L.A. blasting classical music to drive unhoused people from subway station.
A battle is being waged at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station near downtown Los Angeles. The weapon of choice? Loud classical music.
The classical music — along with floodlights at either end of the station platform — are part of a pilot program that L.A. Metro operations and security, in cooperation with law enforcement, began implementing at the station in January. In an email to The Times, Metro said the music is a royalty-free playlist it compiled of piano sonatas, symphony orchestra pieces and concertos, including some by Vivaldi, Beethoven and Mozart.
L.A. Metro’s goal with the music and lights is to reduce crime and drive away unhoused people. But the use of music is divisive, with online commentators calling it an inhumane torture tactic. Critics also argue that it does nothing to address the root causes of the problems plaguing the station.
“You’re trying to attract and make certain people feel comfortable based on the associations with classical music,” says musicologist Lily E. Hirsch, author of “Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment.” “And you see that in fancy cheese shops that play classical music because they hope people will feel like they’re a part of some elite upscale world and then they’ll spend more money.”
That feeling is not intrinsic to classical music, says Hirsch, but when the music is being used as a tool to achieve a goal — driving certain people away while welcoming others, for example — those cultural associations are manipulated.
When classical music is used in dark and aggressive ways, it can also feel dystopian and creepy, notes Hirsch, not unlike the mood of “The Silence of the Lambs.” One Twitter user compared the music at MacArthur Park station to Stanley Kubrick’s psychological horror film “A Clockwork Orange.”
It appears that the loud classical music is working at cross-purposes here, says Hirsch. She notes there is a history of classical music being used in public places, including town squares and outside various businesses, as a way to signal that certain people are wanted and others are unwanted.
“It’s like a bird marking its territory where you hear the signal and you go, ‘OK, this is not for me. This is for the older money crowd,’” she says. “And that technique seems to work. There are examples of teenagers leaving an area that’s playing classical music, not because they don’t like the music but because of the associations.” In fact, 7-Eleven has used classical music outside L.A.-area stores to deter loitering since 2019.
The problem with this approach, says Hirsch, “is you’re creating hierarchies of sound” by making it clear that an area belongs to certain privileged groups and not other people.
“And you’re not solving the problem,” she adds. “You’re just pushing the problem to another spot.”
Geez...all the hand-wringing about "othering" people who don't like classical music. The goal here is to make the public transportation safe (er) and clean(er). If it accomplishes that through music, all the better, afaic.
