
Bach at the Burger King - wellokthen
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bach-at-the-burger-king/#!
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creaghpatr
>Today, most young people encounter classical music not as a popular art form
but as a class signifier, a set of tropes in a larger system of encoded
communication that commercial enterprises have exploited to remap our societal
associations with orchestral sound.

Most young people? I'd venture that most children who attend US public school
encounter classical music in K-5 at some point.

>The average American does not recognize the opening chords of The Four
Seasons as the sound of spring but the sound of snobbery.

Rolled my eyes here. We're talking about Burger King, not a country club.

Edit: I disagree with the conclusion but the article is pretty interesting
with the history of 'weaponized' classical music.

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jpmoyn
The point they are making is that most of America is turned off by classical
and baroque music. Whether or not most children encountered it in school is
less relevant than the fact that most children don't like it. I think the same
could be said about the average American. I don't think the people who browse
hacker news are the average American.

~~~
kpil
My theory is that classical music is so much complex so you literally have to
level up your musical listening skills to make any sense of it.

Also they dynamics is different, typically a piece is building up some sort of
context that adds to the experience - even more so than modern music - if you
get home and someone blasts the final parts of a symphony on the stereo, it's
easily perceived as just a cacophony of irritating tunes. It might have been
enjoyable if you had been listening from the beginning.

It seems to me that a lot of recent songs reduce complexity even further - It
seems common now with songs that are basically just a repeating theme with
minor variations. I'm not saying it's bad, but it doesn't really require much
effort to understand the structure, and it probably makes classical music seem
even more alien.

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Barrin92
Very interesting article and it really is sad that classical music which has a
lot to offer for anybody is being used as a deterrent for 'delinquents' or
class signifier.

I have made a similar experience as a semi-competitive chess player. As a
child, I never perceived chess as an outlandish hobby. Chess clubs are full of
people from all walks of life. But nowadays especially (maybe after enough
movies used chess players as a trite metaphor for 'genius mastermind') people
seem more often associate chess with that kind of stuff.

It strips something from the activity itself if it becomes associated with
certain exclusive groups or classes. It's also happening to healthy nutrition
or sports which are increasingly seen simply as signifiers of elite status and
optimised lifestyles, rather than communal, shared activities.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
I personally got a vibe that chess is an “upper-class elite thing” just
because of the chess books section at my local bookstore. 30-40€ for a book on
just one particular aspect of strategy, and there are dozens of books out
there to read.

Yes, I know that players are not advised to read such books until they are
relatively high in the rankings, but the prices of those books do tell you
that even if a local chess club is open to everyone regardless of class, if
you want to continue to progress in the game you’ll have to shell out money.

(Of course, things are easier these days because virtually every chess book
every published has now been scanned and uploaded to filesharing communities.
I get the impression that the Russian chess community, most of whom either
cannot obtain or cannot afford the books, have come together in a joint effort
to get this done.)

~~~
internetman55
I'm pretty bad at chess but I think you could probably spend less than $100
and have all the technical materials you need to get quite good at chess (one
book on middle games, tactic puzzles collection (software or book), endgame
book, maybe opening book) and probably only really need to study the tactical
one for quite a while. My friend went to paid chess tutoring programs as a kid
and said they just solved tactics puzzles and then played each other

~~~
Mediterraneo10
The vast majority of books I noticed at my local bookshop were dedicated to
different openings or certain subcategories of those openings. Batsford, I
think, is the most famous publisher of these.

~~~
internetman55
Again I'm bad at chess but that sounds like mostly a waste of time until
you're already very good from what i understand. That stuff might be
entertaining to learn but if you're rated like 1500 I doubt you're losing
cause your oponents are getting out of the opening with a 1/4 pawn advantage.
And it takes a lot of study to get to the point where you worry about that
(imo)

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wil421
>Handel’s Water Music willows over the platforms of Atlanta’s MARTA subway
system.

I ride Marta to work 3 days a week and to the airport when I travel. There has
never been any classical music playing at the stations I’ve stopped at or
passed through.

I was in NYC a couple weeks ago and never heard it either. I went to the Penn
Station stop mentioned in the article too.

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pitt1980
Maybe its an off-hours tactic?

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wil421
I’ll have to ask an employee next time I see one.

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trav4225
When I visited Seattle a few times back in the '90s, there was a McDonald's, I
believe somewhere vaguely near near Lenora and 4th, that used to blast country
music outside overnight, ostensibly to repel drug activity from their
storefront area.

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bendbro
It still exists, and it's referred to as McStabby's. A Singaporean friend of
mine didn't believe the name until he encountered a traveller in the restroom
showing off his rainbow colored switchblade.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/73wlqo/mcstabbys...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/73wlqo/mcstabbys_or_crackdonalds/)

~~~
trav4225
Yikes!

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brightsize
A counter-example from fiction comes to mind: Alex, the protagonist and uber-
hoodlum in _A Clockwork Orange_ , can't get enough of classical music,
especially old "Ludwig Van".

[https://youtu.be/cQCQRLA05AA](https://youtu.be/cQCQRLA05AA)

If your business has a Droog problem this is probably the wrong approach.

~~~
frabbit
Agreed. That was immediately the example of which I thought. The article makes
no effort to distinguish whether it is the genre of music or simply its
insistent and pervasive high volume that is unpleasant. I do hope it that it
all backfires and a wave of revolutions are inspired by this aural vandalism.

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SOLAR_FIELDS
I would be interested to see the differences for different genres of music.
How much crime/loitering would happen blasting house music vs classical vs
classic rock, for instance

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_red
Why didn’t you include rap?

~~~
facetube
Why didn't he include gothic-industrial post-punk jam bands?

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CryptoPunk
This kind of ideologically framed over-simplification is really corrosive to
culture:

>>Take your delinquency elsewhere could be the subtext under every tune in the
classical crime-fighting movement. It is crucial to remember that the tactic
does not aim to stop or even necessarily reduce crime — but to relocate it.
Moreover, such mercenary measures most often target minor infractions like
vandalism and loitering — crimes that damage property, not people, and usually
the property of the powerful. “[B]usiness and government leaders,” Lily Hirsch
observes in Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment, “are seizing on
classical music not as a positive moralizing force, but as a marker of space.”
In a strange mutation, classical music devolves from a “universal language of
mankind” reminding all people of their common humanity into a sonic border
fence protecting privileged areas from common crowds, telling the plebes in
auditory code that “you’re not welcome here.”

It conflates deliquency with being a commoner, and implies that those who
succeed in improving their station in life are somehow deserving of being
predated on, at least in terms of their property, by the deliquent.

Essentially this romanticizes and rationalizes deliquency, and discourages any
measure to punish it.

In truth, deliquency harms, first and foremost, the common people, whose
common spaces are degraded by it. It is perpetrated by a tiny proportion of
the poor. It is by no means a common characteristic of the poor.

Making the deliquent out to be victims, and synomous with common crowds, and
their behaviour out to be a socially just act of balancing the class scales,
is factually wrong, and has an absolutely toxic effect on society.

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dEnigma
I've noticed they played Vivaldi at the office of the local government in
Linz, Upper Austria outside of office hours. To be precise they only play
"Spring" from the "Four Seasons". I actually find it quite pleasant when just
walking by, but I guess the repetition alone can be an effective deterrent to
loiterers.

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JansjoFromIkea
I saw this first at that exact burger king and honestly doesn't notice it have
much of an impact on the area (there were never huge numbers of homeless
directly outside it asides from around 9 waiting for the library to open) but
I've seen it in a lot of places since. Wasn't even remotely close to the
grossest BK in SF (the one at mission and 16th is so shabby that I'm almost in
awe).

Most recently in the old shopping centre in Stratford; a place where, due to
some weird zoning laws, isn't allowed to kick out homeless people. The focus
is always on moving homeless.

Oddly it seems like the natural endpoint for where classical music has been
positioned in society. A kind easy listening that is treated so formally it
now carries a strong stuffy and oppressive aura.

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djhworld
A similar tactic has been deployed here in the UK in branches of McDonalds,
with classical music played to discourage groups of youths from causing
trouble

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Apocryphon
So that explains the classical music played at the T-Mobile by 12 St. Station
in Oakland after hours. It's across the street from a Burger King.

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pietroglyph
It would be interesting to see more research into weaponized music. This
article offers law-enforcement anecdotes that baroque period music is "the
best", but there's a lot of other variables (like speaker quality and volume)
that affect how grating music (of any kind) is.

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kccqzy
If we continue to weaponize classical music in this way, making it ubiquitous,
will it ever be the case that people simply become conditioned and
subconciously tune it out? Then it wouldn't have the effect of repelling
undesirable behavior any more.

~~~
convolvatron
I have a massive problem with drunken 'laborers' hanging out outside my window
from 6:30am (corner store opening) until noon. shouting, dancing, singing,
fighting, laughing. as loud as you can imagine, shouts echoing back and forth
between the buildings. nothing is really that amusing, I think the act of
shouting itself is whats so damn funny. if you talk to them, or berate them,
they will avoid your gaze, stop for 15 seconds, and then start up again as
though nothing had happened.

after years of struggling with this, enter the classical music. apparently
pure poison. they proudly try to stand their ground, but you can see the
suffering in their eyes. some of them used to last a couple hours, but when
they leave its always at a run.

anyways, to address your point, over time sensitivity seems to increase rather
than decrease. as exposure increases, lower volumes and shorter durations are
required to elicit the flight response.

you would think that the more aggressive, modern composers would be more
stressful. apparently, just basic baroque chamber is the least palatable.
after that romantic symphonies.

there are a thousand sad things about this situation, one being that I'm
losing my appreciation for the music itself.

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wink
I can totally relate. I am listening to classical music at home, not too
often, but maybe more than average? and I still hate it when they play it in
one or two of Munich's subway stations.

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tlholaday
Theodore Gioia's alliteration in the sixth paragraph delights me.

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internetman55
I'm not really sure about the rest of the article but I would be more likely
to hang out places with classical music cause I like it. So maybe even I would
like Burger King more

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rdiddly
This can't happen quite as easily with music that's still under copyright.
Interestingly I find myself wondering whether stronger copyright protection --
something for which I usually don't have a whole lot of sympathy -- would at
least introduce a little friction into the music appropriation machine.

Also I'm wondering what cultural associations today's music will have, far in
the future after its copyrights have expired.

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mcguire
Wouldn't think Burger Kings and subway stations would be considered the
property of the rich and powerful.

In fact, this is the most snobbish and pretentious article decrying snobbery
and pretense I've seen.

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pstuart
Indeed. Is it really Orwellian to not want a homeless encampment in front of
your business?

The author should stick to reviewing music itself, and stop whining about the
"abuse" of same.

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PhasmaFelis
It's the mission statement, not the intention, that's described as Orwellian.
"Delivering services beyond those the City of San Francisco can provide" is a
really weird way to say "chasing off homeless people and delinquents."

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pstuart
I don't find it so. Opaque, but that is what they are doing: addressing a key
problem their constituents have.

It's a tough situation and a rather benign solution to the problem immediately
at hand (ignoring solving the homeless problem itself).

Disclaimer: my mother was one of those homeless people in the area, so I have
some bias here.

