Nicola

I just want to warn you against using the phrase “listening correctly.” As soon as we start telling people how they are meant to hear something, we’re creating an impenetrable barrier around music. That being said, there is some music that is indeed more easily accessible. John Williams knew this well, and that’s why he has had such a longstanding collaboration with Steven Spielberg. He creates attractive, Romantic, lush orchestral, and thoroughly Western music because that is the demographic they aim to please. That’s business and that’s Hollywood.
Composers such as John Cage are fantastic in that they are trying to stretch our understanding of “good” music beyond Western tonality and timbres. As much as I love to see this happening, the population isn’t going to change overnight. Just like gender roles, language and other marks of culture, Western music is ingrained in us from infancy. Each time we sing “happy birthday,” stand for the national anthem, and even step onto the subway, we hear snippets of melodies with the same I-IV-V-I chord progression. When Spielberg introduces aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Williams appropriately makes the music “alien” by using instrumentation atypical of a classical orchestra, but even then not venturing too far out of the comfort zone of a Hollywood audience. Unfortunately, eclectic/ atonal music will only interest a small population of enthusiast, but as long as it continues to delight and amuse, I say play on!

The crime novel is definitely a highly conservative genre for people that crave the neatness of a happy ending. It’s interesting that you pointed out how human our need is for this ending, and yet how incredibly superhuman the detective often is. The detective’s unique ability to see what other characters miss puts him (or her) at the level of the Divine. I think this genre is so sacred to readers because it reassures us that in a world where parents, policemen and judges can’t always distinguish right from wrong, on a quasi-spiritual level, justice can still be done.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that television will continue to lose its popularity; movie theatres certainly have. Nowadays, serialized shows can be found on Netflix, while news and sports are often live streamed. Netflix is indeed a smart business model, but I fear too soon that it will go the way of other websites and sell its soul to advertisers. There’s always going to be a new system to compete with, and some day Netflix will have to start looking for ways to make more money as its audiences start to turn toward the next big thing.