The purpose of the Fascist formula, the ritual discipline, the uniforms, and the whole apparatus, which is at first sight irrational, is to allow mimetic behavior. The carefully thought out symbols (which are proper to every counterrevolutionary movement), the skulls and disguises, the barbaric drum beats, the monotonous repetition of words and gestures, are simply the organized imitation of magic practices. . . .
--Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment 184-85

Metal, indeed, might be viewed as the epitome of popular music's two most extreme dangers: a dehumanizing, de-individualizing techno-mechanization; and a mystifying, irrationalist "retreat" (however illusory) back to humankind's primordial "rhythmic" origins--to speak diachronically about a tension between myth and reason that Horkheimer and Adorno often deal with in a more synchronic fashion. And yet, with the hegemonic ascendancy of industrial capitalism, the twentieth century seems to represent a new "culture-shock" turn-for-the-worse in Adorno's exposition of his ongoing rational/mythic dialectic. When the rationalist in Adorno must speak of a century cursed by Hitler and Auschwitz, it is only understandable that The Dialectic of Enlightenment has, at these points, a very "dystopian" feel to it (Hohendahl 126), and that Adorno's intellectual angst and pessimism are readily transferred from the jackboot to the jitterbugger, from the martial frenzy of the Fascist collective to the fanaticism of the pop-music audience.

http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/hm.html

to quote steven hawking:

"oh baby, oh baby, spit in my mouth"

what a fuckin idiot.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. (shouting) You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

Do you feel what I feel, see what I see, hear what I hear
There is a line you must draw between your dream world and reality
Do you live my life or share the breath I breathe
Lies feed your judgement of others
Behold how the blind lead each other
The philosopher
You know so much about nothing at all

Ideas that fall under shadows of theories that stand tall
Thoughts that grow narrow upon being verbally released
Your mind is not your own,
what sounds more mentally stimulating is how you make your choice
So you preach about how I'm supposed to be, yet you don't you know your own
sexuality
Lies feed your judgement of others
Behold how the blind lead each other
The philosopher
You know so much about nothing at all

<<to speak diachronically about a tension between myth and reason that Horkheimer and Adorno often deal with in a more synchronic fashion.>>

ah, yes, absolutely... DICKHEAD

th3rdknuckle said:

I motherfuckin' concur

<<And yet, with the hegemonic ascendancy of industrial capitalism, the twentieth century seems to represent a new "culture-shock" turn-for-the-worse in Adorno's exposition of his ongoing rational/mythic dialectic.>>

I heartily concurr... DOUCHE