Serepax

Because the world needs more overwrought candour.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Musical impairs

Frankston station was one of the early adopters of classical music generational warfare in Melbourne. Once a place for right-thinking citizens to scurry between transport modes without looking at the loitering young hoodlums, Frankston station has largely emptied of the young restless. By piping classical music into potential teen-gathering spots, the powers that be make the station subtly unpleasant for potential malingerers and boredom-induced ill-doers. The technique - proven overseas - has been used at more youth-afflicted stations around Melbourne and seems to be a painless way to fend off troublesome youngsters.

But why classical? Is it the pitch? The Mosquito gadget works by emitting a pitch irritating to teenagers but not adults, but classical hardly falls into that category.

On the other hand, top 40 music attracts a particular subculture of teenage girls to slut-wear stores, while punk or alt-rock lures lumbering teenage boys to surfwear shops. According to a very reputable source (my mum), this youth music is utterly intolerable for her and people of her generation. She simply can't stand the volume or the music and avoids the stores. This looks an awful lot like subtle generation warfare, using music - a defining feature of generationalism - as a means of sorting through potential customers and discarding the unwanted. Bogan teens are sifted and found wanting by refined classical music, while baby boomers are kept at bay by youth music and prevented from their offspring through their shops.

Perhaps the future of the generation gap is the cunning aged understanding this technique and deploying honeypots traps to lure teens to grotty skateparks, simultaneously blasting out classical around their property investments and quality lifestyle neighbourhoods. Precocious teens would use the technique in reverse, protecting marijuana crops and bong houses with an impenetrable wall of sound large enough to make Phil Spector proud. Family houses would be split between classical and teen sections, with musical warfare at the frontline.

A bit of background on the future. You know it's coming:
This technique has been used lately all over the English-speaking world -- only not as a civilizing strategy but as a way of banishing ruffians, drug pushers and ne'er-do-wells. To clear out undesirables, opera and classical music have been piped into Canadian parks, Australian railway stations, 7-Eleven parking lots and, most recently, London Underground stops.

According to most reports, it works. Figures from the British capital released in January showed robberies in the subway down by 33 percent, assaults on staff by 25 percent and vandalism of trains and stations by 37 percent. Sources in other locales have reported fewer muggings and drug deals. London authorities now plan to expand the playing of Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and opera (sung by Pavarotti) from three tube stations to an additional 35.
- From the LA Times.