You Are In A Place That Is Out Of The World Analysis

Suzzane G. Cusick in “You Are In a Place that is Out of the World...” writes about the use of music as a torture in a detention camp “Global War on Terror” in United States. In the detention camp, music has been precisely used to harass and discipline detainees for the entire duration of time they were captured in the cell (Cusick 2). Typical musical genre the interrogators used was heavy metal, hip hop, hard rock, and sometimes country music (Cusick 9, 11). Some musicians has been recorded such as Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Queen, Bee Gee, Christina Aguilera, James Taylor, and even Barney, the cartoon character (Cusick 6, 7, 21). The choice of music was not necessarily limited to hard music but also mainstream pop had been utilized as

The anthropologist argues that the sound of music is shaped by the culture which it is part of, and decides what is appropriate to call music and what not (Merriam 6). According to a cultural anthropologist Alan P. Merriam, music is the result of human behavioral processes that are shaped by values, attitudes, and beliefs of individuals who comprise a particular culture (6). Therefore in this perspective, music are rejected or accepted because it does or does not fit into the horizon of what people have learned that to be proper music in the culture, which inevitably affects one's behavior and way of thinking (Merriam 34). A quote by one of the detainee suffice to clarify this point: “In a sense the music didn’t bother me. I’d grown up in Britain, I knew what it was. But Afghan villagers, Yemenis, these guys were dazed, dazzled and confused, bewildered, completely out of it.” (qtd. in Cusick 25). Arguably, the case of Islam detainee is a clear cut example which shows music, or rather Islam language music, had greater psychological pain on the detainee because it was largely inappropriate according to his cultural background and beliefs. Thus, individuals and societies face with misuse and violation of music on much more generic level once stepped outside one's cultural context. Align with the anthropologists, when people encounter with music outside their scope it prompts unfamiliarity and the feel of strangeness. The point here is that the interrogator was not asked to do something beyond his own cultural belief and to betray his own religious beliefs. Ironically, anthropological approach looks at music as made by people for people (Merriam 27), however it is not always the case that music is produced and used for the upmost pleasure, as the exploration of music in detention camps has