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Originally Posted by (Impenitent,) medium is the method of delivery... cd, radio, cassettes, 8-track, live bands<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
Strange... I'd classify most of these (radio and live performance being the possible exceptions) as the same medium, packaged differently. All of them are commercially available, commodified, replayable musical performances. But that's not really what's at issue here.
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Originally Posted by (Impenitent,) the ethical content has been the same since history began... degrading women, picking fights, warring nations, racism, sexism... just read some homer or sophocles or any greek tragedy really... <hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
It just so happens that I recently taught
Oedipus Rex and
Antigone to a class of college freshmen. Could you point to the "degrading women" part for me so that we can have a bit more lengthy conversation on it?
I get the feeling that you're brushing this conversation aside rather than engaging it, but I'll ask anyway that you provide some particular analogues within the Greek tradition (or other traditions) to gangsta rap culture so that I can see what sorts of similarities you have in mind. Remember, I'm a college English teacher--I need specific examples!
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Originally Posted by (Impenitent,) homosexual sex was taboo 20 years ago... but it is making a comeback... and it was perfectly normal in plato's day and in 40 years it will be back in the closet...<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
I would argue that the context in which sex happens matters; in Plato's day pedophilia was the accepted norm, not necessarily sex between adult men (I'm using primarily Plato's
Symposium as my text, though I've read in historical surveys that this bears out in most cases). Every gay man I've talked to on this seems to think that something different is going on in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. What sorts of historical developments do you have in mind driving certain sexual preferences "back in the closet," or are you simply assuming that all things are cyclical and that particular historical developments aren't all that relevant to all this?