The debate about the party song “Layla” occupies Germany. Neuroscientist and science slamme Henning Beck analyzes how a new sensitivity is sweeping pop culture and why pro-ban advocates are ignoring important human insights.
The temperatures in Germany are reaching their highest levels and apparently the minds of the public are sufficiently heated. How else should you explain that Germany has been at odds over the hottest and most controversial Ballermann party hit for more than a week? The land of poets and thinkers is upset about the madam “Layla”, who (“prettier, younger, hornier” as she is) was brought to maximum fame by DJ Robin and Schürze.
Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.
“Scandal!” shout those who see the road to gender equality endangered by the stupid song. “I don’t care!” yell back those who want to let it all out between two Corona winters in order to forget inflation, war and the energy crisis for a brief moment. Who knows when the next party will start again? In winter at the World Cup in Qatar? Here, too, justified ethical doubts would be appropriate.
Of course, the song is strangely disturbing, although: Ballermann songs are sexist? What news. Who doesn’t know Mickie Krause’s “Ten Naked Hairdressers” or his “Snow White Luder”? Incidentally, in Ballermann songs, sexism is not limited to women. Ask the interpreter “Möhre” about her songs “Pack him up and go home” or “20 centimeters” – there’s nothing to laugh about. At least not if your name is Peter.
neuroscientist dr. Henning Beck, born in 1983, is an author (“The new learning means understanding”) and German champion in the Science Slam. His main research areas: the ability of our brain to learn and the psychology of learning. He worked at the University of California at Berkeley and until the end of 2013 he helped start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area to be even more innovative and to use the tricks of the brain for clever communication strategies.
No question, “Layla” is also sexist, the image of women is disturbing and the song stands for everything that an enlightened society has to overcome. And when the Junge Union strides onto the stage of their Hessian party conference with a loud roar of “Layla”, a maximum of unprofessionalism has been reached. Notwithstanding these virtuous lapses, the question must be asked whether a ban (or discussion about it) really serves the cause or maybe even harms it. Because if there’s something that people find particularly appealing, it’s breaking the rules. And by the way, that’s exactly the point of every Mallorca party.
If you want people to enjoy something, then ban it. What is available, on the other hand, is unattractive. That’s why as a 19-year-old you don’t think it’s particularly cool to go to an 18-plus film. The forbidden fruits, on the other hand, are the tastiest. In psychology, this phenomenon is called reactance: resistance to rules is what makes us human.
The new learning: means understanding
Consider the alternative: If we always obeyed all the rules, we wouldn’t be particularly adaptable as a society. Maybe we would still be sitting in a Stone Age cave because nobody dared to question the existing habits of life. The most powerful cultural advances have come not from prohibition, but from questioning and breaking societal norms. Ask the people of the ’68 movement: Radical progress consists in breaking norms.
Conversely, of course, this does not mean that all “Layla” fans are creative rule-breakers and do-gooders. Rather, it is in human nature to do what is forbidden. Anyone who ignores this reactance does not understand how people tick. The basis of the human psyche seems to be unknown to the Würzburg folk festival and all supporters of the ban. Or did they want to avoid a possible shitstorm in anticipatory obedience?
In the end, however, you achieve the opposite: Then even those who also reject the image of women in “Layla” join in, but resist being patronized. In the end, this produces the strangest blossoms when the beer tent party people simply start the song themselves or an organist plays the instrumental version of “Layla” in the service.
Clumsily communicated, a ban suddenly welds together and does the important issue of gender justice a disservice. You throw the baby out with the bathwater. Neuroscientific studies even show that people no longer back away from their personal political and social decisions once they have made them, even if you try to convince them of the opposite with good arguments. Human radicalism is based on this defensive behavior. People are particularly adamant about rejecting well-intentioned advice when it is inconsistent.
That is precisely the problem in the Layla debate: a society that responds by reflexively rejecting provocations with prohibitions is well on the way to the bigoted neo-prudery we know from the USA. There, swear words on television are censored and “live” TV programs are broadcast a few seconds later in order to stop the program in an emergency (Janet Jackson’s breast flasher sends greetings). Facebook censors female breasts even more severely than the depiction of violent symbols – apparently so consistently that women in this country are beginning to fight for free female upper bodies in outdoor swimming pools. Another reactance theme that benefits from the summer slump.
In the USA you can see where sexual correctness can lead. As the neo-conservative takes hold in the Supreme Court, there is a vulgar sex culture in the world’s largest porn market, along with the most blatantly sexist lyrics in rap and hip-hop culture. And: The Americans at least once elected Donald Trump as President. No child of sadness as far as we know.
Aren’t we just as hypocritical – and therefore make ourselves vulnerable to moral concerns? We pounce on the image of women in “Layla”, a song that should never have left Spanish party miles and German beer tents in a normal summer. We would have given him what every Ballermann hit deserves, with a smile and disgust at the same time: humor. For what is made fun of loses all danger. A society that prefers to prohibit rather than expose the provocation to ridicule becomes less robust in the long run because it ignores the nature of the human psyche. Or has the official ban on cultural life ever worked well on this side of the ethical and legal boundaries?
Maybe we want to make an example of “Layla”, as it were the moral “whitewashing” of the German party and folk festival organizers, while at the same time much more disgusting texts continue to run up and down on the radio. Next time, don’t listen too closely to Milow’s breakthrough pop song ‘Ayo Technology’ – or the summer hit classic ‘Sweat (A La La La La Long)’ unless that’s what you want to keep in mind, what Goethe describes in “Faust” with “the little doll kneaded and trimmed”.
In short: On the way to moral progress, a society also needs air to breathe. Sometimes ideas about prohibition make the situation worse and you lose sight of priorities. What useful things could we have done while we were discussing Layla.
