The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 62 - There Is Nothing Uplifting Or Empowering About Stupid, Trashy Pop Music

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Ariana Grande is out with a trashy and utterly stupid song and video called “God is a woman.” The media has hailed it as empowering and uplifting for women. But, like most pop music, it is neither of those things. It is exactly the opposite, in fact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Ariana Grande, Grande, grande, grandi, grande. Anyway, the one who licked the donut, you know, the donut-licking one. She's out with a new video and song called God is a woman, and it has caused waves in the culture. Pop culture is a frenzy right now because of God is a woman. And it has the media, like the L.A. Times proclaim that Grande has officially smashed the patriarchy with her music video for God as a woman, which just a quick side note there, we are continuously told that this and that thing or person has smashed the patriarchy, but then feminists continue

to complain about the patriarchy. So I thought it had been smashed. I mean, once you smash something, it's gone, right? So, like, I guess that means you haven't really been smashing it. I mean, if you actually smashed it, then you have to stop complaining about it. But if you're still complaining about it, then you can't claim that you're smashing it. clearly it's if the patriarchy is still intact and can be smashed, it means that it was not smashed in the past. That's just a quick, just a quick note there, technicality, all right, just a logistical point. But, and there rather mashable says that it's the empowering female anthem the world needs. The Guardian wrote a lengthy article dissecting the theological

aspects of Grande's song, and there's been a lot of coverage like that. Of course, the only problem with dissecting the theological aspects of the song is that there aren't any theological aspects of the song. The video consists of the singer writhing about in various states of Andres, which is, you know, what most female pop videos consist of these days. And, you know, she's gyrating on various different objects, including on the globe itself at one point. And the video is peppered with a random hodgepodge of blasphemous imageries and things like that. At one point, Madonna comes on and quotes scripture. Okay, so it's just, there's just random blasphemy going on along with Ariana Grande naked prancing about.

So the song itself, like 98.7% of all pop music, is just nonsensical garbage. and it makes you manifestly stupider just by encountering it. Like, I will, just so we're on the same page, okay? And kind of as a science experiment, I will read some of the lyrics to you. And I want you to be, now, pay attention as I read this, because you're going to feel your own IQ plummeting to the earth. Your IQ will lower by 13 to 15 points just when I read a couple of lyrics from this song. You're going to feel it.

You're going to feel yourself, you're going to say to yourself, wow, I'm getting dumber right now. And by the end of it, you will be dumber than you were heading into it. And this is just, as I said, just a science experiment. So the lyrics of the song, and maybe you can, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is some deep theological significance here. Maybe she's making some argument for the womanhood of God that I just am too stupid myself to pick up on. But here's what the lyrics say, you love it how I'm moving. you. You love it how I touch you. My one, when all is said and done, you'll believe God is a woman.

And I feel it after midnight, a feeling that you can't fight. My one, it lingers when we're done. You'll believe God is a woman. I don't want to waste no time, yeah. You ain't got a one-track mind, yeah. Have it any way you like, yeah. And I can tell that you know, I know how I want it. Ain't nobody else can relate. Boy, I like that you ain't afraid. baby lay me down and let's pray i'm telling you the way i like it how i want it but why does she i thought he earlier she said that he knows he knows how she wants it and then now she's saying that she's going to tell him how she wants it so i don't i'm trying to understand that so it seems a little bit redundant but anyway i could continue but your brain would actually liquefy and leak out of your nose

if i did so i won't do that and this is why there there are several people emailed me and they said, they asked me, he's like, Matt, can you, can you do a podcast talking about why God isn't a woman? You know, can you, can we, can we talk? Can you engage with the point that Ariana Grande is making and get into a theological debate with her pop song? And I'm not going to do that because as you can tell from, she's not, this is, it's just, it's, again, it's just nonsensical. And she's not even really saying that God is a woman. She's saying that God is a woman because she is God. And the reason why she is God is that she can sexually satisfy her partner. She can sexually satisfy a man in bed. So that means that she is God. That's what she's saying. That's the theological argument that she's making.

And I mean, I do disagree with it. I don't think the ability to sexually satisfy someone makes you a God personally. That's just my own reading of scripture is that that's not accurate. As far, now, if I were to actually engage this idea of, you know, is God a woman, it's God is not a woman, neither is God a man. God is not a male or female. God is not a created being. Okay. God is a being that transcends all of that. Okay, so we can't put them into the labels and the box boxes that we belong to. However, So it's not, so God, from the way that we think of it, like our understanding of man and woman, God is neither. He's above beyond transcending. However, it is important that we refer to God as He for two reasons.

The first reason is that if we're not going to refer to God as He and we're not going to refer to God as she, because that would certainly be inaccurate, then we're left with something kind of impersonal. We'd have to refer to God as it or they or something like that. But there's a reason why Scripture uses a personal pronoun because he is a personal God. And that's a point that has to be driven home. When you start using these kinds of vague, when you start using vague language to refer to God, then you begin to think of God as this kind of impersonal, almost this pantheistic kind of cosmic force that's just sort of floating out there detached from reality. And that is the kind of God that some religions believe in.

That is not the Judeo-Christian God. And it's not the true God. The true God is a personal God. So we have to use personal language when referring to God. Why do we call him He? Well, I think it's very simple because that's, I mean, that Jesus tells us to call God father. So you can argue with that.

that if you want. You can tell Jesus he's wrong about the nature of God. If that's an argument you want to get into it with Jesus, be my guest. I wouldn't recommend it, but I'm not going to get into that argument. For me, it's as simple as Jesus told us, God is Father, call him Father. In what sense is He Father? In what sense can you use this obviously masculine label and attach it to God? I don't know. I mean, I don't know exactly. As far as the exact nature, of God, I understand very little. I have just like this little tiny thimble of understanding in my head. And all I can ever hope to do is just fill that thimble. So even if I reach my max capacity for understanding God, I will still have just a little thimble. And as it happens right now, I have only a

little bit of that thimble filled. So my point is, I don't know exactly. But this is what Jesus Christ, God incarnate. This is what he told us. So we know that God is personal and we are to refer to him and see him as father. But let's put all that to the side, because really I don't want to talk about that. I wanted to talk about just kind of pop music in general, and especially this idea that stuff like this can somehow empower us and especially empower women. So a few points. First of all, the problem with this kind of stuff, I mean, this kind of pop music is that

it harms you both mentally and spiritually. It harms your mind and your soul. It's not a neutral. I know I was kind of kidding around about how your IQ drops listening to it, but I was, I was only half kidding. I think it really does harm us. It's not a, it's not a neutral experience. Your mind is harmed because this is nonsensical, obnoxious, utterly stupid. And so in order to enjoy it, And when I say stupid, I don't mean it as, it's not a playground insult where I'm just, oh, that's stupid. I mean, it's really stupid. It is just stupid. I mean, I read it to you.

That is stupid. There's really no other word that would better capture. There's no adjective that would better capture it than stupid. And I would use the term stupid before I would use a term like offensive. Now, when you've got these pop stars, they start getting into the blasphemy and everything, they want you. to be offended. What they're going for is offensive, but it's not nearly smart enough to be offensive. Ariana Grande just doesn't have the intellectual wit to be offensive. She can't offend me. It's just really, really stupid. So in order to enjoy it, you have to kind of willfully kill off

the parts of your brain that demand actual substance and actual coherence. Now, I would say that smart people don't listen, to this stuff, but that's not quite right. Because there is something in it. And I don't mean just this song in particular. I mean, there's something in pop music in general. There's something in it that plays to the lowest common denominator in all of us, something that everybody finds weirdly, almost incomprehensibly appealing to some extent. I don't find this song appealing at all, but everybody has, even when it comes to stupid pop songs, everyone has certain stupid pop songs that you hear that and you're like, this is stupid, I don't like it, but I also, there's something about it that I do like.

I can't quite understand it. And it has to do with the repetition and the melody, the beat, the way, I think also the way the lyrics of these songs almost always feed into the ego of the listener. And I think all of this could entice even potentially smart people to listen. to it, but if smart people do listen and they keep listening and they get enmeshed in this pop culture world, then they will become less smart in the process. They may remain smart, but not as smart. And they will be smart in spite of all this crap they're listening to, not because of it. Because your mind atrophies after a while. And I know people like to say,

well, sometimes you've got to turn your brain off and just enjoy. And what they're they mean is that they're talking about something, the song, the show, the movie, whatever they're talking about. When they say, well, you know, you just got to turn your brain up, what they're saying is that this thing is so completely devoid of intellectual substance that you would be bored by it unless you made the effort to put your brain into kind of hibernation mode. again it's not this so much in pop culture the shows the songs so much of it is just incredibly stupid and it's not that uh if you encounter it you'll be offended it's more like if you keep your brain on you'll be bored by it you just it's boring because with your brain still on yeah you might

it's it is possible to be entertained with your brain on so that your mind is also being engaged in some way and that's a much deeper more fulfilling, more enjoyable, more entertaining form of entertainment. But if you keep your brain on and you try to engage with Ariana Grande or Beyonce or whoever, you're just going to be bored to death. So you've got to make this effort to turn it off. And yeah, maybe every once in a while it doesn't hurt to do that. Maybe every once in a while it doesn't hurt to turn your brain off and really enjoy something

completely stupid. Okay, maybe that doesn't. Although it never really helps, but maybe it doesn't hurt. But the problem is that most people are indulging in this turn off your brain entertainment every day for hours at a time. They turn their brain off and they never turn it back on. They say, oh, sometimes you've got to turn your brain off. And the only response to that is sometimes? What do you mean sometimes?

This is what you're always going. You never have your brain on. Everything you, every form of entertainment that you enjoy requires you to turn your brain off. And you're always being entertained by something. So when exactly are you turning it back on? And it's not like the person who's always turning their brain off for Ariana Grande and company and for whatever reality shows and The Bachelor or whatever else. It's not like they're balancing that with Shakespeare and documentaries about military history,

you know, intellectually substantive. No, that's not what's happening. They're just, their whole life revolves around the turn your brain off stuff. And I think after a while you get to the point where you don't know how to turn it back on. And you don't really want to. So your mind just kind of withers after a while in the same way that your legs will wither if you just lay around on the couch all the time. So the mind is hurt. And then the soul is also hurt, I think, because art can be a very, very uplifting experience.

and it can be edifying, and it can be enlightening. And I'm not just talking about religious art. I mean, any art, any art that is rooted in something true, and that brings you closer to truth, any art that illuminates in some way. And I think all art should do that. Even non-religious, I mean, all art should have that effect. I've said in the past that all art should bring us closer to God, and people always object to that because they think that I'm saying,

that all art should be religious, but that's not what I'm saying at all. In fact, I would actually quite prefer it if Christian artists, like Christian musicians, Christian actors and so on, would make less Christian entertainment, quote, Christian entertainment, and make more entertainment that is consistent with their faith, but is not explicitly evangelical. So I'm actually not a fan of this thing we do now where you've got art, you know, got like regular secular art,

which is rooted in nihilism and just stupidity and materialism. And then you've got Christian art, Christian movies, Christian music, Christian TM, trademark, you know. What I would like to see, I think what would be great is that you take some of those Christians from over here, from this category, and you bring them over into secular entertainment, and you have them make secular entertainment that is still consistent with and rooted in their Christian worldview. That's the way pretty much all art used to be in the West up until like the mid-20th century. It's not that all art was religious, it was that all art told stories of love and redemption and suffering and forgiveness and justice and virtue and sin.

So even if it wasn't preaching, it was still rooted in a philosophical understanding of these things and it would increase your own understanding to listen to or watch or read whatever art form. But most art today has no connection to anything real, and instead it exists for its own sake. It exists only to distract. It exists to appeal to the basest parts of us. And I think that that certainly does hurt our souls as well as our brains. Second point, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. I just, and I admit I'm not a woman myself. so maybe I'm going to engage in a little bit of mansplaining here.

But when I hear people say that stupid pop music is empowering to women. Or when someone says that the song, the lyrics to which I just read to you, when someone says those lyrics and a video of a woman naked prancing around empowers women, I can only think that that is incredible. Not only is it false, but it's incredibly demeaning and insulting to women. Because the women that I know, the women in my life, the women of my family, my own wife, so there's women that I know personally. If you told them that, you know, if you said to them, hey, I found this really empowering thing for women,

why don't you come watch it? And then you put on the Ariana Grande video for them, the first thing they would probably do is laugh at you because they would think you were joking. And then when they realized that you weren't joking, they would be, I would think, probably insulted. It's like, what do you think of me? Do you think I'm empowered by this idiocy? Are you kidding me? Turn this garbage off.

So the women that I know, that's how they would react to that claim. And I think that's probably the case for most women. So this is always the case with modern feminism. that while it claims to be defending women and representing women, all it does is demean them and bring them down to this level where most women have no interest in being. So I think there are a lot of, I think substantive, intelligent women, like the women in my life, like hopefully any of the women watching this, like most of the women in the country, there's a lot of places they can look, just like men,

there are a lot of places we can look for empowerment, but they're not going to look to pop music any more than I think an intelligent and substantive man will look to pop music or to rap or something for empowerment. And the third point I want to make, this is the last point. There's this really dumb thing that people do where they dismiss concerns about modern pop music on the basis that people had similar concerns 50 years ago.

And I'm sure there are people saying this even now, right now. As I'm discussing this, there are people thinking this in their head, I'm sure. Or people will say, oh, please, you know, adults in the 50s were complaining about Elvis. And those concerns were obviously unwarranted. So what's the big deal? It's just pop music. Every time I hear that, I think, well, yeah, you're right. I mean, adults were complaining about Elvis in the 50s.

You're saying that their concerns were unwarranted. but were they? It seems to me, now most people in the 50s or in the 60s or whatever if they were complaining about Elvis or the Beatles, they weren't literally claiming

that the world was actually going to end because Elvis was shaking his hips around. I don't think anyone was saying that. I don't think anyone was saying that the world, that all human, that all life on earth will be annihilated because of the hip shaking of the pelvic thrusts,

of Elvis or whatever. Nobody was saying that. I think instead, what perceptive people were saying in the 50s and 60s, as pop music was coming into its own, they were noticing that this stuff is having a

coarsening and stupefying effect on our culture. And so what they were worried is that art would increasingly be debased and would be increasingly disconnected from beauty and truth and God and virtue and, you know, and all of that. And instead it would become this coarse, vulgar, ridiculous, stupid thing that exists only to distract and for no other reason.

I think that's what people were worried about in the 50s when they were looking at Elvis. And you're saying they were wrong about that? No, no, I think clearly they were right. I think it's quite obvious that their concerns were 100% warranted, and what they warned would happen actually did happen and is happening now. So yes, complaints about pop music have been around since pop music has been around. But my point is, those complaints have all been justified. They've all been proven true. I mean, what are you talking about? Have you noticed what's happening in the culture?

Now, I'm not saying, we can look at our cultural state now. Now, I'm not saying that it's the fault of pop music, but pop music has not helped. Pop music has contributed to it. Pop music has been both a symptom of our cultural decline and a vehicle for it. And I think that is very clear when you just look around you, just open your eyes. We live in a culture today that is just dumb in need of constant stimmeries. There are great many people in this country who have no desire for any kind of intellectual engagement.

So they have this constant need to be entertained, and the kind of entertainment they look to is it just gets dumber and dumber by the day. And I would submit that that's a process that really began in earnest in the mid-20th century. and so all the people who were pointing that out and kind of wringing their hands about it in the mid-20th, they were right. We probably should have listened to them. All this so-called classic pop music of the Beatles and Elvis,

I mean, all that stuff is just garbage. I mean, it's done nothing good for society whatsoever. Society would have been better off if none of that ever existed. And I know that's supposed to be some kind of like heresy now. Oh, what do I mean, Elvis? Well, Elvis is a classic. because he was, I mean, how could you say? No, I mean, the music is just kind of garbage.

It's like, what is, what's it trying to say? What's it doing? What's the point of it? What was the point of most of what the Beatles were churning out? I mean, it's just, I submit that if we could turn back the clock to the 40s and 50s and just go off on a completely different path and all the pop music, it just, it never came about, I think we'd be in a better spot today. I'm not saying that we'd be in a utopian spot.

I don't even know how, I don't know how, I don't know to what degree we'd be in a better spot because there are so many other problems as well, but I think we'd be in a better spot. I don't think the world was made better by any of this stuff, person. So once again, it would seem to be the case that the prophetic voices in the early and mid-20th century

who were warning about this and that, we probably should have listened to them. But the world didn't listen to them, just like they're not listening to those voices today. That's just the story as it goes. Anyway, thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.