Ch. 7 History p. 107 q.2

I decided to commit to the history question since I am doing the questions and such for the ideology chapter. This was kind of tough, because I've never listened to the Sex Pistols, and I've always just assumed that they're up there with The Flaming Lips and such. After looking them up, and I think I get what this question is asking. I think that by making historical claims like the Marcus one challenges people to look at the music, the popular culture of the time to possibly reflect what was going on with the common people. I keep thinking back to the Marx view that popular culture was the culture of the working class, the average people. The history chapter talked about how history normally focuses on the greats and tends to leave out what was going on with "the little people." So, by looking at the Sex Pistols music, it somehow can give an insight to the people who listened to it. There was definitely a reason for why films during the 1920's in Germany were picking up expressionalist, subjective, dark views. The people were poor after the treaty of Versailles, and there was so much unrest. Some of the greatest horror silent films came from that time and place. In that sense, another form of media seemed to represent the people of its time. I think this makes history more complex, conflicted, and open-ended because wouldn't that mean you could look at practically anything to get some sort of historical meaning out of it, like grocery lists? I don't know. Also, I think that looking at the Sex Pistols only represents its listeners--what about the people who listened to other music? This is a tough question to answer.