scholarly journals The Psychology of Metal Music, Culture, and Dis/Ability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle J. Messick
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Heavy Metal Music ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Firsthand Experience

This chapter explores the psychological functions that metal culture helps provide for community members with dis/abilities. Explanations are provided for how individuals with dis/abilities are able use metal culture as a potential source for mood and symptom maintenance, representation, social relatedness, a sense of belonging, and as an outlet for sharing their experiences. The underlining cultural and historical contextualization of dis/ability in rock, punk, and metal cultures is discussed, including depictions that could be considered exploitative, exaggerative, or inaccurate in order to understand the extent to which metal culture is inclusive towards people with dis/abilities. It is proposed that the embracing of societally taboo topics like dis/ability in heavy metal music and culture can serve a destigmatizing role towards the dis/abled, and when combined with an overlapping ‘outsider’ identity, it fosters a welcoming environment in metal culture for people with dis/abilities. This theoretical framework is applied through qualitative interviews with metal community members that have firsthand experience with dis/ability in metal.

scholarly journals ‘A Cockroach Preserved in Amber’: The Significance of Class in Critics' Representations of Heavy Metal Music and its Fans

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 719-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy R. Brown ◽  
Christine Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
Heavy Metal Music ◽  
The Uk

In this paper we engage with new cultural theories of class that have identified media representations of ‘excessive’ white heterosexual working-class femininity as a ‘constitutive limit’ of incorporation into dominant (middle-class) modes of neoliberal subjectivity and Bourdieu's thesis that classification is a form of symbolic violence that constitutes both the classifier and the classified. However, what we explore are the implications of such arguments for those modes of white heterosexual working-class masculinity that continue to reproduce themselves in forms of overtly masculinist popular culture. We do so through a critical examination of the symbolic representation of the genre of heavy metal music within contemporary music journalism. Employing a version of critical discourse analysis, we offer an analysis of representative reviews, derived from a qualitative sample of the UK music magazine, New Musical Express (1999–2008). This weekly title, historically associated with the ideals of the ‘counter culture’, now offers leadership of musical tastes in an increasingly segmented, niche-oriented marketplace. Deploying a refined model of the inscription process outlined by Skeggs, our analysis demonstrates how contemporary music criticism symbolically attaches negative attributes and forms of personhood to the working-class male bodies identified with heavy metal culture and its audience, allowing dominant middle-class modes of cultural authority to be inscribed within matters of musical taste and distinction.

Heavy metal music and emotional dysphoria among listeners.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Ryan Shafron ◽  
Mitchell P. Karno
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
Heavy Metal Music
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