Manifesto of Futurist Musicians and False Dilemma

For me this reading was highly reminiscent of my first encounter with Walter Benjamin in a film theory class, which I may have mentioned before. The teacher introduced the reading with a statement along the lines of "We are going to be reading Walter Benjamin, and he is completely wrong for the most part, but we are going to read him anyways."

Now of course I understood it as "he is wrong, but people used to think he was right, so we are reading it because we are trying to understand the way things came to be."

Aside from strong language that in my opinion is tinged with arrogance, Pratella employs the logical fallacy "False Dilemma" aka "False Dichotomy" liberally throughout the Manifesto. A definition of which maybe found here: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html. In sum, it is when "an arguer sets up a situation so it appears as though there are only two choices and then eliminates one of the choices." Pratella's version simply put would be something like "School, traditionalism, publishers, imitation or learning from the past bad, they supress innovation, everything outside of that good."

What I find funny is that he himself went to a conservatory, and while he sought to distance himself from academia, it seems to me that academia is the realm that "preserves his legacy."

While I completely agree that he is correct in promoting the importance of innovation and I'm happy that he was innovative, I feel that his words cannot be taken at face value and I find it all rather foolish to be completely honest (which is of course my opinion). Another example of false dilemma would be something like "Tigert Hall is in bad shape. Either we tear it down and put up a new building, or we continue to risk students' safety. Obviously we shouldn't risk anyone's safety, so we must tear the building down." In my opinion the prior example can be used as a metaphor for Pratella's way of thinking in which publishers and the elements of traditional music, etc. are the building. But of course there is another alternative, which is the option of repairing the building. Now I don't think that one option is better than the other (creating traditional music and going to school or being innovative), i.e. tearing it down or repairing it, but I do think it is silly to vehemently suggest that one is, which is what Pratella does…which is narrow minded…which is not very innovative...

Because ultimately I feel that there's no need for those "opposing sides" to be enemies, or to even be labelled as divided. Often times and especially in the arts, you don't have to destroy the traditional to be innovative.

Seriously, his language is so strong that I feel like a publisher and some traditional composer must have killed his father and sold his mother and sister into slavery, and this is part of his great revenge story. Which by the way I picture him writing this in Samurai garb with a katana on his side. Thank you Sansho the Baliff.