All My CDs, pt 76: The Schlong Remains Insane

The Schlong Remains Insane - Elvis Manson

Here comes perhaps the most awkward moment of this entire two-hundred-twenty-part review project: the moment where I review my own father’s album of dirty parodies. And when I say dirty, I don’t mean occasional swear words and references to sex. I mean filth of the most puerile and immature. The second song (and the first with lyrics) makes light of prison rape to the tune of Bad Case of Loving You, with shockingly explicit description. The album then cycles rapidly through familiar tunes re-worded to cover everything from coprophilia to transvestism to prostitution.

And the material is most certainly not handled in a sex-positive or inclusive way. One gets the impression that this kind of humor is the result of rebellion against repression, rather than actual acceptance of sexual difference and healthy expressions of sexuality.  This isn’t a reasoned commentary on negative sexual attitudes in our society; it’s more like an hour-long purging of a lifetime of thoughts and urges that have been denied and bottled up and branded as perverted or sinful or unpolite. And there’s only so much of that I can take before I just have to shut off the music.

My relatively sex-positive upbringing has given me a privilege. I don’t automatically see sexual content as forbidden and therefore exciting. Shock doesn’t have as much value to me. I like art that involves or expresses sexuality, but when the whole point is to say “Isn’t this perverted?” I often have to respond with “Yeah, but not for the reason you think it is.” Repression and demonization is the perversion, and much of dirty humor is its traumatic aftereffects.

I’m afraid I didn’t spend much of this review talking about music. I’m sorry for that. Like I said, it’s an awkward moment.

Next: Celtic Harpy