4 ms·

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is

> This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. Regardless, he seems to have disdain for the tastes of the public, which doesn't quite jibe with the idea that he's treating the public as capable of appreciating music without it being dumbed down. I see a lot of defense of his arguments in this discussion, and I don't have much to add, other than to say I really don't understand it at all. I think it's really just a blind spot in how I think about art, but asserting that a televised performance of an orchestra playing some classical music is 'pointless' doesn't make sense to me.

cafard 2y ago
A quibble: A 1983 Webster's Collegiate gives the definition of problematic as "1: a. difficult to settle or decide b. not definite or settled c. open to question or debate 2: expressing or supporting a possibility". (Bold type, proffered synonyms, and examples omitted.) The sense of "problematic" as in "you've got a problem" developed after 1968, perhaps after 1990.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  I had no idea, thanks for pointing this out! I'm mostly frustrated with the modern usage, usually when used in reference to someone or some entity's behavior. Every time I hear it I want to understand what exactly the issue is. So if I go back and reread the quote that I had posted, is the critique that the public's tastes are not fixed, and change across geography and time? I'm still not sure what he was really getting at, I guess.
  - d1sxeyes 2y ago
    > This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. Basically, I think the point is that the idea of the 'taste of the public' is just a shorthand for 'something that appeals to lots of people with differing tastes'. The author's key point (I think) is that 'engineering' music somehow makes it less artistic, and the 'problematic taste of the public' is a tangent which explores why sound engineers do what they do, rather than being part of the main argument.
    - cafard 2y ago
      > This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. It was written for the Paris Review subscribers of 1968. I imagine that they found little difficulty in understanding it.
      - d1sxeyes 2y ago
        It was adapted from an interview which took place with Der Spiegel, so I guess it was originally in German, although I haven't found the original. My guess would be there are less complicated translations, but I might be wrong. Regardless, I think you're right, the target audience of this as it's written probably would not have issues understanding it.
- vundercind 2y ago
  I don’t recall encountering the latest usage until the mid-2010s.
- solardev 2y ago
  I think the common modern usage of that word is kinda an euphemism for "yucky because they're not woke enough". I've never seen it used outside that context, personally...
  - dpig_ 2y ago
    Caricaturing progressive ideas as some linear scale of 0 - Not Woke, 10 - Wokest is such a lame way to avoid the real points being made on a given subject.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    If by “not woke enough” you mean racist, sexist, or homophobic, that what I usually assume too.
klodolph 2y ago
> I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. I don’t think that’s the real problem with the word “problematic”. So many other words have the same problem—“bad” doesn’t say anything about what the badness is, “difficult” doesn’t say anything about the difficulty, etc. “Green” doesn’t say anything about greenness. I think the problem people have with problematic is that you’re taking a subjective claim and making it sound like a property of the object. If the taste of the public is “problematic” then it means that someone has a problem with it, but that someone is absent from the sentence. The word “problematic” is, eh, fine. Writers and speakers shouldn’t be injecting subjects into sentences just because the sentences express opinion. There’s not necessarily any kind of clear subject to introduce. The author/speaker is usually better used as an implicit subject for subjective statements. I have other problems in Adorno’s claims here but I have somewhat accepted the word “problematic”.
- jrm4 2y ago
  Nah, "problematic" as used commonly today is, well, problematic: Kind of like "woke" and some others, perhaps "toxic", it's used as a placeholder for a feeling/idea that the speaker believes to be commonplace, but is often VERY ill-defined, and thus ends up muddying the discussion and/or leaving things unsaid that do deserve more consideration.
  - klodolph 2y ago
    Kind of like the words “good” or “bad”, or “smart”, or “ugly”, or a million other subjective, contextual ideas? Words that are ill-defined and leave things unsaid are the norm. If you want clarity, you need sentences, paragraphs, and context. Those sentences will be filled with words that, individually, and stripped of their context, are unclear.
    - rpdillon 2y ago
      I think of it like the writing advice that tells you not to use words like good, bad, and nice, since they are low information density. My general feeling is you could replace the word problematic with a much more specific word in every single context where it's used, and the message would be clearer.
ysofunny 2y ago
the way I've dealt with semi-related issues is to regard 'engineered music' as it's own artform distinct from live music the archetype I'm trying to follow is painting. when the camera was invented photorealistic paintings became usless and what followed was impressionism, which focused on what the cameras cannot do. however I do not think music has reacted to reccording technology in the same way painting did (pretending for one sentence that 'music' and 'painting' are entities with agency). I don't think there's an "impressionistic" movement within music that arose as a response to reccording technology, at least not yet.
empath75 2y ago
Would he have been out of place on any audiophile forum today? This is just one of these things where he wants to find some deep philosophical basis for his personal preferences.
- coldtea 2y ago
  Rather one of the things based on the idea that "personal preferences" as in "everything is personal taste, bro, and as good as another, if you like it you like it", is a bad aesthetic and even moral default - backed by a certain line of development of culture and aesthetic ideas for a couple of millenia before the mass market era arrived (America, once it developed beyond barebones settles was almost always embedded in it like fish in the water -with the exception of some European leaning academics and such-, so ideologically can't even understand it could be any different to begin with). Which is less than some definite objective final measurement (as it's not physics, it's culture, and it's impossible), but a lot more than "personal preferences".
coldtea 2y ago
>Regardless, he seems to have disdain for the tastes of the public, which doesn't quite jibe with the idea that he's treating the public as capable of appreciating music without it being dumbed down. Their "tastes" are not set in stone - and according to him they're not even consciously their own to begin with, in the sense that they arrived at them with knowledge of the possible options and/or after cultivating them. Just conditioning from the music industry and lack of education. Like a teenager who defaults to the current hits everybody listens to.

cafard 2y ago

A quibble: A 1983 Webster's Collegiate gives the definition of problematic as "1: a. difficult to settle or decide b. not definite or settled c. open to question or debate 2: expressing or supporting a possibility". (Bold type, proffered synonyms, and examples omitted.) The sense of "problematic" as in "you've got a problem" developed after 1968, perhaps after 1990.

rpdillon 2y ago
I had no idea, thanks for pointing this out! I'm mostly frustrated with the modern usage, usually when used in reference to someone or some entity's behavior. Every time I hear it I want to understand what exactly the issue is. So if I go back and reread the quote that I had posted, is the critique that the public's tastes are not fixed, and change across geography and time? I'm still not sure what he was really getting at, I guess.
- d1sxeyes 2y ago
  > This is the fault of the sound engineers, who subsequently engage in fundamentally quite unmusical procedures by surgically extracting these voices, which is quite in keeping with their—if I may say this—unartistic intuitions and is also congenial to the highly problematic taste of the public. This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. Basically, I think the point is that the idea of the 'taste of the public' is just a shorthand for 'something that appeals to lots of people with differing tastes'. The author's key point (I think) is that 'engineering' music somehow makes it less artistic, and the 'problematic taste of the public' is a tangent which explores why sound engineers do what they do, rather than being part of the main argument.
  - cafard 2y ago
    > This sentence scores as 'extremely difficult' or 'difficult' on most readability scores, and it's just unnecessarily flowery. It was written for the Paris Review subscribers of 1968. I imagine that they found little difficulty in understanding it.
    - d1sxeyes 2y ago
      It was adapted from an interview which took place with Der Spiegel, so I guess it was originally in German, although I haven't found the original. My guess would be there are less complicated translations, but I might be wrong. Regardless, I think you're right, the target audience of this as it's written probably would not have issues understanding it.
vundercind 2y ago
I don’t recall encountering the latest usage until the mid-2010s.
solardev 2y ago
I think the common modern usage of that word is kinda an euphemism for "yucky because they're not woke enough". I've never seen it used outside that context, personally...
- dpig_ 2y ago
  Caricaturing progressive ideas as some linear scale of 0 - Not Woke, 10 - Wokest is such a lame way to avoid the real points being made on a given subject.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  If by “not woke enough” you mean racist, sexist, or homophobic, that what I usually assume too.

klodolph 2y ago

> I've never been a fan of the word 'problematic' because it says so little about what the problem actually is. I don’t think that’s the real problem with the word “problematic”. So many other words have the same problem—“bad” doesn’t say anything about what the badness is, “difficult” doesn’t say anything about the difficulty, etc. “Green” doesn’t say anything about greenness. I think the problem people have with problematic is that you’re taking a subjective claim and making it sound like a property of the object. If the taste of the public is “problematic” then it means that someone has a problem with it, but that someone is absent from the sentence. The word “problematic” is, eh, fine. Writers and speakers shouldn’t be injecting subjects into sentences just because the sentences express opinion. There’s not necessarily any kind of clear subject to introduce. The author/speaker is usually better used as an implicit subject for subjective statements. I have other problems in Adorno’s claims here but I have somewhat accepted the word “problematic”.

jrm4 2y ago
Nah, "problematic" as used commonly today is, well, problematic: Kind of like "woke" and some others, perhaps "toxic", it's used as a placeholder for a feeling/idea that the speaker believes to be commonplace, but is often VERY ill-defined, and thus ends up muddying the discussion and/or leaving things unsaid that do deserve more consideration.
- klodolph 2y ago
  Kind of like the words “good” or “bad”, or “smart”, or “ugly”, or a million other subjective, contextual ideas? Words that are ill-defined and leave things unsaid are the norm. If you want clarity, you need sentences, paragraphs, and context. Those sentences will be filled with words that, individually, and stripped of their context, are unclear.
  - rpdillon 2y ago
    I think of it like the writing advice that tells you not to use words like good, bad, and nice, since they are low information density. My general feeling is you could replace the word problematic with a much more specific word in every single context where it's used, and the message would be clearer.

ysofunny 2y ago

the way I've dealt with semi-related issues is to regard 'engineered music' as it's own artform distinct from live music the archetype I'm trying to follow is painting. when the camera was invented photorealistic paintings became usless and what followed was impressionism, which focused on what the cameras cannot do. however I do not think music has reacted to reccording technology in the same way painting did (pretending for one sentence that 'music' and 'painting' are entities with agency). I don't think there's an "impressionistic" movement within music that arose as a response to reccording technology, at least not yet.

empath75 2y ago

Would he have been out of place on any audiophile forum today? This is just one of these things where he wants to find some deep philosophical basis for his personal preferences.

coldtea 2y ago
Rather one of the things based on the idea that "personal preferences" as in "everything is personal taste, bro, and as good as another, if you like it you like it", is a bad aesthetic and even moral default - backed by a certain line of development of culture and aesthetic ideas for a couple of millenia before the mass market era arrived (America, once it developed beyond barebones settles was almost always embedded in it like fish in the water -with the exception of some European leaning academics and such-, so ideologically can't even understand it could be any different to begin with). Which is less than some definite objective final measurement (as it's not physics, it's culture, and it's impossible), but a lot more than "personal preferences".

coldtea 2y ago

>Regardless, he seems to have disdain for the tastes of the public, which doesn't quite jibe with the idea that he's treating the public as capable of appreciating music without it being dumbed down. Their "tastes" are not set in stone - and according to him they're not even consciously their own to begin with, in the sense that they arrived at them with knowledge of the possible options and/or after cultivating them. Just conditioning from the music industry and lack of education. Like a teenager who defaults to the current hits everybody listens to.