walking about with ear-phones plugged in. Or youngsters and teens glued to the sight-impairing glow of the computer games for hours on end instead of playing outdoors after school. Those are among the other negative featrues of commerpop.

I'm sure he's genuine. And yes, an example of someone who Po would consider part of popculture.


If they got publicity from it, is there really a problem.

An example of the "rotten west" (of which Poand is nowadays very firmly a part) doing something very altruistic.