Peter Pichler – Stahl

Month: June 2020

  • Politics, values, norms, and ethics in metal and metal studies: ‘Reflexive anti-reflexivity’ has a history!

    Our project on metal and law at the University of Graz is advancing. We are even a bit ahead of our planned schedule. In the past months, I have worked my way through existing metal research literatures, also paying close attention to older metal studies works’ take on questions of politics, ethics, norms, in short on the norm-related sonic knowledge of metal. ((Once more, here we have to mention the ‘usual suspects’ of classic metal studies works; among them, see H.M Berger, Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and Phenomenology of Musical Experience, University of New England Press: Hanover and London, 1999; D. Elflein, Schwermetallanalysen, Die musikalische Sprache des Heavy Metal, Bielfeld: Transcript, 2010; R. Walser, Running wit the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music,Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014; D. Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, Boulder, CO: Da Capo, 2000.))

    As explained in my recent last blog post, cultural-historically, we now have a pretty solid impression of how metal culture, most of all since the early 1980s, developed its discourse centered on law and norm-related phenomena, on a European and global level. Starting from this broad framework, the next steps are to engage critically with the key results from this first phase and develop the final empirical framework (questionnaires for interviewees, selection of interviewees) for researching the norm-related sonic knowledge in the Styrian heavy metal scene.

    This is the point where we go from the macrosphere of the European and the global to the microsphere of the local in the Austrian region of Styria with its capital city Graz. In this step, it seems crucial to me to reflect upon an aspect which frequently ‘popped up’ in existing research literatures and also when talking with potential interviewees and local scene stakeholders.

    An apparent blind spot in metal studies …

    Frequently, when re-reading existing works in metal studies, I was struck (or to be more frank: hit) by the fact that actually metal studies has rather serious issues when it comes to addressing the moralities, polictics, values, and ethics of metal culture since the 1970s. So far, it is only clear that metal has its ever-varying values, moralities, and political agendas.

    But as shown brilliantly by Rosemary Lucy Hill in her excellent key note lecture in Salzburg last year, metal studies has serious issues when it comes to developing a convincing grip on phenomena in the culture that belong to the sphere of values, norms, or moralities. We know that there are ‘problematic aspects’ and partially we understand them, but we do not really know how to explain and deal with them in metal studies in a historical longue durée perspective.

    Of course, I have no full solution to this problem in a short blog post. But I want to raise two points that seem to be relevant and so far neglected. Much more than now, we should also take these discussions (and the apparent non-ability of metal studies to deal with them) as historical phenomena, that have a past, yet today still effective history of their own.

    Still, Kahn-Harris’ concept of the ‘reflexive anti-reflexivety’ in the extreme metal scene is the most convincing analysis of how a specific subgenre of metal developed its norm-related discourse. (( K. Kahn-Harris, Extreme Music: Music and Culture on the Edge, London and New York: Berg, 2007, 157-166)) Kahn-Harris showed that extreme metal scene members consciously and reflexively decided to ignore ‘problematic aspects’ like violence, racism, homophobia, or simply hatred in their culture.

    This is true. But if we approach this issue historically, two serious challenges are not solved convingly in his analysis. Reflexive-antireflexivity is a habitus the extreme metal scene seems to have encultured. However, as a first aspect, we have to intepret this habitus as a culminating point of a history of living metal since the 1970s. Reflexive anti-reflexivety did not fall from the sky in the early 1990s. It simply never was the case that extreme metal fans were historically independent from  their contexts and 100% consciously or independently decided to adopt this concept. So far, the analysis is biased towards a rather ahistorical presentism.

    Much more than currently, we have to acknowledge that this way of approaching their own culture has deep roots in metal culture and outside metal culture; it developed at the points where the moral spheres of both touched upon each other. In short: reflexive anti-reflexivety has a history. Unambiguously, it is a history we do not know much about (to formulate it cautiously). ((I hope my  upcoming book on the European cultural history of metal can be a first step into this direction; see P. Pichler, Metal Music, Sonic Knowledge, and the Cultural Ear in Europe since 1970: A Historiographic Exploration, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, in press, 2020.)) This habitus is a historically created way of knowing metal and we have to research how exactly metalheads learnt to know metal in this way.

    The second point, perhaps, is even more critical for metal studies in its current phase of becoming an independent field of studies. Most metal scholars are metal heads themselves. This fact for itself is no problem; I even think it is a big advantage because with fandom comes a lot empirical knowledge.

    However, with the fact that many metal studies scholars are (extreme) metalheads  reflexive anti-reflexivety found its logical way into metal academia. Hence, the concept Kahn-Harris described could wander beneath the surface into the the moral sphere of metal studies. We should look sharp at this point of moral intersections. I hope a cultural-historical take on this discussion can bring in new insights – by scrutinizing the history of metal’s norm-related discourse.

     

  • Maggie Thatcher made heavy metal (…and she saw that it was good?)

    Original source: cover picture of Iron Maiden, ‘Sanctuary’, (c) EMI 1980.

    Obviously, the title of this new blog post, which takes up the thoughts expressed in my recent post on our project of law-related phenomena in heavy metal culture, is not meant to be taken literally. But if we see it as a cultural-historical metaphor (very much like the above used graphic cover artwork of Iron Maiden’s Sanctuary single from 1980, where ‘Eddie’ kills Maggie Thatcher) it raises crucial research questions for our project. In this short blog post, I will attempt formulating some of these questions.

    Currently, our research focuses on the early 1980s, the years of the climax of the NWOBHM. These years were the ones in that several classic metal songs were released, which centered on law in their musical material, lyrics and imagery. Just to name a few: Judas Priest’s ‘Breaking the Law’ (1980); Iron Maiden’s ‘Sanctuary’ (1980), ‘Running Free’ (1980), and ‘Prodigal Son’ (1981); and Helloween’s ‘Heavy Metal (is the Law)’ (1985). All of these songs treat law as a cultural system of norms and rules, which the metal community had to face in for this community new ways. Usually law was depicted as conservative, liberty-taking, even oppressive.

    Here, the point is how the community faced it in the construction of an ‘imagined community’ in metal’s ‘golden age’. My colleague Charris Efthimiou, a musicologist, spent the past three months analyzing these classics in great detail. ((Charalampos Efthimiou, Musicological analysis of Judas Priest’s ‘Breaking the Law’ (1980); Iron Maiden’s ‘Sanctuary’ (1980), ‘Running Free’ (1980), and ‘Prodigal Son’ (1981); Helloween’s ‘Heavy Metal (is the Law)’ (1985). Not published work. Graz, 2020.)) He focused on ‘law patterns’ in the songs’ lyrics and musical material. We started with these classics, because they also were a main point of reference for the initial construction of the local heavy metal scene in Graz and Styria. Charris shows very clearly that such law patterns were at the heart of the culture in those crucial years.

    This finding raises serious questions. As a rule, in these songs, law is explicitly thematized and pointed out as a system of norms and ethics the emerging metal scene had to deal with. As far as we can say at this point, this rendering of law as a system of oppressive norms is clearly integrated in the emerging musical language of metal in the years 1980-85. The focus on law in the lyrics is matched in the chosen harmony progressions, guitar chords and song construction modes. Obviously, law – as a point of reference – was essential for metal in these formative years.

    As most of these classics by bands like Maiden and Priest were written and performed in Great Britain in the era of ‘thatcherism’, that ideology’s approaches to the legal system and society in general (under the very conservative auspices of ‘law and order’) were necessary elements of the emerging metal discourse. Law was seen and treated as a highly conservative body of outdated and dusty traditions, even as a threatening system of oppressive rules. It seemed to take metalheads’ deserved liberties.

    This narrative of law – thatcherism’s vision of law or what metal suggested it to be ((See Eric J. Evans, Thatcher and Thatcherism, London: Routledge, 2013.)) – was the crucial point of reference metal needed to develop its contrasting ethics of liberty. It was the classic ‘Other’ metal needed to construct itself. The artwork of the ‘Sanctuary’ single captures this perfectly. Thatcher’s vision of law was the ‘Other’ metal needed. To continue our research, we have to answer three crucial questions: 1) How did this narrative of law circulate in Europe? 2) How did it advance to the global metal scene? 3) And finally: How was it taken in in the regional metal scene in Graz and Styria? Put ironically, Maggie Thatcher did not make metal but she supported it with her political agenda greatly.

    Edit, 10 June 2020: Engaging with my post, legal philosopher Christian Hiebaum commented that thatcherism was not only about conservative ‘law and order’ ideologies. Thatcherism also promoted individualism and individual liberty, but mainly in the economic sphere – this was key to its brand of neoliberalism. This critical remark made me dig a bit deeper into socio-historical literature on thatcherism.

    In 2010, Brian Harrison published a survey book entitled Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970-1990 as a part of the ‘New Oxford History of England’ series. Strikingly, Harrison described how the law reform movement in the UK in the 1980s saw the British legal tradition as elitist and oudated:

    The parliamentary draughtsmen offered stiff resistance in the early 1970s (…) but during the 1980s pressurce built up for demystifying law in several ways. Its esoteric language – with its archaic forms, Latinisms, and and formulaic phrasing – was now being challenged (…) As for wigs and gowns, more people now felt that these ‘priestly garments’ unduly distanced the judges ‘from ordinary men and women’. ((Brian Harrison, Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970-1990, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010. This volume was published as a part of the ‘New Oxford History of England’ series, ed. by J.M. Roberts.))

     

    What Harrison says here is about the image and narrative of law in the Thatcher era, especially in the early 1980s. Law had to be ‘demystified’. This is very much in line with my argumenation on thatcherism’s take on law. Still, the question how the neoliberal individualism inherent of this ideology affected the narrative of law is not really explained with this.

    I suspect that metal culture at the apex point of the NWOBHM did focus on the conservative image of Thatcher as a public person. Her neoliberalism seemed to be outplayed by this. But we have to continue our research into this. I am also thankful for any feedback on this specific aspect.