ANUS.com?

[My Man Mahmoud]

Format your post, asshole.

 

[TylerTheNuke]

I'm sorry you don't like my format. I quoted our discussion up to the point and responded in a block paragraph because I feel the dissection method of arguing ruins the overall message. It can't be that much harder to just read it like that.

 

[MasterOLightning]

Just hit enter twice every few sentences. There's no way anyone will suffer through that block of text.

 

[TylerTheNuke]

Just hit enter twice every few sentences. There's no way anyone will suffer through that block of text.

I would have sufferred through it myself, but whatever. Popular demand wins.

 

[My Man Mahmoud]

Just hit enter twice every few sentences. There's no way anyone will suffer through that block of text.

He needs to format it by breaking up the original quote so I can tell what the fuck he's responding to in the first place. I don't have time for guessing games. The quote function just isn't that hard to operate.

 

[Cythraul]

Certainly within a given cultural (or subcultural) tradition, this is true (the association of minor keys with 'sadness' in the Western tradition being a classic example.

Ok, I'm willing to grant you this point for the sake of discussion even though I feel compelled to nitpick about the fact that association does not add up to denotation.

Music rarely deals in concrete subjects - it is usually representing abstract and conceptual ideas: love; power; pain; triumph; death etc. - things that can never have a one-to-one representative correspondance at the symbolic level. In any event, much of the meaning (in words, images or sound) conveyed by any work is connotative, and is carried not in agreed upon definitions, but in the association between signifiers or the associations evoked by signifiers.

I don't really disagree with that, but connotation does not add up to representation (nor is it necessary...I think). Denotation is a necessary condition for representation.

You would be changing the signs - but not the signified. The absolute quality (or lack thereof) of Britney's music would remain the same - all that would change is the way we talk about it.

Of course I wouldn't be changing the signified. However, you make it seem as though the value of a musical work is reducible to whatever it represents. Anything can represent anything else. So Britney Spears' music could've represented the heroism of ancient Aryan values. By hypothesis, the value of the musical work would have nothing to do with the signs, but rather with the relation between the signs and something else. There simply isn't anything else for you to appeal to aside from this relation. I have no idea what you mean by "absolute quality".

This is probably the most useful insight to come out of structuralist theory. The idea in structuralism is that meaning is not produced by a given sign, but by the relative positioning of signs in a text. Essentially, the argument is that signs do not have a fixed relationship to that which is signified (i.e. words and other symbols have no absolute "meaning"), and thus the meaning of a given text is produced by the way its signs are placed in its structure.

I would never maintain that meaning is produced by a given sign, nor would I maintain that a sign has a fixed relationship to what it signifies. However, I don't agree that the meaning of a given text is produced by the way its signs are placed in its structure. Of course, that's definitely part of the story and a huge chunk of language owes its meaning to something analogous to that, but many sentences (in fact the most important parts of language) owe their meaning to direct conditioning with observable, non-verbal circumstances.

Music is, in a sense, a carrier of philosophy, but it fills a very different function.

And what is that function?

 

[TylerTheNuke]

He needs to format it by breaking up the original quote so I can tell what the fuck he's responding to in the first place. I don't have time for guessing games. The quote function just isn't that hard to operate.

The problem is you can't quote within a quote. I guess I'll bold your responses, the rest are mine. Orriginally, my responses said quote: in front of them. As for yours, I was hoping you'd recognize your own words. And yes, you probably do have time for guessing games. Especially easy ones a five year old could do. God, why are people so picky? It isn't about the language or the format, the only thing that matters is the message. Grr. I was hoping for something to sink my teeth into now that I've finished my english essay.

 

[skeptik]

The problem is you can't quote within a quote.

Yes you can.

 

[Astrum]

durrrrr

 

[TylerTheNuke]

The problem is you can't quote within a quote.

Yes you can.

Hmmm, testing....

 

[TylerTheNuke]

Oh, wow. Okay, why doesn't this happen automatically when you click quote on a quoted message. Why does it delete the inside quote?

 

[Astrum]

It should

 

[My Man Mahmoud]

Cythraul,

Both denotation and connotation are forms of representation - any time a symbol stands in for an object or concept, representation occurs. Denotation is a more 'direct' form of representation - but not the only form. We see this all the time with metaphors and other forms of indirect, connotative representation - and music works the same way.

 

[TylerTheNuke]

It should

Damn alternative browsers

 

[audiophileguy]

some of you guys here take music way too seriously...
have fun being virgins, living in ma's basement, pondering about shit no one gives a flying fuck about, while the rest of the world moves right past you.
i'm off to hang out with friends, listen to metal church(oo idiot rock!), and make the most out of a tuesday nite.

 

[DE]

Oh, wow. Okay, why doesn't this happen automatically when you click quote on a quoted message. Why does it delete the inside quote?

So that you don't have 50-level pagodas of nested quoting that take four hundred hours to scroll past

 

[Astrum]

Damn alternative browsers

I mean it should do it, its stupid that it doesnt. Not it should do it when you try.

 

[Astrum]

some of you guys here take music way too seriously...
have fun being virgins, living in ma's basement, pondering about shit no one gives a flying fuck about, while the rest of the world moves right past you.
i'm off to hang out with friends, listen to metal church(oo idiot rock!), and make the most out of a tuesday nite.

good for you.

 

[TylerTheNuke]

some of you guys here take music way too seriously...
have fun being virgins, living in ma's basement, pondering about shit no one gives a flying fuck about, while the rest of the world moves right past you.
i'm off to hang out with friends, listen to metal church(oo idiot rock!), and make the most out of a tuesday nite.

lol, didn't see this coming. Trust me, I'm not really a loser. I just sometimes like to excersise my head by debating stuff online. I mean, my best friend probably has an IQ of 70, so By hanging with him, we negate each other. Its cool. I'm moderatly cool. Enjoy your hangin.

 

[My Man Mahmoud]

Of course I wouldn't be changing the signified. However, you make it seem as though the value of a musical work is reducible to whatever it represents.

In the sense that an artist who starts without good ideas to communicate will never make music worth hearing, this is true. However, you're, ah, misrepresenting my argument as a whole - which is that you can't seperate content from aesthetic when analyzing art (i.e. "Oh, this band is technical, they must be good").

Anything can represent anything else. So Britney Spears' music could've represented the heroism of ancient Aryan values.

To have any functional, externalized meaning, representation has to make use of a symbolic 'language' held to some degree in common by both creator and audience. To represent say, the values of the 'Aryans,' an artist has to make use of symbols that represent the ideas in question within the cultural discourse in which they work (more on the significance of discourse later).

By hypothesis, the value of the musical work would have nothing to do with the signs, but rather with the relation between the signs and something else.

You're catching on! Purely aestheticist analysis tries to reach some sort of value judgment merely by examining the signs. But to do so is to examine an arbitrary collection of symbols with no value in and of themselves. A more holistic (and, I think, valid) approach is to examine signs, signified and the relationship between the two. Which is what I've been arguing for in the first place.