Опасности музыкального фанатизма (стр. 1 )

ВОСТОЧНЫЙ АДМИНИСТРАТИВНЫЙ ОКРУГ

ГБОУ ИЗМАЙЛОВСКАЯ ГИМНАЗИЯ № 000

Бразуль-

10 класс

«Опасности музыкального фанатизма»

Исследовательская работа по психологии

на английском языке

Научный руководитель:

Москва 2014

Contents

Introduction	4
I. Psychological peculiarities of teenagers	5
II. Musical fanaticism	8
i. The definition of musical fanaticism	-
ii. The Beatles and Beatlemania	9
iii. One Direction infection	10
iv. Psychological portrait of a fan	12
III. Looking for the solutions to the problem of musical fanaticism	15
Conclusions	17
References	18
Appendix	19
i. Glossary	-
ii. Illustrations	21
iii. Questionnaire

Introduction

I am a teenager and like many of my peers I sometimes quarrel with my parents and have some problems with the society’s understanding. It’s common knowledge that all children have problems at adolescence. At this period relations between parents and teenagers are often very tense. Parents usually don’t understand their children. Stress, depression may cause teenage problems. The teenager searches for an identity, and it is a struggle. Teenagers try to find support, which they commonly find in music and sometimes it leads to musical addiction.

So, the theme of my project is the dangers connected with musical fanaticism on the example of The Beatles and One Direction. This theme is vital because the number of music fans is rising day by day.

The aim of this project is to define how to confront psychological problems connected with musical fanaticism.

The object of the research project is the dangers caused by musical fanaticism.

The hypothesis is the following: there are many teenagers among the music fans due to their psychological peculiarities because common problems they face at this period of their life.

The tasks are the following:

1. To define the origin of musical fanaticism

2. To describe psychological peculiarities of teenagers

3. To describe the influence of One Direction and The Beatles

4. To find the ways to help musical fans to confront the problems they face

5. To draw conclusions

The methods used are: constructive analysis of scientific works of foreign authors, questionnaire, comparative approach.

I. Psychological peculiarities of teenagers

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” – The Bible [1, 4-6]

Teenagers are uniquely human phenomenon, they are a vital part of the society, although, they are regarded as one of the less responsible parts of it. This is perhaps true in some cases, but in fact it does not define their real personalities. As many would want to view it, they are really not that irresponsible. However, at times, the sense of curiosity and adventure that they naturally have can overshadow their sense of responsibility. [2]

Being a teenager is an overwhelming part of life. This is the stage where one is little by little accepting and mingling with the real world. This is also the stage where one is always interested to try new things out, which sometimes becomes the root of problems, especially for (most) parents.

Although they don’t want to be guided anymore, they still need all the guidance that their parents could give because this is the stage where their curiosity is at its peak. For this reason, it can be understood why parents can become stricter and more cautious at this stage in their children’s lives.

Moreover, teenagers are the group of people who, generally, may lack communication with their adults. The major reason for this might be the different views of the teens and their parents or what is commonly referred to as the generation gap.

Some could also be fragile at times, in a sense that there are issues which are essential and need to be discussed with them. The way teenagers view things change as they come to this stage. If before, they didn’t care about how they look or how they dress, now, they are spending hours just to make sure that they look normal. This is mainly because they want that assurance that the world would approve them. Problems like having pimples or gaining weight would also make a great impact on teenagers, especially if they come to the point of being infatuated with someone. [7]

Teenagers are a group of young people from thirteen to nineteen years old. I’m sixteen so I belong to this group. There are many problems, which are common for all young people. For example: how to spend free time, what to do after finishing school, how to deal with the classmates and family. The problem number one is the problem of fathers and sons. The generation gap is the difference in attitudes and opinions between parents and children that often causes arguments and disagreements.

All teens want to be independent; we don’t like it when our parents try to rule every step of their life. Our parents don’t like our clothes and our music. They often try to treat us like small children. But if we really want to solve this problem we must try to understand each other.

Some teens begin smoking and drinking alcohol to show that they are grown-ups already. This will lead to poor health in future (especially for girls). As for me, I don’t accept the idea of smoking at all. I think that it’s not the thing you should do to look cool.

The most serious problem nowadays is taking drugs and AIDS (the disease when the body’s immune system is not working). [7]

One of the worst teenage problems is schooling. Sometimes you feel bad because of teachers’ or classmates’ attitude to you. You are tired of studying, that’s why you don’t have energy and time for doing other things. But a teen can turn to bad habits because of problems in private life. Absence of the second half, loneliness, lack of pocket money or parents’ misunderstanding can inspire a teen that his best friend is a bottle or a cigarette. None should be angry with teens because of their feelings, because a boy or a girl often doesn’t control his or her feelings. Streets and street bands can make a teen ruder and crueler, that’s why parents shouldn’t allow their children to have such interests. I know both boys and girls, who think that cleaning their room is the most important problem of humanity. They think it’s boring and useless, because the room will become dirty 5 minutes later. From my point of view, teens that have addiction to computers are very boring and uninteresting. You can’t speak with them about anything but “Sims” or “GTA”. It is absolutely the same talking about music. It’s a real problem, to my mind. Every teenager has a favourite singer or music band. But no one should become a fan, because we can kill our individuality and become clones. Sometimes a quarrel between teens can lead to serious violations of laws. Besides, bad relationships between members of the family make the teen very emotional. The teen doesn’t get along with parents and relatives. The parents press on their child, they think he is iron hard and he doesn’t feel soul ache. Parents want us to study very well; they don’t understand that we do everything as well as we can. They don’t respect our interests thinking that we become weird because of music, computer games or TV.

In conclusion, we need to say, that being a teenager is the stage where one is little by little accepting and mingling with the real world. This is also the stage where one is always interested to try new things out, which sometimes becomes the root of problems, especially for (most) parents. The way teenagers view things change as they come to this stage. But a teen can turn to bad habits because of problems in private life. Absence of the second half, loneliness, lack of pocket money or parents’ misunderstanding can inspire a teen that his best friend is a bottle or a cigarette. None should be angry with teens because of their feelings, because a boy or a girl often doesn’t control his or her feelings. The teenager searches for an identity, and it is a struggle.

Teenagers try to find support, which they commonly find in music and sometimes it leads to musical addiction.

II. Musical fanaticism

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”

- Victor Hugo

i. Definition of musical fanaticism

Fanaticism is a belief or behaviour involving uncritical zeal or (with) an obsessive enthusiasm for a pastime or hobby. Philosopher George Santayana defines fanaticism as "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim"; according to Winston Churchill, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". The behaviour of a fan with overwhelming enthusiasm for a given subject is differentiated from the behaviour of a fanatic by the fanatic's violation of prevailing social norms. Though the fan's behaviour may be judged as odd or eccentric, it does not violate such norms. A fanatic differs from a crank, in that a crank is defined as a person who holds a position or opinion which is so far from the norm as to appear ludicrous and/or probably wrong, such as a belief in a Flat Earth. In contrast, the subject of the fanatic's obsession may be "normal", such as an interest in religion or politics, except that the scale of the person's involvement, devotion, or obsession with the activity or cause is abnormal or disproportionate, which means he is turning into a fan. [2, p.1]