‘Recycling the past to meet immediate needs’

Bad Religion’s approach to history1

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21873198
AutoresJoseph D Bryan (0000-0003-4691-8573, Montana State University Billings, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen10
Número2
Páginas221-244
Fecha de publicación2021-06-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPunk & Post Punk (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2044-1983 • E-ISSN: 2044-3706
EditorialIntellect (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/punk_00083_1
OpenAlexW3167347543
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas10

With the release of their seventeenth album of original music ( Age of Unreason , May 2019), Bad Religion has reminded the public that their brand of punk rock is not, and has never been, simplistic, reductive or dismissible. While the language of variegated scientific fields provides co-lyricists Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz a consistent trove of terms, concepts and imagery, Bad Religion also scrutinizes the past and draws out historical implications for their socio-political-religious commentary. Through an analysis of Bad Religion’s lyrics, especially focusing on Age of Unreason , this article will argue that Bad Religion uses historical references as dire warnings, rhetorical devices and examples to instantiate their larger moral and philosophical principles. They seek to entangle the present and the past and reveal how narratives of ‘progress’ and American ‘exceptionalism’ are misleading. Bad Religion condenses revolutionary and reactionary historical events into sweeping generalizations of human (usually western) civilization, invoking idealized versions of historical periods (‘Dark Ages’ and ‘The Enlightenment’). While their use of the past is often overgeneralized, Bad Religion examines human history as a record of choices and behaviours that matter to the only existence we have: material and mundane, not transcendental or supernatural

Aesthetics · Age of Enlightenment · Art · Art history · Civilization · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Exceptionalism · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Punk · Reactionary · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Superstition · History · Law · Music History and Culture · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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