Drugs have influenced our culture since the earliest civilizations. The
earliest known record of cocaine use is found on a three-inch ceramic
head of a Valdivian in Ecuador, in 1500 BC.1 Hector Berlioz wrote“Symphonie Fantastique” in 1830, inspired by an opium dream he had.
Writers from the last three centuries have written on their drug
experiences. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, was
devoted to opium. Fritz Hugh Ludlow wrote the classic Hashish Eater,
(published in 1857).2
There has been a history of literature and pop culture that thumbed its
nose at the puritanical and conservative political culture of early America.
At the turn of the century (about 1910), the Masses, a Greenwich Village
magazine, fused the cultural radicalism of American Bohemianism with
radical socialist politics. Various anarchists’ publications of the late
1800s promoted fee-love.
In recent years, as then, there have been attempts to suppress culture
that offends the puritan values of the US. By the 1990s politicians and
pundits of the right, far right and center left have called for a “culture war”
against the movie, music and television industry. This is not just for the
portrayal of drug use, but for sex, too much violence, themes involving
suicide, the acceptance of homosexuality and a number of other taboos as
well.
The US Senate held a three-hour hearing, November 6, 1997, to
criticize violent and “anti-social” song lyrics. Senator Sam Brownback,
R-Kansas, made it clear he wanted to shame the music industry into acting
more responsible.3
“Looking at the lyrics of some of this music... particularly in the shock
rock and gangster rap area, it’s very violent,” Brownback said. “It’s
hateful to women, much of it is quite racist, it glorifies things like cop
killing and date rape that I think everyone in society agrees is wrong.”4
These attacks are nothing new. At the beginning of the 20th century
Anthony Comstock introduced the Comstock Act. Comstock was a
Christian social activist who promoted censorship laws to suppress
anything of a sexual nature. He not only campaigned against pornography
and sinful behavior, he lobbied for federal and state anti-obscenity
legislation.5
Most drug laws were passed before or after the time of alcohol
prohibition. The main difference between alcohol and most other drugs
was that the other drugs were more closely linked to minorities in the eyes
of the public. Cocaine was associated with blacks, opium the Chinese and
9
marijuana the Mexican immigrants. Yet alcohol was seen at the time as a
vice of European immigrants. These immigrants were considered a threat
to the traditional middle-class values that have often been summed up as
White Anlgo-Saxon Protestant (WASP).
Charlie Parker was a drug addict who was also a progressive musician. He is written about in this book.
This book is available from Barns & Noble.
9 comments:
The 8 deleted messages on here were from a hack writer whose attempt at argument was so indefensible he had to rely on name-calling. Obviously if his books were anygood he would have little reason to write in and attack the credibility of other people’s work. I don’t claim to always be right about everything and I do make mistakes. But when someone nit picks over insignificant details in one of my books, not just once but over and over, I finally deleted the blather. He has dozens of books he’s written on the same author, Conan Doyle, so with so limited an imagination, I can see why he gets in such mud-fests with other writers. How else can he justify what he writes himself? If he can’t take criticism, he shouldn’t leave messages.
I always encourage messages, even the ones I disagree with. The only reason for these deletions are that this person was no longer leaving opinions, he was just leaving insults. As a blogger, I don’t need to keep those.
Post a Comment