Hardcore, Punk, and Other Junk by Eric James Abbey

Author:Eric James Abbey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739176061
Publisher: Lexington Books

Social Control, Dominance, and Submission

The aggression of noise as a sonic entity is not limited to its “musical” setting, and the treatment of noise in other situations informs the experience of the noise music performance. For most people, exposure to sustained, meaningless noise is highly objectionable, and noise is often limited and eliminated if possible. Theorist Jacques Attali argues that the attempted regulation of background noise, a continuous and unavoidable phenomenon, is one of the more basic hallmarks of civilization.40 For Attali, the creation of musical order out of chaotic noises assists in maintaining and legitimizing the social order. In American society, noise is often actively policed through laws that ban, for example, the use of engine brakes on semi-trucks or loud music during evening hours. In the latter case, music becomes noise solely by being undesirable in a particular time and place.41 Many social spaces, such as restaurants and libraries, are defined through their suppression of noise, although some eating establishments deliberately maintain a higher sound level to encourage faster turnover.

The disruptive and psychologically draining aspects of noise have more recently been adapted as a means of crowd control and psychological warfare. The “meaningless” aspect of noise can trace a heritage within military propaganda and communication, especially after tape recording provided a means for editing, rearranging, and disguising coded messages in the 1940s and 1950s.42 More recently, American Technology Corporation has developed a crowd control and hailing device called the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) which produces a directed high-pitched sound beam beyond or near the threshold of pain with a maximum effective range of five hundred yards.43 Police forces have used LRAD devices to disperse protesters, and commercial sea vessels have used them against pirates.44 Police and military forces also frequently use loud noise and objectionable music to psychologically wear down subjects in standoff situations such as at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.45 Steve Goodman notes that sound can also be used more generally against a population in order to harass, intimidate, and create a climate of fear, citing in particular the Israeli military’s use of sonic booms from low-flying military aircraft against civilian populations in the Gaza Strip. Goodman further theorizes that much of the potential for social control and violence through sound resides in realms in frequency he terms “unsound,” consisting of subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies that cannot be “heard” but which physically act upon the body and mind.46 In these cases, social or criminal disruption (itself a type of social “noise”) is dispersed or intimidated by sound that has been sanctioned by the state and wielded by military forces. On an individual level, sustained exposure to loud music and noise has also been used as a psychological torture technique in detention camps such as Abu Ghraib.47

Noise performance presents similarly unwanted or weaponized sounds in a space where they can be experienced voluntarily as an exercise in aggression, domination, and submission. From the audience’s perspective, a noise performance is in some ways an enactment

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