In which ways can we understand the significance of heavy metal for female middle-class British youth in the 1970s and 1980s, as Britain rebuilt itself after World War II?
Abstract
As a female metal fan, journalist and musician since the 1970s, I apply reflexive autoethnography in order to contextualise metal’s significance in terms of musicology, heritage, sociology, subculture, class and, most explicitly, its relationship with women. In both autoethnographic and theoretical frameworks, the feminist concepts of Judith Butler (performativity) and Rosi Braidotti (nomadism) are investigated as potential ‘tools’ to fill the gaps in Metal’s inclusivity. With reference to my own struggles with gender and patriarchal issues, I discuss Metal’s presence during times of alienation from middle-class ‘War Generation’ parents in the 1970s/80s, my journalism career as empowered female within a patriarchal context and my own music as epiphanous, cathartic and narrative.
Presentation
Thesis Title:
In which ways can we understand the significance of heavy metal to British youth in the 1970s and 1980s, as Britain rebuilt itself after World War II, exploring musicology, heritage, subculture, class and, significantly, gender and feminism within an autoethnographical framework?
A Sense of Genderlessness
I relate to Catrina’s sentiments as I too have hurled myself about in a few moshpits. I remember feeling powerful, strong and part of something – and I and perhaps Catrina too, felt accepted as a person, a ‘metalhead’, neither male nor female but genderless.
The Quandary facing Girls in Metal
Whilst metal scholar Deena Weinstein talks of the ‘Empowering Masculinity of British Heavy metal’ in Heavy Metal Music in Britain (2009), Andy Brown points out that ‘Girls like metal too’ in Heavy Metal Gender & Sexuality (2016). A quandary it would seem. I can attest that girls do indeed like metal and that metal is masculine – but I claim there is space within metal for gender performativity, despite its reputation for machismo. Certainly I and others who were teenagers in the post-WWII period of 1970s and 80s – metal’s formative decades – found capacity to subconsciously transform within metal away from society’s essentialist roles, as we were growing up alienated from parents still embedded in structuralism.
Youth & Alienation in the 1970s
This was a significant era of reassessment of what it is to be a young person and a woman. metal may be perceived as a micro culture reflecting society at the time: a masculine environment denying the presence of women, yet women were and are very present in the particular patriarchy of metal. I was there for over thirty years in multiple roles.
Performativity & Nomadism
Have I been a nomad perhaps, clutching my many identities as I travelled around metal? A performative changeling, responding to any given social environment? Both Rosi Braidotti and Judith Butler’s feminist theories have left deep impressions.
Of course, this is only my unique experience – metal’s sometimes gratuitous sexism cannot be ignored. This I was reminded of at the first World metal Congress (WMC) in 2019 when evidence emerged of sexism in the same moshpits Catrina and I have experienced gender liberation and empowerment. Are we actually accepting some kind of social exchange, as Sonia Vasan suggests?:
…accepting an unequal rate of exchange for their continuing membership [of metal] because the subculture addresses social and psychological needs that cannot be met elsewhere in their lives, such as freedom from the constraints of domesticity and femininity.
Certainly as a tomboy I regarded domesticity as anathema. Within metal, as with any patriarchy, the exchange deal may involve doing gender on men’s terms but, more often than not, accepting sexism. Those girls expressing outrage at the WMC are, perhaps, the brave ones who will not accept this exchange. I know that despite any sexism I experienced, I also felt protected by my peers. In my case, however, my personal life was riven with violence and therefore I felt my exchange deal with metal was better than nothing – swapping abuse for empathy within metal, however far that empathy may have pushed boundaries. I did however push my own boundaries by becoming a successful metal journalist, occasionally behaving like a man and reversing sexism – or should I say behaving as the empowered woman I was (and hopefully still am).
Journalism
Although the over-arching theme of my thesis is based in feminism and gender – because I am a woman within a patriarchal environment – this is a musicology degree, therefore there will be analyses on metal as music; I am a musician and so threading my own musical examples throughout. I am 61, therefore the history of metal is discussed. I was a youth in need of empathy and catharsis, so subcultural research I’ve already conducted for my MMus will be expanded upon; I’m middle-class, therefore alleged misconceptions of middle-class as wealthy are studied autoethnographically as well as research into assumptions that metal is working-class. All in all, whilst I want to suggest there is space to be genderless within metal, I also hope to conclude that one may feel classless and ageless as well. metal’s inclusivity is often questioned, and it is true that it ‘must do better’. I hope to help it improve.
Journey from Alienated Teenager to Journalist to Academic
Now I’d like to explain how I journeyed from alienated teenager to woman carrying my interconnected multiple identities with me through life: musician, journalist, autoethnographer, person, daughter, sister, et al, as nomad.
In 2009, I jumped out of thirty years of music journalism into my BMus. Since then, despite initial intentions to rediscover my own musicality (after interviewing hundreds of musicians about theirs), I found myself on an unscheduled voyage of self-discovery, looking back down and around the mountain of that previous life. I wrote a BMus dissertation on music journalism as perhaps redemption for lack of integrity. Then a MMus dissertation on presumptions that metal (and hip-hop) cause deviant behaviour. Concluding that there is no cause, only correlation, I discovered on scouring the many sociological studies that benefits can be reaped from metal – psychologically, sociologically, culturally and musicologically, in particular. (I also noted the correlative role of metal as possible narrator of post-WWII society in terms of evolving attitudes towards youth and their forms of expression.)
Since that dissertation in 2015, metal’s multi-disciplinarity has been blossoming, this reflected in the increasing number of Metal Music Studies conferences and the diversity of conference themes, including heritage, youth, subculture, leisure studies and musicology.
It was at my first conference that the idea for an autoethnography first emerged. After revealing my previous career as a metal journalist, it was suggested I consider writing about my evolution from journalism to academia.
This kernel of an idea has evolved into the research I’m now working on, which began with both personal and theoretical reflection of my experiences of sexism and empowerment within metal. I want to demonstrate that there is fluid space here for the concepts of Butler and Braidotti, for example, to be developed, for performativity and nomadism to become commonplace and for differences to be navigable and negotiable.
Audre Lorde decries binary oppositions as over-simplistic. Further, in 1980, she emphasised that “it isn’t our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognise, accept and celebrate those differences” (Olson, 1998). I hope to imbue within metal and beyond the vitality of difference as a significant category of its own, as Braidotti, following Deleuze, promotes when she urges the avoidance of all constraints or oppositions. She advocates in her boundless optimism that differences should not automatically be rejected as insurmountable but as a “fundamental category of thought” (1991, p.273) intrinsic to itself and as vital as nomadism. In deference to these concepts, I think it is important to advocate for that space between so-called ‘binary opposites’ in all walks of life to be navigated and embraced, in terms of gender, class, age and, by default, race. In other words, to strive for equality within and without metal.
A Final Note on Autoethnography
Over the past three years I have studied both the positive and negative implications of autoethnography and believe that if applied with rigour it is a methodology of significant interest for music and creative studies. Our creative histories have, after all, led to our current research and should, I believe, perform methodologically within it. My own brief explanation of autoethnography, as presented in a couple of lectures I have given, is based on definitions by autoethnographers Carolyn Ellis and Heewon Chang:
Combining the two, and with a metaphorical camera in hand, whilst we zoom in on ourselves – the ethnographic subject – we must then zoom out to encompass ourselves and others within the culture in question, in this case metal, in order to survey the full picture. Hopefully, metal’s global impact may be viewed by widening the lens even further. As attested at the WMC, metal continues to enthrall and bind people together on a global scale, providing catharsis, understanding and empathy in a world in which all three are hard to find. It is also true, however, that metal falls short of complete inclusivity and equality. I hope my thesis may open up possibilities to achieve this, and inspire future research.
Bibliography
Braidotti, Rosi (2011): Nomadic Subjects – Embodiment & Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press
Brown, Andy (2016): Girls like Metal too. Heavy Metal Gender & Sexuality – Interdisciplinary Approaches. Heesch, F & Scott, N (eds). Routledge
Brown A, Spracklen K, Kahn-Harris K & Scott Niall W R, eds (2016): Introduction. Global Metal Music & Culture – Current Directions in Metal Studies. Routledge
Butler, Judith (1990): Gender Trouble. Routledge
Chang, Heewon (2008): Autoethnography as Method. Routledge
Ellis, Adams & Bochner (2011): Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum – Qualitative Social Research. Volume 12, No. 1, Art. 10
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095
(Accessed: 1st November 2018)
Olson, Lester C (1998): Liabilities of Language – Audre Lorde Reclaiming Difference Distortions. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84. Ps 448-470
Riches, Gabby (2015): Re-conceptualizing women’s marginalization in Heavy Metal – A feminist post-structuralist perspective. Metal Music Studies. 1:2. Ps 263-270
Weinstein, Deena (2009): Empowering Masculinity of British Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal Music in Britain. Bayer, G (ed). Routledge
Author Bio
Pippa Lang was a music journalist for thirty years before commencing her BMus at Kingston in 2009 at the age of 50. During her journalism career, she interviewed hundreds of bands and musicians, including Nirvana, Pete Townshend, Pearl Jam, Jack Bruce, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. She is a musician/songwriter, singing, playing bass and piano in her own bands, one of which she hopes to resurrect after Covid. Pippa is currently cowriting a musical based on her life. Included in her bucket list is to record an album and write her autobiography.
Websites:
https://www.pippalang.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pippa-lang-55a83334/
https://kingston.academia.edu/PippaLang
https://twitter.com/LangPippa
festivalofresearch.wordpress.com 