# Crime and Punishment: Mozart Edition



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2009543344_music27m.html

The classical music blaring from speakers mounted on the light posts in a Rainier Beach parking lot keeps Richelle Reason walking. She never stops to hear the next song in the storefront symphony.

"It's kind of annoying," she said of the music in the Saar's Market Place parking lot on South Henderson Street.

That's exactly the point.

...

he music, paired with heightened security efforts, helped cut spending on vandalism-related repairs from $3,000 between 2006 and 2007 to $1,600 between 2007 and 2008, he added.

But Levitin cautioned about being elitist or ethnocentric[editor's note: yeah, that'd be the end of the world] in linking good behavior with classical music and other fine arts. "I think hip-hop or R&B or heavy metal [editor's note:], in the right circumstances, can make someone feel kind, sensitive or inspired," he said. Saar's customers seemed divided on the classical-music offerings.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/weoponizing-mozart

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was "subjecting" (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In "special detentions," the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably "go into adulthood associating great music-the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth-with a punitive slap on the chops." This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think "Danger!" whenever they hear Mozart's Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

I like the ultra sensational titles of your threads.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

brianwalker said:


> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2009543344_music27m.html
> 
> 
> he music, paired with heightened security efforts, helped cut spending on vandalism-related repairs from $3,000 between 2006 and 2007 to $1,600 between 2007 and 2008, he added.
> ...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think they were doing a similar thing, but with the singer Barry Manilow's music here. Piping it out in parking lots frequented by rev-heads (young people who raced their cars there, which can be dangerous and is loud for surrounding people in their houses at night, etc.). Same as with Mozart in your example, Mr. Manilow's dulcet tones has made this problem disappear in that area & it's caught on to other areas with "problem youth," eg. shopping malls. Which makes you think, where can young people let their hair down and simply be young people. Even if they're not making trouble, just congregating naturally as young people do, they seem to be targets of concerned citizenry who then target them with either Mozart or Manilow...


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## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

I thought the second article about Mozart being used as punishment was a little worrying. The first one had a load of guff about 'reverse psychology' in it. It seems to me that these places are just doing what shops have been doing for decades -if a place 'sounds civilized' then people are likely to behave better -that's why so many shops have been pumping out The Four Seasons on an endless rotation for as long as I can remember. Yes 'gangstas' are less likely to hang around in a parking lot in which the dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy is regularly played, but I think reverse psychology is a rather extravagant way of saying that it just doesn't fit their image.


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## EarthBoundRules (Sep 25, 2011)

I bet the person who thought this up _reall_y likes A Clockwork Orange...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

hocket said:


> I thought the second article about Mozart being used as punishment was a little worrying. The first one had a load of guff about 'reverse psychology' in it. It seems to me that these places are just doing what shops have been doing for decades -if a place 'sounds civilized' then people are likely to behave better -that's why so many shops have been pumping out The Four Seasons on an endless rotation for as long as I can remember. Yes 'gangstas' are less likely to hang around in a parking lot in which the dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy is regularly played, but I think reverse psychology is a rather extravagant way of saying that it just doesn't fit their image.


My careful analysis indicates that both Mozart and Manilow tend to distract the hearer from _evil (or even constructive) thoughts_. Manilow may introduce fears of falling into a trance-like state, without the enhanced imagination that cannabis encourages. The determined and sophisticated adult may be able to combat those influences, but many young minds have not yet developed the necessary defenses.


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