Swag, Swag, Punch a Bitch - an Exploration of New Moral Panic Through the Music of Odd Future

The single-shot music video for Tyler, the Creator’s “Yonkers” is a shocking tour de force that can really only be described as “gross” – at  0:50 he eats a cockroach and 6 seconds later we watch him start to vomit; at 2:00 he becomes a black-eyed demon, and by 2:30 he has successfully hung himself. As my first interaction with the now infamous rap group Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (also called Odd Future), “Yonkers” (by Tyler, the group’s de facto leader) was a surprisingly emblematic gateway to the surreal world the group has created. Over the past three months I have attempted to find out what it is that makes this world so alluring despite its blatant (ironic?) nihilism and to understand Odd Future’s position at the margin of reality.

http://auralstandards.com/tag/odd-future/

I know I'm not the only bastard in America

So I'm going to need some help

Scream with me n****s – "Inglorious"

            Walking into the concert venue for my first Odd Future show, I am handed a mask of Tyler’s face that I quickly realize is not an optional accessory, indicated by the “what is that mask doing in your hands and not on your face” stare given to me by the bouncer. Being in a room filled with kindred Tyler-faces immediately makes me feel comfortably anonymous, removing accountability in a way that palpably changes the dynamic of the show. Assuming the role of Tyler and participating in his distinct narrative, one revolving around his “race, gender, acquired abilities, family background, and other personal circumstances” (Miller), is strangely liberating. The show is mayhem, and any behavior becomes acceptable within the confines of the venue; this isn’t me anymore, this is Odd-Future-me.

            For two hours, Odd Future makes the audience feel like part of their circle. The ten members scream into microphones, and audience members compulsively rap along, their voices invisibly joining those of the performers, and frequent call-and-response (“I say ___, you say ___”) engages the audience on another level. The group very much feels like a dynamic social circle, with each member inhabiting a unique niche that is solidified outside of the show by their online presence. Almost every member operates a Twitter account that highlights their personalities –

Tyler's hypersexualized jokes

Domo Genisis's stoner 

Taco's juvenile sense of humor

FrankOcean's suaveness(?)

With constant, mundane updates on Twitter and their group Tumblr, Odd Future fans feel as if they are constantly kept in the loop about what the group is doing, and coming to their show means coming face to face with already familiar performers. They create an inviting and immersive image – a pastiche of LA skateboard punk-dom and schoolyard bullying that is bizarrely alluring.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_luoorqVnv61qb8q0zo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324368285&Signature=oBYNVXq2hR%2Fe1SMcma1nEJ2nvLY%3D

I'm not a rapper nor a rapist nor a racist

I fuckk bitches with no permission and tend to hate shit

And brag about the actions in a rhyming pattern matter

And proceed to sat her down when I go splatter in her chatterbox
– "Tron Cat"

            It is impossible to discuss Odd Future’s fan base without first understanding the nature of their lyrical content. Most criticism of the group focuses on the blatantly misogynistic and violent themes that pervade Odd Future’s songs. In the song “Tron Cat,” Tyler enacts one of his alter egos and delivers the oft-quoted line, “Raped a pregnant bitch and told my friends I had a threesome.” 

In “Transylvania,” Domo Genesis raps, “Don’t got a problem smacking a bitch / kidnapping, attacking, with axes and shit / 'til I grab them throats and start smacking them shits / it’s because, I’m Dracula bitch.” 






Other songs are subversive for the sake of subversion – the chorus of “Radicals” is the repeated chant, “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school.”

           Their songs are polarizing, and listener reactions vary across a wide spectrum. YouTube comment battles ensue in response to their videos, with some commenters lauding Odd Future for their genius, and others pointing to Odd Future as evidence of the death of hip-hop. Discussions of OF content are often highly racialized, with disapprovers criticized for their “whitness.” Online, fans face criticism with relentless retaliation, drawing solidarity from their collective subversion (Miller). They quell criticism by suggesting that analyzing Odd Future’s songs through an analytical or moral lens constitutes a misunderstanding of the group.

            And maybe these songs shouldn’t be looked at through a socially critical lens. When asked about their intent in writing such nihilistic lyrics, the usual responses from Odd Future imply a failure on the part of their critics. They constantly draw attention to the fact that their lyrics aren’t meant to be taken seriously and that they are either expressions of their darkest thoughts, or that they are used for the simple shock value. However, many listeners are unphased, and some try to redirect attention to what often goes unnoticed in OF’s lyrics – the substance, artistry, and wit. Regarding Tyler's alter-egos, OF fan Dan says, 

"I think one of the most indicative personas, one that really cuts to the heart of the question is his role as the psychologist. One of the things that I think he's doing, which he might not be, is exploring these aspects of the mind that are repressed and not talked about socially."

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I am the devil, fucker get on my level - "Nightmare"

            The text of Odd Future songs alone is not enough to make conclusive statements about its fanbase, but as quoted in Hills, “The processes by which fans choose to poach one thing and not another…. Involve factors both in the text and in the individual.” What is to be said about an audience that guiltlessly screams “Shut up bitch, suck my dick!”? I optimistically hope OF fans don’t charge the lyrics with meaning, but I do think there is genuine meaning in the free expression of blatantly subversive subjects.

            One of the most bizarre dynamics of Odd Future shows is the racial disparity – a group of over ten black rappers singing to an almost completely white audience. In Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang, Eithne Quinn writes, “The urban ‘underclass’ connotated moral permissiveness and criminal threat, both figured in terms of race… The strategy of dubbing poor black communities as ‘dangerous’ and ‘dependent’… helps to forge one’s own territory – defining other people in stereotypical ways consolidates self-definition.” Though this analysis is a bit dated, more appropriately applied to rap in the 80’s and not to its modern iteration where rap can often be considered a form of pop, the still-present racialized label of “moral permissiveness” finds a bizarre permutation in Odd Future’s fan base. There seems to be an appropriation of symbols of danger that have become culturally associated with blackness, but exploring these “dangerous” subjects – violence, rape, murder – in a space where they are conspicuously absent and addressed with a sort of wink makes them more acceptable for exploration by groups that have traditionally proscribed them. Just as dubbing blacks as “dangerous” consolidated rightward-oriented whites, accepting the aggressive nihilism of Odd Future’s music helps to consolidate listeners in a feeling of shared subversion (Miller).

            But again, the emphasis is exploration in the absence of actual subversive acts. In her essay “Women’s Responses to Shocking Violence,” Annette Hill describes a female viewer of gory horror films whose experiences watching on-screen violence reaffirm her attitude toward real-life violence – “Testing boundaries does not relate to real experience of violence, and her memory of acute distress at witness real violence reinforces her new understanding that responses to fictional violence are not the same as responses to real violence.” The experience of listening to Odd Future songs is comparable to watching a horror movie so absurdly bloody that it’s almost easy to watch – if it were more realistic, it might be more shocking (Come on, Tyler, you’re not really chopping your girlfriend’s legs off and then putting her eyeballs into your canteen). The lyrics never seem to be realized; nobody is actually getting killed, or beaten, or raped. 
        With so much talk of raping bitches, the bitches are almost nowhere to be found, except in the back of the hall (more about this later…). Every nihilistic line feels like it is delivered an implicit wink that suggests, “Nobody should really do what we’re talking about doing.” As Tyler says in the opening of “Radicals” –  “Random disclaimer: Hey, don’t do anything that I say in this song. Okay? It’s fucking fiction. If anything happens, don’t fucking blame me, White America.” 

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I’m not homophobic…. F****t – Goblin

             Odd Future insults a lot of people – women, whites, blacks, gays, hipsters – in essence, every constituency of their fanbase. So how do they manage to keep these offended groups coming back to their concerts to scream lyrics that are no more than self-directed slurs?  Taking these insults in stride becomes the main form of accumulating subcultural capital in the OF scene. Just as early rap culture embedded  hardness into its image, associating it with an ability to tolerate trying urban life, Odd Future’s fanbase equates hardness with an ability to stomach defamation.

Syd tha Kyd
oddfuture.tumblr.com

            The gender disparity at the Odd Future show was as jarring as the lack of racial diversity. Without many exceptions, the girls who attended the show (I would guess about 20% of the audience) were concentrated in the back of the hall. First of all, I imagine it takes a certain amount of chutzpah as a female to show up to an OF show, when their music does very little to depict women as anything other than murder-able, rape-able bodies. Secondly, women at the show itself were under rapid-fire slander, with chants with misogynistically charged vocabulary (“Kill sluts,” “My bitch suck dick,” etc.).

            But most of the women reacted to these attacks with emphatic enthusiasm, as if their ability to tolerate offense legitimized their place in the impromptu gang that encompasses the audience and Odd Future itself at their shows. In Hill’s article, she describes a similar phenomenon –  “the fact that [the subject] watches violent films does not mean she is desensitized to violence, she has empowered herself.” The ability to withstand verbal assault becomes a right of passage into the Odd Future scene. The poster child for this female “empowerment” is Odd Future’s only female member, Syd that Kyd. She fills a distinct niche; as the DJ, she is responsible for maintaining the flow of the show. Her aesthetic is typically male, with short, cropped hair, baggy clothes, and no element of visual adornment; she is also lesbian-identifying, which further removes her from traditional modes of femininity and seems to solidify her place in the intensely masculinized scene. But what makes her so striking is how eerily stoic she is; during the show, Tyler calls on the audience to chant “Kill the stripper,” directed at Syd, who faces this affront with nothing more than a slight smile. Her access to power comes from her arguably racialized ability to take insults in stride, an ability that defends her position in the Odd Future gang and that becomes the standard disposition that should be assumed by any group that is insulted by Odd Future.

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N***a had the fuckin' nerve to call me immature

Fuck you think I made Odd Future for?

To wearin' fuckin' suits and make good decisions?

Fuck that n***a, Wolf Gang – "Sandwitches"

            So at the end of this blogpost, you’re likely left with the same question I have – do we take Odd Future seriously? They supposedly don’t mean anything they say, but does their music normalize dangerous subjects, or does it provide a constructive venue for (safe?) exploration of proscribed topics? In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau argues, “Every reading modifies its object… The reader … invents in the text something different from what [the author] intended. He detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something unknown.” Author Henry Jenkins continues this idea – “Such intense interaction eventually leads many fans toward the creation of new texts, the writing of original stories.” It’s unrealistic to expect Odd Future to be responsible for breeding a generation of nihilistic criminals, but I do think they inspire potentially dangerous subversion.

            What ultimately makes the group so alluring is their position on the brink of reality and on the brink of morality. Matt Hills argues, “‘Cult’ status therefore seems to hinge on a certain ‘undecidability’, a space for interpretation, speculation and fan affect which cannot be closed down by final ‘proof’ or ‘fact’. Even texts which appear to offer closure or resolution can be mined by fans for endlessly deferred narrative.” Odd Future is forever deferring this narrative – half-convincing us “no bitches were raped in the making of this album.” But the last, more important question is this: what is being said about the group’s fans? I think that what makes Odd Future successful is their refreshing subversiveness. With the now-tired motifs of materiality, objectified sex, etc. becoming commonplace in much modern rap, Odd Future goes one step further, talking about murder as if it were blasé. In doing so, they are able to incite moral panic in a largely desensitized generation, appealing to the characteristic desire of youth to be radical.

With the whole world in front of me,

Odd Future teenagers, nobody can fuck with we – "Parade"

Word Count: 2225

Works Cited

Barker, Martin and Julian Petley, eds. 2001. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate (Second Edition). New York: Routledge.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984

Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, Henry (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.

Miller, Kiri. 2008. "Grove Street Grimm: Grand Theft Auto and Digital Folklore." Journal of American Folklore 121(481):255-285. 

Quinn, Eithne. 2005. Nuthin' But a "G" Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap. New York: Columbia University Press.

Critical Review 8 – Marshall’s “We Use So Many Snares”

Marshall’s blogpost entitled “We Use So Many Snares” traces the popularity and the prevalence of snare patterns and timbres in Reggaeton, a genre he only recently discovered. He also offers a relatively detailed description of the “music itself,” drawing attention to the differences between snare styles in various genres. “the difference between soca and dancehall, between merengue and reggaeton,” he says, “Is a mere issue of speed--at least in a basic musical sense; let's not forget, though, that the cultural contexts for these styles are often rather different.” The overarching tone of the article is the accessibility that beat-making programs, bloggers, and technology in general have widened to each of these genres. My question is if these musical styles, which have their roots in specific localities but are also syncretic international forms, become simplified and reduced once they are exported globally.

            He explains its global reach – “Reggaeton has become the most popular youth music not just in the PR and DR and Panama but in Cuba, Colombia, Belize, and increasingly in Mexico, Chile, and non-Caribbean Latin America. of course, it's big in Japan. and there appears to be a thriving scene these days in the UK.” When a musical style is globalized – that is, exported to and enjoyed in countries apart from its origin, does it maintain its historical integrity? Do Reggaeton listeners in geographically distant areas like Japan understand the music they are listening to – its influences, founders, shapers, or does it become the generic sound of an entire area? Do musical genres need to maintain their historical integrity (that is, their indebtedness to locality) for them to keep their cultural validity? 

Field Note 2 - Odd Future Interviews, Lyrical Motives

My second set of fieldnotes is dedicated to developing a deeper understanding of the motives (if any) behind Odd Future’s lyrical content. One of the most striking elements of Odd Future’s music is the often nihilistic lyrics. A lyrical analysis will not play a large role in my final ethnography; rather, I want to understand the lyrics as they relate to both their creators and their receivers. Although the members of Odd Future may not support the ideas expressed in their lyrics, we cannot expect that a chorus of fans chanting blatantly immoral lyrics has the same relationship to the text. The following excerpts from interviews highlight a few points:

1.     Tyler the Creator and other Odd Future members sometimes use their negative lyrics as a sort of competition amongst themselves – who can come up with the grossest texts?

2.     Odd Future suggests that texts can exist independent of motive or subliminal message.

3.     The lyrics that are often cited as Odd Future’s most immoral are not thought out (as far as meaning), but are simply what popped into their heads.

·      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Wci7j6dvs

o   1:50

§  Interviewer: Is there any territory that you guys will not touch lyrically because it’s off limits or it’s just too personal?

§  Tyler: Sudan

§  Interviewer: Anything?

§  Tyler: I don’t know. I don’t really set off to say… I just say the first shit that pops into my head.

·      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcYsE_H7mM

o   2:40

§  Hodgy Beats: Our actions are really random and our thoughts are normally out of the ignorance and creativity that we have built up, so I know you guys think there’s some fucking subliminal messages behind everything we do. Well guess what, motherfucker? it’s not! it’s fucking not! we’re fucking human and we like art and we like creating shit!”

·      http://austinist.com/2011/03/10/odd_future_wolf_gang_kill_them_all.php

o   Interviewer: Do you think there's gonna be some backlash from some of your lyrics? From the Republicans and such.

o   Hodgy Beats: Well, it’s not really about Republicans. I mean, I don't care who I piss off by saying anything because most of the shit that we say, if it’s not us being sincere to ourselves, it’s probably us competing in the studio to see who comes up with the most disgusting verse or some shit. So, they can talk all the fuck they want to but they're not there when the music's created. So, I'm not worried about anything.

o   Interviewer: So you guys actively try to one-up each other and push the envelope even further?

o   Hodgy Beats: Oh hell yeah, hell yeah. That's why I think our music is so good. It's such a production. But a lot of, at our shows, the kids sing along to every fucking word so the lyrics must contain some type of catchy content or something that someone likes.

·      http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/tyler-the-creator/#page2

o   Waka Flocka Flame: I’m sure you know people say y’all’s lyrics are dark or are negative. What do y’all think fans should get when they walk away from listening to y’all’s music?

o   Tyler: Well, our fans relate to our music, but most of the time the people who say that our music is dark and weird and shit like that—it doesn’t relate to them so they judge it based on what shocks them the most instead of the whole project. So the fans walk away as fans who are relatin’ to the shit, knowin’ what the fuck I’m talkin’ about, and then the other people can just sit there and claim what we’re doing is dark and Satanist or other bullshit that I don’t even like readin’ about. Because I’ll be readin’ shit where peo- ple say, “He’s not lyrical, and rap is supposed to be lyri- cal and have passion,” and I’m sitting there like, “He’s rappin’ about his life and how he misses his brother [on the song “Nightmare” from Goblin]. How is that not passionate?” But I guess those people just don’t relate to anything we’re saying, so they’re quick to judge.

o   Waka Flocka Flame: Do y’all actually do any of the stuff y’all talk about in your lyrics?

o   Tyler: Well, I don’t rape chicks . . . I have punched a girl in the eye . . . Um . . . What else? I say a lot of shit and it just depends . . . Sometimes it’s just ’cause shit is funny.

o   Waka Flocka Flame: Is there something deeper behind it? What do those images mean?

o   Tyler: Well, a lot of people think that stuff is deeper than it really is. Some people just think too much. Like, my manager knows I wanna be a video director, so he was like, “Hey, just write a video, write the treatment for it, and we’ll shoot it.” So I was like, “All right, fuck it. I’ll eat a cockroach, I’ll throw up, and then I’ll hang myself . . . It’s, like, no subliminal messages or secret meanings or anything. I just personally think the shit would look really cool, so I did it. I just like doing shit that I think is cool, and people happen to like it, so I’m pretty, like, fortunate for that. So I’m gonna just continue to be myself and do what I like. Again, people are just so quick to judge shit ’cause they don’t understand it. But I understand what I’m doing, and that’s all that should matter.

My next step, one that I am struggling to accomplish, is to find more fans of Odd Future and examine their relationships to the group’s lyrics. The main hurdle will be the issue of diversity – the fans that I currently have access to are students at Brown, who might not be indicative of the greater Odd Future fanbase. 

Critical Review 7 - Duany's “Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of ‘Salsa’”

            In his article “Popular Music in Puerto Rico: Toward an Anthropology of ‘Salsa,’” Jorge Duany traces the development of salsa in Puerto Rico, showing how it rose as a proletariat genre in a social and political context of syncretism. He very effectively shows how the history of the Puerto Rican people, particularly in relation to European colonization and later US colonization, is reflected in the conflagration of musical styles that ultimately resulted in what we know today as salsa. He also successfully describes “the music itself,” highlighting instrumental consistencies between subgenres, rhythmic elements, and vocal patterns. My one point of contention with the article is his lack of description of the dance culture associated with salsa, which in this particular genre should not be neglected.

            Duany describes the prevalence of Puerto Rican culture in the United States, and the heavy hand American colonization had in shaping what became salsa. Today in the United States, salsa is associated with music, but I would argue that its principle connotation is with dance. Salsa clubs have very much become social fixtures particularly in urban centers, often seen as emblems of generic Latin culture. Duany recognizes the importance of dance in salsa culture when he says, “Above all, this is music to be danced to: a song that doesn’t make you moveyour feet doesn’t have any ‘salsa.’” (199). However, he fails to make any description of “the dance itself” or even the role dance plays in salsa culture aside from a few general descriptions. Upon noting this oversight, I question when music can appropriately be separated form its corresponding musical genres. If salsa is not truly salsa if it fails to evoke physical movement, how can it be analyzed without a description of the dance?

Black Jungle

The BBC documentary “Black Jungle” describes the musical style and attached culture of Jungle, a genre that developed in the late 1980’s combining traditionally black forms like reggae and soul with fast, rave-like beats. Jungle has clear connections to the sound system culture in 1970’s London (described in Les Back’s article, “’Inglan, nice up!’: black music, autonomy, and the cultural intermezzo”), where groups of black youth, excluded from white institutions of leisure, went to the street and established communal celebrations that revolved around musical participation. Though the line between exclusion and choice is blurry, the Jungle movement seems to be rooted in an affinity for black musical styles that were not being represented by the prevailing rave scene. Jungle’s adherents strove to achieve a syncretism between the two – the beat-driven elements of rave, with the connection to rich cultural styles. It is difficult to say whether the absence of black music in rave clubs unintentionally led to an exclusion of black youth, as seen in sound system culture, or if it simply highlighted a dissatisfaction with the preexisting musical scene.

What struck me about the documentary was their description of Jungle as a departure from the past, in the sense that it was a redefinition of British identity “on black terms.” Instead of deepening a schism between white Britain and black “others,” Jungle appropriated the sounds of London’s musical scene and combined it with soul and reggae to create a distinct genre based on locality and a complex racial identity. Whereas the sound system scene was pushed out of white institutions, Jungle participants created a syncretic sound by their own will. However, I question the extent to which the success of the scene still depended on white support. In the documentary, a song is described as being so successful, it was played on BBC 1, a predominantly white media outlet. The documentary shows white record executives and radio jockeys, as well other white Jungle adherents. Is it white participation in Jungle simply indicative of the style itself, a blend of white and black styles, or does it point to an inability for black styles to disseminate without white aid?

Interview with Dan and Cam

Here's an excerpt from my interview with Dan and Cam, two roommates at Brown University. More to come...

11:20

Will: Something that you guys have been talking about a lot is the idea of Tyler’s personas. How do you think those multiple personas are related to reality? Do you see these personas as charicatures, or as exaggerated perceptions of reality? My basic question is – how do you guys listen to Tyler’s personas?

C: Dude, I see Tron Cat as like - this is obviously the very violent like murderous disturbing persona. I see it kind of like a horror film, um like visually, but I also kind of see it as his sick thoughts and imaginations that he just doesn’t really express out loud, but he just sits and thinks to himself but this is an embodiment of all of those thoughts culminating into one being and one persona in the song. Do you know what I’m saying?

D: Yeah, I think that one of the most indicative personas, or one that cuts to the heart of the question is his role as the psychologist. And I think that one of the things he’s doing, or one of the things I think he’s doing, is kind of exploring these aspects of the mind that are usually repressed and not talked about socially. And he got interested – you know, I’ve read interviews where Tyler says, “I got interested in the minds of killers and criminals and what’s going on in their heads, and like, what is their mental process?" And I think that he explores that through some personas like Tron Cat. And so, maybe that’s me really trying to put a positive spin on some pretty negative lyrics.

C: I feel like along with the psychologist persona is the really vulnerable Tyler sitting in a chair talking back to this doctor, and he always just spills his emotions, and sometimes will feel more, not dark, but sad. You know?

Will: And how do you guys feel like you connect to these songs that represent very dark sides of Tyler’s personality?

C: I feel like it’s kind of like, to some extent, I mean I obviously don’t think like that on a regular basis, but it’s just like, the fact that he can construct such well lyrically put together song with really creative metaphors about really disturbing and crazy shit just makes me want to root for his dark persona. Like, if it were a horror movie and I were watching all the lyrics happen, I would probably cheer for that guy.

D: Yeah, I think you just touched on the two things that I really identify with. Obviously, I don’t have the same kind of thoughts as Tyler in his Tron Cat persona. But there are times where I think things that are not quite socially acceptable. You know, there are dark sides to my personality too that I think I can not necessarily identify with, but that I can see some kind of sympathetic, um. And I respect Tyler for not only not repressing that side but letting it flourish. And I think the lyricism and the metaphors, the song construction, I can appreciate as separate from the lyrical content. I find that really compelling.

16:00

Will: So turning to songs like “Radicals,” where the chorus is “Kill People, Burn Shit, Fuck School,” do you see that as an ironic statement or as an exaggeration of the everyman’s dark desires?

C: I thought about this a lot over the summer when I was listening to “Goblin” in the car, because I listened to it a lot over the summer. I think it’s very much an exaggeration for his rebellion against typically accepted societal norms. Do you know what I’m saying? Like, obviously he doesn’t want you to kill people and drop out of school and burn shit, it’s more about going against the grain and not doing necessarily what society wants you to do. I feel like he’s just saying, “do whatever the fuck you want. Be whoever you want to be.” Like, I’m a table, I’m a unicorn, if I say I want to be a table or a unicorn you can’t tell me I’m not a unicorn.

D: Yeah, I’d agree. I think it’s exaggeration for effect. But you know, there are other songs where the ironic component might be a better explanation.

Critical Review 6 – Weinstein’s “Digging the Music: Proud Pariahs”

            In her article “Digging the Music: Proud Pariahs,” Weinstein discusses the subculture of metal, particularly its white, working class, male ethos. I challenge many of the assertions she makes in regards to gender disparity and identity within the scene, as I find her to reduce the gender dynamics to overly simplified binaries. On page 104, she says that males are, “at a minimum, ambivalent regarding women, seeking to escape from maternal and other forms of female authority and fearful of being viewed as ‘mama’s boys,’ and yet attracted to women sexually.” This description of male-female relationships essentializes them into two categories – mother and partner, a categorization that does not take into account the myriad of complexities that go into interactions between sexes. Though she later discusses some female metalheads who achieve some level of subcultural capital (by performing masculinity), there is a resounding binary in her argument about gendered relationships – men either hate women or want them. This binary takes credibility from her research, as it feels like it reduces metalheads into restricting archetypes of masculinity, which may often be true but nonetheless lack necessary nuance.

            This lack of nuance is also evidenced by her general oversight of the inherent femininity in many of the cultural signifiers in the metal scene. Weinstein traces the genealogy of metal to hippie, punk, and biker culture. In her discussion of metal music itself, she highlights its expressivity, specifically referencing the wailing, crying qualities of many guitar solos, as well as the expected emotionality of lead vocalists. These vulnerable qualities of the music seem at odds with the identity of the scene, which Weinstein asserts is overwhelmingly masculine. Furthermore, her extensive discussion of the long hair as central to metal style never once calls into question long hair as a traditionally female aesthetic. Though their long hair is arguably descended from hippie culture, not from feminine style, long hair has implicit societal connotations, namely feminine ones. She says that metalheads take pride in the “stigma of long hair” (133), likely referring to its stigma of disheveled rebellion. Again, she forgets to discuss the role of long hair in establishing the feminine identity, one that metalheads would probably be less proud of.

            Though I agree with many of Weinstein’s arguments and cannot deny the inherent masculinity in the metal scene, I think she overly simplifies its gender dynamics. Her reductions make her article feel very flat, and leave the reader with the sense that they haven’t actually learned about real, nuanced people.