Quote:
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Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson
Isn't being "amusing" the entire point behind entertainment?
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Most people don't pick up a cheesy slasher flick expecting high art. I happen to adore schlock, and dick and fart jokes, and serial killers who chop up cops, and baseheads, and wife beating bigots; eat dead bodies, drink Faygo, and fuck fat chicks.
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This is a really important point I think - wider than this thread. There's this curious austerity that follows a lot of music, as if something entirely preposterous like ICP should be written off precisely because it's ridiculous. If you compare it to film - the only other popular art which has anything like music's social standing - there's an socially-imposed disanalogy. That is, it's alright to enjoy a film like Avatar (name out of a hat) which is clearly fantastic, ridiculous and by no means 'serious'
because it's a film, but music is often considered exempt from being appreciated on that level. The other side of this is fine - we can enjoy a 'serious' film (say, Schindler's List) in a similar way we might enjoy a Dylan Vietnam protest song. Although, personally, I'd take the Monks' brand of hysteria over Vietnam over anything Dylan ever put out.
But yeah, while I don't actually like ICP, I can't really see what's so bad about them (except, obviously, that miracles song is
astonishingly bad). I am, obviously, always right on any given subject, and as a consequence I am the prime arbiter of good taste for the world, but I don't really see that ICP's brand of ridiculousness is immediately a bad thing - like Herr Felikson says, it's patently ridiculous, and if you enjoy that ridiculousness, there doesn't seem much point criticising. For my part, they're vastly more enjoyable than yet another ugly guitar band who don't really say much, don't really engage their audience, don't really comment on society, don't really make the effort with all that bits that aren't music (clothes, videos, merchandise) etc etc.