http://www.xojane.co.uk/entertainment/how-black-metal-saved-my-life-or-at-least-my-sanity
Here's my response, which takes on a larger issue that bugs me a bit about a lot of metal writing aimed at the general public.
Pardon me for the soapboxing I’m going to do below, and I’d like to note that it is not the result of anything specific in this piece, which I find all well and good.
BUT the article relies on one of the things that
annoys me about many accounts of metal, even from insiders. Too often, the
narrative about metal relies on what folks who study culture call the
“symptomatic reading.” The basic premise of the symptomatic reading is that a
cultural phenomenon, an artwork, and/or an interest in either of the above can
best be understood as a symptom of something else, often some version of
capitalism. Now capitalism isn’t usually seen as the root cause of the
development of metal or a given person’s interest in metal, although it would
easy (far too easy) to make that claim. Instead, an interest in metal is
typically seen as symptomatic of personal or social struggles. In this piece,
it’s the author’s mom’s illness. In Sam Dunn’s movies (and in the work of Deena
Weinstein upon which Dunn heavily relies), it’s outsider status, adolescence,
alienation, negotiation masculinity, etc. In all these cases, a person’s
interest in metal, and indeed the genre itself, is seen as a logical symptom of
something else.
Now, it’s entirely clear that an interest in metal
very often does correlate with some or all of the personal and social
issues we’ve seen above. And it’s also true that when we tell the narrative of
the art and/culture that was formative for us, always a reflective and even
nostalgic practice, we will often seek to understand why we were drawn to
certain works or genres as opposed to others. Finally, people like Dunn and
Weinstein are looking at metal through the lens of social science, which seeks
to uncover the roots of human behavior. All this is to say that there’s nothing
essentially wrong with the symptomatic reading of metal.
However, the symptomatic reading of metal has
become de rigueur, and in fact all too often it’s become a lazy shorthand way
of encapsulating the genre and its fans themselves. Before I get to why I think
the symptomatic reading is problematic, I want to repeat my caveat. I don’t
accuse this author of lazy encapsulation because she’s writing in the mode of
personal reflection, and as such this narrative (which is more about her life
than about metal) works. I do however think that a piece like this is likely to
be published precisely because it does rely on the symptomatic reading, a
paradigm that makes metal and metal fandom accessible to the outsider.
So why is the symptomatic reading of metal
problematic? There are a few reasons. The first is legible in the word
symptomatic itself. That is to say that the symptomatic reading is by
definition predicated on the idea that in order for one to produce or like the
artform in question, either one’s society or one’s self must be seen as ill. On
this model, metal and the liking thereof are aberrant and they need to be
accounted for. The typical pro-metal defense is that that aberrance should be
celebrated, and that metal is just a healthy relief for the troubled. I think
such a defense struggles to say anything very interesting because in the first
place it relies on the exact narrative of metal’s critics. In essence, what’s
going on here is that metal and the interest in it must be justified, but that
the logic of justification simply reinscribes metal’s status as aberrant. Let’s
illustrate this by counterexample. When people write about R&B or math rock
or new wave, do they commonly offer a justification for the genre itself? Do
they explain their love for the genre in terms of illness, of being somehow
broken? Sometimes, perhaps. But it seems to me that this is the saw of writing
about metal and only a footnote for writing about other genres.
In addition, the notion of metal as release valve
devalues the artform, making it into little more than one of those palm-sized
rubber stress balls. Look, it is true that music, dance, drama and other
performing arts offer release to both performers and spectators. But at the
same time it is undeniably reductive to say that these arts are best understood
or discussed as release valves. Indeed in doing so, one removes from them the
status of art and sees them instead as simply instrumental, as tools that make
life a bit more tolerable. While art can certainly be instrumental in a number
of ways, to those of us interested in aesthetics (which should be anyone at all
who is fascinated by art) art can be and is something besides purely
psychologically instrumental.
What the symptomatic reading really does is deny
the ability to take an artwork or artform seriously on its own grounds as an
aesthetic production. Instead of asking questions like “Why do people like this
stuff,” we should be asking, “How does it work? What does it do? What are its
rules and logics, its philosophic undergirdings?” Ultimately, I’m interested in what happens when we study art on its own terms rather than as a product of neurosis
or social ills. To do so is the first step in taking art seriously. No one
seriously reads the work of Shakespeare or Dante or Jane Austen as simply
products of troubled times that offer a dab of salve to a broken audience.
Instead we look at what these works do and how they work. Rarely do we see such
work done on metal. (If I may plug my own work, I try to think about what I consider to be the central aesthetic move of death metal in this piece: http://holeinyoursoul.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-experience-of-brutality-breaking.html)
In the end, the symptomatic reading doesn’t
necessarily preclude other readings, and there’s nothing essentially wrong with
the former as a perspective on a given artwork, genre, or subculture. On the
other hand, when the symptomatic reading of metal becomes the only reading, and
when it is unexamined, it covers over the fact that it is itself symptomatic of
the resistance to taking and thinking about metal seriously, and to
acknowledging it as art.
I should add as a final note that Grim Kim no doubt knows a ton more about metal than I do, and that I would love to hear more from her.
