Painful Irony

This past weekend I went to a cafe to do the music as torture readings. Usually this cafe plays nice, relaxing music, sometimes even classical, but that day someone decided to play upbeat pop fairly loudly. One of the songs they played was the infamous Rebecca Black classic, Friday. Here is the music video for your viewing and listening displeasure:





One of the questions we were thinking about in class yesterday is what makes music torturous. I think the answer, obviously, is that it can become torturous in a number of different ways for a variety of reasons. I think the reason I find the above song difficult to listen to is because of the way it clashes with my personal aesthetic sensibility. This seems to be the same reason the detainees reacted so adversely to country music. It wasn't the ideological content of the songs per se (Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, one of the songs mentioned in class and #12 on the Torture Playlist, is far from a pro-American song) but a reaction to the particular timbre of the song.

Suzanne Cusick, in her Music as Torture/ Music as Weapon article, provides us two more explanations on how music can become torturous:

 Generally coded masculine in mainstream US culture, metal and rap are musics that those who don’t identify with them often hear as embodying the sounds of masculine rage. Thus they may seem, to soldiers in the field, to “torture” Muslim men by creating a soundscape in which US men defeat them in a struggle of masculinities... But wait. The delivery of cultural offense is, from the state’s perspective, only incidental to what goes on in the interrogation room. The point, the disintegration of identity, depends not on music but on sound. (13-14)

Firstly, there is a use of music as torture that is based on lyrical content. Specifically, using songs whose lyrics can offend or degrade the subject forced to listen. The contrast to this mode of torturous music is one based not on the content of the music but rather sound. Sound, at the right volume or pitch, can be torturous in and of itself.

Lastly, I would suggest that one of the major contributing factors to the capacity for music to torture is simple repetition. I think any song, at any audible volume, would drive me insane if it was played enough times.