Theatrics of Hate Speech
This page provides resources to discuss strategies for building reflexivity about hate speech within the context of extreme metal music scenes. The materials are intended to foster critical discussions among two groups of people: the first of these are educators and students in the secondary school, pre-university, and university contexts who are interested in learning about the politics associated with the freedom of expression in niche cultural scenes. The second group is comprised of members of the broader extreme metal music scene, including musicians, journalists, writers, record label representatives and, of course, the fans themselves.
The materials on this page are drawn from an interdisciplinary research program on metal music studies jointly led by SOMEONE Canada researchers Vivek Venkatesh, Jeffrey Podoshen , Jason Wallin and Tieja Thomas, along with a host of collaborators committed to building theoretical and practical intersections between the humanities and social sciences in better understanding the production, diffusion and consumption of hate speech in extreme metal music scenes. The content has been produced in partnership with Grimposium (http://grimposium.com) - an international touring festival and conference series squarely focused on issues of social, political and economic import in global extreme metal music scenes.
The materials are intended to engage our audiences in discussions – they are meant to generate fodder for debates in educational contexts, as well as provide the broader public with an opportunity to engage with materials produced directly from our field research. The multimedia provided below includes recordings of lectures, panel discussions, interviews as well as an improvisational reading performance.
Critical Questions
These questions are intended to complement the interviews and panel sessions we conducted with scene members and might help guide potential debates and discussions for viewers of the materials on this page.
01
What kinds of hate speech do the interviewees make reference to during their conversations with the researchers? Are these representative of the kinds of hate speech you have witnessed?
02
Are there certain kinds of hate speech or hateful utterances that have become accepted within the extreme metal scene? What kinds of strategies do the interviewees propose to combat these systematic and accepted forms of hate? What kinds of strategies do you propose to help sensitize scene members about the ill effects of these types of such statements?
03
Does freedom of expression or artistic liberty restrict a musician's, visual artist's or lyricist's ability to create their artform? Is there a limit to artistic expression? How are some of the interviewees grappling with balancing their artistic freedom with being provocative and asking scene members to reflect on broad socio-political issues of discrimination?
Conversations with Metal Music Scene Members
In August of 2015, in collaboration with our partners at evenko, a Montreal-based entertainment production and promotion company, and Grimposium, we conducted a series of interviews with musicians who performed at the Heavy Montreal festival. The interviews were fairly organic and semi-structured by nature – they probed musicians' motivations in exploring darker facets and themes of social import including death, dystopia, loneliness and racism (amongst many others). We present these interviews to you as a way to expose elements of criticality and reflexivity in the scene, especially as members of the scene discuss some of the complex factors impacting the politics and economics of the metal scene.
Spectacles of Hate Speech
In this lecture, Vivek Venkatesh and his collaborator, Brad Nelson, provide an overview of how a combination of novel quantitative methods applied to critical discourse analysis, psychoanalytic approaches and humanities-based analytical techniques yield a multi-layered portrait of hate speech in the online realm of the global black metal scene.
Video of lecture
Video of Q&A
Deciphering Norms of Media Consumption in Extreme Metal
This new four-episode podcast series brings thought-provoking, contemporary topics to the table. Be it reappropriating Runes, warning against the perils of media censorship, distinguishing between provocative art and hateful discourse, and giving voice to the experiences of women in the music industry, no topic proves too challenging for Vivek Venkatesh and his co-host, Michelle Ayoub. Produced by Aaron Lakoff and Kathryn Urbaniak, each episode runs at about 30 minutes long and also has original music by Leticia Trandafir.
The first episode is titled Propositions for Cultural Reappropriation and features Jannicke Wiese-Hansen, Kirsti Rosseland, Ivar Peersen (Enslaved) and Kjetil Grutle (Enslaved).
Next is Balancing Free Speech, Critical Thinking and Media Literacy featuring J.R. Hayes (Pig Destroyer), Richard Johnson (Agoraphobic Nosebleed) and Ihsahn (Emperor).
Then there is Social Media: The Good, the Bad and the Unforgivable featuring Neill Jameson (Krieg), Jason Rockman (Slaves on Dope), Ihsahn (Emperor), Richard Johnson (Agoraphobic Nosebleed) and Sean McGuinness (Pissed Jeans).
And finally, Women in Metal: Underdogs or Equals? featuring Kirsti Rosseland, Jannicke Wiese-Hansen and Ivar Peersen (Enslaved).