Everything After - A 9.11 Youth Circle - Other issues still matter!

I'm sick and angry when adults announce that nothing else matters after 9-11 or that the world has changed! Nothing changed except the WTC being gone and the U.S. being in war! Things that got me angry still get me angry. When I have a fight with my teacher, that got me angry enough to hurt myself then! And it still gets me angry enough to hurt myself now! Look at the drinking age, I watched a debate on the drinking age on TV not too long ago and actually found a referendum once about abolishing the laws that make it a crime for teens to drink. Some adult commentators from the media said that that was trivial after what happened on 9-11. WHAT DUNG! If you really think it's trivial then I guess YOU should have said yes to abolishing the drinking age (or curfew) or whatever before 9-11 came along, huh? But YOU were too stubborn. Kids are getting tossed into jail because they have a beer on them or are out after curfew, or are smoking a joint. It mattered then, and it matters now. People get arrested just because they look too "weird" or "scary" in public. That's been going on before 9-11 and it's still going on. I want to write articles against it and hold a Rage Against the Police day, but judging from what people are saying there are going to be people who think we look like fools for getting mad at this after 9-11. IT'S STILL WRONG! 9-11 WAS AN EVENT THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS PEOPLE. Look at those magazine articles and commenteries from people who looked at anti-global protestors and people protesting against the WTO after the WTC was blown up and called the people fools. Some of these writers were LAUGHING at them! OK, whose fault is it, young people's fault for being angry, or YOUR fault for not having abolished these things or changed the laws and the world BEFORE 9-11? You authority figures have yourselves to blame for the fact that those things haven't changed. How could you people NOT take us angry youth seriously? We're angry about things that are ruining our whole LIVES, just as your worried about your life possibly being destroyed by the remote possibility of a terrorist attack that kills you. And HELLO? There were the dangers of terrorist attacks in America long before 9-11. Even the WTC got attacked earlier back in 1993. And don't forget the OKC building and other times we got bombed. You have the possibility of your life coming to an end through terrorism now, and you had the possibility of your life coming to an end through terrorism then. Didn't you already KNOW you and the country weren't invincible to terrorism and apocalypse? I sure didn't hear you saying that these things were petty because of the possibility of terrorism back THEN. And as for people saying that angsty music sounds shallow and different music should be popular after 9-11, THAT'S DUNG AGAIN. If you look at some charts you'll see that harder rock and angstier songs aren't any lower down or less popular than they were before 9-11. That's because these are FEELINGS, feelings about everyday things that relate to us, that aren't remote, because people are getting angry. What's playing on MTV now, are the radio stations are filled with only patriotic songs or only "Sing about happiness" junk bedcause of 9-11? No. And the reason music industry is unchanged by 9-11 is because predominantly young people are buying it. Our fortysomething and fiftysomething parents don't buy music recordings in heaps and heaps. They're the ones who are being judgmental and think everything is petty, not us. You got the wrong generation. Some people (adults, in writing) have actually said they LAUGH at young people who are so angry now. Anyone who laughs at these things deserves to be smacked in the lower jaw until instead of laughing, they cry bleeding. Because everything that sucks about this world STILL MATTERS!

Totally! I'm appalled when I hear anyone tell a young person that they shouldn't care about so-and-so because of September 1. Terrorism ain't the ONLY thing in this world that wrecks lives and breaks hearts, folks. And people have been having their hearts broken and committing suicide for as long as humanity existed. When I hear people use the WTC attacks as an excuse for refusing to do some controversial activity to champion gay rights or whatever, I don't even know if they're actually dense enough to believe that 9/11 renders everything else irrelevant or if they're just using it a new excuse to be strongly against gay rights (or your issue here). And don't get me started on the police! Ughhh! How could a few police officers over in New York on one day mean that the whole law enforcement occupation is unquestionably sacred and now no police officer can ever do any wrong? If you want petty, how about some of the things the cops arrest people for being pretty petty?

I haven't noticed any change in pop music myself. On All-reviews, a site that lists (and reviews) the top 50 songs by airplay every week, sampled from rock/pop/rap stations, there is no change evident in the rankings in the weeks before September 11 and the weeks after September 11. The site itself remarked that the event has had little visible effect on songs, and that the only song affected by the event was the "Dead Bodies" floating in the pool song, which was yanked by many radio stations after the event. Apparently nothing else was too excessive. To look at the top 50 songs by airplay on All-reviews' list, visit the site at http://www.all-reviews.com/music-songs/January02Week3.htm. If you want to compare to what was on the air one year ago, change the URL to http://www.all-reviews.com/music-songs/January01Week3.htm.

I have no clue why the sources like the news-hour program that talked about music become cheerier by the end of 2001 perceive music as having changed. It's just not out there. They picked out a few happy tunes, but sure, anyone could point out plenty of upbeat or feel-good songs from any year, even in the dead middle of the grunge era. Do the videos that are playing on MTV right now sound all changed by "the Events of September 11"? My bet is that these newscasters were trying to get as much hype out of 9/11 as they could, so they thought, "Why don't we be opportunist and take up the opportunity to dig up some gold in the field of POP MUSIC, and see how September eleventh's changed that!"

And yes, I feel completely disgusted (and angry) at these older people who are trying to tell younger people what music they should be listening to. (Whether it should be angsty, etc.)

Yeah, people definitely see musicians as being the artists, bohemians, people to cater to pop culture (= counterculture) interests. Another factor that would make movies suffer more than music is that the vast majority of musical acts are geared towards young people (generation X and anything younger -- the type of people who would follow the song on MTV) while the cinema is aimed at all ages (with a movies especially for teen audiences or made just for little kids). Movies therefore will have to satisfy both sides of the generation gap. Television varies, with particular shows for just about all different age groups, and something for everybody. Yet even with movies, it seemed to be films that had something that tied in with 9/11 that got retracted -- films with plots about terrorism, films that involved bombs at airports or circumventing airport security, attacks hitting NYC -- rather than a generic censoring of violence. I saw one film that originally got pulled but was shown later, it had a bomb being sneaked through an airport in it. It seems like such an amazing coincidence that there were so many movies being made about this stuff at the time. The music industry had a few cases of this too, but you couldn't really see any visible change afterwards. For instance, the Strokes removed a New-York-related song just as they were finishing their CD because they finished it just after the attacks, and another rap album got pulled from stores right after it arrived (exactly on September 11) because it had, on its cover . . .

a doctored photo showing the World Trade Center blowing up.

Shocking, huh?

You're probably right that music advertises itself to a younger audience, because the changes in music are so hard to detect. On television, MTV is ptobably the most unchanged, possibly even funkier than before. While stations like the WB are trying out some STUPID things after 9-11 and trying to make themselves sound so patriotic. The absolute worst station though is the one that keeps running the line "United we stand" during commercial breaks. THE NATION IS NOT UNITED PEOPLE! 'more united than ever before?" It certainly doesn't come close to how united Americans were in the FDR years especially during the war.

Shut up, Bono. There's nothing to laugh about about suburban angst in music, because that's the way our generation feels. The music is in our hands, not yours, and we actually have a few brain cells when it comes to putting the potential of terrorism and other things into perspective.