FREE ESSAY ON HEAVY METAL AND GENDER

HEAVY METAL AND GENDER

Name: Milad
Surname: Rafiei
Year/Major: 3rd Year. Film, TV, and Media Studies.
Question: Choose one popular music genre and analyze with respect to race, gender OR
class. 
Analysis Of Heavy Metal With Respect To Gender.
Heavy Metal music usually include impressive technical feats on the electric guitar,
counter posed with an experience of power and control that is built up through vocal,
guitar power chords, distortion, and sheer volume of drums. Also Visually, metal
musicians typically appear as males, leaping about the stage, leather clothing
punctuating their performances with phallic thrusts of guitars and microphone stands.
Heavy metal is, a discourse shaped by patriarchy. Circulating in context of Western
society, for much of its history metal has been appreciated and supported primarily by a
male teenage audience. This is a group lacking in social, physical, and economical power
but besieged by cultural messages promoting such forms of power, insisting on them as
masculinity.
The purpose of a genre is to reproduce a particular ideology, and the aim of heavy metal
until mid 1980s was for young white male performers and fans to hear and believe in
certain stories about the nature of masculinity. However these representations can never
be definitive and they are always open to transformation and changing figures. Since
social circumstances may change so that particular forms of culture are no longer related
to an individual. For example metal fans as they get older may gain some amount of
economical power, or they may find children who replace them at the bottom of social or
physical power. Also we have seen a great increase in number female fans, since around
1987, concert audiences for metal shows have been roughly gender balanced .
In my discussion I will try to explain why metal has been dominated by male musicians and
fans, also why there was a big increase in the number of female fans. I will be framing
heavy metal songs and videos in terms of strategies concerning gender and power. 
Until the mid 1980s, one of these three strategies misogyny, exscription , and androgyny
dominated heavy metal music . However another approach in recent years did soften metal
with songs about romance, this kind of music particularly has drawn female attention to
heavy metal.
I will explain these in more details, this type of analysis may tell us about gender
construction in heavy metal genre or culture. I have to mention that it is not only
lyrics or visual imagery but also the music itself that construct gender experiences.
Such signification mentioned above reflects in social contexts such as gender, class, and
race. Hence musical meanings are inseparable from these fundamental social concepts.
Sorry No Chicks (Exscription):
The most distinctive feature of metal videos is that they typically present it as of a
live performance. However bands are different in styles as Guns'n'Roses, and Metallica,
they all rely on live footage. The video in a concert setting, presents the group in all
their glory, as larger than life figures whose presence is validated by feelings of
community and power, and evoked by venue and music. These types of footage offer a
fantasy world of action, one in which male bonding among members of the hero team is very
important. It is worth mentioning that even in nonperformance metal video, narrative is
set on a stage concerning male world without women. A good example would be Judas
Priest's "Heading To The Highway" which shows band's guitar players drag race, flagged by
the lead singer. The point is the same, to represent and reproduce spectacles that depend
for their appeal on exscription of women . 
The seductive women who sometimes intrude into the video points out several things. First
to trigger desire and its appeal to the male gaze and more importantly its threat to
masculine control.
Male As Victims (Misogyny):
Heavy Metal has developed a discourse of male victimization and androgyny; its power to
reproduce or adapt patriarchy is often contingent on the absence of overt violence .
Women are hinted as mysterious and dangerous; they are dangerous just by being there,
their attractiveness threatens to disrupt both male self-control and male bonding.
However female fans are invited to identify themselves with the powerful position that is
has been made for them.
Glam Metal (Androgyny):
Androgyny has a long history in music, from classical (opera) to pop; famous examples
would be David Bowie and Little Richard. Same in glam metal, androgyny has found popular
success to a degree unique to its own. Poison is a good example of a successful glam
metal band. Sadly even though they had commercial success they have gotten no critical
approval. In the case of bands such as Poison, we might understand androgyny as a tactic
to deal with a sort of male anxiety.
Musicians themselves may notice how the ambiguities of androgyny provoke compensatory
strategies. Aerosmith's hit song "Dude looks like a lady" confronts this gander gender
anxiety, airing the problem with a mockery. Many metal fans link glam metal closely to a
threat of homosexuality .
In summary androgyny offers male performers the chance to play with colour, and movement,
which is basically an escape of the expected man.
Romance And Female Fans:
Heavy metal changed a lot in the last half of the 1980's; a good example would be
Slippery When Wet album (by Bon Jovi). The lead singer Jon Bon Jovi showed a kind of
genuineness and romantic exposure that appealed very much to female fans. It was band's
mainstream success and helped heavy metal music to enter top 40. Obviously they were not
the first to do so but nobody else got this much success.
The most obvious change was the lyrics: going from creepy and gloomy lyrics to refining a
positive, upbeat outlook, where the only thing, which is important, is love. This new
product was so pleasing to the female market.
But still features of heavy metal are evident in timbres and phrasing the instruments.
Bon Jovi left some of metal dimension for constructed sincerity of pop music, just the
right degree of prettiness so it could catch the taste of a female audience.
The biggest selling single from Slippery When wet was " living on a prayer" which show
cased a young middle class couple who are in love but Tommy (the male character in the
song) is on work strike, hence they are in need (they are living on a prayer), but we
know it's going to be ok since they have each other. The source of song's main pleasure
is its musical romanticness, as with any pop song with the use of heavy metal
transcendence. This song led to critical dismissal of Bon Jovi as rock musician. 
In conclusion, in my essay I have mainly concentrated on the issue of gender. Since the
social context within heavy metal circulates are highly patriarchal, it is not surprising
to find that an important concern of metal is to represent male power and female
subordination. Music, lyrics, visual images, and behavior supply to assemble gender
identities, infusing them with power and say that they are natural and desirable. These
representations primarily serve the interests of the male musicians who dominate heavy
metal performance. It is also important to mention that in heavy metal genre, women are
more offered heavy metal empowerment through adaptations of ideology of romance. 
Bibliography
References:
? Running With The Devil, Robert Walser, University Press Of New England, 1993.
? Heavy Metal, Bob Brunning, Heinemann Publications, 1998.
? Stairways To Hell, Daniel Surgerman, St.Martin's Press, 1st Edition, 1991.
? Questioning the Media, Ali Mohammadi, Sage Publication,1995.