Faux Real

When I was a kid the only people on my block to play with were two boys my age who lived catty-corner to my folks, one of whom was a sweet, sandy-haired He-Man lover who liked to smell my hair. Fast forward ten years and the little boy has learned to play drums. He practices night and day, you can hear the bass drum booming for blocks. In another five years he sees me walking around the block with a toddler Ethan and invites me into his parents’ home to listen to his band practice. They hand me a massive set of headphones and play a song so fast I can’t bob my head appreciatively.

Kevin is a more than talented drummer. I remember seeing him play in pep rallies at school when the band would back off and let him launch into a drum solo that would vibrate the gym for upwards of ten astoundingly gifted minutes. He was a good student, senior class president, and today he’s the drummer for a grindcore band that plays shows all over the country and could be considered “TOTALLY FUCKING BRUTAL!!!”

I thought of Kevin fondly as Chef and I sat down to watch “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey,” a movie easily described as the thinking fan’s guide to metal. We’d recently watched “Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years,” sequel to the punk years, a disappointing flick because it left too much to the fans and artists and didn’t offer a critical lens. Though it looked like a Christopher Guest mockumentary and left Chef and I agape that these idiots had been allowed to talk on film, it was unapologetically misogynistic and didn’t allow the artists or fans a shred of dignity. Mostly I wondered how long Ozzy Ozzborn was going to let that pot of water boil on the stove.

Where Civilization was a dated performance of glam-metal idiocy, A Headbanger’s Journey prevailed. The synopsis:

Sam Dunn is a 30-year old anthropologist who wrote his graduate thesis on the plight of Guatemalan refugees. Recenly he has decided to study the plight of a different culture, one he has been a part of since he was a 12-year old: the culture of heavy metal. Sam sets out on a global journey to find out why this music has been consistently stereotyped, dismissed and condemned and yet is loved so passionately by its millions of fans. Along the way, Sam explores metals’ obsession with some of life’s most provacative subjects - sexuality, religion, violence and death - and discovers some things about the culture that even he can’t defend. Shot on location in the UK, Germany, Norway, Canada and the US, this documentary is the first of its kind. It is both a defense of a long-misunderstood art form and a window for the outsider into the spectacle that is heavy metal.

First, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who isn’t at least peripherally interested in metal. Secondly, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who wants an uncritical jerkfest over his or her favorite bands. However, I do believe anyone who is piqued by an anthropological look at sub-pop culture will be intrigued. Dunn isn’t ashamed to look at the stickier issues that have plagued metal culture, in particular how masculinity performances resemble fun house gender mirrors more than power, and how the fascination with evil, sadism, and rejection of the church has been taken too far with anti-Semitism, the burning of churches in Norway and even a murder between rival bands. There were many points in the movie in which Dunn could have excused his idols but kept true to his anthropological background, keeping a critical eye on the issues at hand with narratives from various academics, artists, and fans.

But this is no dry movie. Dunn has a lot of fun with the area of censorship, speaking extensively with Dee Snider about the PMRC Senate hearings of the 1980s, where nine of the “Filthy Fifteen” were metal songs. (See Frank Zappa present at the Maryland State Judiciary Hearings in 1986, via Auguste in the comments. Zappa was put on the Filthy Fifteen for an instrumental album.) It’s no wonder why metal was so vilified in the ’80s. The Reagan years, man. For those too young or stoned to remember, this is the “parents’ rights” group headed by Tipper Gore that herded kids into workshops preaching against the evils of metal and hip hop*, the originator of that annoying parental advisory sticker. The reason liberals think Tipper Gore is a schlup. Snider is more well-spoken than I previously believed and the footage of Snider’s rebuttals at the Senate hearings make the Senate panel look like well-dressed fools. Even Snider’s quips about gender and sexuality are worthwhile.**

In the end, the only bits of the movie that I could have done without included every frame of Alice Cooper and Slipknot. The former thinks he invented the goddamned genre and the latter shouldn’t be allowed to talk on film.

The film lacks a clear thesis on the genre; it is, as the title says, a journey, a general exploration of the community. Rob Zombie*** sums up the real focus — nobody says they were really big into Slayer one summer.

Watch the trailer.
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** Never did I think I could say nice things — unironically — about Dee Snider.
*** Is hot and I am not ashamed.