Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre and fantastic methods for policing the populace. But its weaponization of classical music - where Mozart, Beethoven and other greats have been turned into tools of state repression - marks a new low.
Britain is already the king of closed-circuit TV. An estimated 20 per cent of the world's CCTV cameras are in the U.K., a remarkable achievement for an island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world's inhabitable land mass.
A few years ago, some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over 20 but that is so high-pitched, so piercing and so unbearable to the delicate eardrums of under-20s that they can't remain in earshot. It's designed to drive away unruly youths from public spaces, yet is brutally indiscriminate - it also drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers and wakes sleeping babies.
Police in the west of England recently started using super-bright halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or loitering in parks, in the hope they'll become so bamboozled they'll stagger home.
And Liverpool police recently boasted about making Britain's first arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by British and U.S. robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.
Now it's classical music. Once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and souls, it's being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behaviour.
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. Children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them) and as a deterrent against future bad behaviour. Aapparently, 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 commentator said, the children probably will "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 .
The music detentions are just the latest experiment in using and abusing some of humanity's greatest cultural achievements to reprimand youth.
Across the U.K., local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. Not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee. (In Toronto, classical music is played at several subway stations with the same goal.)
The county of Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of the U.K. to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local railway company decided to do something about the "problem" of "youths hanging around" its train stations. The young people were "not getting up to criminal activities," admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they were "swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers." So the company unleashed "blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi." Apparently, it was a success. The youths fled.
"They seem to loathe [the music]" said the proud railway guy. "It's pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing." He said the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich. (That one I can kind of understand.)
In Yorkshire, the local council has started playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at "troublesome" bus stops between 7:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Shops in Worcester, Bristol and North Wales have also taken to "firing out" bursts of classical music to ward off feckless youngsters.
Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a "punitive slap on the chops" for low youth has come true. In his 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange , the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to "the Ludovico Technique" by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and remoulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.
Pleading with his therapists, he tells them that "Ludwig van" did nothing wrong, he "only made music." He tells the doctors it's a sin to turn him against Beethoven. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favourite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.
The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite's authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They're so desperate to control youth - but from a distance, without actually having to engage them - that they'll film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes and bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young people's intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their willingness to engage with humanity's highest forms of art, that they imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The dangerous message being sent to young people is clear: You are scum. Classical music is not a wonder of the human world, it's a repellent against mildly anti-social behaviour.
Brendan O'Neill is editor of London-based spiked-online.com.