The cultural pessimists said that popular culture has been
“dumbed down” and producers of the new media are making more of the boring and
un-stimulating same things. Morrissey would probably agree – he stated in an
interview that when writing his lyrics and choosing the album covers he assumed
that his audience was intelligent instead of dumb, as most artists do. He also
said that popular music should be used to make serious statements, and it is a
shame that most musical artists sell millions of records but don’t give out a
message, they don’t make the audience think, they don’t touch the people’s
consciousness. Most media assumes the audience is dumb and gives them a load of
meaningless rubbish to fill their lives with.
All of this is important to how Morrissey, and The Smiths, choose to portray themselves in the media.
This is a presentation about Morrissey and The Smiths someone has created, which analyses their sexual ambiguity and political messages and so on. The Smiths have been called an "intelligent" band by many. Everything they have done was self-conscious and thought through - they all knew what they were doing, especially Morrissey.
http://www.debaser.org/mozskin/mozskin/ms01.htm
