Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization 1787565122, 9781787565128

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Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces

Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization Series Editors: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK and Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, UK There is growing interest in work on transgression, liminality and subcultural capital within cultural studies, sociology and the social sciences more broadly. However, there is a lack of understanding of the problem of alternativity: what it means to be alternative in culture and society in modernity. What ‘alternative’ looks like is often left unexplored. The alternative is either assumed un-problematically, or stands in for some other form of social and cultural exclusion. Alternativity delineates those spaces, scenes, subcultures, objects and practices in modern society that are actively designed to be counter or resistive to mainstream popular culture. Alternativity is associated with marginalization, both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and subcultures. Alternativity was originally represented and constructed through acts of transgression and through shared subcultural capital. In contemporary society, alternative music scenes such as heavy metal, goth and punk have spread around the world; and alternative fashions and embodiment practices are now adopted by footballers and fashion models. The nature of alternativity as a communicative lifeworld is now questioned in an age of globalization and hyper-commodification. This book series provides a stimulus to new research and new theorising on alternativity and marginalization. It provides a focus for scholars interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of spaces, scenes, subcultures, objects and practices defined as alternative, liminal or transgressive. In turn, the book series enables scholars to theorise about the status of the alternative in contemporary culture and society.

Titles in this series Amanda DiGioia, Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts: The Marginalized and the Monstrous Stephen Brown and Marie-Cécile Cervellon, Revolutionary Nostalgia: Neo-Burlesque, Retromania and Social Change Karl Spracklen and Beverley Spracklen, The Evolution of Goth Culture: The Origins and Deeds of the New Goths

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization

Edited by

Samantha Holland Leeds Beckett University, UK

Karl Spracklen Leeds Beckett University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2018 Copyright © Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen. Published under an exclusive licence Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78756-512-8 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78756-511-1 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78756-513-5 (Epub)

Contents

List of Contributors 

vii

Introduction Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen 

1

Part I: Subcultures Chapter 1.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?: Investigating Virtually Constructed Fashion Subcultures Therèsa M. Winge 13 Chapter 2.  Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb: Inversion/Subversion and the Inscribing of Morality on Women’s Bodies in Heavy Metal Amanda DiGioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis 27 Chapter 3.  Japanophilia in Kuwait: How Far Does International Culture Penetrate? Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

43

Chapter 4.  Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device): Alternative Perspectives on the Misogynist Aesthetic of W.A.S.P.’s ‘The Rack’ Gareth Heritage

61

Chapter 5.  Reight Mardy Tykes: Northernness, Peaceville Three and Death/Doom Music World M. Selim Yavuz

81

vi    Contents

Part II: Bodies Chapter 6.  Constructions of Regulation and Social Norms of Tattooed Female Bodies Charlotte Dann

103

Chapter 7.  ‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’: Tattoo Collecting, Gender and Self-Expression Beverly Yuen Thompson

119

Chapter 8.  The Spectacle of Russian Feminism: Questioning Visibility and the Western Gaze M. Katharina Wiedlack

133

Chapter 9.  Out of Time: Anohni and Transgendered/ Trans Age Transgression Abigail Gardner

153

Chapter 10.  Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions: Sociology, Madness and Disability Kay Inckle

169

Part III: Spaces Chapter 11.  Ageing Alternative Women: Discourses of Authenticity, Resistance and ‘Coolness’ Samantha Holland 191 Chapter 12.  Laura Way

Girls to the Front! Gender and Alternative Spaces 205

Chapter 13.  No Blue Plaques ‘In the Land of Grey and Pink’: The Canterbury Sound, Heritage and the Alternative Relationships of Popular Music and Place Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman 219 Conclusion: Making Sense of Alternativity in Leisure and Culture: Back to Subculture? Karl Spracklen

239

Index255

List of Contributors

Shane Blackman is Professor of Cultural Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. He has held posts at the University of Surrey and University of Greenwich. He has conducted research projects on sociological and ethnographic aspects of young people’s culture, undertaking funded research for the Home Office, London Health Authorities, the Kent Constabulary and local authorities in Kent, he was also a consultant for the British Board of Film Classification (London). His research interests include ethnography, social and cultural theory, youth cultures and subcultures, popular music, drug war politics, drug education and prevention, schooling, feminist theory, homeless young people and social exclusion. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. He is the author of Films and dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, Wong Kar-wai (2007) and Veils, nudity and tattoos: The new feminine aesthetic (2015), and has written a number of books on topics ranging from intercultural aesthetics to the philosophy of architecture. He has been researching in Japan and worked for the Center of Cognition of Hangzhou University, China, as well as at Tuskegee University, USA. Charlotte Dann is Lecturer in Psychology at University of Northampton, UK, where she recently successfully defended her PhD. Her research is centred around qualitative explorations of tattoos, femininities and bodies. Amanda DiGioia is a PhD student at The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK. Her PhD thesis focuses on the construction of the female gender in the Finnish heavy metal music scene. Amanda is a member of the International Society for Metal Music Studies, and has been published in Metal Music Studies, Horror Studies and Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones. Asya Draganova is Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, UK, as well as an active researcher within the fields of media and cultural studies, popular music and cultural sociology. Asya obtained her PhD in 2016; her doctoral thesis reflected on Asya’s ethnographic research into the creation and articulation of popular music within the social and political contexts of contemporary Bulgaria. Since completing her PhD, Asya has been involved with research dedicated to the value of popular music – particularly heavy metal and the ‘Canterbury Sound’ – for the heritage and contemporary identity of places and their communities. Abigail Gardner is a Reader in Music and Media at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She writes on music and ageing, music video and music documentary.

viii    List of Contributors Publications include PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance (Routledge, 2015) and Rock on: Women, Ageing and Popular Music (Routledge, 2012). She is a founder member of the Centre for Women, Ageing and Media (http:// wamuog.co.uk). She produces community film and media and is currently PI on two ­Erasmus + European projects, one on diversity and digital storytelling (www. mysty.eu) and one on media literacy for refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant women (https://medlitproject.eu). Gareth Heritage is completing his PhD at Leeds Beckett University, UK. A former high-school music teacher, Gareth is actively involved in music education, privately teaching guitar, bass, drums, sound production and music theory to students of all ages from his studio in S.E. England. An experienced examiner, Gareth examines music for Trinity College London and the International Baccalaureate, as well as A-Level sociology for OCR. Gareth holds a Masters’ of Music, a Postgraduate Diploma, two Postgraduate Certificates, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and is a Fellow of the London College of Music. An associate editor for the Journal of Metal Music Studies, Gareth has published research regarding ‘80s heavy metal’s neo-classical aesthetic and the concept of alternative-hypermasculinity in the aesthetics of 1980s heavy metal. Samantha Holland is Senior Research Fellow at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her research interests are gender, ageing, leisure, popular culture and non-mainstream subcultures, utilizing feminist, ethnographic qualitative methods. Her publications include Alternative femininities. body, age and identity (Berg, 2004), Remote relationships in a small world (Peter Lang, 2008, edited), Pole dancing, empowerment and embodiment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Vintage homes and leisure lives: Ghosts and glamour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Kay Inckle is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK, specializing in the sociology of health and medicine. Her research interests include embodiment and body practices, disability, self-injury, gender and sexuality and user-led and creative research methods and ethics. These interests are informed by her own life and work (mostly) outside academia and her desire for research and education which promotes radical social change. Her most recent book was conceived as one small step in this direction: Safe with self-Injury: A practical guide to understanding, responding and harm-reduction (PCCS Books). Charlotte Naylor Davis is Visiting Lecturer in Theology at Fordham University, USA, teaching the history of interpretation of the Bible. Her PhD developed a new methodology for the criticism of translations of ancient texts with respect to identifying language, culture and ideology. Her research focuses on the Bible as a cultural artefact, particularly in the way that text interacts with language, art and music. She is particularly interested in changes of gender representation throughout the history of textual interpretation and language development. She has published on the use of the Bible by heavy metal artists in Modern heavy metal: Markets, practices and cultures.

List of Contributors    ix Karl Spracklen is Professor of Music, Leisure and Culture at Leeds Beckett University, UK, where until recently he was Professor of Leisure Studies. He was the Chair of the Leisure Studies Association, and is currently Secretary of Research Committee 13 (Sociology of Leisure) of the International Sociological Association. He is the Principal Editor of Metal music studies. He has researched and published extensively on leisure theory and in sociology of music, leisure and culture: by the 2018 he will have over one hundred publications. His latest book is The Palgrave handbook of leisure theory (Palgrave, 2017), edited with Brett Lashua, Erin Sharpe and Spencer Swain. Beverly Yuen Thompson is Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology at Siena College, in Loudonville, New York, USA, where she teaches in the areas of deviance and subcultures. Her book, Covered in ink: Tattoos, women and the politics of the body, was published by New York University Press in 2015. She earned her PhD and MA in Sociology from The New School in New York City. Laura Way is a PhD candidate with the University of Leicester, UK. Her research explores older women punks’ articulation and maintenance of a punk identity through qualitative interviewing and participant-created ‘zine pages. Laura’s research interests also include alternative (or, specifically, punk) pedagogies and creative research methods. She is a steering group member of the Punk Scholars Network, advisory board member of Punk and Post Punk, and currently a associate tutor at Bishop Grosseteste University. M. Katharina Wiedlack is currently Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, Europa-Universität Flensburg. Previously she was Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna and Visiting Professor at the Center for Advanced Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She did research at the University of ­California, Berkeley, the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University and taught at Lomonossow University Moscow, State University St. Petersburg, and the University of Vienna, among others. She was Project Coordinator at the Gender Research Office at the University of Vienna from April 2008 to September 2015. Her research fields are primarily queer and feminist theory, popular culture, postsocialist, decolonial and disability studies. Currently, she is working on a research project focused on the construction of Russia’s most vulnerable citizens within Western media. Therèsa M. Winge is an Associate Professor in Apparel and Textile Design, in the Art, Art History, and Design department at Michigan State University, USA. Her research also focuses on subcultural dress for its meanings and construction of identity. Common throughout her research, she examines the construction and deconstruction of visual and material cultures for the unique representations and sociocultural meanings within subcultural dress and styles. Her first book - Body Style – is about subcultural dress and body modifications; and, her second book – Costuming Cosplay – introduces the Cosplay subculture and costumes.

x    List of Contributors M. Selim Yavuz is a PhD student and part-time lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Coming from a musicological background, his current research focuses on the genealogy of death/doom metal music networks in northern England and on situating these fringe musical spaces in related larger cultural groups such as doom metal and extreme metal, having previously written dissertations about John Dowland and Elizabethan social structures, and death and suicide ideas in depressive suicidal black metal music. He is also the Editorial Assistant of the journal Metal Music Studies and Communications Officer of International ­Society for Metal Music Studies.

Introduction Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen

The chapter begins with an introduction to the concepts of alternativity and marginalisation. Alternativity is associated with marginalisation (and, by definition, with the mainstream), both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and subcultures. The idea of the alternative and the transgressive has a long history in the field of academic subjects, from psychology through sociology to cultural studies. In recent years, there have been several key studies that demonstrated the importance of the problem of being alternative, and being transgressive. Holland (2004), Winge (2012) and Yuen Thompson (2015) have been at the forefront of this growing body of work, using queer theory and gender theory to make sense of bodies as sites of alternativity and marginalisation. However, it is not only in the sociology of gender and sexuality that authors have explored alternativity and marginalisation; these concepts have been explored to a greater or lesser extent in a wide range of subject fields all interested in the problem of youth, belonging, leisure or music subcultures (Bennett, 2000; Blackman, 2007; Cohen, 1991; Hodkinson, 2002; Rojek, 2000, 2010). These different explorations of alternativity and marginalisation demonstrate the salience of this edited collection and the book series it launches, and its continuing relevance to scholars. We hope this book and the series serve as a signpost for how we theorise and research alternativity, because we believe the existing body of work falls short in defining alternativity ethically, culturally, politically, historically and sociologically. The alternative in much of the work cited above is all too often introduced without thinking through the meaning and purpose of being alternative, of transgressing. That is, alternativity is all-too often taken for granted to be something that is merely a practice of exclusion. This is where the book series will intercede. The alternative became itself a mainstream idea—that is, something that was understood and recognised as something not mainstream by the hegemonic powers of popular culture—with the rise of the counterculture in the West in the postwar period, but especially in the problematic decade of the 1960s. That does not mean that alternativity appeared ex nihilo in America at that time. Being alternative was something that has a long history, and multiple spaces could be seen to be alternative since the rise of modernity. But America’s 1960s particularly fixed the idea of counterculture in popular culture; we return to ideas about the

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 1–10 Copyright © 2018 by Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181002

2    Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen counterculture in the Conclusion. Alternativity became defined as something that is related to the idea and practice of transgression. That is, alternativity came to be understood as being something associated with community, belonging and identity expressed through shared fashions, collective memories, shared interests and tastes and politics. All these concepts are explored in the chapters that follow, where they crystalise around the idea of subcultural capital—what is it that different subcultures share that make them alternative or transgressive? Alternative music such as heavy metal has been globalised and made part of the global mainstream; and alternative fashions and embodiment practices have become mainstream, now adopted across all walks of life including the rich and famous, and not just alternative people or Instagram ‘influencers’. If alternativity was a communicative lifeworld, a space for people to resist the rise of instrumentality, commodification and capitalism, its existence now is under threat, if it survives at all (Spracklen, 2014). Despite that pessimism about the future, alternativity now is still associated with marginalisation, as this book will show. Being alternative is still something that individuals choose to be, and it is still something that is used to label (by the actors, authorities and academics) individuals and subcultures. We use alternativity here in a broad sense. Alternativity represents the people and places, the practices and objects and ideologies, which are actively designed to resist mainstream popular culture and mainstream society. This edited collection and its attendant book series Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalisation aim to map the landscape, to provide new theory and methods in an area currently under-theorised, setting out issues, questions, concerns and directions for scholarship and debate. The book brings together some of the key scholars working in the field today and we aim to offer a strong and exciting start to enable a long and varied conversation to unfold. It is consciously feminist in its approach and composition with women authors, unusually, in the majority; we saw this decision as important historically and socially (because women are still routinely talkedover or silenced) as well as politically; and because many edited collections about subcultures/alternativity tend to have more male contributors than female. The book has 14 chapters written by a blend of international, established scholars and early career researchers, all of them producing world-class and cutting-edge work. The authors were briefed to open the debate around the terms alternativity and marginalisation, on issues of their choosing, with chapters acting as a springboard for future discussions. The content ranges from critiques of theory and new theoretical developments to case studies of alternativity and marginalisation in practice, and in performance. We, the editors, hope to see future work that expands on many of the themes presented here including questions about disabilities, mental health, age, belonging, regionalism, misogyny, gender roles and the commodification of bodies – but this list is not exhaustive. Much more work is needed on class and ethnicities in relation to alternativity and marginalisation, in order to engage fully with how those terms become the basis for everyday meanings and practices. In this way, the book (and the series) offers a focus for scholars interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of that defined as alternative, liminal or transgressive; theorising the status of

Introduction    3 the alternative in contemporary culture and society. This edited collection demonstrates the theoretical richness and empirical diversity of the interdisciplinary subject field it encompasses. Across three subsections focussed on subcultures, bodies and spaces, the authors individually and collectively construct a case for the book’s contribution, which is summarised in the Conclusion; the Conclusion is also where Spracklen addresses arguments about the use of the terms subculture and post-subculture, and our rationale in returning to the term ‘subculture’ in relation to the concepts of alternativity and marginalisation. Part 1, Subcultures, begins with Theresa M. Winge’s chapter ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep dressed in street fashions?: Investigating virtually constructed fashion subcultures’. In May 2016, Aleks Eror’s op-ed article, ‘Dear Fashion Industry: Stop Making up Bogus Subcultures’ on the HighSnobiety website accuses the fashion industry of creating ‘quasi-subcultures’, such as Normcore, Seapunk and Health Goth to promote specific fashion trends via the Internet. Eror argues that these fashion subcultures do not exist in resistance to mainstream culture (as he understands subcultures), but instead offer the specific fashions and their designers cache for being associated with a counterculture and connecting with alternative trends. Setting aside Eror’s narrow understanding of subcultures, he raises questions of authenticity and the current state of virtual fashion subcultures. Still, there is evidence of these subcultures online and growing in substantial numbers regardless of their inception. Furthermore, persons identifying themselves with these groups practice alternativity, which delineates their scenes, artefacts and practices from those of mainstream Western society. Winge pursues questions of authenticity regarding these recent fashion subcultures who appear to emerge in close proximity to the launch of specific fashions. She explores the ways these fashion subcultural experiences differ from known subcultures. The chapter investigates notions of constructed resistance and perceived alternativity and marginalisation, as well as how that positionality manifests into a fashion subculture identity. Chapter 2, ‘Cursed is the fruit of thy womb: Inversion/subversion and the inscribing of morality on women’s bodies in heavy metal’ by Amanda DiGioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis focuses on the problematic relationship between heavy metal and gender politics. The authors argue that while metal may be deemed as being an ‘alternative’ subculture, metal still ‘uses’ women in the same way as ‘normal’ society. Despite the nature of metal as counterculture, women’s images and morality often inverted but not subverted and it is this nuance that they explore: for example, the use of Mary, Mother of God in ‘Amen’ by black metal band Behemoth, where though her image is a challenge to convention, she is still ‘used’ as emblems for male political ideology. In the textuality of heavy metal music, women appear as mothers (both good and bad), fetishised whores, mother earth, and sexualised virgins. Where modern open sexuality is ‘praised’, anything less so is mocked. Though this ‘praise’ may come across as positive, it is nevertheless still ascribing morality/immorality/virtue to women’s bodies in a way that is not done with men. DiGioia and Naylor Davis use examples of texts from metal bands who reference women, imagery associated with band merchandise as

4    Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen well as comments from the performers themselves (such as Dee Snider’s approval of the lyrics of ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ being associated with the Women’s March on Washington) to investigate the place of the female body in this cultural representation. By using textual critical analysis, they show that women in metal are still having morality written on their bodies, bringing to light the debatable nature of metal being deemed as ‘alternative’ when it comes to gender. The fourth chapter by Gareth Heritage offers a converse approach to that of DiGioia and Naylor Davis, and can safely be described as polemic. We anticipate that some readers will find much to debate in his analysis. The chapter ‘Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device): Alternative Perspectives on the Misogynist Aesthetic of W.A.S.P.’s ‘The Rack’’ argues that Glam metal of the 1980s represented a notable development in popular music at this time. A subgenre of the 1980s heavy metal, glam metal combined elements of late 1960s and 1970s heavy rock, glam rock and punk rock (Doolin, 2003), enriching both the visual and aural aesthetic diversity of 1980s heavy metal as a result. Moreover, 1980s glam metal bands such as Guns N’ Roses and Poison, Cinderella and Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Warrant, dominated the music video airwaves and sold out venues across the United States (Popoff, 2014). Yet, for all its comparative individuality and widespread popularity, the vast majority of mainstream glam metal bands were marginalised by social action groups mainly, but not exclusively, because of misogynist-type themes that the bands represented in their aesthetics. During the 1990s, scholars began scrutinising 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics, for example, Lisa Sloat’s (1998) analysis of glam metal’s sexist and misogynist themed song lyrics concludes: ‘if exploiting women for sex sells, [glam metal] musicians will [continue] record[ing] songs which do so’ (Sloat, 1998, p.  299). Yet none of these accounts seem to be able to sufficiently unpack the idea that 1980s glam metal’s representation of misogyny was fundamentally egregious. An alternative reading of the aesthetics shows us how many of the bands creatively appropriated misogyny to idiomatically hallmark metal glam, thusly differentiating the style from the broadly homogenous displays of machismo that generally defined the aesthetics of other 1980s heavy metal subgenres. In response then, this chapter should be thought of as a doctrine proactive, intended to elicit a debate about the need to look alternatively at how misogyny is/was used as an artistic aesthetic device, not only in 1980s glam metal, but throughout culture more widely. In Chapter 3, ‘Japanophilia in Kuwait: How far does international culture penetrate?’ by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, begins by noting that Japanese culture is present in Kuwait in many different shapes. Universities have manga clubs, ­Japanese conventions like Q8con or PlamoQ8 draw thousands of people, cosplay competitions take place several times per year, and the Japanese and Korean embassies organise cultural events for young people. Universities invite specialists of Japan for well-attended talks. Of course, it would be wrong, naïve and—paradoxically— orientalist to find this surprising. All over the world young people are attracted by Japanese popular culture, so why should young Kuwaitis be different? Kuwait is a ‘normal’ country in terms of Internet access and communication, and by far the largest part of Japanese culture is not concerned with censorship.

Introduction    5 While in the past, ‘Westernized’ Kuwaitis went most typically to a Western country to study, today young people can get ‘globalized’ on their own, mainly through the Internet. Most will approach both American and Japanese mass culture. However, because of the individual way in which the Internet functions as a medium, many people will mix their own cocktail of globalisation and develop a subculture that is opposed to consumer culture. Globalisation through the Internet functions in a very personal way since they receive new ideas from foreign online friends. In the final chapter of this part, M. Selim Yavuz develops the theme of ‘regionalism’ in Reight Mardy Tykes: Northernness, Peaceville Three, and Death/Doom Music World’. After the extreme turn of late 1980s and early 1990s of metal music, three northern England-based bands—My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost from Bradford, and Anathema from Liverpool, commonly referred to as ‘the Peaceville Three’—went on to pioneer the musical style which came to be known as death/ doom. The mid-1990s saw these bands’ shift into a more gothic rock-influenced sound. This Paradise Lost-led shift gave birth to the style gothic/doom. Around this deviation, these bands also started to employ a different sense, or rather a sense, of locality in their music: Paradise Lost started calling themselves a Yorkshire band, instead of specifically Bradford; Anathema shot a video for their 1995 song ‘The Silent Enigma’ in Saddleworth Moor (historically part of West Riding of Yorkshire) in Manchester; and later, My Dying Bride became more and more ingrained in the Goth culture of Whitby, including releasing an extended play titled The Barghest o’ Whitby (2011), a Dracula-inspired trail guide, and frequently appearing in festivals in Whitby. Yavuz’s extensive ethnographic research with both musicians and fans interrogates the involvement of the North of England in the making and perception of gothic/doom. Applying Michel de Certau’s idea stating that ‘every story is a spacial practice’ within the context of northern England landscape, gothic/doom metal style emerges as an act of northernness. Yavuz discusses how this act is performed within these bands’ oeuvre and how it is perceived from the listener perspective using interviews with people from around the world, and musicological analyses of significant songs from the repertoire of the three bands. Part 2, entitled Bodies, begins with Charlotte Dann’s chapter ‘Unwritten rules and societal norms of tattooed female bodies’. In it she argues that over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the popularity of tattooing in the United Kingdom, and a subsequent increase in tattooed female bodies. As explored by Walter (2010), key for the women of today is that they have a choice, to conform to stereotypical constructions of femininity, or resist them. However, tension lies in the ways in which these choices are already constrained by socially imposed boundaries. In exploring constructions of tattooed female bodies, a stratified sample of 14 tattooed women were interviewed, with the transcripts being analysed using a discursive–narrative approach. Reflexivity forms a key part of Dann’s analysis, as a tattooed woman, with some of the insider– outsider intersections informing the analysis. Here, the discourse of unwritten rules and social norms is explored, with a specific focus on how tattooed women construct ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ choices in respect to the tattoos they and others get,

6    Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen the expectation and the normalisation of the pain of getting and having a tattoo, and finally, the generational difference in respect to how tattoos are accepted and understood. Chapter 7, ‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’: Tattoo Collecting, Gender, and Self-Expression’ by Beverly Yuen Thompson continues the focus on women and tattoos, and demonstrates the continued significance of female tattooed bodies to the discourses around alternativity and gender. Yuen Thompson argues that the act of becoming ‘heavily tattooed’, with its historical association with deviant subcultures, continues to carry a social stigma and evoke negative sanctions. This is especially so for women, who must also contend with gender norms within the highly masculinised tattoo subculture. For women, the experience of becoming heavily tattooed comes to represent an embodied resistance to normative ideals of beauty, against which the participants construct their own alternative gender and beauty philosophies. Besides gender norms, the tattoo world has specific ethos which divides the serious subcultural member from those more casually connected to it. The physical parameter of the subculture finds people gathering in tattoo studios and at tattoo conventions, as well as consuming tattoo-oriented media, such as magazines and television shows. Yuen Thompson’s study draws on in-depth interviews with 36 participants across the United States who consider themselves serious tattoo collectors. From their stories, we learn about the importance of participating in this leisure activity and how becoming heavily tattooed impacts their sense of self, gender and identity. Chapter 8, ‘The Spectacle of Russian Feminism: Questioning Visibility and the Western Gaze’ by M. Katharina Wiedlack analyses the presence of ­Russian feminists and female LGBTIQ+ activists within US-American mainstream media. In the course of a multimedia discourse analysis, she briefly raises the question of who becomes featured and how, to argue that current debates marginalise Russian queer female, trans*gender and intersex voices, compared to those of male queers. One exception to this trend is the case of the journalist and activist Masha Gessen. Together with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the protest group Pussy Riot, Gessen seems to represent Russian queers and feminists within US media. Although marginal, compared to the presence of US feminisms, especially popular culture figures such as Beyoncé Knowles-Carter or Lady Gaga, the two women become frequently featured within US-news media and beyond. Frequently, those articles, interviews and discussions of their work open up a debate, or rather comparisons, between US values and Russian values, questions of modernity, progress and civilisation. Equally often, the female Russian ­dissidents are pictured as ‘Putin’s victims’—the female versions of David fighting against Goliath—by focussing especially on their physical vulnerability and their female bodies. In this vain, feminism is constructed as inherently ‘western’, while the bodies that carry out such f­ eminisms and most of all their country of origin is entirely ‘othered’. Comparing the (self-)representations to other voices of female Russian dissent within US-media, Wiedlack critically discusses the western gaze of US mainstream media, its victimising strategies, and homonationalistic construction of US-identity and US-nation in rejection of a ‘backward’ homophobic Russia. Most importantly, by highlighting Russian feminists such as the author

Introduction    7 and graphic novelist Anya Ulinich or graphic journalist Victoria Lomasko, and their work within the US context, Wiedlack draws attention to the possibility of alternative discourse on the issue of Russian homophobia, misogyny and sexism, that is possibly more critical to contemporary US-culture and more willing to recognise the agency of female and gender*queer Russian dissidents. Chapter 9, ‘Out of Time: Anohni and transgendered/transage transgression’ is by Abigail Gardner. Anohni is a transgender musician whose recent 2016 and 2017 musical work and artistic collaborations emphasise intersectionality and feminism’s relationship with ecology. This chapter uses the music videos for Hopelessness and Paradise as a springboard from which to argue the complexity of transgressive potential in relation to ageing and ‘othered’ femininities. All except one of the videos use a similar method of inserting Anohni’s transgendered voice into the mouths of Black, ageing, non-normative women in what Gardner argues is a strategy of displacement that doubles up the transgressive potential of Anohni’s work. Gardner argues that Anohni upsets a singular subjectivity through this process and also, if we think of her voice and its vocalisation as being somehow out of sync, in so far as it is displaced, then her work also prioritises a sense of being ‘out of time’. The chapter works primarily with two of Judith Halberstam’s concepts from her 2005 writing on ‘Queer temporality’ where she argues for the concept of a ‘queer time’ that lies beyond the logics of heteronormative and capitalist temporal certitude and trajectory and for the ‘patina of transgression’ (p.19) that transgendered bodies suggest. It formulates how the audio-visual contributions of one transgendered artist ushers into popular culture versions of liminal and flexible subjectivities in relation to gender and age that also encompass race and sexuality. This is a lot to deal with but it uses O’Grady’s work on miscegenation ‘When Margins become Centers’ (CCVA exhibition, 10/2015–01/2016) and work on TimeSpace and ageing (Baars, 2012; Hawkins, 2016; May & Thrift, 2001; Moglen, 2008) to ask questions about the transgressive potential of both transgendered voices and of ageing bodies, whose presence is emblematic of a ‘queer time’ (p.4), a kind of temporality that is ‘wilfully eccentric’ (p.1) and subject to a non-normative life-course. In ‘Irrational perspectives and untenable positions: Sociology, “mental illness” and ‘disability’ Kay Inckle critically examines the relationship between sociology and the identities/experiences of disability and ‘mental illness’ (referred to throughout as distress). Inckle argues that despite sociology having an ethos of social justice and frequently producing critical accounts of inequalities—such as anti-racism and gender equality—it nonetheless uncritically reiterates the marginalisation of disability and distress. As such, sociology not only reflects the increasing ‘medicalisation of everyday life’ and shores up the essentialist discourses of genetics and neuroscience, but it also consigns research and knowledge production about disability and distress to the medical sciences. She challenges these sociological conventions and highlight the ways in which both disability and distress are socially structured, embodied experiences. Inckle also argues that a sociological account of distress and disability are important not only in and of themselves, but also because they highlight the ways and means to challenge

8    Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen essentialism, inequality and the ever-narrowing definition of what is considered a normal or acceptable part of human experience. Furthermore, vibrant streams of user-led research, activism and practice-interventions—resulting in widespread social, legal and identity transformations—have emerged from the experiences of disability and distress. These user-led perspectives highlight the importance and potential of knowledge produced from the margins, not only for those experiencing disability and/or distress but also for the ways in which we perceive, theorise and research the social world more broadly. Part III, Spaces, begins with ‘Ageing alternative women: Discourses of authenticity, resistance and “coolness”’ by Samantha Holland. Like Winge, Holland examines issues about authenticity which remains a key issue in any study of subcultures or groups who define themselves as alternative. She draws on three stages of data collection, spanning almost two decades, with a group of ageing ‘alternative’ women, interviewed in the late 1990s, 2010 and 2018. Holland asked the women how they felt about ageing, what had changed for them, and how they viewed their own alternativity and authenticity; in the context of older alternative women facing double marginalisation, within and outside the subculture. The participants placed themselves as being still authentic because of subcultural capital they had amassed when younger, with people they termed as part-timers, newbies, tourists and weekenders existing on the periphery and at the margins. How did they measure their place in the hierarchy, and whose hierarchy is it? Holland’s chapter asks about the space allowed for ageing women in subcultures, and how the women themselves respond to the narrowing options facing them. Chapter 12, ‘Girls to the front! Gender and alternative spaces’ by Laura Way discusses that for some, gender remains a mechanism of marginalisation within mainstream popular culture because of expectations concerning what femininity and masculinity entail. This marginalisation refers both broadly to the way girls/ women are marginalised as well as the marginalisation of those boys/men who fail to conform to societal gendered expectations. If alternativity is synonymous with resistance to this mainstream popular culture it would be logical to then assume that alternative spaces could provide opportunities for pursuing alternative understandings of gender. But to what extent does empirical work support this proposition? Are alternative spaces created or used in ways which envision gender differently to hegemonic discourses concerning femininity/masculinity? Or do normative gendered beliefs and practices prevail? This chapter critically explores these questions through a number of alternative spaces, drawing out key themes and emerging gaps. This exploration will take the subcultural work of the BCCCS as its starting point, acknowledging the limitations of such work in theorising gender within alternative spaces, before exploring what empirical work across a number of subcultural spaces ‘offers’ in relation to gender. Before concluding, the chapter more briefly, considers a relatively more recent consideration of online alternative spaces. Chapter 13, ‘In the land of grey and pink”*: Popular music alternativity in the lived and imagined city of Canterbury 2017’, Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman reflect on their study on popular music scenes and the cultural economy of

Introduction    9 the heritage city of Canterbury, UK. Drawing on our ethnographic fieldwork, particularly observations and interviews with music artists and cultural intermediates (Bourdieu, 1983), they explore the alternativity within the contemporary meaning of the so-called ‘Canterbury Sound’. In the 1960s and 1970s, the terms ‘Canterbury scene’ and ‘Canterbury sound’ were used to refer to psychedelic and progressive rock styles developed by artists such as Caravan and Soft Machine (Bennett, 2002). The authors argue that the ‘legacies’ of these aesthetic approaches to rock music are significant to the local cultural heritage and are the engine for formulating an ‘imagined’, mythologised Canterbury: a source of cultural continuity and inspiration for creating new music. While exploring the ‘legacies’ of the Canterbury psychedelic sound, they focus on contemporary developments in local music scenes and the ways through which they take part in cultural practices. This chapter puts an emphasis on the argument that Canterbury is interpreted by musicians as both metaphor and alternative ‘micro music’ scene reality (Slobin, 1992): it has created a symbolic space whose ‘aura’ (Benjamin, 1999) shapes music identities in the struggle for attaining artistic distinctiveness and legitimacy. The final chapter is the Conclusion, ‘Making sense of alternativity in leisure and culture: Back to subculture?’ by Karl Spracklen who asks, what does it mean to be alternative? What is alternativity, and how does it relate to other attempts to make sense of those on the margins? In the first part of this chapter, Spracklen maps a history and philosophy of alternativity, from deviance through subcultures to neo-tribes. This will focus partly on popular notions of alternativity, and partly on academic attempts to understand it in various disciplines and subject fields. In the second part of the chapter, he focuses on how alternativity has been explored in two specific subject fields—leisure studies and popular cultural studies—to make the claim that both subject fields have failed through different means to get to groups with the idea of the alternative: leisure studies have failed through a lack of theory, and cultural studies has failed through a lack of empirical research. In the final part of the chapter, Spracklen attempts to reconcile leisure and culture, and sketches out a new theory and empirical programme of alternative leisure that returns to the idea of subculture as counterculture. Several chapters echo others, with themes recurring or analyses being developed differently by different authors. The chapters can be approached individually, as well as collectively as part of a broader narrative. Either way, the chapters function as an opening to further scholarship in the area of alternativity and marginalisation.

Note *The title contains a reference to Caravan’s (1971) album In the Land of Grey and Pink (Deram Records).

10    Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen

References Bennett, A. (2000). Popular Music and youth culture: Music, identity and place. New York: Macmillan. Blackman, S. (2007). “Hidden Ethnography”: Crossing Emotional Borders in Qualitative Accounts of Young People’s Lives. Sociology, 41(4), 699–716. Cohen, S. (1991). Rock culture in Liverpool: Popular music in the making. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hodkinson, P. (2002). Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture. Oxford: Berg. Holland, S. (2004). Alternative Femininities: Body, Age and Identity. Oxford: Berg. Rojek, C. (2000). Leisure and culture. London: Sage. Rojek, C. (2010). The labour of leisure. London: Sage. Spracklen, K. (2014). There is (almost) no alternative: The slow ‘heat death’ of music subcultures and the instrumentalization of contemporary leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 17(3), 252–266. Yuen Thompson, B. (2015). Covered In Ink: Tattoos, Women, and the Politics of the Body. New York: New York University Press. Winge, T. M. (2012.) Body Style. London: Berg.

Part I Subcultures

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Chapter 1

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions? Investigating Virtually Constructed Fashion Subcultures Therèsa M. Winge Abstract In May 2016, Aleks Eror’s op-ed article ‘Dear fashion industry: Stop making up bogus subcultures’ on the HighSnobiety website accuses the fashion industry of creating ‘quasi-subcultures’, such as Normcore, Seapunk and Health Goth to promote specific fashion trends via the Internet. Eror argues that these fashion subcultures do not exist in resistance to mainstream culture (as he understands subcultures), but instead offer the specific fashions and their designers cache for being associated with a counterculture and connecting with alternative trends. Setting aside Eror’s narrow understanding of subcultures, he raises questions of authenticity and the current state of virtual fashion subcultures. Still, there is evidence of these subcultures online and growing in substantial numbers regardless of their inception. Furthermore, persons identifying themselves with these groups practice alternativity, which delineates their scenes, artefacts, and practices from those of mainstream Western society. I pursue questions of authenticity regarding these recent fashion subcultures who appear to emerge in close proximity to the launch of specific fashions. The author explores the ways in which these fashion subcultural experiences differ from known subcultures. The author investigates notions of constructed resistance and perceived alternativity and marginalisation, as well as how that positionality manifests into a fashion subculture identity. Keywords: Dress; street style; subculture; Seapunk; Normcore; Health Goth

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 13–26 Copyright © 2018 by Therèsa M. Winge All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181003

14    Therèsa M. Winge During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Internet was readily available to the public. Accordingly, many subcultures were present on the Internet, but not necessarily originating online or classified as cybercultures. For example, in the late twentieth century, Modern Primitives and Cosplayers used the Internet and social media as modes of communication for disseminating information about the subcultures. Therefore, it is a natural progression to find twenty-first century subcultures emerging from online sources or being directly tied to the Internet for essential elements of the group. There is evidence of subcultures’ evolution from online and offline sources. Furthermore, persons identifying themselves with these groups practice alternativity, which delineates their scenes, artefacts, and practices from those of mainstream Western society. In May 2016, Aleks Eror’s op-ed article, ‘Dear fashion industry: Stop making up bogus subcultures’, on the HighSnobiety online lifestyle news site accuses the fashion industry of creating ‘quasi-subcultures’ such as Normcore, Seapunk and Health Goth to promote specific fashion trends via the Internet. Eror argues that these fashion subcultures do not exist in resistance to mainstream culture (as he understands subcultures), but instead offer the specific fashions, and their designers, cache for being associated with a counterculture and connecting with alternative trends. Setting aside Eror’s narrow understanding of subcultures, he raises questions of authenticity and the current state of online subcultures. In this chapter, questions of authenticity are explored regarding these recent fashion subcultures that appear to emerge in close proximity to the launch of specific fashions. I also explore the ways in which these online fashion subcultural experiences differ from known subcultures. I investigate notions of constructed resistance and perceived alternativity and marginalisation drawing specific examples from Seapunk, Normcore and Health Goth subcultures, as well as how that positionality manifests into a fashion subculture identity.

Subcultures Earlier scholars of subculture speculated on the reasons why these groups were formed and attempted to understand their activities, particularly those that deviated from mainstream society. Over time their theories have become canon despite the dynamic ways that continually morph mainstream societies and globalisation impact countercultures or subcultures. Editors and scholars, David Muggleton and Rupert ­Weinzierl (2004), gather diverse subcultural research in The Post-Subcultures Reader, which offers new ways of understanding subcultures that exist as not always in opposition but in alternativity to mainstream culture/society. Contemporary research about subcultures extends and at times contradicts the Chicago School and Birmingham Centre (The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) (Williams, 2011, p. 6–7). Current subcultures are reflexive to the changing mainstream culture and are significantly impacted by globalisation and technology in greater ways than past subcultures. Contrary to the fixed descriptions of subcultures, the fluidity in subcultural groups parallels mainstream global cultures. Subcultures are complicated and difficult to describe with their complexities, intradynamics and contradictions. Moreover, internal and external factors contribute to the motivations driving a subculture in directions of alternativity and resistance, often in reaction to perceived marginalisation.

Part I Subcultures

16    Therèsa M. Winge Adding to the complexities of time for online subcultures is how posts (texts and images) and other digital content will remain online forever, which has intertwined drawbacks and benefits. Online subcultures post images, texts, tweets, videos etc., which are viewable by anyone regardless of subcultural affiliation. Regardless of the subculture archives, the subculture’s online content never goes away completely. While this permanence is not afforded to most subcultures, online subcultures’ existence persists long after the subculture dissipates. Whether archived or resulting from a random search, even the most insignificant and temporary subcultures potentially remain relevant and inspirational. Online subcultures primarily communicate through asynchronous streams of consciousness. Despite the disconnected interactions, the online platforms facilitate building virtual communities that strengthen the subculture overall. Their sociotechnical experiences generate shared commonalities and even encourage interactions of play and creativity, which may lead to innovations for the subculture. Subcultures or cybercultures that emerge entirely or almost entirely online are a more recent incarnation but increasing in numbers. Online subcultures tend to have two types of existences: 1) entirely online without in-person physical interactions, or 2) both online and in-person interactions between subculture members. Both types weave aspects of the online and real world together, because the real world will always bleed and be carried into the virtual. Subsequently, online subcultures, regardless of level of emersion, live intertwined existences in both the real and virtual worlds. For example, the first type of online subculture includes groups created in the Second Life, World of Warcraft or Sims videogames. These subcultures require an online avatar or identity to interact with other members and conduct subcultural activities while in the game. When participating in the subculture there is a deep level of immersion into the virtual world for the subculture member. Seapunk, Normcore and Health Goth subcultures are examples of the second type of online subcultures as members carry specific but common subcultural tropes into their physical, real-world existences. These subcultures negotiate between their physical identities versus online identities where they are determinant in both. While each of these online subcultures is distinct, they share commonalities in their use of social media and online identities.

Seapunk The Seapunk subculture and subsequent fringe art movement is closely associated with aquatic hues, styles and imagery. The subculture draws on imagery reminiscent of the 1990s tropes in their fashions, styles, music and videos set in low-quality water-themed backgrounds posted on social media platforms. On 1 June 2011, the Brooklyn DJ Lil’ Internet (Julian Foxworth) posted a brief synopsis of a dream he had on Twitter: ‘Seapunk leather jacket with barnacles where the studs used to be.’ This tweet is commonly credited with naming the subculture (Stehlik, 2012). In January 2012, Miles Raymer interviewed Shan ‘Zombelle’ Beaste and Albert ‘Ultrademon’ Redwine for the online article ‘The Week Seapunk Broke’ about the emerging Seapunk subculture (2012).

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?    17 Due to the significance of music and music videos to the Seapunk subculture, the online subculture launched a music scene and record label – Coral Records Internazionale (Raymer, 2012). According to The Guardian’s journalist Alexis Petridis, Zombelle announced in a tweet that the Seapunk movement is dead (Petridis, 2014); however, closer examination of her post suggests that she is remarking about co-opting of subcultural aesthetics without the ideology (@zombelle_, 2012). Drawing on the Seapunk subcultural aesthetics, on 10 November 2012, performer/entertainer Rihanna performed her song Diamonds on Saturday Night Live in front of a green screen featuring Seapunk imagery (Perpetua, 2012). Then, on 12 November 2012, rapper Azealia Banks’ Atlantis song and video drew heavily from Seapunk imagery and themes; the video was released to multiple online sources (Hawkins, 2016). The online feedback from Seapunk enthusiasts was overwhelmingly negative towards Rihanna and Banks, stating that they borrowed imagery and themes without being part of the subculture (Perpetua, 2012). In 2012, the fashion house Proenza Schouler (designers: Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez) released the animated video Desert Tide (2012) featuring Seapunk fashions and thematic elements to celebrate and advertise the launch of a new store. Their 2013 Spring fashion design collection was inspired by the Internet and included Seapunk themes, such as collage digital prints and aquatic hued fabrics (Sidell, 2012). In addition, Givenchy and Versace incorporated Seapunk elements into their individual fashion designs (Sidell, 2012). These fashion companies recognised the potential to co-opt subcultural styles and turn these fashions into revenue for themselves. An analysis of the online information for the Seapunk subculture reveals that it was spawned in reaction to mainstream culture becoming hypersaturated with overpolished imagery that seduce and compel the viewer into a tranquil state. Instead, Seapunks create a premeditated nostalgic dreamscape with jumping dolphins, moving water and variegated soft hues that soothe the viewer. The resulting fashions are both futuristic and retro, combining digital prints on clothing worn with John Lennon round (sun)glasses, and pale blues and greens dyed hair with soft waves and curls.

Normcore Normcore (a blend of normal + hardcore) is a subculture that circulates around the fashion style of wearing casual dress that purposely does not draw undue attention to the wearer (Friedman, 2014). Normcore is ‘stylised blandness’ (Friedman, 2014), where dress is not distinctive, colourful, or body contouring. Instead, the clothing appropriately fits the body and is suitable for the environment where/ when it is worn. While the term ‘normcore’ was first used in the Templar, Arizona webcomic in 2009, K-Hole, a New York trend-forecasting group, utilised the term in association with a fashion style in the 2013 report titled Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom (Tschorn, 2014). ‘Normcore’ gained worldwide legitimacy and was co-opted when the term was added to the Associated Press Stylebook in 2016 (Associated

18    Therèsa M. Winge Press, 2016). Subsequently, ‘Normcore’ quickly became the name adopted for this fashion-driven subculture. Normcore went viral (became an online sensation) with the assistance of individuals who identified with the movement/subculture’s images posted to Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook. These social media platforms were deployed to introduce, exchange and facilitate visual communications for the subculture. While the development of Normcore is to some degree a reaction to and rejection of the heavily brand-saturated fashion landscape, subculture members’ subtle use of brands within the prescribed dress code for the subculture is appreciated (and quietly encouraged). The subculture’s nostalgia for the 1990s is evident in the references to fashions associated with some of the male conservative middleclass dress from the TV comedy series Seinfeld (Duncan, 2014). Normcore is a conscious dressing decision, which includes indistinct articles of clothing, such as a mainstream middle-class father’s baseball cap, khakis and t-shirt, but may display prestigious brand labels. Normcore aesthetics are met by brands from all price ranges and combinations of categories, from GAP, Nike, L.L. Bean, Everlane to Dior. Viewing and being viewed as a member of the group rather than distinct individuals reinforce the Normcore subculture’s ideology. The members of the subculture actively blend into the crowd and group activities, but have the potential for individuality online (i.e., selfies and posts). In this way, the subculture has a seemingly opposing identity, which is not resolved but also not self-contradictory.

Health Goth The origin of Health Goth is credited to Chris Cantino, Mike Grabarek and Jeremy Scott (Petty, 2014). In 2013, Mike Grabarek and Jeremy Scott from Portland, Oregon, who were also underground musicians in the band Magic Fades, created the Health Goth Facebook page (Erbentraut, 2014). Chris Cantino is a video artist who worked with Grabarek and Scott to create Magic Fades videos (Harper, 2017). Later, Johnny Love, a Chicago DJ, established healthgoth.com, which includes a store, press page, blog and the Health Goth Bible. The Health Goth Facebook page features futuristic exotic imagery and videos, and is still managed by Grabarek and Scott. Although Health Goth is not necessarily Goths who like to exercise, the subculture is attracted to an athletic lifestyle and nutritional diet and the Goth subcultural aesthetic (Brillson, 2014). Health Goth’s aesthetic is mostly monochromatic; clothing and accessories tend to be black with white or grey accents. They wear standard athletic brands but gravitate towards dark and high-tech products, such as Nike ACG boots (black), Converse Chuck Taylor All Star high-tops (black with white accents) and Carhartt WIP Razor t-shirt (black with white graphics) as well as using 3M reflective tape for safety and futuristic styling. For Autumn/Winter 2014, Nasir Mazhir and Alexander Wang for H&M individually released Health Goth-inspired fashion collections.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?    19 Inspiring the subculture’s aesthetics, Grabarek and Scott stated that Health Goth is about ‘sadness… and sportiness’ (Davis, 2014). healthgoth.com also offers primarily black apparel featuring white graphics stating ‘DEAD WORLDWIDE’ and ‘DEAD INSIDE’; some merchandise includes redesigns of athletic companies’ logos, such as ‘DEAD’ written over the Nike swoosh and ‘sad’ replacing ‘adidas’ under the adidas tri-leaf graphic (healthgoth.com; Love, 2017). In addition, subculture members scour the Internet for apparel that meets or, with slight modifications, reflects the Health Goth aesthetic. Similar to Normcore, Health Goth also became an Internet sensation, which encouraged athletic brands to feature more sportswear that targeted the subculture with their desired aesthetic. Despite the media references to Health Goth being a fashion subculture, the Health Goth Bible on healthgoth.com focuses on having a healthy body and lifestyle with only one tenet jokingly referencing Goth dress (i.e., leather harness). Still, since ‘dress’ (and appearance) incorporates all body modifications and supplements, the subculture supports members considering all aspects of their dress and even how their body’s shape and fitness impacts their clothing (see Eicher & Roach-Higgins, 1992).

Subcultural Authenticity and Post-Authenticity Online subculture shares many similarities, such as authenticity, marginalisation, resistance and subcultural identity, with other types of real-world subcultures. Still, the online spaces/scenes define these subcultures in distinctive ways from mainstream society. Furthermore, these subcultural scenes created highly constructed virtual spaces in ways unique from subcultures without similar online presences. Consequently, online subcultures are met with questions about authenticity from ubiquitously constructed resistance and perceived alternativity and marginalisation from the mainstream culture. The authenticity of online fashion subcultures is questioned because of how the fashions appear to be artificial, contrived and/or superficial in order to market trends and related lifestyles. These questions of authenticity led to derision of these subcultures from outsiders, which result in online outcries from individual subculture members. According to the K-Hole report: ‘Normcore capitalises on the possibility of misinterpretation as an opportunity for connection – not as a threat to authenticity’ (K-Hole, 2013, p. 33). This is an intriguing statement to make about a subculture; Normcore does neither challenge nor resist others’ legitimacy. I argue that this in itself is authentic, as the subculture stands apart while offering the chance of inclusion to its members. Spawning from discussions of the authenticity of online subcultures is a new term being circulated: ‘post-authenticity’. What is post-authenticity in the context of online subcultures? Bruce Springsteen (2012) gave a keynote speech at the SXSW (South by Southwest) music and film festivals, where he announced: We live in a post-authentic world. And today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights

20    Therèsa M. Winge go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history; and at the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that still matters. (Springsteen via Speakola, 2012) The term ‘post-authenticity’ suggests a new direction for authenticity, and/ or authenticity understood within a postmodern world, where individuals have fragmented identities. I argue that authenticity, however, is not fixed but instead is individually negotiated in the context of multiple sites and values. An external evaluator commonly determines authenticity. While Springsteen speaks with regards to changes happening in music, he echoes a theme in the zeitgeist perpetuated by the mass media, that ‘authenticity is a house of mirrors’, but are we truly in a time of post-authenticity? Currently, there is a lack of understanding for the label of ‘post-authenticity’; its use appears to be an attempt to describe a new entity that lacks description using current tropes. In other words, Springsteen and the media are expressing an inability to evaluate the world using past measures of genuineness and authenticity, but that inability does not mean these entities are necessarily ‘post-authentic’. The online subcultures discussed here have the ‘post-authenticity’ label thrust on them by mass and alternative media, which in turns leads the subculture members acknowledging this tag as a descriptor of their respective movements. This is problematic because this label does not move us towards a better understanding for arts and subcultural movements in and in common resistance to the current culture, most of which incorporate online components. Furthermore, deeming something ‘post-authentic’ negates the influence and genuineness of the subculture. Assumptions about authenticity lead outsiders to assume that subcultures that do not fit previous models lack criteria for establishing authenticity and are thus fake or invalid. The Normcore subculture members, for example, seek to be indistinguishable from one another and the mainstream general public but share their subcultural presence online, which is novel but not necessarily post-authentic. Accordingly, the K-Hole report notes: ‘Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness’ (K-Hole, 2013, p. 28). It seems most online subcultures are being labelled as ‘post-authentic’ or exhibiting ‘post-authenticity’. ‘Post-authenticity’ is the new buzzword with subcultural cache; however, the label lacks both the understanding for subcultural marginalisation and alternativity of the members when hoisted on subcultures by mainstream society. Online subcultural identities are readable by anyone with an Internet connection, which encourages assumptions of universal human experiences. Subsequently, online subcultures are likely to be superficially read or misunderstood by non-members.

Subcultural Identity Historically, marginalisation and alternativity have been intrinsically connected and intertwined with subcultural identity. Marginalisation demarcates the

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?    21 position of the ‘alternative’ or ‘subculture’ within their local or global (in the case of online subcultures) culture and society. Accordingly, postmodernism asserts that individual subcultural people have disjointed existences and common resistance to being defined or labelled, further suggesting alienation and marginalisation from the mainstream (Appignanesi & Bennington, 1989; Lyotard, 1979). Alternativity emerges as a reaction and, at times, a characterisation defining those subcultural geographies, scenes, activities and material cultures, originating from a mutual resistance to the mainstream tropes. Since there is not a single mainstream culture, there is not a holistic counterculture or subculture. Instead, there are multiple reads of each mainstream culture, which result in groups that adopt, react and/or reject their understanding of what is mainstream. For some individuals this positionality manifests into a fashion subculture identity, which may find a sense of belonging within an existing subculture or create a new subculture with the same ideology. Naming is a significant phase in belonging to and establishing of an identity. Most names of subcultures emerge over time, and are rarely established by subcultures entirely. Normcore, for example, appears to be named by K-Hole, a trend-forecasting group (K-Hole, 2012). Still, these online subcultures assume the labels and names given by outsiders but further identify themselves with the use of keywords, hashtags, etc., which asserts self-determination and identity. Subcultures construct the group’s collective identity with technology, ideology, activities, language, scenes and dress. Online subcultures follow similar patterns but with distinct additions regarding the ways in which the Internet provides exposure and access not afforded by non-online subcultures. Subsequently, response times are quickened on the Internet, which means the subculture will rapidly find its identity via reactions to external stimuli. Similar to other types of subcultures, online subcultures will quickly dissipate if they cannot remain a dynamic, highly responsive system. In addition, online subcultural ideologies offer alternative values from which members reinterpret their social worlds. With each online interaction, these subculture members reinforce the subculture’s identity and participate in ­community-building within the subculture. A self-motivated community that reflects and promotes the subculture’s ideology and identity will sustain the subculture outside of the mainstream. The media promotes Seapunks, Normcore and Health Goth subcultures in spaces/scenes outside of mainstream society. Even though Normcore members pursue appearances that are indistinguishable from others, this pursuit suggests marginalisation and alternativity. Their desire to belong (to the subculture) by blending or fading into the crowd or masses suggests that the members did not have a sense of belonging prior to finding Normcore. Furthermore, Normcore alternativity looks like sameness, but the reasoning behind the purposeful aesthetics creates and sustains this unique positionality. Alexis Petridis (2014), journalist for The Guardian, suggests, ‘online subcultures seem to come cloaked in layers of knowing irony’. This is most evident in Seapunk and Seapunk-inspired videos that resemble surreal and low-quality versions of 1990s-era Windows screensavers (Hawkins, 2016). The themes of these videos, especially those of Seapunk, reflect the ironic position of the subculture

22    Therèsa M. Winge juxtaposed with mainstream society by drawing on cliché imagery to visually communicate nostalgia with heavy doses of alternativity. Marginalisation is something that typically subculture members claim about their positions in mainstream society; however, online subcultures sit in a perceived ‘safe’ space from which they delineate us versus them, avoiding the faceto-face ways in which in-person subcultures are challenged by outsiders. Online subcultures retain designated gatekeepers for practical and aesthetic (and material culture) reasons. While those who originate the accounts (i.e., stakeholders or founders) typically execute practical considerations with which the members interact and gain (or are denied) access, aesthetic and material culture considerations are used to control the subculture by admitting or prohibiting posting for online subcultures. Accordingly, Grabarek and Scott stated, ‘We love when people send us images, but we don’t just post anything, or automatically sanction media that is tagged “health goth”’ (Neugebauer, 2014). Most subcultures strive for more egalitarian or at least loose social structures without designated leaders. While the gatekeepers for online subcultures, however, serve a necessary function, they also establish a hierarchy with themselves at the top. Not only do the gatekeepers guard the access points but they also lead by example, which presents significant limitations for the subculture. For example, if the gatekeepers lose interest in the subculture, move on to another subculture, or decide to take the subculture in a new direction, this change in gatekeepers can have dire consequences for current members. Subculture members also have the means to impact the subculture. Online subcultures are hyper-reflexive as they are constantly adjusting themselves to create a stylised view in the camera lens/screen, which is followed by viewing and reviewing by themselves online. While this reflexivity appears superficial, it is not dissimilar to the way identity formation and self-recognition takes place. Moreover, positive or negative comments/critiques from viewers online result in subculture members changing their behaviours and dress. Gregory Stone’s Program and Review theory (1962) suggests that individuals program their dress and change that program according to feedback/reviews that validates or rejects their choices. Stone neglected to account for significance of the review from peer group versus outsider. Trolls,1 for example, play significant roles for online subcultures, offering resistance and/or unwanted critiques, which may or may not in turn affect the online subculture’s actions.

Sartorially Subcultural Dress can visually distinguish subcultures from mainstream society, and it is the clothing and images of these appearances that remain to define subcultures long after the subcultures disappear. Dress functions as non-verbal communication, which is readable by members and non-members with distinct interpretations by each. Furthermore, each subculture develops a visual lexicon utilising dress and

1

An Internet troll is an individual who uses an Internet identity to comment online in order to provoke and encourage arguments or issues.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?    23 appearance, which is key to establishing individual subcultural identity. Subcultures consistently have unwritten but communicated guidelines for dress (Winge, 2017) but are rarely so clearly delineated as with online subcultures through the use of posted images and text, which differentiate prescribed and proscribed dress for its members. Sartorial experiences are paramount for these online subcultures, which are no less genuine or subcultural. Seapunk and Health Goth’s dress distinguishes themselves and communicate their alternative positionality, as opposed to Normcores who choose appearances less distinct. Subcultural sartorial experiences are not necessarily about distinction, but instead evolve with, and as, a subcultural identity. As the mainstream fashion system co-opts elements of a subculture’s dress, the group loses its alternative sartorial status because the non-member masses wear a version of it. Normcore may defy this expectation because this subculture is impacted positively by mainstream adopting their dress; that is, blending in is easier if more people are wearing similar dress. As the mainstream co-opted and commodified Seapunk, there were Seapunk-inspired fashions on runways and at retailers. At the same time, Rihanna’s musical performance that incorporated Seapunk visuals into the video playing behind her on a green screen for Saturday Night Live was reviewed negatively by both the media and the Seapunk subculture members (Perpetua, 2012). The media rejected Rihanna’s performance because they did not understand the semiotics of the visuals; the Seapunk subculture did not read her use of the visuals as authentic. The online presence of these subcultures increases the speed at which the ­co-opting process happens, which contributes to the media’s misunderstandings and labels for online subcultures. Subsequently, the online presence also gives these groups immediate visibility and self-constructed identities, which may not be available to many subcultures until noticed by the media or after years of anonymous existence. The immediacy of the Internet creates fertile ground for online subcultures to create, flourish, play, learn and, possibly dissipate just as quickly. Subcultures, of course, borrow from mainstream culture, but they also co-opt elements from other marginalised groups, especially when borrowing from past subcultures’ dress and appearances. Subcultures synthesise co-opted elements within their ideology. Health Goths, for example, co-opted and commodified Goth subcultural aesthetics (i.e., black clothing, dark hair, etc.) and combine them with mainstream health-driven ideology. The Health Goth subculture promotes consistent and aggressive exercise as a healthy lifestyle, as this quotation from the Health Goth Bible illustrates: Nothing is more healthgoth than self harming by destroying your muscles so they can rebuild themselves. (Love, 2014) Normcore is fascinating as a fashion subculture because they co-opt current clothing trends in the market to construct appearances that render themselves seemingly invisible in a fast-paced, socially demanding society. Still, they exist in contradiction because they also draw attention to themselves by posting images of their looks to various social media platforms and designated websites. They are

24    Therèsa M. Winge not about fashion as much as finding a common style to minimise any possible marginalisation. The prominence of these alternative sartorial experiences raises questions as to whether the fashion industry constructs these online subcultures in order to promote specific styles. Possibly, but it is more likely that fashionistas’ and/or change agents’ actions led to the birth of these online subcultures. In the cases of Seapunk and Health Goth subcultures, it is possible to identify the individuals who founded the subculture, and they were not specifically associated with the fashion industry at the time of the subcultures’ inceptions. Normcore, as previously discussed, assumed a name given by a trend-forecasting group who documented the subculture’s existence and style, albeit an unintentional outcome from their trend report. Furthermore, fashion subcultures are not a recent phenomenon, nor are subcultures from which spawn fashions and lifestyles. In the 1970s, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren created fashions for the band the Sex Pistols, establishing a Punk aesthetic that was available for purchase at their boutique, Sex (Easton, 2014). Eventually the Punk aesthetic was co-opted into mainstream fashion system and sold at mainstream stores such as Hot Topic. Similarly, elements of Seapunk, Normcore and Health Goth fashions/styles were co-opted and commodified by the fashion industry and marketed to mainstream consumers. Overall, the sartorial experiences of these online subcultures demonstrate the diversity possible with online subcultures. While the Normcore-desired sartorial experiences lead to comfort in the group and with oneself, the Seapunks’ preferred sartorial experiences embody nostalgia with fantastic yet calming aqua visual elements, and Health Goths’ form-fitting and functional sartorial experiences embraces the bodily experience and encompasses a healthy lifestyle.

Summary Mike Grabarek and Jeremy Scott state: I think if anything, instead of being all about teenage angst, we are trying to exude a feeling of being suspended in an ever changing internet [sic] environment, just trying to remain chill and comfortable at a time when a lot of horrible shit is happening on and offline. (Neugebauer, 2014) While the quotation is about the Health Goth subculture, it is applicable to many contemporary online subcultures, which are deemed superficial by the mass and alternative media. Online subcultures exist in resistance to mainstream societies and persons identifying themselves with these groups practice alternativity. The authenticity of the online subcultures – Seapunk, Normcore and Health Goth – is questioned because they emerge in close proximity to the launch of specific fashions and style-driven lifestyles. While some companies and brands capitalised on the emergence of these online subcultures, it is unlikely that fashion companies and brands launched these subcultures. Normcore may have acquired their name from K-Hole, but this trend-forecasting group did not create

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Dressed in Street Fashions?    25 the subculture but only documented and named the existence of their lifestyle. Seapunk and Health Goth’s aesthetics inspired fashion design collections but was not clearly linked to any one brand/company. Instead, the mass and alternative media labelled these subcultures as post-authentic, failing to recognise their genuine subcultural experiences. Nevertheless, online fashion subcultural experiences differ from in-person subcultures. Most notable is their chosen hyper-visibility on the Internet. Online subcultures notably share images of themselves online, which acknowledge the significance of their sartorial experiences. The sartorial experiences for online subcultures, such as the Seapunks, Normcores and Health Goths, define these subcultures with specific guidelines and criteria associated with the imagery posted online. Moreover, the subcultural identity emerges from members’ experiences with alternativity and marginalisation, which commonly manifest in subcultural sartorial experiences.

References Appignanesi, L., & Bennington, G. (1989). Postmodernism. London: Free Association Books. Associated Press. (2016). 2016 Associate Press Stylebook. New York, NY: Associated Press. Beaste, S. “Zombelle.” (2012, November 12). 12:01am. @zombelle_ Retrieved from https:// twitter.com/ZOMBELLE_/statuses/267899991929008129. Accessed on February 9, 2017. Brillson, L. (2014, October 24). What is Health Goth and How Do We Join? Nylon. Retrieved from https://www.nylon.com/articles/health-goth-johnny-love. Accessed on March 14, 2017. Davis, A. P. (2014). Introducing Health Goth, A New Lifestyle Trend. The Cut. Retrieved from https://www.thecut.com/2014/10/faq-do-you-know-what-health-goth-means. html. Accessed on March 14, 2017. Duncan, F. (2014, February 26). Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion. Retrieved from https://www.thecut.com/2014/02/normcore-fashiontrend.html. Accessed on March 24, 2017. Easton, S. (2014). Clothes for Heroes: The Punk Fashions of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. New York, NY: Abrams. Eicher, J. B., & Roach-Higgins, M. E. (1992). Dress and Identity. Clothing and Textiles Journal. 10(4), 1–8. Erbentraut, J. (2014). Health Goth is More Than a Fashion Trend. Healthy Living. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/17/health-goth-clothing-fitness-trend_n_ 5999482.html. Accessed on March 14, 2017. Friedman, N. (2014, March 3). Word of the Week: Normcore. Fritinancy. Retrieved from http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2014/03/word-of-the-weeknormcore.html. Accessed on February 12, 2017. Harper, A. (2017, May/June). What Health Goth Actually Means. The Cut. Retrieved from https://www.thecut.com/2014/10/faq-do-you-know-what-health-goth-means.html. Accessed on June 28, 2017. Hawkins, S. (2016). Queerness in Pop Music: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality. New York, NY: Routledge. Love, J. (2014). Health Goth Fitness Bible pdf. Retrieved from http://www.healthgoth.com/ healthgoth-fitness-bible.pdf. Accessed on May 11, 2017.

26    Therèsa M. Winge K-Hole. (2013). Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom. New York, NY: K-Hole. Lyotard, J-F. (1979). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. ( G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Muggleton, D., & Weinzierl, R. (2004). The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg. Neugebauer, T. (2014, August 24). Interview: Is Health Goth the New Street Goth? Complex. Retrieved from http://uk.complex.com/style/2014/08/is-health-goth-thenew-street-goth. Accessed on May 11, 2017. Perpetua, M. (2012, November 12). Web Artists are Furious at Rihanna and Azealia Banks. Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/web-artistsare-furious-at-rihanna-and-azealia-ban?utm_term=.hovKNL5WX#.dxVMABwlY. Accessed on February 23, 2017. Petridis, A. (2014, March 20). Youth Subcultures: What are They Now? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/20/youth-subcultures-where-have-they-gone. Accessed on May 11, 2017. Petty, F. (2014, December 30). How the Internet Became the Home of Fashion Subcultures. I-D. Retrieved from https://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/how-the-internet-became-thehome-of-fashion-subcultures Raymer, M. (2012, January 12). The Week Seapunk Broke. Chicago Reader.: Retrieved from https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/seapunk-twitter-tumblr-ultrademonzombelle-molly-soda/Content?oid=5389539. Accessed on February 23, 2017. Sidell, M. W. (2012). Seapunks Internet Trend Takes High Fashion, From Proenza Schouler to Versace. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/seapunks-internet-trend-takes-high-fashion-from-proenza-schouler-to-versace-photos Springsteen, B. (2012, March 15). Keynote speech at SXSW (South by Southwest). Speakola. Retrieved from http://speakola.com/arts/bruce-springsteen-keynotesxsw-2012. Accessed on May 17, 2017. Stehlik, L. (2012, December 14). Seapunk: Scenester In-Joke or Underground Art Movement. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/ dec/14/seapunk-has-now-gone-pop. Accessed on May 11, 2017. Stone, G. (1962). Appearance and the Self. In A. M. Rose (Ed.), Human Behaviour and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach (pp. 86–118). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Tschorn, A. (2014, March 18). Normcore is (or is it?) a Fashion Trend (or Non-Trend or Anti-Trend). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/style/la-ignormcore-20140518-story.html. Accessed on February 12, 2017. Williams, J. P. (2011). Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Winge, T. M. (2012). Body Style. Oxford: Berg. Winge, T. M. (2017). Japanese Street Style Uniforms. East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 3(1), 7–21. DOI: 10.1386/eapc.3.1.7_1.

Chapter 2

Cursed is the Fruit of thy Womb: Inversion/ Subversion and the Inscribing of Morality on Women’s Bodies in Heavy Metal Amanda DiGioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis Abstract This chapter focuses on the problematic relationship between heavy metal and gender politics. While metal may be deemed as being an ‘alternative’ subculture, metal still ‘uses’ women in the same way as ‘normal’ society. Despite the nature of metal as counterculture, women’s images and morality are often inverted but not subverted and it is this nuance that we wish to explore: for example, the use of Mary, Mother of God, in ‘Amen’ by black metal band Behemoth, where though her image is a challenge to convention, she is still ‘used’ as emblems for male political ideology. In the textuality of heavy metal music, women appear as mothers (both good and bad), fetishised whores, mother earth and sexualised virgins. Where modern open sexuality is ‘praised’, anything less so is mocked. Though this ‘praise’ may come across as positive, it is nevertheless still ascribing morality/immorality/virtue to women’s bodies in a way that is not done with men. In this discussion, we will use examples of texts from metal bands who reference women, imagery associated with band merchandise as well as comments from the performers themselves (such as Dee Snider’s approval of the lyrics of ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ being associated with the Women’s March on Washington) to investigate the place of the female body in this cultural representation. By using textual critical analysis, we show that women in metal are still having morality written on their bodies, bringing to light the debatable nature of metal being deemed as ‘alternative’ when it comes to gender. Keywords: Heavy metal; subversion; inversion; feminism; black metal; women; sexual performance; rape

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 27–42 Copyright © 2018 by Amanda DiGioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181004

28    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis Several academic literature focuses on the marginalisation of women in heavy metal music and heavy metal music subcultures. In many such depictions, women’s dress and actions are heavily policed. Scholars such as Vasan (2010), Kahn-Harris (2007), Walser (1993), Krenske and McKay (2000), Hill (2016), Spracklen (2015) and Overell (2013) have all discussed the policing of women in heavy metal music subcultures. This chapter focuses on the textuality of heavy metal music where women appear as mothers (both good and bad, as well as mother earth), fetishised whores and sexualised virgins, and modern open sexuality is often ‘praised’, while anything less so is mocked. We posit that though this ‘praise’ comes across as positive it is nevertheless still ascribing morality/immorality/virtue to women’s bodies in a way that is not done with men’s bodies. While metal may be deemed as being an ‘alternative’ subculture, metal still ‘uses’ women in the same way as mainstream society – inherently policing women’s bodies, morality, gender expression and corporal styling. The inversion/ subversion of the title is our exploration of the rebellious stance of metal in which an alternative lifestyle is claimed. In this chapter, we shall discuss whether metal actually is subversive in its way of displaying women or whether, because women are still used as totems of morality, the most we get is an inversion of convention. First, then, let us be clear about the notion of subversion – to subvert is to overturn or overthrow a system (if going to the Latin, subversion happens from the foundation up, or ‘trickle-up’ as Hebdige called it, referring specifically to subcultures (Hebdige, 1979).1 The standard forms or systems are undone by subversion. We therefore are making a distinction between inversion of morality – good is bad, bad is good – and subversion which would genuinely recast the ideas of good and bad and create a new framework for judgement. We shall have this discussion via the use of textual criticism on the lyrics of metal songs. Much of the metal studies on women has focussed on wider sociological data. We shall focus on metal texts, for the purposes of this chapter defined as full song lyrics. This will be elaborated below.

Current Research on Women in Metal Metal music is not inherently masculine, although the interpretations of women in textuality are arguably so. ‘Masculine pleasure? Women’s encounters with hard rock and metal music’ by Rosemary Lucy Hill, found in Global metal music and culture (Hill, 2016, p. 277), is an excellent contribution to gender in heavy metal being unpacked in academia. Hill prioritises the experience of women fans of heavy metal music and examines how women discuss the pleasure they derive from their favourite bands (Hill, 2016). Hill goes on to say that Common sense understandings of hard rock and metal as masculine owe much to the way in which certain sounds are construed as

1

Our discussion of subversion is based on the work of Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu and Julia Kristeva where subversion is deliberately constructive of something new or a literal or cognitive undoing of the conventions – linguistic, sexual or political.

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    29 ‘masculine’. However it is important to remember that ‘masculine’ sounds are only ‘masculine’ because they have been understood as such: they have no inherent masculine qualities. (p. 242) Hill’s contribution to the field is significant here, as she challenges the orthodoxy surrounding metal as being deemed ‘masculine’, and encourages that definition to be re-defined. So, we are not disputing that women are a present, vocal, living, playing and writing part of metal culture and the place of women is not the discussion we wish to have. Scholarship by Rosemary Lucy Hill (2016), Laura Wright (2015), Gabby Riches (2015) and others on how women participate in metal and the problems therein, have ably discussed those issues. This chapter focuses on the imagery of women in metal’s textual culture, starting here with lyrics. Hegemonic masculinity and ‘race’ also takes the front stage in regards to depiction of women in metal music as Karl Spracklen discusses in ‘To Holmgard … and beyond’ … folk metal fantasies and hegemonic masculinities’. Spracklen argues that folk metal and heavy metal remain problematic intersectional leisure spaces for the construction of gendered and racialised identities (Spracklen, 2015, p. 360). This spills over to the metal music scene in general, in which Spracklen (2015) observes that We still live in the heteronormative gender order in the global North and in heavy metal, where women musicians are expected to dress in short skirts and look pretty, and where sexism and misogyny are normalized codes of rhetoric even where sub-genres of metal might challenge those codes. (p. 373) In short, Spracklen (2015) argues that folk metal shows that certain types of folk metal reinforce problematic racial hierarchies through hegemonic performative masculinity, while simultaneously showing women and people of colour their place in European society (p. 374). Through the lens of metal texts it can be argued that the overwhelming place of women in heavy metal seems to have morality written on their bodies, and by this, it is morality transcribed by men. By this we mean, essentially women’s bodies still remain vessels for men’s desires, whether those desires be sexual, political, religious or other social constructions or beliefs. This is not a subversion of gender or gender expectations: instead, it is an inversion. The politicisation and co-option of women’s bodies is found in both the mainstream and in the ‘alternative’ scene of metal music. Indeed, recently, metal music artists have been joining and supporting various protests for women’s rights on several social media platforms. Two of the best recent examples come from Nergal (Adam Darski) of Behemoth and Dee Snider, of Twisted Sister. Both Snider and Nergal posted images or statements in support of women’s reproductive rights. In the Czarny Protest2 organised in Poland, Polish women donning black took to the

2

The protest occurred on 3 October, 2016, throughout Poland.

30    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis streets, and protested against a proposal for a near-ban of abortion in Poland. As a show of support, Nergal posted the image shown in Fig. 1.3 The image he posted was of a vulva4 with a halo and crown, styled to be reminiscent of depictions of Mary, mother of God (the labial folds are Mary’s shroud, with the clitoris being the space for the face) and the words ‘HOLY MARY’ emblazoned alongside it. The text from the October 24th post shows Nergal’s support of the protesters, stating #czarnyprotest The black protest in Poland in support of women’s right and freedom of choice. I have no words to expressed how insulting and embarrassing at the same time it is to live in a country led by FOOLS. Period. (Darski, 2016) Interestingly, Darski chose an image associated with the bodies of women in his show of solidarity, therefore ascribing his political beliefs on the bodies of

Fig. 1:  Screenshot from Nergal’s Instagram. 3

Screenshot taken by authors. Not all women have, or need to have, female sex organs.

4

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    31

Fig. 2:  Screenshot from Dee Snider’s Twitter. women. Dee Snider also supports female reproductive rights, as indicated in this post on Twitter discussing the Women’s March5 in Fig. 2:6 Snider is acting as a gatekeeper here, approving his lyrics not only in the context of protest, but in the context of being pro-choice, by stating ‘I am pro-choice to the core!’ before quoting a line from ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ (Snider, 2017). Although Snider did not use an image of a woman or of genitals commonly associated with women’s bodies to make his point, he is still acting paternally, offering legitimacy, and a fan asked his permission to use the lyrics as a form of protest: once again showing that resistance in metal is legitimised by men, while being inscribed on women’s bodies.

Methodology, Feminist Textual Criticism and the Choice of Texts for this Study Our methodology when looking at metal lyrics then is that of feminist textual critics within popular culture, in which we focus on how the text reflects, challenges or constructs images of women, with a concern for what this builds within a subculture itself (Rooney, Exum, Moody, Michele Barrett). We see a text as an

5

The Women’s March occurred in cities all over the world on 21 January 2017, to ­advocate for legislation supporting women’s rights and human rights. 6 Screenshot is the author’s own.

32    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis artistic expression of ideas within the author and the culture they represent. We also see the text as something received by people within the culture and therefore our interest as feminist critics is piqued: how women are displayed in culture influences how they are treated and thought of within that culture (Byerly & Ross, 2008), and that makes this type of criticism particularly relevant to metal as a cultural study. A metal text in this context then is the lyrics of a whole song. This is the microcosm of metal culture, used as a starting point here for discussion at the macro level. We shall focus on the lyrics of certain songs as examples of how language, structure and imagery are used to create images of women. We will then discuss how these images sit within metal culture and raise questions for further research. As previously stated, this is the beginning of a challenge and so our texts are examples of the ideas we would like to present, not an exhaustive survey. We narrowed our field to texts where women’s bodies were used specifically and where language had moral content. The reasons were two-fold: first, in the beginning our discussions revealed that these were texts we had encountered that had struck us, as female feminist metal listeners, to be problematic with the subversive and inclusive narrative put forward by the metal community; and second, those moral images give us a clear test case for our ideas as the imagery of virgin/whore is consistently used, and a boundary for selection rather than purely delving into the mass of lyrics about rape which metal (death metal in particular) produces. We are aware that such studies are potentially problematic as we devised the lens through which selection happens and therefore the data are biased. However in our research, finding amoral texts about women was particularly difficult. Women’s bodies in metal are either displayed through the male gaze or are absent. We found it difficult to find positive examples of women, and those we did find we will mention later in the chapter. We found that female lyricists stay away from body images as expressions and mainly write in terms of power or emotion (e.g., Arch Enemy has songs such as ‘Diva Satanica’, but once female lyricists are part of the band the images of women’s bodies displayed disappear and the imagery becomes much more to do with violence in general). So, though our selection process is flawed it is also partly a problem with the data available. The texts that we shall be looking at are, Aborted – ‘Whoremageddon’; Cloven Hoof – ‘Whore of Babylon’; Cradle of Filth (2010) – ‘Lilith Immaculate’; briefly Ninnghizhidda – ‘Rape (the Virgin Mary)’; Behemoth (2014) – ‘Amen’; Primordial – ‘Lain with the Wolf’. These deal with images of whores, virgins and mothers as mentioned in our introduction.

A Note on the Lyrics Due to copyright issues we are unable to print the lyrics of songs, therefore the reader will need to find alternative access to the lyrics alongside their reading of this chapter. We shall refer to specific stanzas and lines as quoted from the URLs given here: Aborted – ‘Whoremageddon’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/aborted/retrogore.html#4

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    33 Cloven Hoof – ‘Whore of Babylon’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/clovenhoof/eyeofthesun.html#7 Cradle of Filth – Lilith Immaculate http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/cradleoffilth/darklydarklyvenusaversa.html#7 Primordial – ‘Lain with the Wolf’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/­primordial/ redemptionatthepuritanshand.html#2 Behemoth – ‘Amen’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/behemoth/thesatanist. html#5 Ninnghizhidda – ‘Rape (the virgin Mary)’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/ ninnghizhidda/mistressofthenight.html#3

Metal’s Cultural Collusion with Mainstream Morality Alternative subcultures are especially of interest to the feminist critic as they hold a place of self-determined ‘going against the norm’. Imagery surrounding women in popular cultural expression is complex, however our research suggests that the traditional values about women’s morality are rarely undermined or criticised by the audience as popular culture, particularly music and literature, is felt to be a place of enjoyment primarily rather than politics. Women therefore appear in often stereotyped ways even, we argue, when they are displayed in a non-­traditional format. In her investigation of feminism and popular culture, ­Nickianne Moody cites Michele Barrett’s work with regard to textual representations of gender. Even where we think popular culture is being radical, ß ­ ∆∆Barrett shows that there are a number of ways that ‘textual representations reproduce ­gender ideology’ from conventional society (Moody, 2006). She displays the common use of stereotyping, collusion, compensation and recuperation: Stereotyped images are standardized, fixed by convention and common sense, which is difficult to dispute. They contribute to the process of collusion, whereby the audience tacitly agrees with received ideas in order to participate in or enjoy popular culture. Compensation is the process that maintains a discourse concerning the moral value of femininity, while recuperation negates challenges to dominant gender ideology that may emerge in the text. (Moody, 2006) These categories are of particular interest to this discussion, but our real focus here is on the idea of collusion. In the texts that we shall look at, we can see that even where woman’s sexuality is displayed for ‘positive’ effect, or as a positive stance, the traditional view of a woman’s body as a marker of morality is maintained. For the audience to join in with the feeling of the song they must ‘tacitly agree to received ideas’. Rather than creating a new subversive image of women or morality, metal culture often merely inverts the morality – so now the virgin is to be laughed at and the woman with sexual control lauded. As a culture which ‘goes against’, metal has embraced the moniker of ‘deviant’ – however, for one to rebel against the status quo we must in some way acquiesce to its forms; to embrace

34    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis deviance we have to agree that the state of everyone else is ‘normal and right’. We therefore edge once more into inversion of morality but not subversion. This shall be discussed below with regards to the language of ‘whore’ in particular. At this juncture we would like to bring in the research done by Marco Farrarese (2015) on Black Metal in Malaysian Borneo. Farrarese spent significant time appraising the cultural markers or ‘authenticity’ that the members of the Black Metal scene had adopted. He observes the cultural clashes between the scene members, mainly Islamic home lives, and what they present in their lyrics and artwork. Of note is the scene members’ consideration that they are taking part in western music. They, therefore, display the culture in a particular way and collude with its western norms; the point is to shock in the ‘most blasphemous anti-Christian way possible’. This being said, he comments: Accordingly, Malaysian Borneo’s BM authenticity is translated into a simplistic desire to shock in the most lurid, anti-Christian was one can muster – not casually, the most prominent characteristic of BM’s forefathers Venom and Bathory. Such signifiers of imagined BM ‘authenticity’ are found all over Borneo BN bands’ lyrics and artworks. They continue to imagine the genre as exaggerated, blasphemous satanic play. A clear example of is the cover of Kota Kinabulu’s Bestial Hordes Nuclear Metal Lust (2011) EP: It depicts the crude drawing of a naked woman clad in ammunition belts and leather spiked bracelets who masturbates sitting atop a red pentagram. She holds a half empty whiskey bottle and give the middle finger with her left hand, and has inverted cross drawn with blood in between her naked breasts. (Marco Farraese on Black metal in Borneo) Though you may think this an obscure example it is indicative of what many within metal culture will choose as extreme images, and more importantly as the images they expect to shock. They collude with the cultural understanding of women’s bodies. Women’s bodies maintain a space as an ideal – as a thing to be freed or controlled, a place that can be defiled. In this case, masturbation is shocking because a woman’s control of her own body is shocking; a woman having sexual autonomy and creating her own pleasure is taboo. Though we can read the narrative of the image as saying ‘these action are acceptable here in our space’ we still have to acknowledge that women’s bodies are used as a commodity to shock, stricture or shame.

Textual Analysis As one of the authors has a text scholarship background, we will, when able, present the entirety of the text, as in text scholarship; having the text there in its entirety is appropriate when undergoing analysis. However, because of the length and repetitive nature of some of the texts, in some cases, only unique lyrics will be reproduced here.

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    35

Investigating Morality and Women’s Bodies in Metal Lyrics: The Virgin, The Whore, The Mother Aborted – ‘Whoremaggedon’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/aborted/retrogore.html#4 The song is a description of ‘humanity’ or at least parts of it, sometimes using the pronoun ‘we’, sometimes clearly disdaining others and their low standards of ‘crud’ (Stanza 2, Line 4). The text is filled with terms denoting the basest qualities of humanity – corrupt, deluded, wretched, liars, fools, deteriorating. The power of our species is lauded in the first line of the song, and from there the imagery relating to humans deteriorates. The imagery and language of whore here is distinctly negative, and in the first instance that we encounter it is applied to the band themselves (or the participant in the song) when they describe themselves as whores to humanity (Stanza 1, Line 3). Though whore could be applied to a male, it is usually a female-denoting term, and a word used for power and control, and as the next line is about a goddess the female image becomes the dominating effect. To be a whore here is to be less-than. Babylon is cast in the traditionally negative way – Babylon here references the worst of humanity, its excess and its meaningless excess at that. The apocalyptic imagery then is building and the lens of the Biblical Book of Revelation can be used within its interpretation – humanity is cast as being at the end of itself, but not merely an ‘Armageddon’ (mass destruction), this is a ‘whoremageddon’, a mass defilement or mass debasement (chorus line 2). We can assert the negativity and ideas of debasement surrounding the whore image through the surrounding keywords of ‘filth’, ‘faeces’, ‘shit’ and ‘crud’. However, of particular interest is the paring of the words ‘raped’ and ‘degraded’ (Stanza 1, Line 5). Unless there is a moral weighting to what happens to the body of a person rather than their own conscious action, rape is not degrading in any way. We would assert that rape cannot be degrading to a person, as the action is not theirs. The pairing of the words here shows the writing of morality on to the female body – sexual acts done to that body have a moral weight to the standing of the said body. The word ‘cunts’ is used throughout the song as a derogatory term, and this once again echoes modern western culture shock surrounding the word, and that the worst thing a person could be compared to is female genitalia. In a song which also poses the female who is paid for sex as the bottom of humanity, a female body is constructed which fully colludes with common tropes on female sexuality. Maleness is diminished when described with female images. Moral codes of purity are undermined by such actions as ‘whoredom’.

Cloven Hoof – ‘Whore of Babylon’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/clovenhoof/eyeofthesun.html#7 The image of whore is different in this song as the whore of Babylon is being praised. In many ways then, this is a positive song about a female goddess. Conflating Lilith (a goddess from later Judeo-Christian demonology) with the Whore

36    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis of Babylon, Cloven Hoof construct a descriptive inverted hymn to the goddess. They associate the woman in the song with being the child of Satan, who revels in seduction, lust and the suffering of man via her sexual performance. This song is an excellent example of the inversion/subversion distinction that we have been discussing. The song is a celebration of deviance, but this is deviance none the less. The whore is still a whore. No new reading of the goddess Babylon is given. In fact she is fetishised. We are to glory in her deviance, but we do not rewrite it as acceptable behaviour. A woman is still a ‘whore’ who behaves in this way. To subvert the narrative would be to rethink the character as neutral with regards to sexual practice; this rather is inverted where we are to celebrate her but still cast her as negative and deviant. The language of bloodlust and imagery of succubi (those who enthral men to sex and then kill them, and have sexual relations with the demonic) pulls us to this reading (Stanzas 4 and 5). This woman also represents a long-held trope: fear of female sexuality. The goddess described here has control of her own sexuality, she chooses her prey and fools them into her lust (Stanza 7); sexual relations with her are violent, something you want but also leaves you with nothing (Stanza 9). Fear of female sexuality and therefore desire to control it is an ancient trope, indeed going back in this case to the Bible, and is displayed here in fetishised or voyeuristic terms. We are allowed to be titillated, even encouraged to be so, by the images and her lust, but the language does not allow it to be fully celebrated. It pulls us back to the problems of this (the destruction sex brings) and accepts/uses the traditional moral compass to create even more titillation – it is the deviance that makes it arousing, though we are not encouraged to approve of her. Similar to the previous song we have the image of defilement here (Stanza 6). The defiling of women, even those who are choosing to be sexually active in these situations and whose sexual activity we are being encouraged to fetishise, is a common theme in texts about Babylon. This is fascinating as in the ancient context she is entirely in control of her sexuality and that is why she is problematic and sinful. A modern audience misses this Biblical judgement as they do not have quite the same worries about women choosing their own sexual partners, whereas in Revelation this is her primary sin. What has been added then is another layer of negative body morality – this woman is now doubly unacceptable in traditional patriarchal views of women’s bodies: she has taken control of her sexuality in a dangerous way that men should fear; and, she has been defiled, or in being openly sexual caused herself to be defiled.

Cradle of Filth – ‘Lilith Immaculate’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/cradleoffilth/darklydarklyvenusaversa.html#7 This song is slightly different from the other songs we have looked at, as it is a narrative (thus the context of the story and character is a factor to consider) which tells of the possession of a woman by the goddess Lilith, who in this setting has vampiric and murderous tendencies as well as lustful ones. The woman has been innocent, now possessed by Lilith uses sex to confound, to have dominion

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    37 over and to betray the young man. At the same time, she kills nuns and causes havoc in the town. The key to this song is juxtaposition – the title itself ‘Lilith Immaculate’ plays with the contrast between the usual context of the work Immaculate with the Virgin Mary, or at the very least images of purity, cleanliness or holiness, and the goddess Lilith who is shrouded in demonology (and in this album of negative character). Love and lust are also contrasted in this song, as the sweet setting of the first verse descends into more and more visceral language. The language of whore turns up here: using the tool of juxtaposition she is described as a ‘beautiful whore’ though the song is about two lovers, it is the control and ownership of her own power and sexuality that makes her a whore. The later verses match murder with sex (Stanza 9) where her sexual desire leads to the murdering of nuns (a symbol of holiness or at least the controlled sexuality of women) – as with the previous song by Cloven Hoof, power is dangerous in women and sexual power is paralleled with violent physical danger to others. The sentence in lines 1 and 2 of Stanza 14 where Englishness and the harems are compared is particularly telling, as it not only contrasts a classic trope of innocence with ideas of sexuality (therefore applying judgement to both), but is also a shockingly colonial image. Here we have a fetishisation of the exotic, and an unthinking usage, as the surrounding image is of a goddess of power over her own sexuality and this is not the reality of a harem. ‘Cradle of Filth’ here not only apply one standard to all female sexuality – the trope of ‘power equals danger’ – but they also use white western eyes to judge the women of harems as being culpable in their sexual acts while the English rose is innocent. They combine two male fantasies to make one mega-fantasy, the woman who looks innocent but also knows what she is doing in bed! This song is much more positive in its images surrounding the sexual woman than our previous two examples, however we can see that the tropes used are still based in old morality codes. The sexual woman (goddess) is dangerous as she fits with a femme fatale. In Women and Film Kaplan (1983) writes Woman is now neither helpless victim nor phallic substitute. Rather, the threat that her sexuality poses emerges in projecting the hostility onto the female image. The heroine is now a femme fatale, exuding her seductive sexuality directly. Man at once desires her and fears her power over him. (p. 6) The woman, though using her own power, is essentially still there for the enjoyment of men. In this song, we have a clear inversion of traditional morality. We are enjoying the sexuality but at a price. We are even celebrating it, but we again have not recast it or subverted the form. The innocent girl is left and in the rest of the album her narrative is patronising, she has no agency, so even though we may be acceptable with a sexually powerful woman, a woman choosing not to act that way (staying innocent) is judged

38    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis from the other side. Morality once again, is ascribed to her body, it is just an inverted morality from the norms of society.

Primordial – ‘Lain with the Wolf ’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/primordial/redemptionatthepuritanshand.html#2 The sexuality of women being praised and inverted as an asset to dark forces is also found here, a track from Primordial’s (2011) album, entitled Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand. Primordial’s frontman Nemtheanga (Alan Averill) describes the album as simply being the ‘death album’, as many of the songs touch on life, loss, religion (or lack thereof) as well as the existential crises that arise when growing older (Blabbermouth.net, 2011). In ‘Lain with the Wolf’, the protagonists encounter the wolf, a dark beast that opposes the unconditional love of the lamb (an image which the first stanzas mention of praise and light makes clear represents Jesus). The life with the wolf seems more appealing than life with the lamb, as not only is it a less arduous path (laying with the lamb requires constant work, as Nemtheanga sings about in Stanza 1, Line 5), the wolf also brings corporal bodily pleasures to those who choose to follow his path. After speaking to the song’s protagonist in the corner of the crowded room (Stanza 3), the wolf offers salvation. Interestingly, salvation is not found in the loins of men, which is indicative of the heteronormativity of society and metal music. In the case of Primordial, while sexualised women are indeed a form of ‘salvation’, women are still objects that push the agenda of the masculine or of men – in this case, a satanic beast that you cannot escape, once you wear his mark.

Behemoth – ‘Amen’ This song is a superb point of inversion rather than subversion, as it is a rewriting of the Roman Catholic prayer to Mary, which begins ‘Hail Mary full of grace’. The song mimics and inverts ideas within the prayer turning grace to disgrace, blessing of conception via the holy spirit into a sexual encounter, faithfulness into betrayal (Stanza 1, Lines, 1, 2 and 9). In ‘Amen’, her role is inverted. Mary is no longer full of grace, or a blessed virgin who brought forth from her womb a saviour and a King of Kings. Instead, she is portrayed as a fornicator and defiler that brought forth one of the greatest evils into the world. This inversion is evident in the lyrics, with Behemoth’s lead singer, Nergal, growling lyrics which abuse as a hymn, an inverted worship of an evil mother – the woman may carry either virtue or fornication and what she produces is to do with how it is conceived. Virginity and holiness are ridiculed here. However, woman still does not have the freedom to choose or have her sexuality free of judgement. The idea of a virgin, and purity is reviled. The presence of an evil mother is not subversive in itself: the good mother/ bad mother dichotomy has been interwoven in the fabric of culture for generations, as they are represented in goddess figures throughout the world (DiGioia, 2017). Evil mothers are popular figures in metal music: Lilith, a figure who literally birthed a legion of monsters, is a figure discussed in the music of many metal

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    39 bands, such as Therion, Dissection and Saturnalia Temple. Another example of the inversion of motherhood in metal can be found in Amorphis’ ‘Shaman’, off 2007’s Silent Waters. ‘Shaman’ is based on the poetry of Pekka Kainulainen, who was in turn inspired by a story in The Kalevala, which features a good mother (she is simply called Lemminkäinen’s mother, she gets no name) combating the forces of an evil mother, the witch Louhi (Kainulainen & Holopainen, 2007). Eventually, the power of Lemminkäinen’s mother’s love and good shamanistic power (with a little help from a magic bee) raises him from the dead, temporarily, but not permanently, defeating the evil mother, Louhi. Clearly, metal is not subversive when describing women and women’s bodies as mothers: they are either treated lovingly (as in Type O Negative’s ‘Nettie’, in which Peter Steele describes his mother as an ‘angel’), or as archetypical monstrous mothers who have existed in the subconscious of humanity for millennia.

Ninnghizhidda – ‘Rape (The Virgin Mary)’ http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/ninnghizhidda/mistressofthenight.html#3 As with the song by Behemoth, here we have a focus on the Virgin Mary. This text however differs from the Behemoth track as it focuses clearly on the ‘defiling’ of the virgin. The virgin is used here as a symbol of formal religion and the ‘defiling’ of her as triumph over classical religion/idea of god. The title of the song is key here as it gives the lens through which to read the lyrical text. The rape within the text itself is subtle, written from the point of view of the penetrator it is not clear that the woman depicted is taking part against her will. However, with the title using the word ‘rape’ the screams and triumph of the final two lines are far more sinister. The link with the Virgin Mary is made through a classical theological link of Mary to Eve: (Lines 14 and 15). In Augustinian theology, Eve is the origin of sin, and Mary is the woman who’s chastity and obedience to God undo said sin. These lyrics make this link and then create the idea that Mary’s goodness is undone in this act of rape. Her body is used by classical theology as a tool of moral judgement and now used by modern ‘Satanic’ ideology as a place of degradation purely in her body, taking away all choice. The lyric in line 18 focuses on this, making her vagina the place of her power or glory and a thing that can be taken. In this way, the female body is diminished further than in the classical theology referenced, where Eve and Mary are cursed and honoured for their choices as well as their physical acts, as here she is only a body and a symbol – literally objectified – for the ends of the song.

On Cis-Gendering in this Chapter We have used the terms ‘women’s bodies’ throughout this discussion but need to acknowledge that not all those who identify as women have female sex organs. However, what is interesting for us is that in the majority of the songs we found that they absolutely do – female bodies are conceptualised in these primarily as those that are being penetrated and have vaginas, and those bodies are ‘less-than’.

40    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis We found very few examples of trans-bodies in the textual culture of metal songs, despite metal having some trans-performers.7 The traditional heteronormative hierarchy of masculinity and penetration being where power lies and, therefore, the penetrated being synonymous with the feminine, where weakness dwells, is generally maintained. Where men’s bodies are used to display power relations they follow this pattern – weak men are the penetrated or devoured – and women who have power over men in lyrics are playing in this male space. Where men’s bodies are used to display power relations they follow the only true power displayed in these texts, and those who have power are playing in male space of penetration and physical dominance/dominion. We would refer back to the discussion about stereotyping and collusion, and also our primary thesis that metal texts which use women’s bodies tend to invert traditional images, but rarely subvert. Trans issues and their performance within culture are entirely subversive: they disturb the gender binary and disrupt the physical coding of sex and gender as traditionally represented. In the songs we have seen that the traditional language of morality is ascribed to women’s bodies, so arguably transwomen would be painted with the same weaknesses and as dangerous in the same way as they, in these tropes, also threaten the idea that ‘penetration equals power’, however, we found only three examples of transgender bodies in lyrics.8 The lack of transbodies within metal lyrics gives further weight to our main idea, that metal is happy with inversion of morals as a rebellious code but not with subversion.

Conclusion This chapter has begun to challenge the way ideas of subversion and alternativity are held up in heavy metal lyrics by looking at those lyrics as texts about women’s bodies. It is worth mentioning misanthropy in general here as these lyrics sit, as many in this genre do, inside a general theme of misanthropy within metal. Arguably, in metal, everyone is worth degrading. We highlight this as it would be wrong to frame the negative lyrics we have been discussing as only relating to misogyny – although a strong case can be built that they indeed do. The fact is often that hate is for everyone. However, what is of interest to us is that it is women’s bodies which are used to display ideas of defilement and degradation. Hence, this is why our method of analysis was textual critical analysis focussing on lyrics and the way they create imagery and display bodies. Though there is a wider cultural discussion to be had, there is also a solid textual form that needs to

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For a discussion on trans-performers see Valimaki (2017). Songs that we did find were ‘Dismember the Transgender’ by Prostitute Disfigurement, Gortuary’s ‘Transgender Dismember’ and ‘Forced Gender Reassignment’ by Cattle Decapitation. The first two are about hatred and violence against transgender bodies, the bodies described as ‘her’ doing exactly what we suggest. The ‘Cattle Decapitation’ song is slightly different, using the ideas forced physical gender reassignment as a way of undermining the hierarchy imposed by the church, the bodies displayed are cis-gendered that are being mutilated as punishment. 8

Cursed is the Fruit of Thy Womb    41 be analysed on its own terms of words and concepts. By focussing on the microcosm of the song lyrics we hope to cast light on the wider textual culture of metal. We assert that though metal culture does go against the normative morals of Judeo-Christian society in many ways, particularly in the realm of black metal, what happens with women’s bodies is in fact merely an inversion of the said morals and the images of women are not creating a subversive narrative to ‘normal’ or mainstream society. Women, though now arguably allowed the space within alternative culture at large to be sexually active,9 are still judged on the way they use their bodies – we see this not only in the derogatory language and images used, but also in the ridicule of virginity over sexuality; we also see it in the way that masculine power is displayed or the language of danger which surrounds the powerful woman who is in control of her sexuality. Women’s bodies in metal culture are still the totems on which patriarchal morality is inscribed.

References Behemoth (2014). Amen. Białystok: Nuclear Blast. Blabbermouth.net. (2011). PRIMORDIAL Frontman Discusses Forthcoming Album. [Online] Retrieved from http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/primordial-frontmandiscusses-forthcoming-album/. Accessed on May 24, 2017. Butler, J. (2010). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Byerly, C. M., & Ross, K. (2008). Women and the Media: A Critical Introduction (1st ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Darski, A. N. (2016). Instagram. [Online]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/ BL9VIgyjAZM/?taken-by=nergal69&hl=en. Accessed on May 24, 2017. DiGioia, A. (2017). Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts: The Marginalized and the Monstrous. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Exum, J. C. (1986). The Mothers of Israel: The Patriarchal Narratives from the Feminist Perspective. Bible Review, 2(1), 60–67. Exum, J. C. (2015). Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives (2nd ed.). London: T & Clark Cornerstones. Farrarese, M. (2015). Eastern Desekratorz and Nuclear Metal Lust: Perfroming “Authentic” Black Metal in Malaysian Borneo. Metal Music Studies, 1(2), 211–232. Filth, D. (2010). Lilith Immaculate. [Sound Recording] (Monkey Puzzle House Studio). Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1 ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Hill, R. L. (2016). Masculine Pleasure? Women’s Encounters with Hard Rock and Metal Music. In A. R. Brown, K. Spracklen, K. Kahn-Harris, N. Scott (Eds.), Global Metal Music and Culture: Current Directions in Metal Studies (pp. 277–296). New York, NY: Routledge. Kahn-Harris, K. (2007). Extreme metal: Music and culture on the Edge. New York, NY: Berg.

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Vasan (2010) argues that this can be detrimental to women’s acceptance within subcultures, as women are often deemed as being ‘band whores’, and sexualized women are then subscribed to an entirely new form of gatekeeping.

42    Amanda Digioia and Charlotte Naylor Davis Kainulainen, P., & Holopainen, P. (2007). Shaman. Helsinki: Nuclear Blast. Kaplan, E. (1983). Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (1st ed.). New York, NY: Methuen. Krenske, L., & McKay, J. (2000). Hard and heavy: Gender and power in a heavy metal music subculture. Gender, Place and Culture, 7(3), 287–304. Lanser, S. S. (1991). Feminist Literary Criticism: How Feminist? How Critical?. NWSA Journal, 3(1), 3–19. Milner, A. (1994). Contemporary Cultural Theory: An Introduction (1 ed.). London: UCL Press. Moody, N. (2006). Feminism and popular culture. In E. Rooney (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory (1st ed., pp. 172–192). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ott, B., & Cameron, W. (2000). Intertextualty: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17(1), 429–446. Overell, R. (2013). Brutal: Affect Belong In, and Between, Australia and Japan’s Grindcore Scenes. PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne, Melbourne. Primordial. (2011). Lain With The Wolf. Llanfair Caereinion: Metal Blade. Riches, G. (2015). Sensuous Entanglements, Assemblages and Convergences: Extreme Metal Scenes as ‘Sensory Communities’. In T. Karjalainen & K. Kärki (Eds.), Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures (pp. 265–273). Helsinki: Aalto University. Snider, D. (2017). Twitter. [Online]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/deesnider/status/ 823354653635121153. Accessed on May 24, 2017. Spracklen, K. (2015). ‘To Holmgard… and Beyond’: Folk Metal Fantasies and Hegemonic White Masculinities. Metal Music Studies, 1(3), 359–377. Valimaki, S. (2017). Confronting the Gender Trouble for Real: Mina Caputo, Metal Truth and Transgender Power. In S. Hawkins (Ed.), Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender (pp. 326–344). Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Vasan, S. (2010). Women’s participation in the death metal subculture. Houston: University of Houston. Walser, R. (1993). Running with the devil: Power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Wright, L. (2015). Transcending the Form, Advancing the Norm: Queer Post-Structuralism in Post-Metal. In T. Karjalainen & K. Kärki (Eds.), Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Cultures (pp. 247–256). Helsinki: Aalto University.

Chapter 3

Japanophilia in Kuwait: How Far does International Culture Penetrate? Thorsten Botz-Bornstein Abstract The author launched an online survey at a private English-speaking university in Kuwait to evaluate the status, value and importance of Japanese and Korean popular cultures in Kuwait. East-Asian culture is a subculture that is very widespread in the region because of Internet use and the influence of English-speaking education. The survey shows that this subculture can be understood as an alternative culture because it tends to contain a dissimulated critique of traditional Kuwaiti culture. Many students approach Japanese and Korean cultural products because they are in search of a coherent lifestyle founded on certain ethics. The Japanese–Kuwaiti cultural transfer implies a double resistance towards the local culture and towards American culture. The resulting marginalisation is therefore twofold. Resistance towards Western culture is here not based, as is often assumed in Arab contexts, on cultural closure and conservatism, but rather on the willingness to engage with an alien culture. This creates a paradoxical pattern of resistance to both the East and the West through adherence to another Eastern culture. The phenomenon can be understood in terms of globalisation as well as of anti-globalisation. Keywords: Japanese popular culture; K-pop; Kuwait; Kuwaiti youth; intercultural communication; cultural globalisation

Japanese culture is present in Kuwait in various ways: universities have manga clubs, Japanese conventions like Q8con or PlamoQ8 draw thousands of people,

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 43–60 Copyright © 2018 by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181005

44    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein cosplay competitions take place several times per year and the Japanese and Korean embassies organise cultural events for young people. Universities invite specialists from Japan for well-attended talks. Of course, it would be wrong, naïve and – paradoxically – orientalist to find this surprising. All over the world young people are attracted by Japanese popular culture, so why should young Kuwaitis be different? Kuwait is a ‘normal’ country in terms of Internet access and communication, and by far the largest part of Japanese culture is not affected by censorship. Haruki Murakami’s novels (though erotic in content) can be found in the main bookshops. A certain religious input in manga – as some characters can be derived from quasi-animist Shintoist deities – could raise concern, but even manga addicts rarely seem to be aware of this connection. In this sense, ‘Japanophilia in Kuwait’ is a non-topic except for people who mistakenly assume that Kuwait is an isolated culture steeped in the Wahhabist tradition banning everything that does not directly reflect religious truths. The subject for this chapter was inspired the day a female student, fully covered with niqab leaving only a tiny slit for the eyes, came to my office to tell me about her enthusiasm for manga. I found that her manga club drawings showed real artistic talent. ‘Do you want to see my IMVU avatar’, she asked? Out of her folder she took the drawing of a busty, scantily clad woman with tattoos and flowing blond hair striking a rather provocative pose. ‘This is me’, she said. Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of Japanophilia in Kuwait. Many young Japanophiles consume Japanese culture in the same way in which they consume Hollywood, soap operas or commercial Pop music: without any ambition to unearth a cultural background linked to this entertainment, without using the newly discovered culture as a basis from which to view their own culture and without using the new culture to construct for themselves a more nuanced Kuwaiti identity. However, a minority of young Kuwaitis is doing exactly this. I decided to search for this alternative minority that seems to be constantly growing. It was not the ‘officially’ modernised youth consuming mainstream Western culture and who has recently added Japanese and Korean mass culture to their menu of entertainment. Nor was it the – often affluent – youth that had in past decades acquired Western knowledge by spending time in the West and by attending Western universities. The youth I was interested in were not Westernised in a straightforward, ‘modern’ way but in a more individualised, or postmodern way. A more personal, reflective and selective use not only of Japanese, but also of Western cultural elements made those friends of Japan different from other consumers of popular culture. As the example of the niqab girl with the sexy avatar shows almost literally, certain aspects of globalisation in non-Western countries are not manifest but hidden. In terms of space, ‘Japanese culture in Kuwait’ can be theorised as deterritorialisation; in terms of time, it can be theorised as a reconfiguring of the relationships between tradition and modernity. While in the past, ‘Westernized’ Kuwaitis went most typically to a Western country to study, today young people can get ‘globalized’ on their own, through the Internet. Globalisation through the Internet functions in a very personal way since new ideas can be received from foreign online friends. This kind of online communication is

Japanophilia in Kuwait    45 particularly frequent among people who are interested in Japanese or Korean culture. Because of the individual way in which the Internet functions as a medium, many people will mix their own cocktail of globalisation and develop a subculture that will be opposed to the mainstream consumer culture of their country.

The Meme Café My research on Japan- and Korea-based subculture in Kuwait began in the Meme Café. The Meme Café (or Meme Curry) is a restaurant serving Japanese food (mainly Japanese curry) and is located on the top floor of a video game shopping mall in a rundown urban area of Kuwait City called Rihab (Hawalli Governorate). Here, one can meet many of the above-described young people. The customers are all male and, according to the waiter, practically all of them are Kuwaitis. This does not mean that this subculture is a mainly male affair but males in Kuwait can move around more easily than females in certain spaces and at certain times. On blogs women complain that the Meme Café’s location is not suitable for women. The look is casual as they are wearing flip flops and shorts. Boys often have long hair, which is still frowned upon in traditional Kuwaiti circles. The public here is not the rich crowd of Kuwaitis arriving in Ferraris and wearing Rolex. The former will rather be spotted at traditional shisha places in the city center or in Salmiya; nor are those the poorer Bedouin types who can be encountered in fast foods. In the Meme Café, we find a middle-class youth who has had some access to education and educated themselves over the Internet. The mall’s shabby appearance (the lower floors are devoted to furniture adapted to the gaudy taste of poorer expats) draws a strict line between this subculture and the fancy world of Kuwait’s oil-driven luxury lifestyle. In the entire video game part of the mall Japan is important. Most businesses located close to the restaurant incorporate Japanese themes or are exclusively catering to Japanophile tastes. Shops with names like ‘Anime Planet’ sell games and action figures. The restaurant is extremely popular. While the five Arab and Indian restaurants in the mall are almost empty, the Meme Café is always full and the premises have recently been extended. People eat Japanese curry, tempura and udon. The waiters wear headbands like Japanese waiters and the menu contains a manga telling the story of the Meme Café. Manga drawings by customers are hanging on the walls. But there are no chopsticks and the ‘meme special’ versions of some dishes might be considered rather unfortunate interpretations of Japanese food: a grid of mayonnaise stripes usually found on California rolls is put on the udon and on the curry. The restaurant’s website is entirely in Arabic though the printed menu also has English translations. Bloggers criticise the recent substantial price increase as well as the marginalised location of the restaurant. The high prices seem to point towards a gentrification of this subculture; on the other hand, the fact the Meme Café remains where it is and even expands shows that the subcultural identity will not be abandoned. This is the crowd that I consider as representative of a new subculture in Kuwait and which I wanted to interview. How could I reach them? A survey

46    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein addressing Japanophilia in Kuwait was a good starting point, though the more interesting (in terms of individuality, creativity and critical consciousness) Japanophiles needed to be separated from the passive consumers. Therefore, I decided, as I began interviewing people about their cultural interest, to introduce certain questions about Western subculture into the survey. The more individualist people are not only interested in Japan but also tend to search Western popular culture for particular themes. A Kuwaiti Japanophile who knows Jimi Hendrix and Clockwork Orange is most probably not the manga consumer who is only interested in fighting scenes. I introduced a general knowledge question inquiring whether they know some non-mainstream Western cultural items like Pink Floyd or 9gag. The Internet is the first reason for the emergence of this alternative; ‘funky’ type of globalised youngster. In the Gulf, Western cultural elements tend to be absorbed very quickly, which accelerates both the deterritorialising and the reconfiguring processes. Kuwait has the highest rate of Twitter users per capita, and Saudi Arabia has the highest rate of YouTube users per capita in the world (see Mocanu et al., 2013). Young people in Kuwait (who represent the largest sector of Kuwaiti society) constitute the highest concentration of Internet users, which runs to around 63% of all Internet users in Kuwait (Wheeler, npn). Mazeedi and Ismail state that in Kuwait 73.4% of students who use the Internet feel that it was being used in socially abusive and ethically unreliable ways (Conference presentation, see Wheeler). However, the influence is not merely negative. The Internet has brought about dramatic changes in society, for example ‘the transgression of gender lines, which are otherwise relatively strictly enforced in Kuwaiti society. This capability is especially important for Kuwaitis who have attended government schools that are segregated, a majority of the population’ (Wheeler, npn). Wheeler found that the Kuwaiti Internet generation ‘redefines norms and values for future generations’ because here a ‘new thinking, perhaps contrary to one’s upbringing, can grow unchecked by traditional authority figures’. Somehow the Internet always goes ‘against’.

The Logic of Subculture in the Gulf Japanese/Korean popular culture in Kuwait can be called ‘subculture’ for several reasons. First, it tends to be critical of traditional Kuwaiti culture. Subculture has been defined as a possibly subversive cultural manifestation existing within the margins of a mainstream culture opposing the latter’s ‘passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings’ (Riesman, 1950, p. 361). Subculture youths generally distrust the authority and leadership embedded in mainstream culture. They yearn for a different quality of life and question the values of contemporary culture and tradition. Arguably the most radical subculture in Kuwait is the underground Hip-Hop culture, which is hidden but dynamic. The ‘Red Bull BC One Cypher’ Hip-Hop competition (in its 13th year) gathers hundreds of spectators every year and a Graffiti park has been constructed in 2014. The independent curatorial initiative ‘Visual Therapy’ has a blog, a curated space, a studio and an online shop.

Japanophilia in Kuwait    47 In Kuwait or in the Gulf in general, Western subculture has a peculiar status. Regional popular Arab culture is limited to pop music and traditional music or a mix of both. However, who would be the Arab Jimi Hendrix? There is little Arab Indie music. This partly explains why Japan is particularly fascinating for some Kuwaitis. Though being a non-Western country with social rules and traditions relatively far removed from those of the West, Japan has its own rock, punk and hip-hop scene. The scene is so important that many young Japanese have no need to revert to Western culture at all but decide to stay in the realm of their own subculture. The Gulf countries have nothing similar, as a student pointed out in the survey when stating that for him/her the main difference between Japan and Kuwait is that ‘we don’t have a thing called “Kuwaiti Pop” or anything like the manga or anime they have’. Even the rest of the Arab world is arguably less well equipped than the West in terms of subculture. The status of Arab pop music can be compared with that of Japanese pop music. But when it comes to subculture or to a pop culture representing a whole package of alternative lifestyles including music, literature, films and fashion, as is the case for Japanese pop culture, there is no real equivalent in Arab culture. While in the realm of mass culture an equally strong pull from the Arab and the Western side does exist, in the realm of subculture, the Arab pull is relatively weak. More often than Arab mass culture, Arab subculture is dependent on western sources. Therefore, Western subculture elements tend to be absorbed very quickly by people who are looking for alternative cultural identities outside the realm of mass culture. But the existence of subculture in Kuwait is remarkable for still another reason. Whatever those subculture elements are, the present generation has most probably not been informed about them by their parents. Very few older Arabs whom I asked, know Jimi Hendrix while 20% of the young respondents knew him. This means that young Kuwaitis who responded to our survey constructed their subcultural identity, or perhaps even the concept of subculture itself, from scratch and on their own. Traditional Kuwaiti popular culture might have a relatively weak pull in subcultural terms, but on the other hand, it is very exclusive. Imperatives about what should be done, how one should behave and what should be consumed, are very strong. This also applies to the music one should listen to and the pop stars one should adore. The person who listens to rap can easily be marginalised and be labelled ‘American’. Again, this is different from what happens in Western countries and also in Japan. The constellation of a ‘weak Arab subculture pull’ plus Kuwaiti exclusiveness fosters the emergence of a subculture in which people look different, use different words and expressions, and can at times even be recognised by their body language. The fact of speaking English quite well (sometimes better than Arabic) reinforces the above pattern. One reason why foreign-inspired subcultures develop relatively well in Kuwait is the strong presence of international schools. The spread of English education is unique in Kuwait, first because the population is affluent enough to pay for international schools, second because Arab public schools have a bad reputation. The colonial history might also play a (though minor) role here. This does not mean that all subculture youths have a good

48    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein command of English. However, though English education is not necessary for acquiring any subculture identity in Kuwait, its pervasiveness remains important. A study by Hasanen et al. found ‘that individuals who studied at universities that use English as a medium of instruction show significant differences in the extent to which they embrace a global identity’ (Hasanen et al., 2014, p. 544). This has repercussions on subculture consumption. Since the pull of Arab subculture is weak anyway, people who have a partially ‘English’ identity are more likely to be drawn to Western subculture.

The Survey I launched the online survey at the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST), a Kuwaiti-owned private English-speaking university. GUST currently has 3,564 students, 85% of which are Kuwaiti nationals. Most of the others are born in Kuwait and have nationalities from a variety of Arab countries. Females comprise 60% and 40% are male; 24% of come from English or American private schools, 11% from other private schools and 65% from government schools. The tuition fees (about US$20,000 per year) are covered by government scholarships on the condition that students have a moderately high grade point average. A Western-style curriculum (almost all textbooks used are of Western, mostly American, origin) and a large proportion of Western teachers guarantee a relatively liberal environment. The GUST campus is certainly one of the most openminded places in the country. The survey was sent by email to all students and 301 students responded. Eight students left the survey blank or wrote only meaningless characters, which reduces the sample to 293. Two-thirds (197 students) were between 18 and 22 years old, 41 were between 23 and 25 and the remainder were over 25 years old. Only 29 participants were non-Kuwaitis. Respondents were enrolled for all sorts of majors though the majority (62%) studied accounting. Of the participants, 203 were female and 90 male, which contrasts with the all-male crowd I encountered in the Meme Café. Students received an extra credit for participation, which motivated moderately interested individuals to respond. The students who took the time to answer this questionnaire were overwhelmingly students interested in Japanese/Korean culture. However, 50 students indicated that they have no affinities with Japanese or Korean culture (except perhaps the food) but still answered all questions. In 11 of those 50 cases, the respondents’ dislike of or indifference towards these cultures was not formulated in a straightforward fashion. For example, a respondent would say that s/he ‘does not like anything Japanese or Korean’, but still indicate his/her favourite manga character or even report that s/he went to a manga convention. Those contradictions are probably due to the fact that the respondent’s interest decreased over a certain period of time. In the past, they were interested in Pokémon, but at present, this pop-culture is not very important for them. I analysed the sample of those 50 individuals separately. This means that in this survey there is a ratio of 243 ‘pro’ participants (83%) against 50 ‘contra’ participants (17%) who tend towards an ‘I don’t like it’ attitude.

Japanophilia in Kuwait    49

Interests Anime/mange remains the main driving force of far-Eastern cultural consumption. Respondents could choose from eight options but could check more than one. On average, they checked two options:

Anime (169) Manga (100) Martial arts (70) Korean films (67) Video games with Japanese content (63) K-pop (56) Japanese horror movies (45) Visual kei (11)

As ‘other’ options, students mentioned ‘fashion’, specifying the harajuku and gyaru street fashion style, J-rock and Korean TV dramas. When asked ‘How important is Japanese/Korean culture in your life?’ 14% responded by saying that it is very important, 32% said that it is quite important and 53% stated that it is not important at all. On the other hand, 42% stated that Pokémon was ‘very important’ for them; 30 indicated their favorite manga character; 19 were members of an anime/manga club and 57 went at least once to an anime convention like Q8Con, Plamo, ONGCon, GXCon, Rumble Expo or FikraKW, but also to conventions abroad like Extravagant Gaming, ComicCon Dubai and MEFCC (Middle East Film and ComicCon). Only 9 participated in Cosplay but 46 have or had an avatar and many describe it as

A Chibi version of my own self with a funny expression. A demon with a skeletal skull (I don’t want it to look similar to me. I have low self-esteem, so I made it look intimidating). Pastel pink haired with blue eyes and styling both pastel colors fashion and Korean street fashion. She wears old style red dara’a, [has] tanned skin, brown eyes, long black twisted hair with some pearls on her head. A sad girl with hair that reflects the universe. Brown hair with blonde stripes or shades just from the down and hazel eyes.

The majority (77%) find the Japanese/Korean material on the Internet. Eleven percent get it from friends and very few get it through mail order or bookshops. Of 157 individuals, 50 said that they knew this culture already between ages 2 and 7, another 48 said that they started between ages 8 and 13 and only very few said they discovered it after age 17. Seventy said they were introduced to it by friends or siblings (almost always by brothers) but 40 stated that they discovered it themselves on the Internet on gaming sites, YouTube, forums, blogs, social media and through spams. The website KissAnime seems to be important. Some refer to television, especially to the Arab TV channel Spacetoon and also to MBC4 and

50    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein KTV, which showed Takeshi’s Castle in the 1990s. Korean dramas were often discovered by randomly browsing TV channels and getting stuck with the Korean Arirang channel, whose dramas have English subtitles. Eighteen indicated having discovered Japanese/Korean pop culture on American television. Some stated that they watched anime dubbed in Arabic from early childhood on without knowing that it was Japanese. A girl reports that when she was using makeup she loved big eyes, and suddenly discovered a parallel with manga characters, which incited her interest. The students do not seem to encounter much resistance from their families though 40 out of 293 (13%) say that many people in their family are against it. Twenty-three individuals report that at least one of their parents was interested in Japanese culture when they were young.

Background Most students describe their families as relatively traditional; 33% check ‘rather traditional’ and 50% check ‘a little traditional’. There was practically no difference here between the ‘interested’ and the ‘non-interested’ sample. However, when it comes to the question ‘Are you religious?’ one can observe important gaps between the students interviewed in this survey and students whom I had surveyed on another occasion in the past. In the present survey, only 19% answer ‘yes’ and 56% answer ‘moderately’; 24% check ‘not very much’. This contrasts very much with a survey that I conducted in 2014 at the same university with a sample of 1,660 students.1 At that time, 53% stated that for them religion is ‘very important’ and 36% that it is ‘important’. Only 11% checked ‘not very important’. In that earlier survey (concerning the wearing of the hijab), 92% confirmed to pray daily, and 64% indicated to have a ‘good’ knowledge of Islam. When in the present survey only 19% stated that they are religious (against 56% who are ‘moderately religious’ and 24% who are ‘not very religious’), it can be concluded that far-Eastern popular culture attracts less religious students.

English Language Skills It was necessary to establish the importance of the English language in the process of acculturation. A total of 36% indicated that their parents speak English ‘quite well’ and 26% say ‘sort of’, 38% of the students’ parents speak no English. Again, there was practically no difference here between the ‘interested’ and the ‘non-interested’ sample. One hundred and thirty-five of those who read manga read them in English and 24 read them in Arabic. Only 53 say that their consumption of Japanese or Korean culture does improve their English, 119 say that it does a little, and another 119 say that it has no effect on the mastery of their English. A total of 33% went to English schools, which is higher than the overall at GUST (24%). In the small sample of those who are not interested in Japanese/Korean culture, the numbers are

1

See Botz-Bornstein and Abdullah-Khan Noreen (2014).

Japanophilia in Kuwait    51 a little lower (30%); 8% say that they speak only English with their friends and 58% that they use a mixture of English and Arabic. Among the ‘not interested’ ones, this number goes down to 48%, and 5% speak only in English with their friends.

National Identity Hasanen et al. have shown that ‘the language policy in international schools weakens national identity and enhances the global identity of students’ (549) because ‘generally, Kuwaiti media reinforce nationalism, provide a Kuwaiti perspective on issues and interests and emphasise the importance of local culture, heritage and Islam, which all reflect the nation’s prejudices’ (550). It has also been stated that in Kuwait, ‘frequent viewers of American television were more likely to endorse equal gender roles and a liberal outlook on life in Kuwaiti society’ (Abdulrahim et al., 2009, p.  63). However, to perceive the exposure to foreign cultures only as a factor weakening national identity can be problematic. While studies like Hasanen’s describe a relatively simple West–East influence, the reception of Japanese/Korean culture by Kuwaitis is uniquely complex. It is more complex than the Western way of seeing Japanese culture. When being asked, ‘What do you like about Japanese (or Korean) pop culture?’ 33 simply answer that they like it because it is different, unique, or a ‘whole world by itself’. However, this does not always mean that they were looking only for differences. Students also look for similarities. Several students write that Japanese culture is ‘different and also somewhat like our own’, which means that they contrast both Japanese/Korean and Kuwaiti with ‘Western’. They recognise Japanese/Korean as exotic from their own point of view and even more from the Western point of view. At the same time, they notice ‘people who sit on the floor, who take off their shoes when entering a house, and who like to eat rice’. One concludes that this is ‘exactly like in Kuwait’. The social norms are similar. As the most striking feature, students point out the formulaic behaviours of Japanese and Korean people. These behaviours contrast very much with American casual social norms. In the Anglo-American world, professors wear shorts, everybody is called by the first name and authority seems to have been abolished in the 1960s. In America, non-formulaic behaviour can lead to success, which works neither in Japan nor in Kuwait. This means that students discover not only the exotic other whom they can reject or emulate, but they are also stunned by the fact that societies similar to their own can be globally successful.

General Culture Are there differences between the ‘interested’ and the ‘non-interested’ ones in terms of general culture? Naruto was naturally known to 71% of the ‘interested’ ones and much less to the others. What about some other Western cultural icons? I asked about Pink Floyd, 9gag, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Frank Sinatra and Clockwork Orange. Bob Marley was known by more than the half of all students. The others rated between 24% and 35%, with Clockwork Orange reaching a minimum of 13%. With regard to all items, the ‘non-interested’ ones scored an average of 10% less than the ‘interested’ ones, except for Bob Marley and Frank Sinatra.

52    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

What Makes it so Attractive? Japanese/Korean cultures are not simply consumed as an entertainment. ‘Cool’ and ‘cute’ appear only twice in the survey though one could have expected those aesthetic categories to be more central. Only one student says that s/he likes fighting scenes. Clothes and fashion are mentioned only three times each, and the words fun, joyful, friendly, exciting and entertaining appear only once each. Only one student is impressed by technology. Catchy tunes and the choreography are mentioned, but the messages contained in the stories are put forward much more often. Aesthetic qualities like style (7) and creativity (5) are noticed, but more students seem to have a strong interest in the culture and the traditions of Japan and Korea. ‘I like how everything, from their arts to their food, is deeply rooted in their culture’, is a typical statement. The words behaviours, habits, ­manners and customs appear repeatedly. This means that most students look at Japanese and Korean cultures not from an aesthetic but from an ethical angle. They are impressed by the politeness of the Japanese and their capacity to organise life, which lead to harmonious societies or what three students characterise as ‘simple life’. Discipline and a good working attitude are pointed out over again.

Their politeness and their peaceful attitude. Smart, hard workers. Efforts and hard work will always show in the things they make and I ­appreciate that. Active and growing. Advance quickly. Organised and respectable. Also have good technology. How much thoughts and efforts they put into what they make. How they give their best and make so much effort with dancing and singing. And taking care of their looks. Polite to each other. Japan is strong independent country, even though they face a lot of natural disasters they stand up again doing her best again.

A student writes that they ‘organise their life starting from the clothes they wear’. This means that many students look for a coherent lifestyle founded on a certain ethics. This becomes even more obvious in the answers to the next question.

Would you say that Japanese (or Korean) Culture Contrasts Very Much with Kuwaiti Culture? As expected, most students find Kuwait more conservative; no drinking in Kuwait, no public festivals, no karaoke bars. Eighty-one find that everything is different, but 10 say that nothing is different; 12 say that they don’t know. One student writes that it’s like comparing batman to superman. Two students say that Japanese and Koreans are more creative than Kuwaitis. A student notices that the ‘idea of masculinity and attractiveness is very different’. Religion – contrary to

Japanophilia in Kuwait    53 what could be expected – is mentioned only twice. Differences of dress, greetings, food and the way of speaking are mentioned 14 times. A student explains that the Japanese way of bowing could be considered offensive in Kuwait ‘because we can only bow to God’. But students also find similarities. Some believe that kindness, hospitality and honesty are essential in both cultures. There is also an emphasis on fashion with which Kuwaitis can empathise. However, the big topic is once again ethics. Fifteen are impressed by the work ethics, organisation and the application of rules, norms and values, dedication to education.



In a way yes, because in Japanese and Korean culture, teamwork is highly emphasised and being loyal to the organisation in which they work, those things do not apply in Kuwait. Also, though both Kuwait and Japan/Korea are considered high context cultures, Japanese culture is even more formal, also, you usually refer to someone with their last name and sometimes accompanied by a title. From what we can see, they are definitely more organised than we are, and rules are rules in contrast to our culture where things are always unorganised. I believe we should learn a lot from the way Japanese people manage their schools and education. They cover the basic fundamentals of Islam more than Kuwaiti people even though they are not Muslim.

One wonders how some parents can still think that this culture can have a bad influence on their children. Second, the word respect appears again and again (36 times in all comments). It is used in two contexts: (1) Japanese and Koreans show respect to each other; (2) they also show respect to outsiders. Ten students say that the main difference between the cultures is that Korea/Japan shows more respect to others.

Very non-judgmental respectful society, acknowledges different types of capabilities and talents. They respect parents a lot. The difference between them [and us is that] they care about environment. The difference is that they embrace the uniqueness of a person. Respect towards their culture. Respect all people. The respect peoples’ differences. I knew that they respect Muslims who fast in Ramadan.

The fact that students use these observations as an answer to the question about differences between Japan/Korea and Kuwait signifies that in their view, respect is not as much valued in Kuwaiti society. However, when it comes to the respect of parents, Kuwaitis see strong similarities with their own culture.

They have many traits that us Kuwaitis do, like respect our parents and must stay clean and tidy and to greet everyone. The respect they have of their parents and how they treat them and how close families are in Japan.

54    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

It is slightly similar in some ways as the importance of their national culture and respect for the older. I’d rather start with the similarities; we both show much respect for the elderly and for our parents. They both hold respect and honor in high standings. We both have similar culture when it comes to family. respectful to person who is older (they are more respectful then us).

In spite of the flagrant modernity of these pop cultures, the majority of the students emphasise the traditional character of Japan and Korea, which they find impressive and to which they can relate.

They have traditional behavior everywhere. Some of their family ties are different and how they deal with cousins but similar in the customs of marriage and parenting. The family issues are very similar. The same because of the conservative society. Not much different if we look at the importance of tradition in both cultures. Both feel proud with their tradition. Similarities, such as the emphasis on family ties. Moreover, it’s that they still know their traditional life even the new generations. Different from all things that we are used to. Everyone is more of a fan of American culture but Japan & Korea still have respect to their traditions which makes them different but very interesting.

Two students even believe that Korea and Japan are more traditional than Kuwait. Others are particularly fascinated by the fact that Japan is

So modern, but still grabs hold of their traditions in a beautiful way. Or by



The existence of a mix of cultures and the adaptation of multiple parts of other cultures into it makes it a strange concoction.

How Much Personal Research Do Students Undertake to Learn about the History and Culture of Those Countries? It must be said beforehand that, in general, students at GUST are known to be not very much attracted by world history. This study must be put in the context of a society driven by consumerism and entertainment where knowledge is not very much valued. It is therefore surprising that almost half of the students indicate having made some efforts to approach the history and culture of those countries. The other 50% did not. The difference between Japan and Korea is ‘not clear’ or ‘not really clear’ to 54%. Only 23% know what bushido is; 42% are aware that Japanese manga have sometimes input from the Shintoism. On the other hand,

Japanophilia in Kuwait    55 the knowledge can be punctually quite concrete: some students know the Meiji era, the Sengoku period and Chuseok. Sometimes the knowledge comes from watching anime about Japanese history. Some try to understand the lyrics of Japanese songs and search for historical references.



I always try to learn more about it rather than just sticking to watching anime. I’m into learning the Japanese proverbs and the mythology that was written back in the Edo era. And I’m still on the progress of learning more and more. Me and my family were interested in the story behind the ring. I was interested in some of the religious references that they make sometimes, and some of the characters have very complex philosophical ideas behind them that were even [present] in the Greek mythology.

Only 12 students put forward religion and myths as their main interests. Many looked for information about geisha, kawaii culture, samurais, traditional clothes or the lifestyle in Japan. Three were interested in Japanese philosophy. However, by far the most popular topic is war.

I researched some history of warlords like Oda Nabnuga [Nobunaga] or Date Masumumne [Masamune] and a little about Korean empires. I have also researched about their folklore and legends, a little about some artists and classic novelist.



How they lost the war.



I found out that Japanese history is built on betrayal that many shogun in Japan history betrayed each other. Know a lot about the civil wars in feudal japan. It is one of my favorite cultures to study and understand. The general history of the Japanese Edo period and its conflicts. The shogun and feudal Japan but I kind of dropped the history lesson after a while. Some things about the warring states. I search about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Researched a bit about the civil wars in there between the samurais to learn more about ruruni kenshin. World war. I searched about how they recovered after WWII and a lot about their education and general information about their lifestyle. I took huge interest in Japanese history especially when it comes to war, clans or big known warriors who changed the land.



Did Your Interest in Japanese/Korean Culture Change Your Way of Seeing the World? To this question, 116 answered ‘yes’ and 174 answered ‘no’. Some comment that they find the morals of manga childish and that they can only be consumed for fun.

56    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein One student says that Japan is all about ‘Sushi’n losing wars’. Six state that it changed ‘everything’ for them. Many are more precise and explain how it affected them. For a smaller group, it concerns the aesthetic perception, as emerges from these comments:

It has shown me how beautiful the world is. I see now that the world has beauty. Japanese culture makes me positive and optimistic! For me, the world (or at least the society I live in) has become dull and boring. It made me want to live in the Japanese culture and experience it firsthand. I feel like it makes me see the world in more color. Japan made me realise how the world is not all flower and sometimes you they will be darkness in your life. The world is not all bad with anime in it, it lights it up in a way. I started to notice a lot of things that I didn’t before. It unleashed my creativity and broke down many boundaries.

A by far bigger group puts forward ethical themes. Twenty-six state having been influenced by Japanese values and discipline and claim that it changed their character.

I like how Japanese people treasure WORK and it made me do that too. Although I am a lazy person. They’re so organised and the way they raise their kids inspires me so much. I’ve tried to adapt some aspects of Japanese culture into my life as well as work. I’ve introduced the concept of Keizen at my workplace and that interested my superiors.

Even more popular is the ‘open minded’ theme. Twenty-nine students answer that the contact with those cultures made them more tolerant of other cultures, that it made them think differently, and that they look now at the world from a different angle:

A culture shock to be honest. I became more open minded instead of the rigid way of thinking. To be tolerant of all diverse existences, human or otherwise. Made me more open minded, creative and taught me professionalism. And to value knowledge.

The biggest subgroup gives this ‘open minded’ theme a more ethical slant by elaborating once again about the importance of respect. Two suggest that the confrontation with this pop culture made them less racist.

I have more respect to others now. It made me realise that each individual has their own concerns and is trying hard to live by day-to-day. I have grown appreciative of some of my teachers, even the ones I disliked.

Japanophilia in Kuwait    57

I have really close family members who think Asian men look like females, which to me is not true. They do have clear skins with no hair but that’s what makes them special and we should respect our differences. Respect peoples’ privacy. Respect, respect, and respect. All the way. Respecting people. The way they treat people. It let me see that some countries don’t care about organising society or ­respecting others.

Does it Make You Different from other People in Society? This was the final question that was supposed to grasp the marginalisation of this kind of culture. Thirty answered ‘yes’, 41 answered ‘no’, 9 said ‘a little’ or ‘may be’. Three explained why they think that it does not make them different:

Globalisation and the internet is blurring the lines. Much more people are getting into Japanese culture, a lot are already into it. However, because they fear what people think of them, they keep it hidden. To be honest, not really. We are living in a world where cultures are intertwined. Especially with the internet where we are exposed to many cultures around the world. Not so much, because Asian culture is very popular even here in Kuwait. Yes, but not a lot because there are people like me in my country. I think that Asian culture is very widespread in this generation, you can find a lot of anime lovers, so I think a lot of people will think the same way.

Two say that ‘It does influence my character, in a good way, so I believe so, yes’ and that ‘It just make me funnier’. However, another 25 explain, often quite lengthily, how their interest in Japan and Korea marginalised them by establishing an aesthetic or ethical distance between them and the rest of Kuwaiti society. They stick out. Already at home, their rooms being decorated with Japanese picture makes them different within their own family. ‘Being different’ is not so much a matter of looks in Kuwait because especially girls (who were the main respondents in this survey) will often not be allowed to stylise their outer appearances, for example, by colouring their hair. Most of them cannot even show their hair. The difference must be hidden.

By the way I look and behave? Not at all. By the way I think? Absolutely. I am smart enough to not show it otherwise they will look at me weirdly. Not really. I am interested in many things. I am an Otaku. A hidden one I guess. But that does not mean that I let go of everything else. I am a very diverse person. People always say that I can click with everyone be it games, books, history, manga, fashion or makeup, I can make a long interactive conversation about whichever subject which the other individual is interested.

58    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

No, the only thing that makes me different is that i don’t talk about it. Generally no, because my interest in Asian culture is just an interest, not an obsession. So I only converse with people who I know like the genre instead of people who don’t. Also, there are a lot of people who enjoy Asian culture, but they don’t show it out of fear of scrutiny. Others experience a separation from the rest of society.



In a way yes, because not everyone in Kuwait has a keen interest on Asian culture and most of my friends do not watch anime. Of course, because nobody really understands why I like Asian culture unless they’re into it themselves. I believe so! Since there aren’t that many people who share the same interest as I do. In a sense, yes because I tend to be more open minded than others because of what I’ve been exposed to. Pretty much, yes. Rather childish, as they say. Some people make fun of me because I watch ‘cartoons’. They’re judgmental and closed minded. It makes me feel different because not all people like it. It isolates you because you meet [only] people who have somehow similar interests like you.

The subculture effect can be grasped when considering that for many, the adherence to this culture signifies a sort of protest. They have chosen it in order to be separated and they do not regret the separation. They have a feeling of superiority that is typical in subcultures:

People who know more are different from others. It separates me from them, it’s my own will. Maybe … I wish I could live there myself since people here are not going to change. I think so. I’m one of the few people that’s not really interested in Arabian culture, but I’m definitely interested in Asian cultures. Because I like what I like and love what I love instead of liking the same things as my friends. You to have your own stuff and that’s one part of what it makes me unique. I’m not interested in Arabic culture, and my family is very cultural. I choose to draw ‘weird and creepy’ art (similar to monsters in anime and manga) because that’s what I like to draw. But people around me tend to think it’s too scary and think I’m too much of a weirdo.

In personal interviews, a student whose parents threw away her entire manga collection, explains why she insists on her being different.

I know I’m different, why should I be like them. I have my own way of wearing clothes [she is actually wearing a traditional abaya], I have my own way of speaking.

Japanophilia in Kuwait    59 A student who has blue hair under her hijab (she once tried to take it off, which cause a major turmoil in her family) explains that she likes Japanese culture because it makes her superior.

What are those others doing? They believe in rumors, conspiracy theories, follow all sorts of advices on the internet about dieting and so on. Do plastic surgery. Everybody imitates the other. They don’t respect individualities. Here people enjoy humiliating people because they have no self-confidence. That’s why I am into Japanese culture.

Conclusion Globalisation tends to be linked to Americanisation and is most often seen as a power that flattens and erases local culture. In an Arab context, this produces political connotations. Arab culture has been credited with the ability of resisting globalisation and cultural imperialism because of its conservatism and traditionalism. This has been made clearest by Raphael Patai in his The Arab Mind (Patai, 1976). Also less biased authors like Al-Kandari and Gaither (2011) confirm that ‘many Arabs refuse any acculturation of Western values that might alter or negatively affect the social structures, status quo and the morality of youth’ (p. 270). The problem is that this logic considers only the transfer from the West to the East while in the Japan– Kuwait case we have to do with an East–East exchange. The Japanese-Kuwaiti cultural transfer implies a double resistance towards the local Kuwaiti culture and towards American culture. Alternativity is created in a more complex way as it is the result of globalisation as much as anti-globalisation attitudes. The double-bind structure implied by those negotiations with both traditional and Americanised Kuwaiti culture can lead to increased marginalisation. More precisely, it can lead to a twofold marginalisation. Manga fans are against Kuwaiti traditions but are also leaving the American cultural fold that is generally accepted as a symbol of coolness. East–Asian culture represents thus the alternative to two (and not only one) culture. Second, resistance is not based on cultural closure and conservatism but rather on the willingness to engage with another (Eastern) culture. The paradoxical pattern of resistance to the East through the adherence to another Eastern culture exposes the complexities that international subcultures can undergo in a postcolonial world. Kuwaiti/American is seen as a compound that one tries to undermine by using elements of another non-Western culture. The result is a subculture wearing many traits that subcultures manifest in the West.

References Abdulrahim, M, Al-Kandari, A., & Hasanen, M. (2009). The Influence of American Television Programs on University Students in Kuwait: A Synthesis. European Journal of American Culture, 28(1), 57–74.

60    Thorsten Botz-Bornstein Al-Kandari, A., & Gaither, K. (2011). Arabs, the West and Public Relations: A Critical/ Cultural Study of Arab Cultural Values. Public Relations Review, 37, 266–273. Botz-Bornstein, T., & Abdullah-Khan, N. (2014). The Veil in Kuwait: Gender, Fashion, Identity. New York, NY: Palgrave. Hasanen, M., Al-Kandari, A., & Al-Sharoufi, H. (2014). The Role of English Language and International Media as Agents of Cultural Globalisation and their Impact on Identity Formation in Kuwait. Societies and Education, 12(4), 542–563. Mocanu, D., Baronchelli, A., Perra, N., Gonçalves, B., Zhang, Q., & Vespignani, A. (2013). The Twitter of Babel: Mapping World Languages through Microblogging Platforms. PlosOne, 18. Patai, R. (1976). The Arab mind. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Riesman, D. (1950). Listening to Popular Music. American Quarterly, 2, 359–371. Wheeler, D. L. (2003). The Internet and Youth Subculture in Kuwait. Journal of ComputerMediated Communication, 8(2).

Chapter 4

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device): Alternative Perspectives on the Misogynist Aesthetic of W.A.S.P.’s ‘The Rack’ Gareth Heritage Abstract Glam metal of the 1980s represented a notable development in popular music at this time. A subgenre of 1980s heavy metal, glam metal combined elements of late 1960s and 1970s heavy rock, glam rock and punk rock, enriching both the visual and aural aesthetic diversity of 1980s heavy metal as a result. Moreover, 1980s glam metal bands such as Guns N’ Roses and Poison, Cinderella and Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Warrant, dominated the music video airwaves and sold out venues across the United States. Yet, for all its comparative individuality and widespread popularity, the vast majority of mainstream glam metal bands were marginalised by social action groups mainly, but not exclusively, because of misogynist-type themes that the bands represented in their aesthetics. During the 1990s, scholars began scrutinising 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics, for example, Lisa Sloat’s (1998) analysis of glam metal’s sexist and misogynist themed song lyrics concludes that, ‘if exploiting women for sex sells, [glam metal] musicians will [continue] record[ing] songs which do so’ (Sloat, 1998, p. 299). Yet none of these accounts seem to be able to sufficiently unpack the idea that 1980s glam metal’s representation of misogyny was anything other than fundamentally egregious. An alternative reading of the aesthetics shows us how many of the bands creatively appropriated misogyny to idiomatically hallmark metal glam, thus differentiating the style from the broadly homogenous displays of machismo that generally

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 61–80 Copyright © 2018 by Gareth Heritage All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181017

62    Gareth Heritage defined the aesthetics of other 1980s heavy metal subgenres. In response then, this chapter should be thought of as a doctrine provactive, intended to elicit a debate about the need to look alternatively at how misogyny is/was used as an artistic aesthetic device, not only in 1980s glam metal, but throughout culture more widely. Keywords: Alternative; glam metal; marginalization; misogyny; W.A.S.P; subculture

This chapter challenges the view that 1980s glam metal espoused misogyny for sexist ends. Drawing on interview material and photographs of an act performed by W.A.S.P. known simply as ‘The Rack’, this chapter considers what was arguably the single-most misogynist-themed aesthetic performed by a glam metal band. It posits the idea that instead of being little more than a crude misogynist-themed spectacle, ‘The Rack’ can be thought of as symbolising how one band pushed glam metal’s broadly misogynist-themed aesthetics to the limit. It does neither provide a complete historical overview of either the vilification by groups critical of 1980s glam metal or the glam metal genre, nor does it condone misogyny. Instead this chapter should be regarded as a catalyst, with the intent of initiating a wider debate on the use of misogyny as an artistic device, not only in 1980s glam metal, but throughout popular culture more widely. The chapter adds to the conversation about marginalization because it challenges the popular discourse that ultimately pushed W.A.S.P. to the margins of musical obscurity. It can also be read as a polemical piece, intended to provoke wider debate about the role of misogyny in the creative arts. Throughout the 1980s, ideologically conservative organizations such as the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and Back In Control criticised glam metal bands for their graphic representations of misogyny (Gore, 1987; Pettinicchio, 1988).1 In a 1985 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the PMRC posited the argument that in their view ‘[t]here is a new element of vulgarity and violence toward women [in music. As such] warning label[s] [should be placed] on music products … due to explicit sexual or violent lyrics’ (Baker & Gore, 1985, p. 11–12). Although the PMRC did not single out glam metal bands as the sole perpetrators of ‘vulgarity and violence towards women’ (Baker & Gore, 1985) in music, they were scathing of several well-known glam metal bands for their aesthetic representation of misogyny.

1

Back in Control was more of an ideological collaboration between Gregory Bodenhamer and Darlyne Pettinicchio who promoted a ‘conservative’ method of reforming the behaviour of wayward teenagers. Informed by their work in the Californian juvenile probation office, one of their methods to bring young people back into accepted society included ‘de-metaling’ (Pettinicchio, 1988, n.p.), which involved getting young offenders ‘out of heavy metal’ (Pettinicchio, 1988).

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    63 One 1980s glam metal band, in particular, to experience ‘the sting’ of the PMRC’s scorn was W.A.S.P.2,3

Discourse Analysis 1980s glam metal’s representation of misogyny must be regarded differently to previous perceptions. Glam metal of the 1980s has more artistic credibility than its critics allow. By creatively appropriating misogyny, 1980s glam metal bands idiomatically hallmarked their aesthetic, thus differentiating their style from the broadly homogenous displays of homoeroticism that generally defined the aesthetics of other 1980s heavy metal subgenres. One way that many 1980s glam metal bands achieved this was by conveying the subjugation of women in creative ways; via song lyrics, album art, music video imagery or by other means, such as on stage at the live concert. I am neither suggesting that we should condone or overlook the real subjugation of women, nor that such bands were not misogynistic; my discussion here is entirely focussed on the creative outputs in which these bands expressed a particular aesthetic. Although there are examples of 1980s glam metal bands who represented misogyny in a wholly moronic way,4 certain bands adopted a creative approach to the construction of misogynist-themed aesthetics. By looking closely at how this was achieved, a new discourse (one that places greater emphasis on the artistic merits of 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics) can be set in motion. During the 1990s, several scholarly analyses served only to confirm (albeit indirectly) the anti-glam metal position posited by the PMRC. Lisa Sloat’s analysis of glam metal’s 1980s and 1990s sexist and misogynist-themed song lyrics illustrates the typical view scholars have tended to take when confronting this subject. In her chapter, ‘Incubus: Male songwriters’ portrayal of women’s sexuality in pop metal’ (1998), Sloat analyses the lyrical content

2

With their less-than-glamorous appearance, W.A.S.P. do not fit neatly into the glam metal pantheon. However, W.A.S.P. are perhaps the most ‘glam’ of all 1980s glam metal bands, not because of their look, which was particularly grimy, but because of their lineage and conception. The band’s founder, Blackie Lawless, was a former member of the punk rock band The New York Dolls and late 1970s punk rock had a notable influence on the sound and look of 1980s glam metal. The New York Dolls especially influenced the aesthetic development of many glam metal bands. In the early years of his post-Dolls career, Lawless regularly frequented Sunset Boulevard’s Rainbow Bar and Grill (9015 Sunset Boulevard), which became synonymous with hard rock and glam metal bands. There is little doubt that Lawless would have taken inspiration from the bands going there. In my view W.A.S.P. clearly satisfy the criteria for being regarded a glam metal band, especially when one considers that their grimy appearance closely resembles that of other, less glitzy ‘80s glam metal bands, such as Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Skid Row. 3 This chapter focuses primarily on W.A.S.P.’s founder/vocalist/bassist/guitarist B ­ lackie Lawless. 4 Such as Dangerous Toys’ ‘Sport’n a Woody’ (1989).

64    Gareth Heritage of 17 songs. Although developing some interesting ideas, such as how some glam metal lyrics focus on the male protagonist’s ‘desire to sexually please [as opposed to take advantage of] women’ (Sloat 1998, p. 287), Sloat’s analysis is based mainly on a surface reading of lyrics chosen to support her thesis that ‘if exploiting women for sex sells, [glam metal] musicians will [continue] record[ing] songs which do so’ (Sloat 1998, p. 299). Due to a lack of wider contextual detail, Sloat’s analysis must be regarded only as a snapshot in our complete understanding of 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics. Robert Walser (1993a, 1993b), known for his defence of heavy metal, acknowledges that the ‘brutal stage shows of W.A.S.P. [and the] forthrightly misogynist lyrics in some of the music of Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe’ (Walser, 1993a, p.  117) raised ‘legitimate concerns about sexual violence in the lyrics and visual representations of metal shows’ (Walser, 1993b, p. 73). Although Walser’s highlighting of 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetic is less opprobrious than Sloat’s, he, too, fails to take into account the artistic merits of 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetic. More recently, Kristen Sollee (2011) has attempted to go beyond the perceived notion that 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics were merely the realization of the bands’ sexist attitudes. Sollee determines that representations of misogyny functioned to tie the bands’ sense of masculinity to an element of social ‘normality’. With reference to Sandra Bem’s theory of psychological androgyny, Sollee suggests that glam metal bands afforded themselves the opportunity to play with gender signifiers, ‘choosing which sexual position was most optimal for fulfilling their needs’ (Sollee, 2011, p. 54). Although Sollee is speaking specifically about how the male band members ascribed femininity through their adorning of female signifiers, specifically makeup, hair modelling products and feminine-­identified fashions (such as high-heel boots, bouffant hair and leopard-print clothes), she is nevertheless saying that by assimilating female signifiers, 1980s glam metal’s misogyny derives from the masculine colonization of what was perceived at the time as uniquely feminine: the way men in glam metal use female ornamentation for their own devices is far more misogynistic than the exscription of the female altogether … [b]y taking up all possible positions for themselves, they leave no room for women to exist as subjects at all. (Sollee, 2011, p. 57) None of the scholarly work mentioned above fully challenges the accepted notion that 1980s glam metal’s representation of misogyny was in one way or another sexist. As such, the scholarly discourse pertaining to the notion that 1980s glam metal supported a misogynist/sexist agenda, typically (at least in broad terms) endorses arguments leading to its marginalization in the first place. To challenge ideas that glam metal was only misogynistic, in the following sections I show that there are alternative ways of reading 1980s glam metal’s misogynist aesthetics that allow us to appreciate the artistry behind their composition.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    65

Introducing W.A.S.P.’s ‘The Rack’ W.A.S.P. were singled out by the PMRC as exemplifying the extent to which rock’s aesthetic vulgarity had, by the mid-1980s, become socially and morally unacceptable. From their name, a media designated acronym for ‘We.Are.Sexual.Perverts’ (Barton, 1984, p. 56; Gore, 1987, p. 50), to the misogynist lyrical content of some of their songs, stage theatrics and album covers, W.A.S.P.’s output in the early-mid 1980s was unsurpassed in its ability to offend (Reesman, 2013, p. 73). Although the cover art and lyrics to their Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) (1984) single was lambasted by the PMRC as the worst type of misogynist music, giving credence to the idea that no artwork has absolute `moral rights’ (Gaut, 2002, p. 431), it was W.A.S.P.’s live concerts that received the most vitriolic criticism.5 W.A.S.P.’s concerts differed from those of other 1980s heavy metal bands because stage theatrics accompanied their music.6 In a 1988 video documentary interview with W.A.S.P.’s founder/vocalist/bassist/guitarist Blackie Lawless, Lawless notes that to ensure his band stood out in what was, in the early 1980s a rapidly developing marketplace, W.A.S.P. needed an identity that was both conformist (to appeal to established audiences) and distinct (to attract new fans). In addition to finding new ways of commercially competing with the pyrotechnicrich stage theatrics used by other 1980s glam metal bands, such as Mötley Crüe, Lawless wanted to differentiate W.A.S.P.’s live act from the conventional rock concert format. A quote on the official W.A.S.P. website illustrates precisely why Lawless was moved to create a glam metal live act unlike almost any other. I was always bored to death by bands that got onstage in T-Shirts and jeans, and stood in one place all night. Hell, the people could have more fun by staying home and playing the albums in the comfort of their living rooms. I’d rather be dead than stand onstage like that. (Lawless, 2017, n.p.) In numerous interviews given throughout the 1980s, Lawless repeatedly stated that the theatrics performed at W.A.S.P.’s live concerts were inspired by elements of vaudeville (Chirazi, 1985; Kordosh, 1985; Lawless, 1988). In one interview Lawless admits that his goal was to engineer a contemporary, ‘electric-vaudeville’ ­(Lawless, 1988, n.p.) spectacle that tapped into the audience’s sense of imagination. Lawless (1988) called this the ‘psychodrama’ and it had two functions. On one level it was used to make the band look like they had a ‘million dollars’ (Lawless, 1988). On another it was a way of trying to put what was happening both on stage and being sung about in the lyrics (essentially the atmosphere/mood of a particular piece) 5

Gaut’s work on the ethics of art provides fascinating insight into the rights and wrongs of censorship and art’s intrinsic moral obligations. Due to the limited scope of this chapter, no further reference to art as ethics is made. 6 With the exception of other theatrical bands, most notably Alice Cooper and Mötley Crüe.

66    Gareth Heritage into the audience as authentically as possible (Lawless, 1988). Although the psychodrama consisted of several acts, some of which included Lawless chopping-up pieces of raw meat with an axe, throwing meat at the audience, setting a large sign of the band’s name on fire, throwing posters of skeletons at the audience, eating fake worms, shredding pillows and pretending to drink simulated blood from a prop skull, only one, known simply as ‘The Rack’, had a misogynist narrative. Performed live as an accompaniment to the song ‘Tormentor’ (1984), ‘The Rack’ involved the simulated torture and execution of a woman naked from the  waist up. During a prolonged musical interlude, Lawless would bring onto stage a type of mock gallows to which a semi-naked woman appeared to be chained. After some posturing and non-verbal interaction with the audience, Lawless would use a fake machete and theatrical blood to simulate the slitting of the ­woman’s throat as she stood spread-eagle, seemingly helplessly bound to the mock gallows. ­Writing in the music magazine Melody Maker, Simon Reynolds (1987) provides an explanation of how ‘The Rack’ was performed during their set at the 1987 Monsters of Rock festival. Blackie wheels on a gallows from which a semi-naked girl is chained by her wrists, flailing ineffectually. Blackie looks to the crowd, that familiar wide-eyed gape at the depths of his own depravity, the extent of his daring. He draws out a scimitar, looks round again as if to say “Shall I?”… Blackie slits the girl’s throat, drinks deep and turns to face us quenched, drooling gore; glazed eyes appeal to us to share his disbelief at the enormity of his own evil. (n.p.) From Reynolds’ description it does not take much imagination to understand why ‘The Rack’ elicited controversy. On the surface it appears to be little more than a graphic display of misogynist-themed violence giving legitimacy to the concerns raised by the PMRC. Yet, when contextualised with the vaudevilleinspired creative direction Lawless envisaged for the psychodrama, the artistic merits of ‘The Rack’ become clearer. Vaudeville historian Henry Jenkins (1992), describes the traditional American vaudeville aesthetic as consisting of three main components: (1) the interactive relationship between performer and spectator; (2) the delivery of a ‘heterogeneous array of materials’ (Jenkins, 1992, p. 63); and (3) ‘reliance upon crude shock to produce emotionally intense responses’ (Jenkins, 1992). Bearing in mind that ‘The Rack’ was only one part of the psychodrama, which comprised several heterogeneous acts, Jenkins’ second point is not strictly applicable to an analysis of ‘The Rack’ in isolation. However, using Jenkins’ first and third definitions of the constitutional components of the vaudeville aesthetic, it becomes apparent that there is parity between Lawless’ performance practice when enacting ‘The Rack’ and that commonly employed by vaudeville artists. Highlighting similarities between the two dispels the notion that W.A.S.P. were mere ‘scum-mongers’ (Christe, 2003, p. 123) promoting theatrical misogyny for the sake of it, and aids our understanding of the misogynist-themed artistic fabric weaved by W.A.S.P.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    67

Methods In the following sections, I present ‘The Rack’ in an alternative light to that which it may at first appear. I outline the artistry behind its aesthetic potency in an attempt to respond to and challenge some of the criticism that ultimately led to W.A.S.P.’s marginalization. Basing my analysis on two of the three definitions that Jenkins uses to define vaudeville, I show how Lawless created an interactive relationship with his audience. First, I highlight specifically the way facial expressions were used by Lawless to establish a (non-verbal) interactive relationship with his audience. Using Reynolds’ description of ‘The Rack’ and photographs of the same performance published in Kerrang magazine, I demonstrate how Lawless’ performance practice closely resembles that of the vaudevillians/silent movie actors of the 1920s/early-1930s, many of whom also used facial expressions to establish a non-verbal interactive relationship with their audiences. Then I consider Lawless’ suggestion that, despite being a form of ‘electric vaudeville’, ‘The Rack’ was also a type of theatrical horror predicated on the aesthetics of 1970s and 1980s horror cinema. Here I draw on the work of Robin Wood (2002), Deena Weinstein (2000) and Robert Pattison (1987) to theoretically substantiate the misogynist representations that formed the basis, not only of W.A.S.P.’s marginalization, but also their intrinsic aesthetic identity. Finally, I highlight some of the established alternative perspectives on W.A.S.P.’s performance practice/the psychodrama. I show how Kerrang magazine’s review of W.A.S.P.’s first ever London performance, and Manowar’s bassist Joey DeMaio (a person who not only respected the psychodrama but also understood the artistry that Lawless was attempting to convey) had the far-sightedness to realise the psychodrama as a means of artistic expression. I also examine the extent of W.A.S.P.’s marginalization in the contemporary and reflect on the surprisingly different views held by Gore and Lawless today.

Part 1 – Observational Analyses (A) Reminding ourselves that one of two characteristics of the vaudeville aesthetic pertinent to this chapter is ‘the interactive relationship between performer and spectator’ (Jenkins 192, p. 63), this first observational analysis highlights similarities between vaudeville performance practice, and that employed by Lawless during performances of ‘The Rack’; specifically, the role of facial expressions in establishing an interactive relationship with an audience and their role in reinforcing a narrative. Whether it was via the use of masks, like the vaudeville comedy act of Drane and Alexander, or the broadly monotone facial expression synonymous with Charlie Chaplin, facial expressions played a pivotal role in the way vaudevillians interacted with their audience. In the absence of amplified sound (or any sound in the case of silent movies), vaudevillians used facial expressions to aid the creation of an interactive relationship with their audiences.7 Vaudeville comedy acts 7

Moving forward, this analysis focuses on the vaudeville aesthetic as represented onscreen.

68    Gareth Heritage in particular often relied on the performers’ ability to convey the comedic narrative of their sketches in a way that was universally understandable through facial expression.8 Consider, for example, the work of Stan Laurel. Laurel was an expert at using expressive facial gestures to elicit a response from his audience. Be this as a result of his wistful stare, or trademark crying face, Laurel’s instantly recognizable facial expressions reinforced the comedic narrative of his work and, as a result of the laughs he would get, established an interactive relationship with his audience. We can see examples of this in one of his many film appearances. From Soup to Nuts (1928) is an 18-minute silent short film about two caterers serving a high-class dinner event. The images pictured in Figs.1 and 2 are taken from two scenes in this film. They illustrate Laurel’s expertise in using facial expression to enhance the comedy of the often slapstick events happening around him, thereby establishing a clear interactive, albeit disaffiliated, relationship with his audience. The first image (Fig. 1) is taken from a scene in which Laurel inadvertently pours soup onto Oliver Hardy’s foot. The second (Fig. 2) captures Laurel’s realization that he has to serve the salad undressed (i.e., in his undergarments). In Fig. 1, Laurel is looking vacantly into the distance, seemingly unaware that he is spilling the soup all over the floor. In Fig. 2, his look sharply contrasts with that in Fig. 1. It exudes panic because he has misunderstood how the salad should be served. Despite the differences in these two expressions and the absence of sound, their function in reinforcing the comedic aura of each sketch (thus establishing an interactive relationship with the viewer) is the same. Similar to the vaudeville and silent movie performers of the early twentieth century, Lawless regularly used facial expressions to create an interactive relationship with his audience. Often sneering sadistically, Lawless used facial expressions to visualise the savage persona of the characters he played, as well as the

Fig. 1:  An image depicting one of Stan Laurel’s expressive facial gestures. 8

This was significant for the vaudevillians who moved their acts from the stage to the silent screen.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    69

Fig. 2:  An image depicting another of Stan Laurel’s expressive facial gestures. narratives of the acts he performed.9 Reference to Lawless’ use of different facial expressions is made in Reynold’s description of ‘The Rack’, specifically that ‘Blackie looks to the crowd, [with a] familiar wide-eyed gape … [Having] slit the girl’s throat, [Lawless] drinks deep and turns to face us quenched, drooling gore; glazed eyes appeal to us to share his disbelief at the enormity of his own evil. (Reynolds, 1987, n.p.) The words highlighted in bold attest to the importance Lawless placed on the use of facial expressions to communicate with his audience and convey the act’s narrative. Given that the ‘The Rack’ was accompanied by amplified music, and that Lawless often moved around the stage in a frenzied manner (to the extent that it would have been impractical for him to carry both a microphone and a fake machete), Lawless’ use of facial expressions were effective in communicating his sadistic intentions in a methodologically similar way to that used by Laurel and other vaudeville comics (examples of which can be seen in Figs. 3 and 4). Lawless did not only use facial expressions to interact with his audience. In Fig. 3 we can see how physicality also played a role in enhancing the spectacle of this particular performance of ‘The Rack’. Fig. 3 shows Lawless climbing the torture rack. From the cross-beam he looks to the audience for their encouragement to ‘do the deed’. Perched above the trapped women, a sadistic facial expression accompanies his domineering position. His protracted, albeit silent, engagement with the audience maximises the sensation and excitement of the 9

Lawless’ trademark bestial grin is also present in many other silent media guises, such as album covers (most notably ‘The Last Command’ [1985]) and magazine pictures, including on the cover of Kerrang magazine (issue #65), which British newsagent WH Smith refused to stock.

70    Gareth Heritage

Fig. 3:  An image from the 1987 Monsters of Rock festival showing Lawless moments before performing the execution of the woman during a performance of `The Rack’. simulated torture, climaxing in the pretend execution of the woman.10 By climbing the rack, Lawless surpasses the use of facial expressions to communicate the psychodrama. He uses the performance space in a way similar to the physical (slapstick) comedy of vaudevillians and early silent movie actors, such as Oliver Hardy and Groucho Marx. However, the Monsters of Rock performance of ‘The Rack’, as described by Reynolds and depicted in Figs. 3 and 4, was not typical. The festival setting gave Lawless a performance area that was unrepresentative of the types of venues, often indoor and on much smaller stages, where ‘The Rack’ was usually performed. As the confines of smaller venues did not afford Lawless suitable room to climb the rack, we can deduce that facial expressions were more 10

Although Lawless had access to a microphone when singing, his decision not to use one when performing ‘The Rack’ meant that he was able to focus on the physicality of the performance; one may find it hard to hold a microphone in one hand and a fake machete in the other while clambering up a mock gallows. Without a microphone, his reliance on facial expressions, akin to the vaudevillians, to visually/non-verbally/ interactively communicate the act’s narrative was a more effective tool.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    71

Fig. 4:  An image from the 1987 Monsters of Rock festival showing Lawless moments after performing the execution of the woman during `The Rack’. important than physical movement in Lawless’ ability to establish interactivity with his audience, as depicted in Figs. 5 and 6. Although performances of ‘The Rack’ are not comparable to any one vaudeville performance/style, they nevertheless demonstrate that Lawless used facial expressions (and occasionally other physical performance practices) to express the psychodrama’s narrative in a way similar to that which undergirded the performances of vaudevillians during the silent movie era of the 1920s/early-1930s. It could be argued, however, that the success of the psychodrama is essentially a matter subject to personal opinion. Indeed, Reynolds (1987, n.p.) writes that W.A.S.P. are ‘staggeringly bad at what they do’. However, given that Reynolds observed both men and women (the latter of which he refers to as ‘[d]umpy traitors to their sex’ [Reynolds, 1987]) positively interacting with Lawless on stage, it is clear that Lawless’ use of facial expressions contributed, at least in part, to ‘The Rack’ being optimistically received by an audience that revelled in its misogynistic splendour.

Part 2 – Observational Analyses (B) Reminding ourselves that an additional characteristic of the vaudeville aesthetic pertinent to this chapter is the ‘reliance upon crude shock to produce emotionally

72    Gareth Heritage

Fig. 5:  An image of an early 1980s performance of `The Rack’. Notice the limited space Lawless had to perform the act compared to Fig. 3 and Fig. 4.

Fig. 6:  An image depicting Lawless’ expressive use of facial gestures and the dream-like atmosphere of an early 1980s performance of `The Rack’.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    73 intense responses’ (Jenkins, 192, p. 63), this second observational analysis shows how Lawless modernised his use of the vaudeville aesthetic by fusing it with thematic elements prevalent in horror cinema of the time. Despite the vaudevillian inspiration, Lawless undoubtedly realised that in order to differentiate W.A.S.P.’s aesthetic from that of his competitors, the psychodrama needed to exceed the freakish shock-rock themes used by other glam metal bands. To magnify the psychodrama’s ability to elicit emotionally intense feelings of revulsion, which are comparatively absent from even the most extreme vaudeville acts, Lawless looked to horror cinema for ideas. In a 1988 video interview, Lawless implies that despite his vision of the psychodrama being a type of electric-vaudeville, he also envisaged the psychodrama to be like a horror film, specifically Wes Craven’s Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) (Lawless, 1988, n.p.). A surface reading of ‘The Rack’ aligns it with some of the most revered misogynist-themed horror films of the 1970s.11 By this measure alone, Lawless was successful in eliciting an emotionally intense response through his use of crude, misogynist-themed shock imagery. However, interpreting ‘The Rack’ in this way suggests that the simulated execution of ‘The Rack’ girl was merely a doltish display of misogyny (as suggested by the PMRC) and does little to elucidate its artistic credibility. In order to shed light on the artistic merits of ‘The Rack’, its aesthetics must be contextualised with those of the 1970s/1980s horror genre. In his article, ‘The American nightmare: Horror in the 70s’ (2002), Robin Wood posits that the 1970s American horror film was predicated upon the relationship between three intrinsic concepts: the Repressed, the Other and the Monster. In order to understand what Wood means by each, we need to consider how one relates to the other, which Wood does in four stages. Wood (2002) introduces the concept of Repression suggesting that it can be defined by a variety of neuroses, including ‘frustration, dissatisfaction, anxiety, greed, possessiveness, jealousy [and] neuroticism’ (p. 25), all of which are psychological products of life in our patriarchal capitalist culture/society. Explaining the concept of the Other, Wood realises that there is a relationship between repression and otherness, noting that ‘[t]he concept of Otherness … functions not simply as something external to the culture or to the self, but also as what is repressed … in the self and projected outwards in order to be hated and disowned’ (Wood, 2002, p. 27).12 Highlighting ways in which society oppresses those who contradict established norms (Wood uses homosexuality as an analogy) Wood suggests that, that which escapes repression will always be oppressed. Through his homosexuality analogy Wood essentially outlines the concept of the Monster, whereby the Monster represents both our fear of/ability to repress/oppress other people. Lastly, Wood transposes each of the eight versions of the Other, albeit nuanced to suit a specific plot, onto a selection of films to illustrate how each version is 11

Such as Last House On the Left (1972) and I Spit On Your Grave (1978). Wood provides eight examples of what he regards as the Other; 1: Other People, 2: Women, 3: The Proletariat, 4: Other Cultures, 5: Ethnic Groups Within the Culture, 6: Alternative Ideologies and Political Systems, 7: Deviations from Ideological Sexual Norms, 8: Children. 12

74    Gareth Heritage cinematically represented. Of these eight versions, one of particular note is the nuanced example Wood gives for Women as the Other, which he presents in the guise of Female Sexuality. On the subject of female sexuality as used in the horror aesthetic, Wood (2002) notes that from Alien (1979) to Sisters (1973), horror cinema in the 1970s presented the viewer with ‘a complete and rigorous analysis of the oppression of women under patriarchal culture’ (p. 29). Although Wood (2002) does not clarify who is the oppressor in each of these films,13 the examples he uses supports the overarching notion that ‘[i]n a male dominated culture … women as the Other … are denied … autonomy and independence’ (p. 27). Perhaps more suitably than the monster from Alien, we can think of Lawless’ character as a monster-type-character similar to Freddy Krueger.14 Considering Lawless in this way is significant for three reasons. Not only did Lawless represent himself with Kruger-like razor-fingers and saw-blade armlets (see Figs. 7 and 8), the atmosphere of ‘The Rack’ (which consisted of pyrotechnics, dry-ice, warm lighting and persistent music) has the feel of being a dream-sequence, not

Fig. 7:  An image showing Lawless with prosthetic fingers, not dissimilar to the razor-glove worn by Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street films.

13

One may be inclined to think, for example, that in Alien, the Xenomorph is the ­oppressor. Others argue that Ash is a more credible threat to Ripley. 14 The main monster/villain from the Nightmare On Elm Street films.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    75

Fig. 8:  An image showing Lawless with his trademark saw-blade armlets and codpiece. Although different to the razor-glove worn by Freddy Krueger, the adorning of sharp metal implements is a clear parallel between the two. dissimilar to the ‘dreamy’ aesthetic central to both the look and plot of Nightmare On Elm Street.15 More importantly, however, ‘The Rack’ was of a time when slasher-type films were at the height of their popularity. It is inconceivable to think that W.A.S.P. would be able to ‘get away with’ performing ‘The Rack’ today. Yet, when contextualised with the ‘video nasty’ phenomenon of the late 1970s/mid-1980s, where outrageous movies such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Driller Killer (1979) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) were popular titles in the home-video market, W.A.S.P.’s horrific output (epitomised by ‘The Rack’) must be regarded in the same historical context as these films.16 Regardless of which 15

Which can be experienced from time reference 29:11–30:43 at this Weblink: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayysUvgSQQQ (accessed July 20, 2017). 16 Although not technically a ‘video nasty’ (as it did not appear on the UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions list of 72 banned films [which was essentially the classification that defined the term]), Nightmare On Elm Street and similar slasher films (i.e., Friday the 13th [1980] and Halloween [1978]) are of the same era and of a similar style. Interestingly, the PMRC drew up a list of what they believed to be the worst offending music artists for having sexually explicit content, music that advocated violence and the Occult, as well as songs that condoned drug and alcohol abuse. The list, called the Filthy 15, served to exemplify the PMRC’s view that like movies, the content of music should have a ratings system. It will not come as a surprise to learn that along with other artists, including Judas Priest, Madonna and Prince, W.A.S.P. were on this list.

76    Gareth Heritage Monster guise we connect with Lawless, during performances of ‘The Rack’ he is both the Monster and the hero. This is because ‘The Rack’ can be read from two different perspectives, both of which I explain below. From a surface reading of the ‘The Rack,’ repression is conveyed via the chains that bind the women to the gallows. Her sexuality is a narrative omnipresent because of her nakedness, but never physically exploited (it is after all just an act). Oppression is conveyed by Lawless’ tormenting/torturing her as a prelude to her execution. However, using Wood’s theory of the Other we can regard the women in an alternative way other than simply as the victim. An alternative reading of the role of ‘The Rack’ girl suggests that she is a metaphor for the audience’s neuroses. In this respect, it is not the woman who is being repressed, but what she represents as the Other that is being oppressed by proxy (i.e., by Lawless) on behalf of the audience. Deena Weinstein (2000) notes that for young male metal-heads of the 1980s, women were the Other. Weinstein (2000) says that for the mainly young male fans, women were regarded as ‘objects of lust’ (p. 104). From Weinstein’s observation, it is clear that ‘The Rack’ girl is a figure of lust beyond what the audience can attain. They see her as belonging to Blackie, regardless of whether or not she is his victim or sadomasochistic lover, who must be oppressed because she is unattainable to them. In whatever context ‘The Rack’ girl is regarded, Lawless’ feigned brutality towards her means she is completely repressed/oppressed. What is different is how the audience interprets the act. On the one hand, Lawless is the Monster, fulfilling his artistic intent in presenting ‘The Rack’ in a guise similar to that of a (‘video nasty’) 1970s/1980s horror film. On the other, he is the hero to the mainly young male fans within the audience because he oppresses women on their behalf, carrying out what they are thinking about the Other (their neuroses of greed, possessiveness, jealousy, etc.). In this sense, ‘The Rack’ loses its artistic credibility and becomes merely a product of consumption that satisfies the basic (pseudo-sexual) needs of its audience. As Robert Pattison (1987) succinctly puts it: ‘[whereas] the fans of mellow rockers Genesis expect and get male submission … [t]he fans of heavy-metal rockers Mötley Crüe [and W.A.S.P.] expect and get male dominance’ (p. 116). Thinking of ‘The Rack’ in these terms suggests that the simulated execution of ‘The Rack’ girl is not merely a graphic display of misogyny, as emphasised by the PMRC, but is instead the manifestation of a complex set of sociocultural circumstances.17 Interestingly, however, the naturally horrific aura present in some of the music of other glam metal bands has been used in an inverse way to that which we see happening in ‘The Rack’. With reference to Mötley Crüe’s repertoire, Thomas Sipos (2010) notes that heavy metal ‘enlivens the fast paced gore-fest’ central to the horror aura of slasher-type films (p. 238). Although Sipos does not mention W.A.S.P. by name, the notion that horror films of the 1980s used the music of some glam metal bands as the soundtrack for their gory visuals highlights the suitability of ‘The Rack’ as a vaudeville-type accompaniment, intended to use

17

Analysis of these circumstances is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    77 crude shock as a means of producing an emotionally intense response, to the aggressive music of W.A.S.P.’s song ‘Tormentor’.18

Part 3 – W.A.S.P.’s Post ‘80s Marginalization, Some Developmental Insights Although marginalization was the price W.A.S.P. paid for their use of misogynist themes, their artistic merit did not go unnoticed. Garnering respect from those with the foresight to see the psychodrama as ground-breaking, Kerrang journalist, Geoff Barton (1984), described their stage theatricality as ‘true greatness’ (p. 56).19 Additionally, in an interview given by Joey DeMaio (the founder and bassist of the 1980s true metal band Manowar) in a 1992 edition of Kerrang magazine, DeMaio admires the psychodrama, noting that ‘I did get it when he [Lawless] had all the blood and the meat and the strip girls on stage. I thought that was visually powerful. He was on the right track there. He’s got talent’ (DeMaio, 1992, p. 12). Despite their aesthetic individuality, W.A.S.P. were marginalised by the PMRC as well as people put off buying their music due to the infamous explicit content warning labels. Nevertheless, it was W.A.S.P.’s move away from the psychodrama towards more conceptual material in the late-1980s/early-1990s that resulted in the diminishing of their fan-base. Berelian (2005) notes that although albums such as The Crimson Idol (1992) ‘astonished many critics’ (Berelian 2005, p. 388), they received comparatively little attention from fans, who had largely stopped buying W.A.S.P.’s music precisely because it rejected its former thematic misogyny.20 Given the acrimonious relationship between W.A.S.P. and the PMRC, it may come as a shock to learn that in recent years, something of a role reversal has occurred. Lawless, now a born-again Christian (Reesman, 2010, n.p.), has vowed never again to perform his song ‘Animal’ (Fuck Like A Beast)’ (Lawless, 2009). In view of this admission, it is reasonable to suggest that the same is also true of ‘Tormentor’ and ‘The Rack’. Perhaps even more surprisingly, however, is the revelation that the now divorced US Senator, Albert [Al] Gore, arguably the political muscle behind Tipper Gore and the PMRC’s campaign,21 has recently suggested that the PMRC’s line of reasoning was ‘total bullcrap’ (Gore, 2010, n.p.). Pictured wearing a Megadeth T-shirt and

18

Although not mentioned by Sipos, Lawless’ immersion into horror cinema extends beyond the psychodrama. Lawless had a bit-role in the ‘80s horror B-movie, The Dungeonmaster (1984) and composed/performed part of the soundtracks to ‘80s horror films, Ghoulies II (1988) and A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 (1989). 19 Writing of their 1984 London Lyceum Ballroom concert. 20 An attempt to revisit the misogynist aesthetic of W.A.S.P.’s early ‘80s psychodrama was made in the mid-1990s. On the Kill, Fuck, Die tour (1997), Lawless performed the simulated rape of a nun onstage. Arguably, this was a means to compete with the extreme shock-rock aesthetics of the time, such as those popularised by Marilyn Manson. Berelian (2005) notes that this was ineffectual in rekindling W.A.S.P.’s mainstream popularity. 21 In conjunction with Senator Paula Hawkins.

78    Gareth Heritage holding a CD of W.A.S.P.’s album Babylon (2009), it is reported that in 2010 Al Gore ‘ha[d] been spending most of each workday gorging himself on [W.A.S.P.’s music, particularly] songs [such as] ‘On Your Knees’, ‘The Torture Never Stops’, and ‘Show No Mercy’ (Linscott, 2010, n.p.). Possibly most telling of all, however, is Gore’s retrospective regret that he wasted precious time advocating the PMRC’s crusade to marginalise W.A.S.P. ‘I can’t believe I wasted half my life helping Tipper put warning labels on this stuff when I could have been seeing these guys do their thing live’ Gore said of W.A.S.P. ‘They used to whip raw meat at the audience. How bad-ass is that?’22 (Gore, 2010, n.p.)

Conclusion This chapter aimed to expand the conversation about marginalization. Specifically, it sought to challenge the popular discourse that W.A.S.P.’s ‘The Rack’ was the musical quintessence of vulgarity and violence towards women. Indeed, I have shown that W.A.S.P. did portray violence towards women. However, I have also shown that by looking beyond the misogynist veneer, ‘The Rack’ is testament to Lawless’ creative vision for a neo-vaudeville aesthetic, rooted in the thematic transference of horror from the screen to the stage. ‘The Rack’ epitomised what was perhaps the most graphic display of misogyny by any band in rock/metal music history. In all likelihood, it will live on in infamy, continuing to adversely influence the opinions of those who see it. Yet, as I have shown in this chapter, ‘The Rack’ attests to how an aesthetic can be misunderstood if the proper time and attention is not given to understanding it or put it in context of the era in which it was created; in this case the ‘video nasty’ period of the later-1970s/early-1980s. As with any art work, the success or failure of a particular piece is ultimately determined by the individual. Lawless/W.A.S.P. may not have been very good at what he/they did, but to pillory an artist for producing bad work does not justify pushing them to the margins. As I have also shown in this chapter, ‘The Rack’ is an interesting piece of performance art that combines some methods used by the vaudevillians of the early silent movie period with themes intrinsic to the ‘video nasty’ horror aesthetic. Although the resultant effect may not be to everyone’s taste, it cannot be denied that Lawless’ attempt to produce a new form of musically accompanied neo-vaudeville in the psychodrama, which by its very nature provokes thought and debate, was an interesting and brave concept. The fact that, to a lesser extent, misogyny was present should not mark it as being the epitome of vulgarity and violence towards women. Perhaps Gore and the PMRC were wrong to raise it as a matter of concern, although their right to do so should be respected.

22

Although appreciative of some of the psychodrama’s other acts, Al Gore’s position on ‘Tormentor’ and ‘The Rack’ are currently unknown.

Torment[Her] (Misogyny as an Artistic Device)    79 The representation of misogyny in the creative arts can undoubtedly be a means to disparage, threaten or harm women, and we must beware of becoming apologists for truly horrifying imagery. But by the same token, particular creative forms are not necessarily for that purpose, as I have argued in this chapter. This chapter has aimed to show how, by focussing on W.A.S.P.’s creative use of misogyny, drawing on vaudeville and graphic displays of violence inspired by horror cinema of the era, offensiveness can indeed be (at least in part) beautiful.

Dedication This chapter is dedicated to Blackie Lawless and Chris Holmes. Thank you, both, for the music.

References Baker, S., & Gore T. (1985). Statement of parents’ music resource center, before the senate commerce committee. Retrieved from http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/ p11.html. Accessed on February 28, 2017. Barton, G. (1984, October 18). Flesh for fantasy’, Kerrang, 79, 56–57. Berelian, E. (2005). The rough guide to Heavy Metal. London: Penguin. Chirazi, S. (1985). WASP: Buzz sore? Retrieved from http://www.rocksbackpages.com. Accessed on March 2, 2017. Christe, I. (2003). Sound of the beast: The complete headbanging history of Heavy Metal. New York, NY: Harper Collins. DeMaio, J. (1992, October 17). Singlez, Kerrang, 414, 17. Gaut, B. (2002). Art and ethics. In B. Gaut & D. McIver Lopes (Eds.), The Routledge companion to aesthetics (2nd ed., pp. 431–444). New York, NY: Routledge. Gore, A. (2010). Recently single Al Gore finally able to listen to W.A.S.P. albums. Retrieved from http://www.theonion.com/article/recently-single-al-gore-finally-able-to-listento—17824. Accessed on March 10, 2017. Gore, T. (1987). Raising PG kids in an X rated society. Nashville, TN: Abingdon. Jenkins, H. (1992). What made pistachio nuts? Early sound comedy and the Vaudeville aesthetic. New York, NY: Colombia University Press. Kordosh, J. (1985). WASP: Lawful or awful? Retrieved from http://www.rocksbackpages. com. Accessed on March 13, 2017. Lawless, B. (1988). W.A.S.P. videos in the raw. Directed by G. Goodwin [VHS]. Los Angeles, CA: Picture Music International. Lawless, B. (2009). W.A.S.P.’s BLACKIE LAWLESS: I Will Never Play ‘Animal (F**k Like A Beast)’ Again. Retrieved from http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/w-a-s-p-sblackie-lawless-i-will-never-play-animal-f-k-like-a-beast-again/. Accessed on August 7, 2018. Lawless, B. (2017). Monster of rock. Retrieved from http://www.waspnation.com/. Accessed on March 2, 2017. Linscott, E. (2010). Recently single Al Gore finally able to listen to W.A.S.P. albums. Retrieved from http://www.theonion.com/article/recently-single-al-gore-finally-ableto-listen-to-17824. Accessed on March 10, 2017. Pattison, R. (1987). The triumph of vulgarity: Rock music in the mirror of romanticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

80    Gareth Heritage Pettinicchio, D. (1988). The decline of Western Civilization part II: The metal years. Directed by P. Spheeris [VHS]. Los Angeles, CA: New Line Cinema. Reeseman, B. (2010). Blackie Lawless renounces his past sins: Attention deficit delirium. Retrieved from http://www.bryanreesman.com/blog/2010/09/21/ blackie-lawlessrenounces-his-past-sins/. Accessed on March 15, 2017. Reeseman, B. (2013). Pop goes the Metal. In M. Dome & M. Popoff (Eds.), The art of metal: Five decades of Heavy Metal album covers, posters, t-shirts and more (pp. 64– 89). New York, NY: Omnibus Press. Reynolds, S. (1987). Bon Jovi/Dio/Metallica/Anthrax/Wasp: Monsters of Rock, Castle Donington. Retrieved from http://www.rocksbackpages.com. Accessed on March 2, 2017. Sipos, T. M. (2010). Horror film aesthetics: Creating the visual language of fear. London: McFarland. Sloat, L. J. (1998). Incubus: Male songwriters’ portrayal of Women’s sexuality in Pop Metal music. In J. S. Epstein (Ed.), Youth culture: Identity in a postmodern world (pp. 286– 301). Oxford: Blackwell. Sollee, K. (2011). Hysteric desire: Sexual positions, sonic subjectivity and gender play in Glam Metal. In C. A. McKinnon, N. Scott, & K. Sollee (Eds.), Can I play with madness? Metal dissonance, madness and alienation (pp. 51–62). Oxford: InterDisciplinary Press. Retrieved from http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/ product/can-i-play-with-madness-metal-dissonance-madness-and-alienation/. Accessed on October 15, 2013. Walser, R. (1993a). Running with the Devil: Power, gender and madness in Heavy Metal music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Walser, R. (1993b). Professing censorship: Academic attacks on Heavy Metal. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 5, 68–78. Weinstein, D. (2000). Heavy Metal: The music and its culture. New York, NY: Da Capo Press. Wood, R. (2002). The American nightmare: Horror in the 70s. In M. Jancovich (Ed.), Horror, the film reader (pp. 25–32). New York, NY: Routledge.

Chapter 5

Reight Mardy Tykes: Northernness, Peaceville Three and Death/Doom Music World M. Selim Yavuz Unhindered by talent, but we don’t give a fuck. If you don’t fucking like it, well tough fucking luck. (Halmshaw, 2016, loc. 98)

Abstract After the extreme turn of the late 1980s and early 1990s of metal music, three northern England-based bands – My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost from Bradford, and Anathema from Liverpool, commonly referred to as ‘the Peaceville Three’ – went on to pioneer the musical style which came to be known as death/doom. Mid-1990s have seen these bands’ stylistic shift into a more gothic rock-influenced sound. This Paradise Lost-led shift gave birth to the style gothic/doom. Around this deviation, these bands also started to employ a different sense, or rather a sense, of locality ­in their music: Paradise Lost started calling themselves a Yorkshire band, instead of specifically Bradford; Anathema shot a video for their 1995 song ‘The Silent Enigma’ in Saddleworth Moor (historically part of West Riding of Yorkshire) in Manchester; and later, My Dying Bride became more and more ingrained in the Goth culture of Whitby, including releasing an ­extended-play titled The Barghest o’ Whitby (2011), a Dracula-inspired trail guide, and frequently appearing in festivals in Whitby. This ethnographic research with both musicians and fans further suggests the involvement of the North in making and perception of gothic/doom. Applying Michel de Certau’s idea stating that ‘every story is a spacial practice’ within the context of northern England landscape, gothic/doom metal style emerges as an act of northernness. The author proposes to discuss how this act is performed within these bands’ oeuvre and how it is perceived from the listener perspective using interviews with people from around the

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 81–99 Copyright © 2018 by M. Selim Yavuz All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181006

82    M. Selim Yavuz world, and musicological analyses of significant songs from the repertoire of this trio. Keywords: extreme metal music, extreme turn, death/doom metal music, northernness, metal and punk, Yorkshire

Introduction In this chapter, I discuss the story of the origin of the three bands – Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema – in relation to their locality and band identities. This cannot be achieved without mentioning Peaceville Records, the first record label for all these bands, and the term Peaceville Three, a term that was used and sometimes is still used to describe the three bands. The bands aimed to differentiate themselves, from the beginning of their careers, from the death metal scene of Bradford, through stylistic novelty, which resulted in the style now known as death/doom metal. The collective, Peaceville Three, embodies an alternative space to the relative ‘mainstream’ of the era, the 1990s extreme metal, that is, death metal, especially in Bradford, and it positions itself towards the margins through occupying a local identity: a Northernness. Bradford was a centre, and the centre in northern England, for the global scene (Berger & Greene, 2011) of death metal. Music press mostly covered death metal and black metal during the early 1990s. According to Stainthorpe, if anyone wanted to make a mark in ‘the scene’, they needed to do something drastic. This drastic move materialised in the style death/doom and the music world constructed around this style. According to Crossley (2015), music worlds, are social spaces that are ‘centered upon a self-identified musical style; a space set aside from other concerns, at least to some extent, where music is a primary focus and where participants share a set of musical preferences and knowledge’ (p. 472). The individual and collective histories of the three bands involved have crucial effects on the style which a music world sets as the nucleus of construction. Born (2010) argues that criticism of a style should steer away from discussing it in ‘the banalised terms of object in “context”, or telos of innovation’, but instead the discussion should be ‘focally concerned with the social and material, the temporal and ontological, as these mediate and imbue the aesthetic’ (p. 198). Starting with ‘temporal’ gives the opportunity to discuss the ‘other layers’ of a style before going into the ‘ontological’ and the ‘social’. In relation to Crossley’s music world, taking the style as the ‘ontological’ as well as ‘the aesthetic’ here makes sense because according to theory of the music world, a music world would not exist without a style as the style is where the members of a social network come together resulting in the coalescent effervescence which in turn gives birth to a music world. The style is in relation to, or more accurately within and among, a music world. Foucault (1998) similarly asserts that ‘there is nothing to be gained from describing [an] autonomous layer of discourses unless one can relate it to other layers, practices, institutions, social relations, political relations, and so on’ (p. 284). As a result, a story about origins of the entities and institutions of a

Reight Mardy Tykes    83 music world relates the autonomous layer, that is, the style, to ‘other layers’ of Foucault. However, it should be clear that when I relate a style here to ‘an autonomous layer’, I do not claim that a style can be autonomous. Furthermore, ‘relating to’ is also problematic in Foucault’s statement as it there emerges a reversed hierarchy between the style and ‘other layers’. As Born states above, the layers ‘imbue’ the aesthetic or style. A style exists as a consequence of the layers and does not have autonomy. Paul ‘Hammy’ Halmshaw states that even though Peaceville Records of Dewsbury, Yorkshire, did not have a motto per se, the above quote would have been looking back on three decades of the label’s history. This motto, even though uttered in hindsight, introduces the bands on which I will focus in this chapter well. As it will become clearer over the course of this chapter, like many other metal music worlds (Banchs, 2016; Moberg, 2009; Purcell, 2003; Spracklen, 2010), death/doom is a personal/intimate endeavour for the parties involved, especially musicians. The above sentence embodies this idea effectively. It also demonstrates the punk culture’s influence on this music world from the beginning, that is, the implied low skill level and the indifference to that fact (Montague, 2003), something the members mention as discussed later.

Methods I choose to say story to describe the ‘temporal’, because the interviews I have conducted with musicians follow the oral history method of unstructured interviews (Portelli, 1981; Thompson, 1978). There are two main sources of data of which I make use in this chapter. The first is interviews with musicians, fans, a manager, label executives and a sound engineer in death/doom music world. I collected responses using semistructured interviews1 with 74 fan participants in the spring of 2016. All the questions were posed as optional including the demographic data and personal background questions; totalling 22 questions. Wider discussion of these responses and demographics are beyond the scope of this chapter and a more detailed discussion of these interviews can be found elsewhere (Yavuz, 2017). All the names of the fan participants have been changed in this chapter except for two where their first names are used as per their request. The names are surnames taken from the index of Atkins’ book, The moor: Lives, landscape, and literature (2014). As I was not able to interview all musicians related to the three bands, I have also conducted an archival research at the British Library, UK. The reason I focussed on Terrorizer magazine is because Terrorizer is popular but more importantly, Terrorizer has embraced the three bands in question from the beginnings of both the bands and the magazine. Owing to this relationship and the geographical proximity, Terrorizer is of importance when it comes to the 1

This research is done as part of my self-funded PhD project at Leeds Beckett University (LBU) in the United Kingdom. The project has received ethical approval from the Local Research Ethics Committee of LBU Carnegie Faculty, and it is in line with LBU Research Ethics Policy (http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/studenthub/researchethics.htm).

84    M. Selim Yavuz stories of these bands. This is illustrated in issue #173 where the three bands are described as the ‘three great powers, each one with a history closely entwined with this magazine’ (Terrorizer, 2008, p. 14).

Peaceville Records and Punk Origins Peaceville Records is a key institution to begin with for a study of the origin story of these bands and the music world because these bands released their first album under this label. Furthermore, they have been called the Peaceville Three for a long time, at least up to and including 2008 when a Peaceville Reunion tour brought all the bands back together. This tour shows how the identities of these bands are closely tied with Peaceville Records by 2008, even though both Anathema and Paradise Lost have stylistically moved on drastically into even non-metal styles. What makes Peaceville even more interesting is that the foundation and origins of Peaceville reveal a hidden cultural link of death/doom metal music world to anarcho-punk culture prominent in West Yorkshire during mid- to late 1980s. Paul ‘Hammy’ (from this point onwards) Halmshaw founded Peaceville Records in 1983 in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, as a cassette label formed to put [the Instigators’ (Hammy’s punk band)] demos out. According to Hammy, Peaceville was not found with professional ambitions. Due to his involvement with the anarcho-punk music world, he decided to make this world work for him by publishing 54 cassettes at first. The release of a flexi disc by Lord Crucifier (Will Evil Win? 1987, Peaceville Records), comprised Italian members fleeing military conscription in Italy who lived in Halifax, ended the cassette label Peaceville (Hammy). Hammy describes this band as a ‘jazz metal’ one, hence the very beginning of Peaceville already interacted with metal worlds. The ‘punk’ identity of Peaceville came from the fact that Hammy was a member of a known punk band. With the help of this identity, Peaceville went on to release albums from prominent punk bands such as Doom and Electro Hippies. During the 1980s especially in England, the punk culture was anti-metal (Hammy). Hence, the punk identity of the record label was crucial in its existence, even though the label ‘was not a solely punk label’ including a fifth ever release by a ‘straight ahead heavy metal band, Torinaga’. However, Peaceville was essentially forced out of this punk identity ‘the moment the Autopsy album was released [12th ever Peaceville release, Severed Survival, Peaceville Records, 1989]’. Peaceville was ‘a metal label now’. This clash was significant. Hammy states that punk culture was almost explosively against a crossover with metal culture. After Autopsy published their Severed Survival album via Peaceville Records, a change had to happen, but this change was also a welcome change for Hammy because at this point, he ‘was running a label to make money to survive so when Autopsy started selling a lot of records, the punk stuff was just a hobby. You never made any money out of punk stuff. And I was getting older and I was trying to build a business to make money. It facilitated that with the metal’. Peaceville became a metal label after Autopsy’s record and was shut out of the punk scene with albums like Fuck Peaceville! (1995, Profane Records).

Reight Mardy Tykes    85

Paradise Lost Paradise Lost is a key point to begin the discussion of the three bands and death/ doom metal, because there is a consensus among the participants of this music world that Paradise Lost are the ancestors of this style of music. They are the originators and death/doom is their legacy ‘cemented’ (Andy Farrow, the manager of Paradise Lost and Anathema, in interview) as evidenced by the trio tour that happened in 2008. Fans of this music also agree with this idea. As for Anathema … I am not a fan of their music at all. They are like [the] children of Paradise Lost (Katatonia here too) who move not only in their own way but also break up with metal genre at all. (Brierly) Anathema’s music is an offspring of Paradise Lost. This is a significant attribution. Other fans state that they ‘started’ the style (Coombes) and they are an ‘influence on absolutely every band that play’ the style (Dennys). While in a 1991 interview, Nick Holmes, the vocalist of Paradise Lost, questions whether they have actually started a ‘new trend’, the fans seem to think that even talk of them as ‘gods such as Slayer [the band], Deicide, and Paradise Lost’ (Terrorizer #15, 1994, p. 15). By 1997, Holmes also agree that all their albums have been ‘completely innovative at the time’ (Terrorizer #44, 1997, p. 14). Vincent Cavanagh of Anathema points to Paradise Lost as a ‘good influence’ as they were starting out (Terrorizer #67, 1999, p. 21) alongside Iron Maiden. Daniel Cavanagh of Anathema also talks of the same influence much later in their career stating that ‘If there’s one person in that genre who I will doff my cap to, it’s [Gregory Mackintosh]’ (Terrorizer #258, 2015, p. 25). Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride also discusses Paradise Lost’s influence on the style of their band: We would get chatting about things like that and there were a couple of occasions and I went to Halifax to some of their rehearsals, which was great. I sort of thought, I might want to do something like this. I didn’t just go to listen to them play, I wanted to see what it was like to be a rehearsal room, to see how they interacted with each other. Because I couldn’t play an instrument, sometimes I thought music was quite magical, I couldn’t compose things. I wanted to see other people doing that. How did they write their songs? So, I’d go to their rehearsals and we would just drink coke and eat crisps and watch what they were doing. You could watch Aaron [Aedy] and Greg [Mackintosh] trying out different guitar parts and how Steve put the bass on as well. It was interesting, then they’d suddenly say play that a bit slower, and wow it sounds really epic. So, Aaron comes up with a fast riff, Greg slows it down. They worked off each other. I’m sitting there thinking I like the way they work. I can understand their thinking. (in interview)

86    M. Selim Yavuz From Stainthorpe’s discussion, one can easily argue that Paradise Lost’s early albums and musical thinking were directly influencing the way My Dying Bride were composing at the time. Paradise Lost was founded during the late 1980s in Halifax, West Yorkshire, with members Stephen Edmondson, Gregor Mackintosh, Aaron Aedy, Nick Holmes and Matthew Archer. The band name is a reference to the poem of the same name by John Milton (1667). According to Stainthorpe, ‘Paradise Lost were the Frog and Toad’, a public house in Bradford (in interview). Paradise Lost released three demo tapes independently (Morbid Existence [1988], Paradise Lost [1988], Frozen Illusion [1989]). They recorded Frozen Illusion with the help of Hammy of Peaceville before getting signed onto Peaceville Records for their first album Lost Paradise (1990). According to Hammy, the way they met was again at the Frog and Toad and it was a chance encounter as the result of Holmes wearing a Doom [punk band] album t-shirt, which was released by Peaceville. The band released their second album Gothic (1991) also through Peaceville Records. Gothic album signifies a change for the band, the record label and the style. This album was the most successful release of the band up to that point which made them ‘jump a level’ in their career. Even though Paradise Lost were not initially successful, this album sold well (Hammy). Paradise Lost were not noticed in the larger scene – even in northern England – (Lee Baines of Serenity in Terrorizer #18, 1995, p. 41) before Gothic. According to Farrow, Paradise Lost, with the lapse of their contract with Peaceville – which coincides with the release of Gothic –, got ‘six, seven’ offers from different labels. Just before this album also gave them the opportunity to play at the ‘upstairs’ venue of Queen’s Hall in Bradford, an important venue for metal fans in northern England and Scotland organised by Andy Farrow himself, however the published as Live Death [1990, Jettisoundz Video] was of Paradise Lost’s ‘cellar’ performance at Queen’s Hall.

My Dying Bride Chronologically, My Dying Bride mark the second stylistic step in the construction of death/doom music world. The band are important in their creation of the basis of the style in a longer stretched time compared to the other two bands. My Dying Bride’s music is the ‘home’ which Paradise Lost fans discussed in the previous section. Consistency, not stagnation, is an important characteristic of their music. My Dying Bride is obviously the band that has had least changes during the years and is basically the only of the three that is still proper doom metal IMO [in my opinion]. (Acland) Remarks about the stability of their style echo often among the fans (Allsop; Auden; Baring; Bart; Blackmore; Carew; Carlisle; Douglas; Dunham; Ellison; Fowles; Garrs; Griffiths). It is evident from Acland’s statement that it is the ‘least changes’ that result in this stability rather than ‘non-change’. The band

Reight Mardy Tykes    87 can be considered to be the masters of this style, and while they still belong to a Beckerian maverick category (Becker, 2008). Because they have produced many albums of death/doom, I can argue that they simultaneously belong to a Beckerian ‘integrated professional’ category. They are highly capable and well-versed in the style they helped to form. My Dying Bride formed a ‘musical identity’ (Carew) and they ‘kept true to themselves’ (Blackmore) in this identity. My Dying Bride are the ‘roots’ of ‘high quality doom’ (Griffiths). Auden puts this idea succinctly: My Dying Bride is a band as tragic as an Aeschylean tragic and lonely hero: they chose a path and they followed it wherever it goes. [… They] go down to explore deeper and deeper human desolation. The band’s music remained ‘bleak’ (Dunham) throughout their career and ‘explored the boundaries of the genre to the full extent’ (Ellison). Andy Farrow calls the band’s career ‘more static’ in comparison to Paradise Lost or Anathema, however, this results from the fact that they are not a full-time band and that ‘they took a less is more approach’ especially regarding their touring schedule. Aaron Stainthorpe, the vocalist and lyricist of My Dying Bride discusses the subtle changes in the lyrical content of the band as follows: I used a lot of old fashioned words and it’s all quite classical. And I liked that back then. But as I evolved and got older and I read different things and try to alter my writing. Because I don’t want to write the same thing over and over again, it becomes dull. So, I evolve and yes you might not recognise some lyrics I’ve written today compared to the lyrics I’ve written 25 years ago. You might think they’re not by the same author. They’re radically different and I like that because it means I’ve progressed or at least I’ve evolved in a way I wanted to, in a meaningful way. (in interview) There is a deliberate change in the content originating from the musicians themselves. However, this does not represent a far enough sling to register in the fan as a drastic change. This is clearly welcomed as well. Participants state that My Dying Bride ‘thankfully’ kept to their roots (Blackmore) and ‘stayed true’ (Garrs) or that they have a ‘consistent quality’ which is appreciated (Carew). The band is ‘very intellectual’ and artful according to the fans as a result of this consistency (Ellison). This demonstrates part of how ‘tradition’ is valued within this music world. Where did My Dying Bride start? As I mentioned, My Dying Bride, age-wise, is the middle ‘kid’ of death/doom formation. The band was formed in 1990 and independently released a demo titled Towards the Sinister with members Aaron Stainthorpe, Andrew Craighan playing the electric guitar, Calvin Robertshaw also playing the electric guitar and Rick Miah playing the drums. According to Stainthorpe, they got together at, again, the Frog and Toad in Bradford around the time Paradise Lost were preparing for the release of Gothic. Hammy recalls his signing of My Dying Bride as a replacement for Paradise Lost. According to

88    M. Selim Yavuz him, Paradise Lost had become too big for Peaceville at the time and My Dying Bride filled out the gap that was left by Paradise Lost. From the beginning of the band’s career, they were supported mentally by Hammy. This is not something that missed the band’s attention either, as Stainthorpe also discusses how they were (and still are) allowed to write longer than 10-minute-long songs and using Latin titles (‘Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium’ first appeared on Towards the Sinister). If we are going to do something special, it’s got to be really special. We can’t just do the same as everybody else. So, when I came up with that title, of course they thought ‘what the fuck? It’s in Latin!’ We needed to punch our hole into this business. We couldn’t just stroll into it and hope that people will accept it. You’ve got to scream and shout! The ‘confidence’ can be seen in this statement as well. At the start, the band believed in themselves enough to think that they were going be able to leave a dent in the active death metal scene of Bradford at the beginning of 1990s. My Dying Bride were based mainly in Bradford during their early career even though some of the members were scattered around Yorkshire, in places such as Dewsbury. At the beginning, there was ‘no money in it’ and it cost the bands money to keep their career going (Stainthorpe), hence neither of the bands were financially comfortable. Again, according to Stainthorpe, because he was able to work in tough conditions outside of music, he had decent funds to be generous towards both his bandmates and Paradise Lost friends at the Frog and Toad. This is also echoed by Hammy. Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride’s close relationship was not limited to drinks at the Frog and Toad as I discussed in the previous section. Musically, Paradise Lost had a direct musical influence on My Dying Bride. However, Paradise Lost were not the only influence at the beginning. [Liverpool-based grindcore band] rip-offs. We wanted something truly miserable and sad, morbid and dark, and My Dying Bride fits all of these. We’re not a doom band as such. Of course, it [bothers us to be compared to Paradise Lost], we play mostly fast stuff, they just play slow stuff, so how people can compare us is a fuckin’ mystery. It is because we live in the same area. (My Dying Bride in Slayer #9, 1992, p. 229) Furthermore, they were getting compared to Paradise Lost solely from the basis of their location.

Anathema Anathema are the youngest of the three bands I discuss in relation to death/doom music world. They are also the ones who are not based in West Yorkshire but

Reight Mardy Tykes    89 instead were based in Liverpool during the 1990s. Anathema embody stylistic change, the best among these bands. The fans see them as ‘change’ and Anathema had a significantly different style in their death/doom albums. The band are also the only ones who cannot be considered death/doom, extreme metal or even metal in any sense of the word in their contemporary style as of this writing. The band have moved on to progressive rock including their performance venues (i.e., festivals) around the mid-noughties and the 2008 Peaceville Three concert tour I mentioned before marks one of their engagements with their earlier repertoire in a larger death/doom music world context. The band has done a tour in 2015, ‘Resonance’, to celebrate all their oeuvre in which they performed the three self-identified eras where earlier works were performed in their original setting such as Darren White on the vocals and Daniel Cavanagh and Vincent Cavanagh using 7-string/baritone guitars. This brief introduction is relevant because similar to Paradise Lost, the majority of Anathema’s releases fall out of the scope of this project and the music discussed in this dissertation is only representative of the beginning of this band. The band were and are still significant to both early construction of the music world and in its current state as I discuss later in this section. Anathema are a different case than the first two bands: first, because of their geographical distance. There is no mention of Frog and Toad in their origins as that would have been physically infeasible. However, Paradise Lost were playing in many cities including Liverpool at the time. Similar to My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Iron Maiden have been influences in their formation: We started off with Iron Maidens and Paradise Losts. Paradise Lost’s first album was a good influence on us when we first started. We liked the guitar style on songs like “Breeding Fear” [Lost Paradise], and the female vocals and stuff was really good. (Vincent Cavanagh in Terrorizer #67, 1999, p. 21) Anathema’s contact with the death/doom music world came with a supporting concert with Paradise Lost. Vincent Cavanagh states that A few months later [after playing with Paradise Lost at the Planet X] we sent our first demo over the Pennines and got a reply from Johnny at Deaf Records. I remember him saying he wasn’t a fan of some of the chuggy [sic.] riffs, but to keep in touch. […] We had taken the Paradise Lost influence and given the guitar harmonies a mournful, almost classical feel. (Halmshaw, 2016, loc. 2260) Anathema, after their interaction with ‘Johnny at Deaf Records’, realised that they already had a place on Peaceville Records: Johnny played ‘Sear Me’ of My Dying Bride and it sounded like a cross between ‘Crestfallen’ and ‘They Die’. ‘Bastards!’ we sighed. (Vincent Cavanagh in Halmshaw, 2016, loc. 2260)

90    M. Selim Yavuz The band signed onto Peaceville Records and published The Crestfallen EP (1992, Peaceville Records) followed by Serenades (1993, Peaceville Records). Hammy acted as the producer for these albums. When Serenades was released it won album of the month in a few magazines. We were extremely grateful. But to be honest we kind of expected it. We always felt different to everyone else. We felt that we had the ideas, the scope and more importantly the tunes to set us apart from everyone else in the scene. (Vincent Cavanagh in Halmshaw, 2016, loc. 2472) This quote shows the confidence of the band in their early career. Death/doom music world was confident in what they were doing from the start as showcased by all the three bands. However, Anathema were relatively overlooked. Always one of our most underrated assets, the affable Scousers were tonight rapturously greeted like home-coming heroes, are rightly so [at Bradford Rios]. (Damien in Terrorizer #57, 1998, p. 25) Anathema are ‘underrated’, but they are still ‘assets’ and the other two of the Peaceville Three have overshadowed them in their early career. Considering these local conditions, Anathema and to a certain extent My Dying Bride – only in relation to Paradise Lost in them getting overshadowed – and their complaint about local fan attention make more sense. Despite this overlooking, Anathema still earned many awards from the music press including placing 26th in Terrorizer Readers’ Favourite Bands of All Time list (#50, 1998, p. 26). It is not only the music press where Anathema have been overlooked. Hammy also states that he was not sure about where the band have headed with their stylistic changes. The geographical difference has ‘other’ed Anathema in relation to Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, however they still had a common umbrella: The Peaceville Three.

The Peaceville Three and English ‘Northernness’ This term, The Peaceville Three, is usually uttered when one discusses any of Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema. So much so is the case that, ‘the myth’ needs ‘debunking’ (Chris, 2012). There are interesting tensions in relation to this term, but if I look at the origin of the term, it was undoubtedly an early conscious effort by Hammy coming from an anarcho-punk background. For him, the label was more about community than individuality of the bands. Hammy wanted to put all the bands together and create a collective that is Peaceville Records, and because of his background, this came naturally; however, this idea was not welcomed by metal bands. They instead wanted to be apart and unlinked to each other. This is where the first clash is seen in resisting the term. As Hammy states, metal culture is much more about individuality than collective action as

Reight Mardy Tykes    91 it is the case in punk, especially anarcho-punk considering the ideology behind it. The bands have still protected their individual identities. The fans reflect this complex belonging and separation as well. It is quite profound, really, that they have such similar roots and I think that is what makes them so special in the way that they are now; each so different from the other, yet the share some similar essence. (Allsop) They are the same but different according to the fans. There is also a thematic and emotional consistency among the bands. The stories are always the same, but the language that is used and the way they are told is completely different. (Armstrong) This comes from the ‘similar essence’ combined with the bands’ desire for distinctiveness. Stylistically, the bands achieve marginal differences but ‘in their dramatic’ (Froissart) dirge they line up. When the social aspect did not work as well as Hammy had imagined, he used the same idea with a radically different context: the commercial aspect. They were together on the shelves as Garrs states, and more so the albums looked the same. ‘Lumping’ together made good sense because these bands were commercially too small to make ‘it’ on their own in their early careers. Like Hammy, the bands also had the same idea of packaging themselves together to reach more people by giving concerts together, creating the concert material in-house and among themselves, and promoting their music by themselves. This DIY culture (Dunn, 2011; Gordon, 2005; Luhr, 2010; Makagon, 2015; O’Connor, 2008; Waksman, 2009) surrounding the beginnings of the music world also shows the punk connection. There is also a dissonance here. While the bands wanted to be themselves and individualistic, separate from the crowd, they were happy to support each other to reach to that point. One can interpret this as an extension of the individualism from an ambition perspective. The bands supported each other in their respective scenes even though geographically they were relatively apart, that is, Bradford and Liverpool. People would sleep at your house, and you’d sleep on their floor. Because you couldn’t afford. (Stainthorpe) Hammy also mentions how people used to come and stay at their house. The community reinforced itself in order to survive similar to many other underground music worlds who have not caught the attention of bigger labels. There was another aspect that brought these bands together and that is geography. There were mentions of certain places in this chapter so far relatively prominently. But the larger area to consider is obviously Yorkshire, England, specifically West Yorkshire when talking about the 1990s. The bands perform an

92    M. Selim Yavuz identity that is tied to this specific region, a Northerner identity. Spracklen (2016) defines Northernness as a form of sympathetic magic, which Northerners choose to perform, albeit through the constraints of hegemonic cultural formations and the symbolic boundaries and invented traditions of the imagined community. (p. 14) These symbolic acts took place in various parts of the music world. The members of this music world deliberately chose to be Northerners. First, all the three bands have worked with The Academy Studio in Dewsbury where Hammy and Peaceville Records were located. This relationship with the studio has been a career-long one for My Dying Bride. However, both Paradise Lost and Anathema have recorded their first albums (Lost Paradise and Gothic for Paradise Lost, The Crestfallen EP and Serenades for Anathema) in this studio. The ‘Peaceville sound’ (Farrow) referred by the participants mostly means The Academy Studio sound. Saturnus is the band for people who think My Dying Bride have wimped out. Although they are slightly more than a carbon copy, there is little to distinguish Paradise Belongs to You [1996, Euphonious Records] from The Angel and the Dark River [1995, Peaceville Records] or Turn Loose the Swans [1993, Peaceville Records]. Other than the lack of an Academy production and lyrics about shagging, that is. (Gregory Whalen in Terrorizer #41, 1997, p. 50) Especially for My Dying Bride, this studio is part of their identity, but more importantly this is a studio that brings these three bands together. The other connection is the early venues such as Queen’s Hall, Rio’s, most significantly The Frog and Toad. This public house and concert venue had the advantage of being in Bradford during the 1990s. Because Bradford was a hub for especially death metal in this decade. According to Hammy, while Rio’s was a place to where everybody would go or where every band would play, Frog and Toad emerges as somewhere different, because that pub was the place where bands came together and were formed. The Frog and Toad was where bands formed and where everybody met others. It was a great club, that’s where you became the person you were or the person we are now because you saw from people’s t-shirts: I know what they like. That was like a trophy t-shirt. You wanted to be the first one to get the brand-new shirt from whichever band. I had two great trophy t-shirts back in the day. […] Before I went out to the Frog and Toad that night, I was trembling because I put this shirt on and I felt like a god. I knew no one else would have

Reight Mardy Tykes    93 one of these t-shirts. […] It was such a proud thing to have that kind of merchandise. As I entered the club, I took off my jacket immediately and I was walking around. (Stainthorpe) The Frog and Toad stayed a hub even after bands became bigger and started playing the larger Queen’s Hall. For Anathema, this is less significant because they were based in Liverpool. However, they were still part of the Yorkshire gang through a conscious effort and Anathema, similar to the other two bands, still performed the ‘sympathetic magic’ of Northernness. For example, Anathema recorded a music video for ‘The Silent Enigma’ (The Silent Enigma, 1995, Peaceville Records) on Saddleworth Moor. While Saddleworth Moor is part of Greater Manchester county, historically this moor was part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Saddleworth Moor is well known through an unfortunate series of events where five kids were murdered. So, one might be tempted to think that is the reason that they chose this place for their video. Daniel Cavanagh corrects this: [Saddleworth Moor] was where them kids got buried. And we were up there setting all this gear and stuff. It’s not about that subject though, it’s quite an idyllic setting considering the reputation it’s got. (Terrorizer #26, 1995, p. 10–11) It is about the ‘idyllic setting’ of the moor. Considering moors are very symbolically Yorkshire-related places, this shows how Anathema became part of this constructed area of belonging. The ‘hegemonic cultural formation’ of death/ doom is in Yorkshire in this case. There is an othering on a micro-level, within the ‘Northernness’ in the case of Anathema. Unsurprisingly, Yorkshire is also important for the other two bands. Paradise Lost probably consider themselves a Yorkshire-based band now. We consider ourselves a Yorkshire-based band now. Because nobody knows where Halifax is or they get it confused with the one in Nova Scotia. But there’s only one Yorkshire. There’s no New Yorkshire in America. It’s quite good now you say it’s Yorkshire and people say, ‘ah that’s where Paradise Lost are from’. It’s sort of makes the scene seem a bit cosier again. Everyone’s from Yorkshire. Obviously, Anathema can’t say that but nevertheless. (Stainthorpe) Paradise Lost list their home town as Yorkshire on their Facebook page as of this writing instead of Bradford or Halifax where they are originally from. For My Dying Bride, they are more embedded to the local identity than the others. First, they also consider themselves a Yorkshire band as Stainthorpe suggests. More so, they released an EP about Yorkshire and Yorkshire folk (The Barghest o’ Whitby) and Stainthorpe collaborated with North Yorkshire Moors National Park Authority and created a tablet computer application titled The Barghest Trail (for iOS-based tablets only) where the trail follows Bram Stoker’s fictional

94    M. Selim Yavuz character Dracula in North Yorkshire with the accompaniment of Stainthorpe’s writing. Furthermore, Yorkshire landscape is a frequent guest in My Dying Bride’s music as I discuss in the later chapter. Stainthorpe talks of his compositional process intertwined with Yorkshire landscape. You realise when you get a map, there is a big green area right next to here, there’s a tiny little road. I’m going to go there and you’d just get to the most beautiful part of Yorkshire. There’s no one else there. I always have pen and paper. Sometimes there is no inspiration, you just enjoy being there for what it is. Other times, you hope there is going to be a moment when you think ‘I’ve got to write this down’ and there are moments like that quite often. Even on a sunny day, the weather can change in this country in one day. It can just start pouring with rain and I’d sit in the car, I love the sound of rain on cars. We just built a cabin in our back garden and I sit in there now when I write. When you hear the rain pitter-patting on the roof, it’s almost like therapy. It just makes me feel at one with nature. So, I would write in the car, with rain pouring down. Then it’d get sunny and I would go out for a walk and the grass would smell of freshness. Again, you’d write that down. I suppose Nick was influenced by the urban decay of Yorkshire, for me it was the natural beauty of Yorkshire. The loneliness you can feel out there, how tiny and insignificant we are in the vast universe and that’s kind of where my angle went. I went to a place called Ogden Water, not far from here. It’s a bit touristy but it’s a lake with a walk all the way around it. If you take some of the smaller routes out onto the hills, no one would go because café’s here, you don’t want to be too far from the café. It’s only five minutes away from the main thing. But there is total silence. You think why is nobody else here? It’s like the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The sun’s just coming through the leaves and it’s like something from Disney. It’s beautiful! Then you feel moved and you feel urged to turn this moment into something you can share with other people. Not a photograph but a lyric. That moment in Yorkshire when the sun was shining through those leaves has appeared in My Dying Bride songs. […] It’s a lovely part of the world we live in. (Stainthorpe) While Stainthorpe tries to make it less obvious that they are from Yorkshire in the composition, interestingly, these bands are part of Yorkshire for the fans and the music press. This shows a construction of a Yorkshire identity for the bands. The Yorkshire imagery was echoed in the London (the south)-based Terrorizer as well: It’s like watching Nick Cave front a version of the Bad Seeds gone wholly metal; My Dying Bride positively ooze class. Upper

Reight Mardy Tykes    95 working class, it is true, but class nonetheless. […] As you might expect, the band bitch and moan in true Yorkshire style about sound quality and fluffed chords afterwards. (Nick Terry in Terrorizer #35, 1996, p. 26) My Dying Bride’s image is working class, which is attached to Yorkshire and the quote also shows how characteristically Northerner the band is. With Yorkshire, there’s something in there that possesses us to moan a lot, form a band, and do it publicly. (Stainthorpe in Terrorizer #182, 2009, p. 58) Alongside ‘moaning’ in the ‘true Yorkshire way’, their music also reflects simplicity, which is quintessentially Northern according to Northerners. I’d say there’s much more a raw quality, much more of an honest, much more of a … I’m really tempted to say Northernness, kind of that the reflection of the … I don’t know how to describe what I mean. There’s that kind of roughness that you just associate with Northernness, that kind of simplicity. (Gamzette) Listeners think about Yorkshire when they are listening to these bands. Gazing out of the last leg of the journey to Dewsbury, the surroundings seem somehow fitting. The Industrial Revolution is long gone, and with it the whole purpose of this place – and many others like it. Endless, crooked lines of ages, withered dwellings crowd beneath now silent, satanic mills, themselves overshadowed on all sides by the hills that spawned them, and will one day consume them – a dreary pageant for the spirituality repressed. Amidst this decay – Anathema; that beacon of quiet sanity, once again preparing to show us the world in their eyes. (Damien in Terrorizer #55, 1998, p. 36) Musically though My Dying Bride paint from a different pallet as the misty moors and snow-covered hills of Yorkshire seem to bleed into every riff. […] My Dying Bride are more like Wuthering Heights. Drama, passion, love, loss, sex, death and the howling wind of the Moors in winter. (Haldane) I was trying to avoid clichés like they evoke the spirit of the Moors and stuff like that but I think so yes. The rainy hills of Yorkshire and stuff, I would picture listening to My Dying Bride. […] There’s something in there. Once the first track in The Dreadful Hours where it sounds like it’s raining, that sounds like Yorkshire to me. (Garrs)

96    M. Selim Yavuz These three examples from the responses are from people who are either in Yorkshire or from Yorkshire. It is compelling how detailed they get when they are familiar with the context. But the responses from countries other than the UK show how far-reaching this identity is. The emotion, the atmosphere, the texture: it feels dark and humid, like in a cave, it’s transcendental and theatrical, I love the folk influences, like soft, flowing scents of Irish and Welsh, old Celtic here and there! But far from overpowering, rather hidden. Very personal and unique musical expression, as well, honest and true to the individual band members and the bands as a whole. (Gumb) From outside the UK, the identity gets altered: it is not Yorkshire moors but it is ‘old Celtic’. Celtic settlement in Yorkshire happened in Roman Empire era with Parisi and Brigantes tribes. Furthermore, as found in Ted Hughes’ poetry (2011), Elmet was a post-Roman Celtic kingdom in place of Yorkshire. Considering Stainthorpe’s interest in local poetry (in interview), I suggest that the music was inspired partly by this heritage as well. Stainthorpe’s discussion of Ogden Water also points towards the same direction. So, while this Celtic attribution is slightly off point in the context of these bands, it is interesting that the musically non-Celtic sounds somehow translate to that in the eyes of the listener when combined with this Northerner identity. This Yorkshire/Northerner identity is embedded so well into the bands’ identities, some fans even talk of the bands as part of Yorkshire pride: I think this sounds a bit daft maybe. But you had this pride in Yorkshire maybe, so I was quite interested in looking out for music from Yorkshire. […] I like the fact they [My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost] sound as good as Metallica yet they are from Halifax. That was really good. (Garrs) These examples show how there is a ‘lumping together’ of the ‘Peaceville Three’. Musically, the bands are significantly different which unfortunately is beyond the scope of this chapter, however, the bands still have a common identity which has implications on both perception and reception of the style of the music world as evidenced by the participant responses.

Conclusion In this chapter, I showed the origins of the bands and the record label where the death/doom style was born, which in turn became the focal point of this music world in question. Interestingly, death/doom’s cultural origins look to be more ingrained in punk, specifically anarcho-punk, and Northernness than in extreme metal, more specifically death/doom metal. As discussed, death metal had a larger impact on the people involved with this music world than doom metal. This further justifies the identifier ‘death/doom’ and the secondary placement of ‘doom’.

Reight Mardy Tykes    97 Even with the resistance to the term Peaceville Three, all these larger entities – bands and the label – are connected through a performed Northerner identity as evidenced by the bands’ involvement with the locality at various levels, including albums, videos, studios and others, and Peaceville’s location. Death/doom becomes a music world that belongs to Yorkshire and becomes part of the local identity and pride. And in turn, the Northernness performed by these bands creates a self-imposed marginalised space and the required differentiation from the global mainstream, that is, death metal. As Fox (2005) suggests, ‘if mainstream culture comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, alternative culture stresses connections to particular (usually ‘rural’ and ‘traditional’ places, p. 165). I discussed, for especially My Dying Bride, how the landscape of Yorkshire is important for their band identity. The example of Anathema making use of a traditionally Yorkshire place, that is, Saddleworth Moor, also demonstrates the deliberate effort to push death/doom to the margins of the mainstream extreme metal culture. This is reflected both by the fan members in this music world and the press. Death/doom is a ‘Northerner’ endeavour. In the case of the Peaceville Three, the music starts off as a ‘site for counter-hegemonic practice’ (Roberts, 2015, p. 38) in relation to death metal, however, as again exemplified by Anathema, it becomes ‘sympathetic magic’ performed within the constraints of the hegemonic culture, and the constraints applied at that point are then the constraints and conventions of death/doom music world, which is a Northerner culture. Death/doom music world highlights the use of local identity based on a geographical location for the construction of an alternative space.

References Atkins, W. (2014). The Moor: Lives Landscape Literature. London: Faber & Faber. Banchs, E. (2016). Swahili-tongued devils: Kenya’s heavy metal at the crossroads of identity. Metal Music Studies, 2(3), 311–324. Becker, H. S. (1974). Art As Collective Action. American Sociological Review, 39(6), 767–776. Becker, H. S. (2008). Art worlds (Updated). London: University of California Press. Berger, H. M., & Greene, P. D. (2011). Metal rules the globe: Heavy metal music around the world. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Born, G. (2010). The Social and the Aesthetic: For a Post-Bourdieuian Theory of Cultural Production. Cultural Sociology, 4(2), 171–208. Chris, D. (2012). The Myth of the Peaceville Three. Retrieved from http://decibelmagazine. com/blog/featured/the-myth-of-the-peaceville-three. Accessed on July 27, 2017. Crossley, N. (2015). Music Worlds and Body Techniques: On the Embodiment of Musicking. Cultural Sociology, 9(4), 471–492. Dunn, S., McFayden, S., Wise, J. J., & Productions, B. (2005). Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. L.C.J. Editions & Productions Foucault, M. (1998). On the Ways of Writing History. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology (pp. 279–296). London: Penguin Books.

98    M. Selim Yavuz Fox, A. A. (2005). Alternative to What? O Brother, September 11, and the Politics of Country Music. In Country music goes to war (pp. 164–191). Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky. Gordon, A. R. (2005). The authentic punk: an ethnography of DIY music ethics. Ph.D. thesis, Loughborough University, Loughborough. Halmshaw, P. “Hammy.” (2016). Peaceville Life. Hell Segundo. Hughes, T. (2011). Remains of Elmet. London: Faber & Faber. Luhr, E. (2010). Punk, metal and American religions. Religion Compass, 4(7), 443–451. Makagon, D. (2015). Underground: The subterranean culture of DIY punk shows. Portland, OR: Microcosm Publishing. Moberg, M. (2009). Faster for the master!: Exploring issues of religious expression and alternative Christian identity within the Finnish Christian metal music scene. Turku: Åbo Akademi University Press. Montague, E. (2003). Skill, Music, and Energy in Punk Performance. In A. Gyde & G. Stahl (Eds.), Practising Popular Music (p. 643). Montreal, QC: IASPM International Conference. O’Connor, A. (2008). Punk record labels and the struggle for autonomy: The emergence of DIY. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Portelli, A. (1981). The Peculiarities of Oral History. History Workshop Journal, 12(1), 96–107. Purcell, N. J. (2003). Death metal music: The passion and politics of a subculture, McFarland. Roberts, D. (2015). Music and the city: normalisation, marginalisation, and resistance in Birmingham’s musicscape. Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham. Retrieved from http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5709/ Spracklen, K. (2010). True Aryan black metal: The meaning of leisure, belonging and the construction of whiteness in black metal music. In Scott, N. (ed.), The Metal Void: First Gatherings (pp. 81–93). ID Press, Oxford. Spracklen, K. (2016). Theorizing Northernness and Northern Culture: The North of England, Northern Englishness, and Sympathetic Magic. Journal for Cultural Research, 20(1), 4–16. Terrorizer: … Extreme music magazine. (1993-2017). London: Dark Arts Ltd. Thompson, P. (1978). The Voice of the Past: Oral History (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Waksman, S. (2009). This ain’t the summer of love: conflict and crossover in heavy metal and punk. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yavuz, M. S. (2017). “Delightfully depressing”: Death/doom metal music world and the emotional responses of the fan. Metal Music Studies, 3(2), 201–218.

Discography Anathema. (1992). The Crestfallen EP [Cassette]. Peaceville Records. Anathema. (1993). Serenades [CD]. Peaceville Records. Anathema. (1995). The Silent Enigma [CD]. Peaceville Records. Autopsy. (1989). Severed Survival [Cassette]. Peaceville Records. Doom. (1995). Fuck Peaceville! [Cassette]. Profane Records. Lord Crucifier. (1987). Will Evil Win? [Flexi Disc]. Peaceville Records. My Dying Bride. (1990). Towards the Sinister [Cassette]. Independent. My Dying Bride. (1993). Turn Loose the Swans [CD]. Peaceville Records. My Dying Bride. (1995). The Angel and the Dark River [CD]. Peaceville Records.

Reight Mardy Tykes    99 Paradise Lost. (1988). Morbid Existence [Cassette]. Independent. Paradise Lost. (1988). Paradise Lost [Cassette]. Independent. Paradise Lost. (1989). Frozen Illusion [Cassette]. Independent. Paradise Lost. (1991). Gothic [CD]. Peaceville Records. Paradise Lost. (1990). Live Death [VHS]. Jettisoundz Video. Saturnus. (1996). Paradise Belongs to You [CD]. Euphonious Records.

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PART II Bodies

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Chapter 6

Constructions of Regulation and Social Norms of Tattooed Female Bodies Charlotte Dann Abstract Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the popularity of tattooing in the UK, and a subsequent increase in tattooed female bodies. As explored by Walter (2010), key for the women of today is that they have a choice, to conform to stereotypical constructions of femininity, or resist them. However, tension lies in the ways that these choices are already constrained by socially imposed boundaries. In exploring constructions of tattooed female bodies, a stratified sample of 14 tattooed women were interviewed, with the transcripts being analysed using a discursive–narrative approach. Reflexivity forms a key part of the analysis, as I research a tattooed woman, with some of the insider–outsider intersections informing the analysis. Here, the discourse of unwritten rules and social norms is explored, with a specific focus on how tattooed women construct ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ choices in respect to the tattoos they and others get, the expectation and the normalisation of the pain of getting and having a tattoo, and finally, the generational difference in respect to how tattoos are accepted and understood. Keywords: Bodies; femininities; norms; regulation; tattoos; women

This chapter draws on literature from a range of disciplines, integrated with examples from my research with tattooed women in the UK, to explore the discourses of regulation that are produced about alternative femininities. The aim of this chapter is to explore discourses of regulation and the production of social norms, through consideration for women’s tattooed bodies. The chapter is made

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 103–117 Copyright © 2018 by Charlotte Dann All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181007

104    Charlotte Dann up of three key sections; the first section presents a review of the literature focussing on femininities, self-regulation and embodiment, the second section provides methodological detail for how the research was carried out. The final section considers discourses of regulation of tattooed women’s bodies, exploring how alternative femininities are negotiated, and how ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ tattoo choices are produced. The feminine body is well researched within the Social Sciences, providing important theories that consider the various ways in which the body is understood. The focus on the bodies of women in Western society leads to expectations for how femininities should be embodied, what is considered as ideal, and what is considered as ‘other’. Giving attention to ‘other’ femininities is of interest to me in relation to how they both resist and reinforce ideal representations of femininities. Being a tattooed woman may be considered as different and seen as ‘alternative’, so also serves to reinforce the kinds of femininities that are considered as ‘ideal’. The research presented here takes a feminist perspective, with an intersectional lens. Intersectionality is important when considering women, ensuring that voice is given to those who are not often heard (see Crenshaw, 1991). In a field that is often dominated by white, middle-class men, the experiences of women should also be given their own focus, especially as they differ so widely from that of men. Intersectionality shows understanding in that there is a difference for the way that women’s and men’s tattooed bodies are constructed and produced in society, and why it is important that we explore these differences. This research focuses specifically on the intersections of gender, class and age in respect to being tattooed, though I am aware that there are many more intersections that women experience, including race, (dis)ability and sexual orientation. These intersections are highlighted where appropriate throughout the chapter.

Femininities, Self-Surveillance and Embodiment: A Review of the Literature Femininity and being feminine are imbued with expectations on how to dress, act, and behave. However, what can be said is that tattoos are not often associated with typical constructions of femininity. Femininity is not a ‘one size fits all’ concept – there are many ways of embodying femininities. Tattooed bodies are able to traverse both conformity and resistance to feminine ideals simultaneously. Though perceptions towards tattoos have shifted over the past decade, tattoos on women specifically can be described as creating cultural ‘noise’ (Hebdige, 1979) as they fall outside of expected traditional femininity, into more alternative constructions of femininity. Through the agentic tattooed body, oppressive societal norms are resisted, while also enabling cultural belonging. This resistance against traditional femininity enables women to gain control over their bodies (Roberts, 2012), while at the same time, enables the younger generation of women to enter into the fashionable trend of feminine themed tattoos (Young, 2001). Women who reject dominant notions of femininity by getting tattoos, further reinforce what is considered as alternative femininity, as well as ideal

Tattooed Female Bodies    105 femininity. Their position reinforces and reproduces the established traditional notions of femininity (Atkinson, 2002; Day, 2010). At various points, women may want to feel more aligned towards one group, and their identities can develop. This contests the association that tattoos appear on the already anti-social, deviant body (Cardasis, Huth-Bocks, & Silk, 2008; Nowosielski et al., 2012; Way, 2013), and demonstrates the value that tattoos hold to the wearer at any given time. In relation to placement, a sense of identity can be seen and interpreted by others, depending on the location on the body. The placement of a tattoo provides societal perceptions of class (Blanchard, 1991), sexuality (Pitts, 2003) and mental health (Birmingham, Mason, & Grubin, 1999) among other things, showing the difference that placement and visibility can make. In this regard, this will have an impact on how femininities are experienced, as those who have hidden tattoos are less likely to experience negativity (Hawkes, Senn, & Thorn, 2004), or be subjected to stereotypical constructions of resisting femininity. With research focussing more on the visibility of a tattoo, rather than specifically considering the bodily placement of a tattoo, there is a failure to acknowledge how the body intersects with the performance of femininity, and how tattoos fit within this. Through objectification of the body, women learn how they are represented and constructed (Aubrey, 2006), and observe self-surveillance (Foucault, 1976) to monitor where they might fit in and how identities are formed through consideration of gaze and imposition upon the body. In a world full of rules and norms, tattoos are attained as a way of resisting regulation, and as a way of protesting against the consumerist culture of today (Langman, 2008). Women’s bodies are held accountable in terms of what is deemed acceptable appearance and behaviour and hegemonic notions of femininity cannot be projected onto women’s bodies that have been adorned with tattoos (Thomas, 2012). Therefore, these women are removed from an oppressive gaze, enabling them to construct their own reflexive and embodied constructions of femininity, and utilise the body to perform their femininities. Women’s bodies are under constant surveillance, from both the self and others, and are often treated as a site of control and containment (Grosz, 1994). Through becoming tattooed however, women are able to challenge the oppressions imposed upon the body – simultaneously occupying competing spaces of object, subject and process; practices of the commodification of the body and embodied subversion become complex sites for the re/negotiation of femininities and constructed feminine beauty standards. (Craighead, 2011, p. 45) In this regard, tattoos can be used as a way of embodying multiple femininities, and constructing the female body in a way that is personal to that individual, by giving them the agency to do so. Through consideration for the various factors that can have an impact on the body, the ways in which femininity is monitored is clear. Surveillance of the self and from others makes women take account of their bodies, how they are

106    Charlotte Dann represented, and how they represent themselves, and also highlights an integral gap in the research that does not take into account the importance of differences in tattoos, be it visible, private, small or large. Permanence must be recognised as a key facet for the wearer, in the tattoos they have, as well as how this interweaves with their own self-concept. Femininity is a construct of the heteronormative world, which determines how women should feel, behave, and be – ‘one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one’ (Butler, 1990, p. 11). Societal norms are based on heterosexual men and women, and the ways in which heterosexual norms inform our thoughts, actions and behaviours. Femininity forms part of the act that enables women to perform their gender – through embodying certain behaviours and actions, women are able ‘to be’ feminine. Femininity is part of the clichéd binary opposed to masculinity, established through language and constructed through social practices. The issue lies with what our society deems as a feminine or masculine trait, which shifts depending on time, context and culture. As Young (2005) has commented, we embody our identities, with gender being expressed through comportment. In this sense, the body is used to perform gender, but is restrained within boundaries that our culture co/constructs as feminine. In contrast to this, tattoos also provide the wearer with the ability to challenge outdated representations of women and femininity (Longhurst, 1995). Young (2001) has also discussed how the practices of body modification challenge oppressive hegemonic boundaries, especially with regards to beauty, gender and sexuality. In this respect, those who are considered as ‘other’ are able to re/construct their own narrative bodies, taking agency for them and forming their own self-identities. The context in which tattoos are displayed also plays a part in how they are embodied. Within social spaces where tattooed bodies are considered ‘normal’, such as tattoo studios and tattoo conventions, they are more likely to be on display (Fenske, 2007), especially if they are felt to hold communicative value, with respect to its meaning, design and the artist. Building upon this, Modesti (2008) notes how tattoo studios are a dedicated space for agency; being tattooed is an exercise in control, over both pain and body, and includes the performances of being tattooed, and taking part in the act of tattooing. What this research highlights is the importance of space and context for those with tattoos, and being able to effectively evaluate surrounding spaces as to the extent that the tattooed body can be expressed. Outside of these spaces, tattooed bodies are viewed differently, and will therefore embody gender differently. Overall, it is clear through the exploration of my research where femininity is positioned within Western society – as privileged, constrained and monitored. Though it is situated as such, we must acknowledge emerging alternative femininities, through recognition for how diverse femininities can be, dependent on a vast web of factors within each individual’s experiences. Tattoos enable an understanding of the body, and provide a sense of control over the body in resistance to the hegemonic oppressive nature that society imposes. The ways in which gender is embodied will differ in accordance with numerous intersectional factors, as well as the space and context within which the tattooed body is located. The relevance of why it is important to gain an understanding of the experiences of women with

Tattooed Female Bodies    107 tattoos must be acknowledged. The vast majority of research that is available on tattoos concerns mostly men (Cronin, 2001; Goldstein, 2007; Guéguen, 2012), or at least, does not fully understand the implications that gender has with regards to body adornment (Horne, Knox, Zusman, & Zusman, 2007; Manuel & Sheehan, 2007), let alone other factors such as sexuality and race.

The Methodological Approach Fourteen women agreed to take part, providing insight into their experiences as tattooed women. Some of the women who took part in the research had been recently tattooed, and some had been tattooed for as long as 30 years. There was also a variety of styles, sizes, placements and total tattoos according to each participant. It could be argued that the diversity of these factors is integral to the understanding of being a tattooed woman, as it illustrates the many possibilities in experiences, and produces a diverse account of the ways that tattoos are attained and represented in today’s society. Within this chapter, extracts are included from a few of these interviews. As the women are of different ages, this will provide insight into how the body is perceived at different ages, and how these representations are constructed. As there is also research to suggest that tattoos can be utilised as a method for healing, consideration for those who are at the beginning of their healing process (Stitz & Pierce, 2013), and perhaps those who are older and have advanced through the process further, will enable examination of this experience. Social constructionism refers to the ways that our realities are constituted through language, which produces how we understand it (Burr, 2015). Gergen (1985, cited in Burr, 1995) discusses four key principles in understanding social constructionism which are centred around production, construction and negotiation. The world as we understand it is produced through exchanges among people, and these exchanges are historically situated, producing and reproducing our understandings of the world. However, the experiences that we have are not necessarily understood in the same way by others, therefore acknowledging how people construct and understand events differently. The understandings that we have about different experiences are not permanent, or fixed – they will change depending on social processes such as communication, conflict and negotiation. Finally, negotiated understandings are important in how they intersect with other experiences that people have. Shotter and Gergen (1994) provide an important and well-rounded definition of social constructionism, highlighting the role that power has in the production of meaning, reflexivity in method and the voice it gives to the construction of identities. In addition, one of Gergen’s (1994) five basic assumptions for social constructionism is that ‘terms and forms by which we achieve understanding of the world and ourselves are social artifacts, products of historically and culturally situated interchanges among people’ (p. 49). This relates to the current research in the sense that the discourses that are produced from the tattooed women will be contextually located. Phenomena that is understood as socially constructed proceeds to normalise certain experiences – for example, gender and the way that it is embodied (Butler, 1990).

108    Charlotte Dann The use of qualitative interviewing as a method for research is justified, as the position I have taken to the research rests on the understanding that the self is constructed through language (Mason, 2002). My research explores the construction of the tattooed self as produced within discourse. Just as important as the justification for using interviews to generate data, is my own positionality in relation to the research. While my positionality in respect to gender, race, class and disability may be clear, I also had to consider my own body, and the exposure of my tattoos when I was interviewing the participants. For consistency, I felt that my more visible tattoos, the ones on my arms, should be on display for all of the interviews. To me, this seemed important, as having all of my tattoos hidden may have an effect on the responses exchanged within the interviews. I am aware that having my tattoos exposed will also have an effect, though given the topic area, and my relationships with the participants, I felt this this would help them be more comfortable with how they responded. While this approach has been criticised in respect to a potential exploitation of relationships and the information that might be shared during the interview process (Banister et al., 2011; Kvale, 2007) this is somewhat of a contested issue, with Oakley (1981) commenting how interviews involve a process of give and take, whereby information is also shared by the researcher, forming part of the co-production of knowledge in the context of the interview. Oakley (1981) furthers this point by arguing that it is impossible for researchers to remove themselves emotionally from the interview process, and that researcher engagement is preferable. I followed Parker’s (1994, cited in Banister et al., 2011) step-by-step guide for carrying out discourse analysis, the first part of which provides a process for analysing text, and the last part, a deeper analysis into discourse. The first steps involve ‘free associating’ to the text, so I made notes on things that came to mind as I was reading through the interview transcripts. Following this, steps include identifying different ‘ways’ of speaking, and what these different voices serve to produce within the text. Deeper analysis conducted on the transcripts focus on how the discourses that are produced operate to naturalise certain things in their given contexts – for example, the construction of certain stereotypes of femininities being taken for granted as ‘normal’.

Negotiating Femininities One of the main aims of the research presented here was to explore how femininities are constructed in respect to tattooed women’s bodies, and how femininities can be embodied or resisted. All the women who took part in the interviews used varying constructions of femininity, within and between each interview, and found it difficult to articulate a singular definition for what femininity was for them. In this first extract, we can see the tensions that arise between productions of traditional femininity and the tattooed feminine body: P: I really really want a massive black panther on my back. R: Covering your back?

Tattooed Female Bodies    109 P: Yeah, but I don’t know, I’ve got a really nice back (laughs) but yeah I don’t know, I don’t know if I’d do it. R: Does it represent anything? P: I want something to do with strength right, and I saw this image of a panther, and it’s just lying down, just looking, and it’s absolutely, it’s such a beautiful image and you can see the strength in his eyes, and that’s what I want I don’t want a pair of weights on my arm (laughs) I want something you know what I mean, I want erm something that’s hidden but, you know that’s what it is with me, I might be all loud and lairy and you know whatever else, but inside, I’ve got a lot of strength in me, you know, so yeah, I want something that’s going to represent that, but I’m not brave enough yet (laughs) [Betty] Betty discusses in her interview that she understands femininity as a position of strength, as represented by the panther imagery. This extract highlights the negotiation she’s making between productions of stereotypical femininity and her construction of femininity. She states how ‘I don’t know if I’d do it’ because ‘I’ve got a really nice back’, producing a sense that if she gets a tattoo on her back, this would not be seen as feminine. It is as though her back would not be ‘nice’ if it was covered in a big tattoo. She emphasises the ‘massive’ size of the tattoo – it is not just a small piece of work – and therefore occupies more space on the body. The more skin that the tattoo covers, it would seem the more far removed the tattoo would be from traditional femininity (Madfis & Arford, 2013). Whereas tattoos that are seen as small, delicate and dainty would be considered as something more associated with femininity, a ‘massive’ tattoo is a statement – though representative of femininity to her, it may not be read as such by others. She does not discuss the tattoo in relation to any other bodily placement – she has decided on her back – and does not seem to consider a compromise. The location is important as she can have ‘something that’s hidden’, which produces a femininity that can still be read by others as ‘good’, as they are not likely to see the tattoo and cast judgement on it. There is a clear sense of a right and a wrong way to express strength that is articulated within the extract above. She makes it clear that the panther is the ‘right’ way for her to express strength, and she gives the example ‘I don’t want a pair of weights on my arm’ to illustrate something that is more associated with masculinity, and physical strength, rather than a more sleek, slender ‘traditional’ feminine strength (Grogan, Evans, Wright, & Hunter, 2004). She positions the imagery in a way that relates to her femininity, also ensuring that the body is read as feminine. A sleek and powerful panther provides a good representation of strong femininity more so than a set of dumbbells, which could be considered masculine. She laughs this away as though the choice would be obvious, that the more feminine choice is the right choice. The imagery is read as feminine, allowing an embodiment of femininity through the tattoo. However at the same time

110    Charlotte Dann that the tattoo embodies femininity, it also subverts it – she embodies an alternative sense of femininity through the tattoo being large, bold and placed upon a female body. What is clear from the extract above is that there she is drawing on a discursive construction of the right way to do femininity, and explores how this might be embodied through the tattoo’s imagery. She is self-regulating, in that she produces a notion of what femininity is, while at the same time, resists against this with the tattoo. It is acceptable for women to be both feminine and be tattooed, as well as feminine and strong, providing that this is done in the right way, ensuring that the body can be read as feminine. Other examples of negotiation were discussed that highlight some of the complexities in being a tattooed woman, in relation to fashion choices: I know people that have, erm massive calf tattoos and in the summer they wear tights cus they don’t like it, and I never want to say I can’t wear that because of my tattoo [Nora] The inclusion of the size of the tattoo is an indicator as to how the tattoo relates to negotiating femininities. If the tattoo was small and dainty, it would be considered as more acceptable – the ‘massive’ size suggests that it is too big to be seen as feminine, therefore the clothing worn must produce femininity. Small and hidden tattoos are often considered as more favourable on women, with links being drawn between the visibility of a tattoo, the size of the tattoo and the body that the tattoo is on (Hawkes et al., 2004). As the tattoo that is mentioned is not as hidden during the summer months when warmer weather would indicate a change in clothing, the wearer still chooses to wear items of clothing to cover the tattoo, ensuring that the body is still read as feminine. As the women discussed within the extract wear tights, this would indicate that the issue lies in the tattoo being visible (or in this case, not visible) to others. This idea sits in opposition to Wohlrab, Fink, Kappeler and Brewer (2009), who conclude that women are unaware of the negative associations formed of tattooed women, as a common reason that is cited for getting tattoos is to enhance personal beauty. While women do choose to get tattoos for personal reasons, this does not mean that they are unaware or unaffected by representations formed by others. Nora does state that she wants tattoos, though she is aware that the choices that she makes in respect to her tattoo choices are not necessarily free, and does show that she gives thought to the ways that her body may be read if she gets them. She does not want to be constrained in her fashion choices, and therefore she negotiates her production of femininity through her tattoo choices. The ways that the feminine body can be read are numerous, and also complex. There are multiple layers of positionings related to gender, class and age among other intersections which produce constructions of the tattooed feminine body. In the above extract, the issue is not just focussed on the tattoo, but how the tattooed body intersects with fashion choices, and how this relates to the production of acceptable, classed femininity. Nora indicates that the size and visibility of a tattoo are factors in the body being read as feminine. Building on this further, the

Tattooed Female Bodies    111 following extracts also focuses on the intersection between the tattooed feminine body and fashion choices, producing femininity as a kind of skilled consumption – the skilled consumer chooses wisely (McRobbie, 2009). Specifically, this extract focuses on a context where traditional constructions of femininities are considered important: P: I want my tattoos for me so I can cover them and show them when I want, like my sister, for her wedding, she made me wear erm, had long sleeve dress I: Were you a bridesmaid? P: Yeah, well it wasn’t her it was her husband that didn’t want them [Irene] Western weddings are stereotypically high in constructions of traditional femininity, encompassing expected social norms for how the bride is dressed and presented, as well as other aspects of the ceremony and celebrations (Kozieł & Sitek, 2013). When it comes to being tattooed in the context of weddings, the debate mainly centres on whether tattoos should or should not be on display (Yang, 2014). As Irene had an important role in the aforementioned wedding – she was a bridesmaid – her tattoos would have been more on display. She gives the wedding as an example of how she makes her tattoo choices, in respect to her previous experiences of how her tattoos have impacted upon other choices, such as clothing. In this manner, the tattoo is produced not just as an object that allows for communication, but also, a consumer object, one that is skilfully chosen, and displayed in a way that she deems appropriate. Irene explains that she was ‘made’ to wear a long-sleeved bridesmaid dress, ensuring that her tattoo was not on display. The covering of the tattoo feeds into stereotypical and heteronormative assumptions made about the feminine body, especially on the day of a wedding. Though it was not her wedding, she produces an understanding that the tattoo would detract from the day, and that her body should be covered so that this is not given any thought. In relation to her tattoo choices, Irene does state that her tattoos are for her, so that she can ‘cover them and show them when I want’. As in the previous extracts mentioned, this would indicate that the location of the tattoo is important for her, so that she is able to represent herself as she wants to – she is agentic in the way that her body may communicate with others. As she can choose whether the tattoo is visible or not, she can determine the level of communication that her tattoo expresses, and where she feels this to be appropriate. In this respect, through her mentioning the long sleeve dress that she wore at her sister’s wedding, she demonstrates how she was able to negotiate her tattooed feminine body with being read as stereotypically feminine – without the tattoo being seen. While she states that her tattoos are for her, they are not obtained without consideration for how she

112    Charlotte Dann may be read by others, so therefore this part of herself is negotiated. Similarly, she highlights her skill in choosing a consumer object, the tattoo, to be in a location on her body that allows her to position herself as feminine. She regulates herself, knowing the tattoo can be visible or not, which produces a simultaneous conformity to feminine ideals, but at the same time resists them through having the tattoo in the first place. This extract shows what the constructions are around gendered representations of the body, especially in more specific and traditional contexts, such as weddings. The tattooed woman must negotiate the constructions of the (ideal) feminine body, the consuming body and constructions of feminine agency as ‘choosing’ and making ‘skilful and authentic choices’. However, this research does not seek to simplify the complexities of the feminine body, and how tattoos are constructed.

‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ Ways of Being Tattooed In this section, I explore the less overt and more implicit ‘rules’ that govern women’s accounts of their tattoos. In particular, these are constituted around normative assumptions of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to be tattooed. The following extract provides an example of how not to ‘do’ tattoos: I think like with the bloggers and stuff on Instagram, people watch others too much, then it’s like well you’ve got that so I want that. I’ve stopped reading magazines because the amount of shit that’s in them, you have to live like this and you have to eat this and you have to do this, you know, and I’m thinking, why (laughs) I don’t get it, I’ll give you an example, like Cara Delevingne had something to do with bacon tattoos right, I don’t know if it’s just fake ones, random, but I guarantee you right, that they’ll be at least one person following her on Instagram who has a bacon tattoo, do you know what I mean, it doesn’t mean anything to them, they’ll just do it because of who she is, it’s insane [Betty] In this extract from Betty, she is positioning herself as a ‘skilful consumer’, a person who is ‘in the know’ in respect to making the ‘right’ choices about her tattoos. The main feature of this extract is that she does not discuss her own tattoo choices, but rather, she discusses the poor tattoo choices of other people, producing a ‘me versus them’ position, where she is skilful, and therefore better in respect to her tattoo choices. She discusses how people conform to those who are ‘celebrities’ or ‘well-known’, and therefore more likely to be emulated. She positions this negatively, reinforcing the notion that these people are not making authentic tattoo choices. At the same time, she also positions herself as ‘knowing’, and above/better than those who would choose to get a tattoo after following a celebrity, therefore, her tattoos are better – she appreciates the artwork, and has taste is respect to her choices (DeMello, 2000). She gives an ‘extreme’ example of someone with a bacon tattoo, representing something silly and seemingly not

Tattooed Female Bodies    113 an authentic or meaningful choice. The bacon tattoo is an example of a ‘tacky’ tattoo (Dann, Callaghan, & Fellin, 2016), and as discussed by Allen and Mendick (2013), female ‘improper celebrities’ – those associated with social media and other similar media outlets – are considered to have low cultural value, with the construction of ‘tackiness’ being normative within this social space. Betty looks to remove herself from this association as she positions herself as independent and not someone who follows trends (‘people watch others too much…I’ve stopped reading magazines’). She is producing a notion that conformity to trends is tacky, and she does not like to follow trends – it is not so much rebellion, but more an anti-conformity, which is positioned as a ‘good’ choice in being true to herself. Contextually, a narrative emerges that details a chronological self-development; a before and after story is given in respect to her journey as a skilful consumer. She states that she ‘stopped reading magazines because the amount of shit that’s in them’, which highlights that there was a time when she did read them, and there has been a change in the view towards conformity and trends (‘you have to live like this and you have to eat this and you have to do this, you know, and I’m thinking, why’). She has challenged what she considered as feminine and the associated behaviours, and has moved past it – she has become ‘skilful’ in seeing these societal constructions of stereotypical femininity and creating her own understanding of femininity. In respect to the language that is being produced here, she draws attention to her actively thinking about these constructions – she is not passively agreeing with and conforming to them. This is related back to tattoos, and shows how she makes sense of tattoos through her commenting that the tattoos of those who copy celebrity trends will not ‘mean anything to them’. Here, she produces a sense that tattoos are done ‘right’ if they hold meaning to the wearer, and also, that a tattoo without meaning does not produce an authentic sense of self – it comes to represent trends in society rather than the person the tattoo is on (Riley & Cahill, 2005). The notion of authenticity that emerges in this extract functions to legitimate the importance of meaning in tattoos, and produces a construction of ‘tackiness’ in those who do not get their tattoos for the ‘right’ reasons. Continuing with a similar focus in the ‘right’ choice for tattoos being related to authenticity, Gabrielle talks about her views towards joke-related tattoos: A lady had every single name of her cats that she had, every cat that she had on her back it was covered, it was covered (pause) what’s bad is when people have like shhh or moustaches written like on their finger (laughs) I do think that’s a bit weird ent it (laughs) it’s just a funny thing isn’t it they’re just messing about its like a joke [Gabrielle] Rather than this being about the tattoos in themselves being the issue, this shows the issue with jokey-style tattoos, that aren’t considered as ‘serious’ or ‘normal’ tattoos. While the first woman that Gabrielle refers to seems to have tattoos that are of meaning to her, the sheer amount of tattoos, constructed as excessive,

114    Charlotte Dann and the subject matter, the repetition of cats, sees this woman produced as ‘not normal’ – the tattoos are too different to be taken seriously. The repetition of the fact that this woman was ‘covered’ emphasises the issue that is held with women who have extensive body coverage. This shows that even within the community of those who are tattooed – often constructed as the ‘other’ – that certain types of tattoos are considered as too much (Thompson, 2015). Similar to the previous extract from Betty, Gabrielle is also talking about other women with tattoos, reinforcing the construction that she is ‘knowing’ in her tattoo choices. What is different here is that the cat tattoos that are referred to seem to hold meaning to the wearer, and while meaning is usually seen as the ‘right’ way to do a tattoo, in this instance, it is the lack of seriousness that plays a role in the perception of the tattooed person. She also gives examples of other tattoos that she considers as ‘bad’ – tattoos that have seen to be ‘trending’ in recent times (Scott, 2016). In respect to these examples, she produces a sense that tattoos related to societal trends are an issue, rather than having something that is meaningful to the person. These examples are also positioned as tattoos that are almost for the benefit of other people – they are there to make other people laugh, and it is their reaction that is sought after, rather than the tattoo being obtained for the wearer themselves. Similar to previous accounts, for a tattoo to be done right, it has to represent an authentic sense of self – following fashionable trends is not positioned as authentic. Through the tattoo being constructed as a joke, a representation is produced of the wearer (Kosut, 2000), which is not seen as ‘right’. As a position is being created that meaningful tattoos are authentic and ‘right’ for the wearer, it seems plausible to assume that tattoos provide an external representation of someone’s personality. This is discussed by Jean in her interview: I think tattoos in general do show peoples personality cus its like what represents me, erm so yeah, so even people that do choose like a random thing it has to mean something to that person or you wouldn’t get it, unless it’s something ridiculous like Harry Styles had all the names of the girls he slept with when he was on holiday or some guy that got the Nandos [end] [Jean] At the start of this extract, Jean makes a statement regarding the link between personality and tattoos, because this is how she has experienced it. From her perspective, this is the ‘right’ way for a tattoo to be done, and she had done it the ‘right’ way because her tattoos are meaningful to her and representative of the things that are important to her. Even in the consideration of people who might get ‘a random thing’ tattooed, she still sees this in the sense that it must have meaning to the wearer – she cannot see that it would have no significance, because a tattoo must have meaning. Within her interview, she discusses how her tattoo might be considered as different (Harry Potter related) and that also she would get a jar of Nutella tattooed because she loves Nutella. In this sense, this example may be considered as random to other people, but still contains meaning for her, showing how she makes sense of tattoo choices that are informed by her own.

Tattooed Female Bodies    115 She also provides examples of how ‘not’ to do tattoos, with these being positioned at the extreme end of the spectrum. For Jean, these extremes relate to sexual exploitations, and the use of names on the body, and also the current trend of people getting advertising tattoos (Scott, 2016). While these examples might be meaningful to the wearer, they might not be read as such by others.

Conclusions to be Drawn The aim of this chapter was to explore discourses of regulation and the production of social norms related to femininities, through consideration for women’s tattooed bodies. Through the discussions that the women had surrounding the ways in which they would and would not be tattooed, some of the norms surrounding tattoo practices are made apparent. The social norms in relation to tattoos serves to function as a policing of tattooing, and the right way to do it. Femininities and the ways that they are represented are complex, with multiple personal and societal issues being considered in relation to being a tattooed woman. Resistance against traditional constructions of femininities serves to produce constructions of alternative femininities, with the women negotiating what these constructions are for them. The visibility (or not) of the tattoo also feeds into negotiations of femininities in that the women feel that they can choose how they represent themselves (Kosut, 2000) depending on where their tattoos are located, but, the takeaway point is that the body of a woman will be scrutinised regardless of whether they have a tattoo or not. The findings here show the women as both conforming to societal norms expected of their bodies, through the way they embody femininity, or how they produce understandings of femininity, while at the same time, resist these very regulations through the tattoo itself, and produce alternative constructions of femininities. Future research may look to consider the location of tattoos on the female body as to how they are perceived, and also, how the imagery itself conforms to or resists feminine ideals, and how these are constructed.

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Tattooed Female Bodies    117 Madfis, E., & Arford, T. (2013). The dilemmas of embodied symbolic representation: Regret in contemporary American tattoo narratives. Social Science Journal, 50(4), 547–556. Manuel, L., & Sheehan, E. P. (2007). Getting inked: Tattoos and college students. College Student Journal, 41(4), 1089–1097. Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative Interviewing: Asking, Listening, and Interpreting. In Qualitative Research in Action (pp. 225–241). London: SAGE. McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: SAGE Publications. Modesti, S. (2008). Home sweet home: Tattoo parlors as postmodern spaces of agency. Western Journal of Communication, 72(3), 197–212. Nowosielski, K., Sipiński, A., Kuczerawy, I., Kozłowska-Rup, D., & Skrzypulec-Plinta, V. (2012). Tattoos, piercing, and sexual behaviors in young adults. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 9(9), 2307–2314. Oakley, A. (1981). Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms. In H. Roberts (Ed.), Doing Feminist Research (p. 240). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pitts, V. (2003). In the flesh: The cultural politics of body modification. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Riley, S. C. E., & Cahill, S. (2005). Managing Meaning and Belonging: Young Women’s Negotiation of Authenticity in Body Art. Journal of Youth Studies, 8(3), 261–279. Roberts, D. J. (2012). Secret Ink: Tattoo’s Place in Contemporary American Culture. The Journal of American Culture, 35(2), 153–165. Scott, E. (2016). Tattoo artists share the tattoo trends they’re so sick of doing. Retrieved from http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/03/tattoo-artists-share-the-tattoo-trends-theyre-soso-sick-of-doing-5922750/. Accessed on October 8, 2016. Shotter, J., & Gergen, K. J. (1994). Social Construction: Knowledge, Self, Others, and Continuing the Conversation. Annals of the International Communication Association, 17(1), 3–33. Stitz, M. E., & Pierce, J. D. (2013). Changes in Appearance in the Presence of Major Stress Events. SAGE Open, 3(2). Thomas, M. L. (2012). Sick/beautiful/freak: Nonmainstream body modification and the social construction of deviance. SAGE Open, 2(4), 1–12. Thompson, B. Y. (2015). Covered in Ink: Tattoos, Women and the Politics of the Body. New York, NY: NYU Press. Walter, N. (2010). Living dolls: The return of sexism. London: Virago Press. Way, A. K. (2013). There’s no “I” in team: Adolescent emotions as a space for organizing feminine identity. Emotion, Space and Society, 7(1), 26–34. Wohlrab, S., Fink, B., Kappeler, P. M., & Brewer, G. (2009). Perception of human body modification. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(2), 202–206. Yang, S. (2014). Wedding dress purchase intentions of tattooed brides. Kingston, RI: University of Rhode Island. Young, I. M. (2005). On female body experience: ‘throwing like a girl’ and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, M. A. K. (2001). Flesh journeys: Neo primitives and the contemporary rediscovery of radical body modification. Deviant Behavior, 22(2), 117–146.

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Chapter 7

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’: Tattoo Collecting, Gender and Self-Expression Beverly Yuen Thompson Abstract The act of becoming ‘heavily tattooed’, with its historical association with deviant subcultures, continues to carry a social stigma and evoke negative sanctions. This is especially so for women, who must also contend with gender norms within the highly masculinised tattoo subculture. For women, the experience of becoming heavily tattooed comes to represent an embodied resistance to normative ideals of beauty, against which the participants construct their own alternative gender and beauty philosophies. Besides gender norms, the tattoo world has specific ethos which divides the serious subcultural member from those more casually connected to it. The physical parameter of the subculture finds people gathering in tattoo studios and at tattoo conventions, as well as consuming tattoo-oriented media, such as magazines and television shows. This study draws on indepth interviews with 36 participants across the United States who consider themselves serious tattoo collectors. From their stories, we learn about the importance of participating in this leisure activity and how becoming heavily tattooed impacts their sense of self, gender and identity. Keywords: Tattoos; deviance; gender; stigma; identity; body art

Introduction: Women in the Tattoo Subculture It was the end of the ’80s and I was five years old. I remember holding my mom’s hand in the mall and seeing my first punk rock chick. She had a freakin’ half-and-half mohawk thing. She had a

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 119–132 Copyright © 2018 by Beverly Yuen Thompson All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181008

120    Beverly Yuen Thompson tattoo of dates [numbers] on her skull. She was awesome to me. I said to mom, ‘what is that?’ My mom was doing the earmuffs thing, covering my eyes. Don’t look at it. I’m like, ‘that is awesome!’ And my sister said, ‘that’s a tattoo’. She was older, she knew all. So that was my first sense of anything subcultural. Rene, a tattoo artist in St. Petersburg, Florida, was suddenly exposed as a small child to the punk rock aesthetic in a moment that profoundly resonated with her. Her exposure to such style was accompanied with her mother’s disdain, making it clear that this alternative was unacceptable. Her sister represents subcultural knowledge that is beyond her own awareness. For some participants, their childhood exposure to alternative culture was impacting and life changing. They vowed to begin their tattoo collection as soon as they were of age. While excited by the stylistic expression, little did they realise how taking on such an image would introduce conflict in their world. If they were still living with parents, such adolescent attempts of playing with self-presentation were swiftly censored inside the home, in schools and the general public. For girls in particular, they have a potentially different path to subcultural membership and different social costs. For girls, their subcultural membership in male-oriented communities can be at odds of social expectations of femininity and have a specifically female-shaming flavour to social sanctions. For boys, male-oriented subcultures provide a space for them to enact their masculine roles in a distinctive style reinforced by other group members, reaffirming a shared gender solidarity. When girls enter such spaces, they face barriers that are enacted through gendered practices such as limiting their roles to sexualised ones, or creating a situation in which they begin to break out of a channelled femininity. Such is the case of women in the world of tattooing in the United States, where they are artists, collectors and fans of the art form. Historically, tattooing was almost completely done by men and for men, sequestered into masculine subcultures such as the military, prisoners, bikers and criminally associated subcultures. In the early 1900s, the only women associated with this underground practice, stigmatised by such deviant group associations, as well as occasional outbreaks of blood-borne illnesses, were women romantically involved with male artists, their wives and girlfriends. A few wives became heavily tattooed as a stand-in for the artist’s portfolio. Some women went on to become tattooed performers in sideshows and circuses. Tattooing in the 1950s, Samuel Steward (1990) – an English professor turned tattooist – writes that most tattooists ‘in those days was composed of ex-cons or conmen, drunks, wife-beaters, military deserters, pushers, (and even two murders)’ (p. 32). Steward writes about his decision to create a policy of not tattooing women – except with permission from husbands – after encountering many angry husbands rushing his shop and accusing him of desecrating their wives. Thus, the hyper-masculine environment, and actual practices and policies, reinforced the gender segregation of the tattoo subculture, which women would be hard-pressed to enter, and few would have such an interest. The literature on subcultures, focused so heavily on male-oriented subcultures, and the performances enacted by members, overwhelmingly accepts the absence

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    121 of women without examining the ways in which gender segregation is enforced. Furthermore, much of the earlier literature ignores subcultures which might predominantly comprise women. Ethnographies of tattoo artists and collectors make note of gender distinctions, but rarely focus specifically on the female experience of collecting tattoos, especially the social consequences of collecting many tattoos that are large, visible and unfeminine. This chapter attempts to examine the social role of women involved in the tattoo subculture and the specifically gendered consequences and outcomes of their engagement.

Subcultures, Neo-Tribal Style and Women’s Prominence in Tattooing Subcultures have always been the topics of study for sociologists, following traditions such as those which emerged from the Chicago School, from which scholars went out into the city to capture the descriptive lifestyles of communities – immigrants, low-income and marginal. Albert Cohen (1955), Walter Miller (1958), Clifford Shaw (1930) and Frederic Thrasher (1927) all completed major works on criminal gangs using Marxist and Gramscian theories to explore this culture from a more grounded, interactionist perspective. In the post-wars years, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, England, was at the forefront of documenting subcultural communities based on youth music and style. Most notably, the volumes Resistance through rituals, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (1990) and Subculture: The meaning of style, by Dick Hebdige (1979), brought attention to specific groups such as the mods, rude boys, Rastafarians, punk rockers and skinheads. Swiftly, the CCCS research faced critique (including from its own writers), for its exclusive focus on masculine worlds. The one exception was Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber’s (2006) article ‘Girls and subcultures’, in Hall and Jefferson’s anthology Resistance through rituals. The article focused on how girls’ subcultures were often staged in the spaces of their bedroom, where they would engage with peers and media, and try on various elements of femininity and identity performativity in this safe space. This was in contrast to young male subcultures staged and performed in public spaces. As the only article outlining girls’ subcultures, McRobbie and Garber’s (2006) article established a foundation for the subfield of ‘girls’ studies’, which produced many more studies on bedroom cultures, girls’ engagement with popular culture media and girls’ lives as sites for societal anxieties (Harris, 2001; Kearney, 2009). Other cultural studies perspectives introduced concepts such as ‘post-subcultural’, ‘lifestyle’, ‘scene’ and ‘neo-tribal’ to describe primarily youth-based subculture communities. French sociologist Michel Maffesoli’s (1995) concepts of ‘tribes’ and ‘neo-tribal’ contends that instead of communities based on socially established divisions such as race or class, connections are instead fragmented and random, easily adapted or discarded. This disposable and mutable adaptation of lifestyles was echoed by Ted Polhemus (1996) in his concept of a ‘supermarket of style’, from which people can simply pick and choose their constantly

122    Beverly Yuen Thompson evolving stylistic expressions. This concept was adopted by other theorists who support the idea of subcultures that can be entered into, and exited, without the complicated encumbrance of rigid identity politics structures (Bennett, 1999; Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004; Riley et al. 2010). Others have been more critical of the post-subculture perspective, stating that it ‘reduces “real” subculture to surface signifiers without authenticity where identity is determined by choice’ (Blackman, 2005, p. 15). The central concept of the subcultural and post-subcultural theories is the idea of ‘style’ as a symbolic representation of one’s community, inner identity and/or resistance to hegemonic culture. David Muggleton (2000) argues that ‘appearance is not free-floating, available to be put on and cast off as a mere whim. To engage in such acts would be evidence of one’s superficiality and inauthenticity, for style is viewed as an expression of one’s inner self’, it is not an empty signifier (p. 103). Derek Roberts (2015) cautions that style cannot be the only ‘method of distinction’ or else the group will have to continuously incorporate new ‘objects and techniques’ or else ‘face extinction’ (p. 1101). While theoretically, items of material clothing and accessories can be adopted by anyone, the underlying message expressed by such objects is not so interchangeable, and individuals do not adopt styles radically outside of their self-presentation, or switch identities on a whim (Jaimangal-Jones, Pritchard, & Morgan, 2015). Subcultures incorporate elements of other time periods or cultural objects, but the final (yet changing) representation has a significant meaning, which work to reify the subculture, for example the hyper-masculine bodies in gay male subcultures (Kates, 2002), the adoption of militaristic objects in hardcore music (Willis, 1993) or single-strap bag of the bicycle messengers (Fincham, 2008). In their research on dance music culture and associated dress, Jaimangal-Jones et al. (2015) demonstrate that such clothing is adopted ‘within specific club environments while generally being invisible on the street’ and therefore, style is also located in particular sites and performed for appreciative and expectant observers. Sarah Thorton (1996) writes that ‘club cultures are taste cultures’, based on a shared preference in music and common consumptive practices (p. 3). Subcultures establish style, meanings and rituals and individuals interact with these symbols through revision and diffusion. Yet, these meanings do not necessarily have a ‘wider ramification beyond the local context’ (Kates, 2002, p. 396). For individuals to rise in the ranks and become an elite member of the subculture, intensive efforts must be placed into stylistic interaction, its circulation and development (Force, 2009). In the tattoo subculture, there are many points of distinction to mark the difference between a novice and an ‘old timer’. One of the distinctions is the continuation of collecting significant tattoos. Derek Roberts makes this distinction: People who have tattoos usually have one or maybe a couple tattoos strategically placed on areas of their bodies that are easily hidden. Tattooed people, on the other hand, get ink that is visible to others. Bold tattoos on lower arms, hands and/or necks are common for tattooed people (italics added, p. 1–2).

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    123 Roberts (2012) continues, ‘though the number of people who have tattoos has boomed, I argue that the number of tattooed people remains relatively small’ (2). This suggests that simply having one, or a few tattoos, is not significant enough to position someone as an esteemed subcultural member. One must prove their commitment by extensive coverage. Katherine Irwin (2003) has written about this distinctive ‘elite tattoo collector’ who have earned the highest subcultural capital. These include having extensive knowledge of tattoo artists, styles and norms: collecting work from the best artists in the community, paying thousands of dollars, booking time on wait lists, travelling long distances and collecting images valued by the subculture, which can include classic Americana (flash style, old school sailor designs, originating with Sailor Jerry) or specific styles, such as hyper-realism, horror or portraits. Irwin (2003) describes such imagery further: ‘Aesthetically, elite collectors and tattooists prefer tattoos depicting fringe themes. Images of monsters, demons, beheadings, severed hands, and aliens are popular tattoo images among this crowd’ (p. 39–40). Such collectors are often attempting to achieve a tattoo ‘body suit’ in which their entire body is covered with tattoo art, with ‘patches of plain skin serve as aberrations and reminders of the unfinished, unbalanced nature of their body suits. Light, pale and colourless skin is only valued for its potential to hold future art’ (Irwin, 2003, p. 29). Collecting extensive tattoos puts one into a distinct, or elite group among other collectors, and a deviant among the non-tattooed. Therefore, having tattoos positions one to belong to the community or subculture around this specific art. One of Paul Sweetman’s (2004) interviewees explains that ‘when you become tattooed or pierced you can feel like part of a club or community that in some ways is like any other lifestyle group’ (p. 89). Moving beyond the casual collector, or, as Dereck Roberts called them, ‘people with tattoos’ and becoming a ‘tattooed person’ represents subcultural authenticity. The external stylistic expression is supposed to represent a claim of one’s internal feelings, an essential self, that happens to be best represented by a particular subculture to which one feels strong affinity (Muggleton, 2000). It may also be held as an unattained, but striven for, authenticity. For example, Agnes Jasper (2004) found that gothic party visitors often stated that they were not goth, or not authentically so, which Jasper assumed to be a way of ‘guarding some kind of subcultural authenticity in the all-absorbing context of commerce and dominant culture’ (p. 91). After all, ‘authenticity therefore derives its power from its apparent distance from mainstream mediation’ (Serazio, 2013, p. 69). There are structural constraints impinging upon one’s stylistic expression such as, aging and employment. Andy Bennett (2013) documents the subcultural aging process. For Bennett’s participants, their use of subcultural fashion accessories often diminishes, whereas their belief system is confirmed without the need of objects. Their values have been ingrained and ‘do not need to be dramatically reconfirmed through the more strikingly visual displays of commitment used by younger punks’ (p. 76). Samantha Holland’s (2004) ethnography was based on interviews with older ‘alternative style’ women in the UK. For this group, their continuation of flashy subcultural stylist markers contrasted with their age, as women are supposed to become more muted. The women discuss their negotiation

124    Beverly Yuen Thompson between expectations of femininity and their own attempts to escape such restrictions, which have different expectations with each age cohort that they enter. Even for younger hardcore punks, as Susan Willis (1993) discovers, they would employ a hair style in which the lower part of their head was shaven, but a longer bob cut on top could be let down for passing at work. Such shifting of stylistic displays and covering up at work was a common practice. When one is ‘involved in a spectacular subculture’, they face ‘targeted public harassment’ which has a result of ‘strengthening group identification,’ as Paul Hodkinson and Jon Garland (2016, p. 542) find during their interviews with goth scene participants. For women, this subcultural identification is more complicated with its relationship to the socially expected performance of femininity. Feminist theory centres embodiment in order to recognise the body ‘as a source of knowledge, as a site of resistance, and as the locus of subjectivity’ (McLaren, 2002, p. 81). Valerie Fournier (2002) brings this perspective to life vividly when she writes ‘bodies get enrolled in the production of gender not simply as materials to be written upon but also as mass of hurting flesh’ (p. 70). Judith Butler ([1990] 1999) focuses our attention on the process of how gender itself is not simply body parts, but an active production engaged upon by the body and its expressive capabilities. This embodied production is based upon women internalising the gender messages of the hegemonic cultures which reinforces the desirability of femininity and beauty and these messages are internalised and empowered by ‘women’s self-surveillance’ (Frueh, 2001, p. 164; Gimlin, 2002). While men’s identities are based on a variety of factors, especially employment, women are more narrowly valued by their body and its perceived attractiveness. Women’s tattooing, in order to be aligned with the beauty process, needs to reinforce femininity, which come to mean tattoos that are ‘small, cute, and hidden’, otherwise imagery would be considered ‘disrespecting the sanctity of their female bodies’ (MacCormack, 2006, p. 57). When women first began collecting tattoos in increasing numbers in the United States, during the social revolution of 1970s, getting a feminine tattoo was itself rebellious. Janis Joplin introduced small tattoos to a new audience of women rock fans in 1970. Yet, it was not until the late 1990s and 2000s when women (and men) started becoming ‘heavily tattooed’ (Mifflin, 2011). There have been notable ethnographies outlining the personal and social role of tattoo collecting. Clinton Sanders and D. Angus Vail (1989/2008), interviewed collectors about their tattoo imagery, 32 percent of whom were lightly tattooed women. Michael Atkinson’s (2003) ethnography of Canadian collectors predominantly comprised women struggling with cultural standards of normative beauty. Margo DeMello (2000) explores the ‘middle-class repackaging of the tattoo, a process that highlights the tattoo’s ‘primitive’, exotic roots and at the same time seeks to erase its white, working-class beginnings’ (p. 3). Victoria Pitts’ (2003) work spotlights extreme body modification subcultures, such as extensive piercing, flesh hanging, body-suit tattooing and subdermal implants, echoing the focus of the classic book Modern primitives by Vale (1990/2010). Katherine Irwin’s (2003) work focuses on the situational deviance of the heavily tattooed individual, which she classified as negative in the mainstream context, yet positive

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    125 in the subcultural world of tattooing. Xuan Santos (2009) explores the world of Chicana, an east Los Angeles tattoo studio where he interviewed 47 women and observed the gendered interactions such as tattoo display designs targeted for women, male artists objectifying female clients and the long female artist inundated with clients more comfortable with her. Santos focuses on the struggle for agency in a subculture where women are referred to as ‘the Chicana canvas’, meaning an unmarked woman transformed into a new social identity by taking on the permanent marking, and the power of gatekeeping that this bestows upon male artists. Finally, my book (Thompson, 2015) Covered in ink extends the ethnographic research on tattoo communities to heavily tattooed women in particular, not simply those with one or more tattoos. By emphasising the distinction between lightly tattooed and heavily tattooed women, the study gets to the nuance of how becoming heavily tattooed specifically creates hardship for women in ways that feminine conforming tattoos do not create.

Methodology Research for this project began at the annual Marked for Life tattoo convention in Orlando, Florida, in January 2007 – a gathering dedicated to female tattoo artists (and a few male artists dressed in drag) – organised by tattooist Deanna Lippens. I attended this convention for five years, making strong connections with the community of women artists. I found Sofia Estrella and commissioned a large-scale back-piece tattoo from her, which would take over five years to complete. I collected smaller tattoos from several other participants as well, embodying the research in a sensory fashion. From this beginning, I branched out to other regional tattoo conventions in search of participants in Florida, Washington state, Texas, California and New York. I approached both female tattoo artists and collectors and video interviewed each for an hour. A tattoo convention is a leisure event that brings tattoo artists and collectors together. These convention halls fill with booths, each representing a tattoo studio, complete with their artistic portfolio, merchandise and gear. Potential clients walk the halls, studying the portfolios and seek a tattooist with a specific style. Some artists may have travelled far; therefore, customers have brief access to non-local artists. Onlookers can watch people get tattooed. Contests such as ‘best tattoo of the day’ are hosted on the stage, where a long line of tattooees and their artworks are displayed. Through networking, I was invited to specific tattoo studios to interview artists and their clients. Two participants contacted me through the social networking site Myspace, popular in the early 2000s, before Facebook came to prominence. Jane, at Abstract Art, in Webster, Texas, brought together 12 women over a threeday period. Tammy, from Outer Limits Tattoo and Body Piercing, in Long Beach, California, connected me to a handful of tattooists who worked at the four studio locations. I reached out to my hometown friend Vaunderbroad who connected me with nearly a dozen of her clients. There were 36 participants in this study: women in the United States who have collected a significant number of tattoos, ranging in age from 20–63years of age, with 20 percent having ethnic backgrounds that were either Latina or

126    Beverly Yuen Thompson Asian American, with the remainder being white. Only one participant was African American and none were Native American. While all ethnic and racial groups collect tattoos in the United States, the shops and conventions they attend are generally racially segregated. The class background of the participants ranged between working class, lower-middle class and middle class. Their professions ranged from student, service industry workers, office workers and several whitecollar professionals. The research was IRB-approved by Florida International University and allowed for video-recorded interviews which would result in the featurelength documentary film Covered (2010), besides academic analysis. The women were asked questions on how they discovered tattooing, how they began their collection, imagery stories, impact of transforming their bodies and social lives and the significance of this practice in their daily lives. Interviews were transcribed in full and coded by hand focussing on various themes that emerged from the transcripts around how marginality is created through social interaction, such as identities, symbolic meanings, relationships, leisure experience, process and social context.

Discussion: Self-Expression through Tattoo Art Pressures to conform to feminine standards of appearance complicate women’s participation in subcultures in ways not experienced by men and therefore demonstrate the importance of focussing specifically on the female experience. Both Lauraine LeBlanc’s (1999) research on adolescent punk rock girls and Samantha Holland’s (2004) research on alternative older women, we see that at each age group, women struggle to balance mainstream beauty culture with their own selfexpressive desires. In contrast to McRobbie and Garber’s (2006) focus on girls’ bedroom culture, where they can practice feminine performances in the privacy of their own room, LeBlanc and Holland are focused on public presentations and interactions with others. The women in this study have no conflict with their own self-presentation, the conflict only arises in interaction with others, such as family, employers or the public. The participants use tattooing to express important values, identities and cultural tastes. Twenty-five-year-old Miami resident Guadalupe finds tattooing a positive way to visualise and express her Mexican heritage: Tattooing is beautiful. I appreciate people expressing feeling in images. And I think it also beautifies the body, I don’t think it’s something that is ugly. I think it’s empowering, that women could get tattoos. It is kind of sad, because some people do criticize them, because we’re supposed to be feminine. It kind of makes you butch or whatever. But as time goes by, more women are become more powerful. I think it’s awesome. And I hope I keep getting tattooed. I can’t picture myself without them, they’re part of me. They express how I feel and what I like. To me they’re like little memories that I keep on my skin.

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    127 Like the participants in other tattoo ethnographies (DeMello, 2000; Sanders & Vail, 1989/2008), these women interviewed here expressed that tattoo imagery was their favourite manner of self-expression. Tattoos provide a filter against people who discriminated against body art and therefore, themselves, and provide insight into their interests to public observers. Their tattoo collection became integrated into their personal identity to the point where they could not imagine their own image without ink. It also provided a pathway for their own bodily acceptance as they began customising parts that they previously may not have enjoyed. Raye in south Florida says, ‘Because you don’t want to show someone your fat rolls and be like, “look at my love handles”. But put a tattoo on it. They’re not looking at your fat anymore.’ Many women talked about this reclamation of their body with their tattoo art, as they beautified parts that they previously saw as problematic, or else they wanted to take care of the tattoo, and thus, themselves. Brenda, a 32-year-old Latina woman in Spokane, Washington, talks about this positive view of her body that tattooing provides: It’s an all-around good experience. I take better care of myself now. I have to, in order to heal. And I am going to be healing tattoos for a long time if I’m going to do both arms solid. So it just made me be healthier. I work out a lot more, because I have this beautiful tattoo, I don’t want my arms to be flabby, I want them to be in shape. It’s been a positive change in my life. Because now I work out, I eat healthy, and I take care of myself more. It was also a way for women to focus their own desires and to make time for themselves. This was especially important for women with children or parents who did not like tattoos, as their tattoo collection could put them at odds with family members. Women’s family responsibilities are an important factor that can infringe upon their subcultural participation in ways which men may not be as limited, but has rarely been examined specifically outside of the subcultural research on aging (Bennett, 2013; Holland, 2004). I met tattoo collector Karen at Kolo Tattoos in Miami, where she was temporarily located for work. After having raised four grown children, she was now at a point in her life where she could fulfil her lifelong wish of collecting small tattoos that represented her interests and identity, such as a Gemini symbol or a musical note. Subcultural theories often focus on musical subcultures and the extent to which people submerge themselves into these stylistic communities, such as ravers, goths, heavy metal, mods or rockers (Hebdige, 1979). Many of the women were expressing their love of their favourite bands with their tattoos. As 20-year-old Julie states, one can just look at her and understand her passions. I have two tattoos I’m going to get this summer. One is, ‘What a Way to Die’, in script, across my stomach, which is a song title by the band The Pleasure Seekers, which was Suzy Quatro’s first band when she was sixteen. That’s my life philosophy. And then the other one is about my love of pop culture. So, I am probably going to be covered with weird shit. One is going to be a half

128    Beverly Yuen Thompson sleeve about the Marx Brothers, a monologue that Groucho Marx says in one of their movies. I’m saying something with my tattoos which makes me happy. It’s not just artwork or something cute. It’s really my personality on my arm. So you don’t even have to talk to me to really get me, you just look at my tattoos. This one is The Dead Boys, they’re my favorite band. I am obsessed with music. This tattoo says ‘lick on my leather’, which is a line from one of their songs. The whole line goes, ‘she got on her knees just to lick on her leather’. But that was a little too much. So I just put, ‘lick on my leather’, which pretty much means, I am going to live my life how I want to live my life. And I’m tattooing it on my arms so that you all know I am not changing. Janet is obsessed with music and her favourite bands. She is also a performer in her own band, plays instruments and considers music central to her life passions. She wants to show the world that she is committed to these passions, no matter what the sceptics say. A unique ethos of the punk rock world is to commit to living one’s life according to one’s passions; not submitting to the normative life path of corporate employment, mortgages and childrearing. She is both enacting that ‘unique ethos’ in her rock performer lifestyle, as well as tattooing it on her arm. One of the ‘special benefits’ she is realising through her serious leisure pursuits is living up to her own ideals and expressing them to the world, in a manner that she loves (Stebbins, 2007, 2011). Collecting extensive, and unique, ‘custom’ tattoos are at the centre of the elite members’ behaviour – contrasted against selecting a simple image from a corporate logo, the Internet, or a piece of flash art displayed on the studio wall. Miami collector Katie wants to explore a new theme in her tattoo collection: I really love movies! I want to do a movie homage on the side of my leg, from my thigh to my ankle. Natural Born Killers is my favorite movie. And A Clockwork Orange, Donnie Darko, Frankenstein. I’m going to throw movie images on the side of my leg, with some film reels, it’ll be cool. The veteran California-based tattooist PK described plans for future tattoo work that reflected her particular sense of humour: I’m going to get both arms done eventually. One arm is going to be all meat-eating plants. That should make all the vegetarians very nervous—plants that pay back. There are dozens and dozens of varieties of meat-eating plants. And the rest will be fruit. Subcultures are about community, bringing together like-minded individuals to share in their mutual appreciation. While outsiders may not understand tattoo culture humour behind design selection, such dark humour underlies many tattoo designs. Sparkil-licious, a roller-derby player in Spokane, has memorial tattoos in this distinct, classic Americana tattoo style:

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    129 So this would be my angel/devil arm. This right here is supposed to be me without skin, ya know. And then I have a dagger back here, it’s for my mom, and I just recently got her name on it, Susan. And then this dagger right here is for my dad, he’s a golfer so it’s stabbing a golf ball. I have some devil looking tattoos. And now when I go to my daughter’s school, I should probably cover those up. And not for me, because I’m proud of my tattoos. But because of my daughter, and because of what little kids think. And because of what their parents think. And that sucks, that sucks. Negotiating such stigma bonds tattoo collectors together and provides shared experiences in ways that non-stigmatised body decoration or modification would not. While people do not form strong bonds because of their shared interest in getting their hair permed or coloured, they do share a connection over having tattoos. But this is not a community that naturally congregates, only those who are more involved in the practice may gather together. The tattoo community is created in locations such as tattoo studios, regional conventions, magazines, online media and at overlapping events, such as at music venues or roller derby rinks. Frankie Scorpion, a Latina living in Long Island, New York, founded the Gypsy Queens in order to promote women’s visibility in the tattoo world. The Gypsy Queens grew out of my friendships with Laura and Tracy Nicole. Lara helps me do everything with the company headquarters Tracy helps us organize the women at events. We now have chapters in the UK, Canada, and across the United States. We do a lot of charity events, benefiting schools. We want to spotlight women and their role in the tattoo community. We’re a promotional team of tattoo women attending tattoo conventions and talking about gender issues in the community. We host booths and provide information on our group and organize events, tattoo pageants, fashion shows, parties, and tattoo gallery exhibits. The Gypsy Queens group is especially helpful for women to network with others and bring attention to gender issues within the promotional industry. Tattoo collectors forge a delicate alliance based upon their shared status as deviants in the mainstream. Tattoo collectors may share experiences of rejection or scorn from family members and may face workplace policies that do not allow visible tattoos. Issa, a Brooklyn-based lawyer, tattoo collector and writer, cautions elite tattoo collectors to keep their tattoos covered up, if need be: I have worked hard in very conservative offices, and they had no idea I was heavily tattooed. But when they did find out, I was making them a lot of money, and I showed my value. If I had shown up to the interview with tattoos, I may not have had the opportunity to change their mind. So I believe in banging on the doors – but also sneaking in from the side. If we can do that two-prong approach, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to say cover up, if you want to change people’s minds.

130    Beverly Yuen Thompson For EM, 24, an academic secretary, such negotiation was required for her job: That’s the problem with ‘peek-age’, it implies mystery. If people think you’re hiding something, they are going to want to know what it is. I like to tell people up front at my job that I am not just a secretary. ‘I’m a musician, I love rock music.’ I put it in their heads that I’m different. So then, if they ever do see my tattoos, they are not as shocked or offended by it because they already know. Oh yeah, she’s a musician, she’s a rock star in her spare time. Of course she would have tattoos. Tattoo collecting is both increasingly popular and continues to be stigmatised with real-world consequences such as strained social relationships and loss of employment. In the United States, where employment is at-will and union membership is in the single digits, employers can fire workers for any reason, except for discrimination of protected classes of people established in federal and state guidelines, such as gender, race, religion and national origin. Being tattooed is not a protected class of employment. Service workers will often have uniforms or personal appearance policies to which they must abide. Such structural discrimination is important to recognise and resist, as workers should be disciplined based upon their work, rather than appearance. However, strengthening labour unions and workers’ organisations is the course for this particular issue.

Conclusion: Resistance, Subculture and Gender Women’s experiences in subculture and alternative self-presentation is different from men’s, and should be analysed accordingly. How one presents ones’ self has serious implications socially and structurally, and therefore the participant’s narratives here do not support Polhemus’ (1996) idea of the ‘supermarket of style’, where looks can be tried on and discarded at will. Rather, Sweetman’s (2004) idea of style as a representation of one’s authentic self and inner feeling establishes the strong relationship between visual presentation and identity. Indeed, one has strong feelings and attachments to a particular representation of one’s self through accessories such as clothing, hair style and body modifications (Irwin, 2003, Roberts, 2015). For women, their selfpresentation will be measured against normative beauty standards and they will face sanctions accordingly (Butler, 1999; Sanders & Vail, 1989/2008). Most participants learn this lesson after they have acquired their tattoo collection and subsequent social reactions, which often comes as a surprise as to the extent of the negativity. Such cost keeps many from collecting visible tattoos who would otherwise desire them. However, this is the social cost participants pay for their alternative self-expression. Most say it is worth enduring, though they regret the social conservatism that leads to such discrimination.

‘Heavily Tattooed and Beautiful?’    131

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Chapter 8

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism: Questioning Visibility and the Western Gaze M. Katharina Wiedlack Abstract This chapter analyses the presence of Russian feminists and female LGBTIQ+ activists within US-American mainstream media. In the course of a multimedia discourse analysis, it briefly raises questions of who becomes featured and how, to argue that current debates marginalise Russian queer female, trans*gender and intersex voices, compared to those of male queers. One exception to this trend is the case of the journalist and activist Masha Gessen. Together with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the protest group Pussy Riot, Gessen seems to represent Russian queers and feminists within US media. Although marginal, compared to the presence of US feminisms, especially popular culture figures such as Beyoncé KnowlesCarter or Lady Gaga, the two women become frequently featured within US news media and beyond. Frequently, those articles, interviews and discussions of their work open up a debate, or rather comparisons, between US values and Russian values, questions of modernity, progress and ­civilisation. Equally often, the female Russian dissidents are pictured as ‘Putin’s ­victims’ – the female versions of David fighting against Goliath – by focussing especially on their physical vulnerability and their female bodies. In this vein, ­feminism is constructed as inherently ‘Western’, while the bodies that carry out such feminisms and most of all their country of origin is entirely ‘othered’. Comparing the (self-)representations to other voices of female Russian dissent within US media, the author critically discuss the Western gaze of US mainstream media, its victimising strategies and homonationalistic construction of US identity and US nation in rejection of a ‘backward’ homophobic Russia.

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 133–151 Copyright © 2018 by M. Katharina Wiedlack All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181009

134    M. Katharina Wiedlack Keywords: Feminism; queer activism; Western gaze; embodiment; victimisation; marginalisation

In this chapter, I analyse the presence of Russian feminism within US-American mainstream media. The questions raised are, ‘What do we “learn” about Russian feminism from mainstream media?’ ‘What are the discursive purposes or effects of such representations?’ Moreover, I read the representations of Russian feminists and feminisms in the broader context of current media discourses that present feminism per se as modern, progressive, positive, fashionable, cool or fresh. In doing so, I do not question the sincerity of the feminist politics as means to liberate female identified persons. Rather, this chapter questions the representation, and celebration of Russian feminists and lesbian activists with regards to American–Russian relations, US-national identity constructions, the negotiation of liberal values and the othering of Russia. In other words, the chapter investigates what the reports and pictures of Russian feminists and lesbian activists tell us about Russia and the US more generally. Considering the strong presence of American feminisms and feminists within contemporary popular culture, from the music industry (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, or Lady Gaga), the comedy sector (Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee or Lena Dunham) and the film business (Emma Watson, Emma Thompson or Meryl Streep), the visibility of Russian feminisms and feminists is marginal. Yet, occasionally, Russian feminists do get attention from US media. The journalist and activist Masha Gessen, together with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the protest group Pussy Riot, not only has a steady relationship with the US public but also arguably signify USAmerican values, modernity and progress, more than their US counterparts. The two women are frequently featured within US-news media and beyond. More often than not, those articles, interviews and discussions of their work open up a debate, or rather comparisons, between US values and Russian values, questions of ­modernity, progress and civilisation. In this vein, feminism is constructed as inherently ­‘Western’, a stable part of enlightened civilisation. The women who identify as feminists become signified as carrying Western values, which makes them targets of Russian conservatism and victims of the Putin administration per se. ­Comparing the (self)representations to other voices of female Russian dissent within US media, I will critically discuss the Western gaze of US mainstream media, its victimising strategies and homonationalistic construction of US identity and US nation in rejection of a ‘backward’ homophobic Russia. Feminism, within the realm of US-American culture, signifies an alternative to the mainstream. Feminism signifies a politics in support of a marginalised or disadvantaged group. Moreover, ‘feminists are challenging the status quo’ (Sathish, 2015). As self-identification, it signals the activity of a person to counter or resist the mainstream, including mainstream popular culture, which is perceived as ‘malestream’. Yet, feminism has entered popular US culture. Karl Lagerfeld co-opted feminism as a trope by staging a ‘feminist demonstration’ at the Chanel show in September 2014; Amazon capitalised on a historical landmark sexual discrimination case with its TV-drama series Good Girls Revolt in

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    135 2015; Mattel sold the ‘first all female ticket’ President and Vice President Barbie dolls during Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016; singer Beyoncé produced a whole feminist black power album called Lemonade in the same year; Kate McKinnon and Tina Fey are just two of the many comedians who entertain millions of TV-addicts with their feminist punchlines; and famous women such as Miley Cyrus, Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson campaign for the feminist cause (Lindner, 2014; Woodward, 2015). You can even buy T-shirts with feminist slogans at every sweatshop-producing retailer. Even so, not all of the feminist politics disseminated through popular culture are shallow or meaningless: I believe all of these cases of feminist publicity speak to the change of the meaning of feminism within US popular knowledge, from a countercultural to an elite phenomenon. This does not necessarily mean that the mainstream, the average citizen, fully subscribes to feminism.1 However, it means that feminism is appreciated within popular culture, as a marker of progressiveness (The Progressive Staff, 2017), freshness (Vivo, 2017), unconventionality or kinkiness (Pollitt, 2014). Since at least 2012, and the highly sensationalised (by Western media) persecution of Pussy Riot, the feminist group, famous for their scandalised (by Russian media) punk performances in brightly coloured balaclavas, feminism has an additional layer within US media: anti-Putinism. The Russian woman who popularised Russian feminism within US-American pop culture and popular media is Nadya Tolokonnikova. Arguably, her charming appearances within US media have even popularised feminism more generally to some extent. Tolikonnikova’s fame is an interesting phenomenon within popular culture; not only did she become famous for being a feminist – unlike the previously mentioned cele­ brities, who became famous and then came out as feminists, but her media presence spans from glossy magazines such as the Vogue, Time or Rolling Stone, to daily news such as The New York Times, the Guardian or the Huffington Post as well as TV shows such as House of Cards, and academic magazines and events. Such interest is unprecedented for feminist art-activists. Even the riot grrrl and post-punk musicians Tolokonnikova seen with JD Samson, or Johanna Fateman (Impose Automaton, 2014) have never gained such broad attention. Finally, her case indicates the perception and indeed new importance of Russia, as a meaningful trope, for the formation of US-American national values and identifications. US-American mediatised alliance with a limited number of Russian feminists, helps to highlight liberal national values, and superiority and confirms Russian authoritarianism. Aside from the occasional report about feminist actions in Russia (Armitage, 2017; Litvinova, 2017; Walker, 2016), and especially their suppression (Roth, 2014, A4; Watson & Somra, 2014), Russian feminism appears within public media as celebration of single feminist dissidents such as Tolokonnikova, or journalist and lesbian activist Masha Gessen, who master the English language 1

A national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post, ‘conducted by telephone May 21–June 17, 2015’, found that ‘6 in 10 women and one-third of men call themselves a feminist or strong feminist’ (Cai & Clement, 2016). Yet, the survey also revealed that the answer about a self-definition ‘depends on how the question is asked’ (Cai & Clement, 2016)

136    M. Katharina Wiedlack and support the West with stories of violence, oppression and authoritarianism. The ‘Russia-West divide boils down to the gay issue’ (Cathey, 2015) and antisexism within public media, concluding with a confirmation of a ‘conservative Russia, [the] post-modern West’ (Cathey, 2015). A distinction between feminism and pro-gay activism is not to be found within these reports. My interest in these feminists is not so much about their personal feminist politics. Rather, I raise the question of what their Russian feminism ‘means’ within the broader popular culture. In other words, I ask ‘why them’ and not others, and to ‘what effect’. My suggestion is that these Russian feminists enter US media as spectacles. One of their features that make them attractive for US media is their alternativity or opposition to the Russian administration and political hegemony, and the spectacularity of this opposition or alternativity. Their spectacular actions and personalities and their feminism support US-American hegemony, through the semantic connection between feminism, equality, homotolerance, modernity and progress. Nadya Tolokonnikova has arguably mastered the spectacle. Her feminist activism and her later feminist videos have focussed on otherness and marginalisation as a media spectacle as I will show in a close reading of one of her latest videos ‘Make America Great Again’. The flipside of this representation of spectacular marginalisation is a complete negation of white privilege and an appropriation of people of colour experience. Masha Gessen on the other hand has used the spectacularity of victimhood. The problem with accounts such as Gessen’s or Tolokonnikova’s is not simply that they lack nuances in their description of female Russian-immigrant or Russian-activist experience. The problem seems to be that they fit too neatly into the framework of Western expectations. Media, further specturalise these Russian experiences, present them as personal and simultaneously universalise them as ‘typical’ Russian experience, and make other experiences, approaches or circumstances invisible. My study is qualitative and has no aspirations of exhaustiveness or completeness. It is a reflection of my personal impressions while travelling through the US, presenting my media analysis at various colleges and universities to students and colleagues within Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies programmes. Tolokonnikova was invited by many universities and colleges, from the New York University (Parogni, 2016) to Johns Hopkins (Hub Staff, 2017) and Harvard (Jackson, 2015). Several colleagues and students have seen or at least heard about Pussy Riot and Nadya Tolokonnikova; many have read articles and books from Masha Gessen. My question about other Russian feminists or feminist activities to the US-American audience is usually answered with silence. Additionally, this chapter muses on results from my regular Google and Yahoo searches for ‘Russian feminism’, or ‘Russian feminist’. Although the results of these searches vary in terms of media that they suggest depending on my location – the results of my searches, are limited to Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Gessen. So taking this obvious interest of the American audience seriously, I analyse the (self-)representations of these feminists. My methodological approach is discourse analysis, focussing on mainstream news media, as well as more vernacular webpages, such as college and university magazines, feminist activists’ webpages, independent scholars’, or feminists’

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    137 blogs, etc. It includes a thorough semiotic analysis of Tolokonnikova’s last pop culture video ‘Make America Great Again’, because I read it as important part of her representation within mainstream media. I equally include a semiotic analysis of the visual representations of Masha Gessen.

The Day the West found out about Russian Feminism Feminism in 2017 is no longer a minority phenomenon. ‘Hundreds of thousands [took] part in the Women’s March in Washington DC’ on 21 January 2017 to protest president-elect Donald Trump and his misogyny and sexism, on the day of his inauguration under a feminist banner. Mainstream media, such as USA Today started educating people on feminist concepts, such as intersectionality at this occasion (Dastagir, 2017). The occasions, when feminism becomes visible within the media landscape is predominantly as spectacle: in the form of Lady Gaga’s spectacular drag appearance as Jo Calderone at the MTV Awards 2011 (Rathe, 2011), or Beyoncé’s bombastic visual album Lemonade in 2016. The fact that we encounter mediatised feminism as spectacle is not specific to feminism, it rather speaks to contemporary US-American culture. ‘During the past decades’, media scholar Douglas Kellner (2003) argues, the culture industries have multiplied media spectacles in novel spaces and sites, and spectacle itself is becoming one of the organising principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life. The Internet-based economy deploys spectacle as a means of promotion, reproduction, and the circulation and selling of ­commodities. (p. 1) Interestingly, one of the most spectacular media events that brought feminism into the homes of contemporary US-Americans was the Russian group Pussy Riot. In spring 2012, reports on the incarceration and persecution of three Pussy Riot members for their attempt to perform their ‘Punk Prayer’ at the famous Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow hit US newspapers (Friedman, 2012, A35; Mackey & Kates, 2012; Michaels, 2012) and news channels (Langston, 2012), and popular culture magazines (Tayler, 2012) started featuring every detail about their trial. Soon after, celebrities such as Madonna, Carrie Brownstein, Bryan Adams, Bjork, Moby, the Beastie Boys, Peter Gabriel, Sting, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (Petersen, 2012), Paul McCartney, Mischa Barton, Elijah Wood (Toronto Star Red, 2012) and many others publicly came out in solidarity with the Russian feminists. The reason ‘why the affair was “picked up” with such vigour by Western media was its perfect fit with the global media market and its use of recognisable “global” feminist imagery’ (Gapova, 2015, 22). Their campaigns and actions made clear that feminism has gained a visible place within American mainstream media. Yet, Pussy Riot’s appeal to the US-American artistic elite and their audience was not sufficiently explained through their particular version of feminist action, and their conformity to the needs of Western markets. Importantly, Pussy Riot’s spectacular media presence

138    M. Katharina Wiedlack within the US coincided with a new political and cultural tide that viewed Russia increasingly as the New Cold War enemy (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2011; Sakwa, 2008), while simultaneously incorporating tolerance towards homosexuality, and gender equality into the reigns of national values (Puar, 2007, 2013). A significant sign for the inclusion of equality into the concept of national values was not only that President Obama was for pro-gender equality or the inclusion of homosexuals, but that he called for example ‘the Supreme Court decision [of June 2015,] requiring states to recognise same-sex marriage “a victory for ­America”’ (Korte, 2015). Pussy Riot, on the other side of the globe, were condemned for their Western riot grrrl methods (Gapova, 2015, p. 22), and their feminism was spectacularly persecuted by the Russian authorities. As much as the controversy over Pussy Riot and their ‘Punk Prayer’ was about the question what defines ­‘Russianness’ for the Russian nation (Gapova, 2015, p. 22; Sineok, 2012), the mediatised ­Western support was about the question of what defines US-Americanness for the US-­ American public. To put it slightly differently, the strong disparity of these political trends between Russia and the US, at a time when media was talking about a New Cold War competition between the two nations, made Pussy Riot and feminism, as a cultural politics, especially appealing to the US-American audience, to their compassion as well as their feelings of Western superiority. The ‘Punk Prayer’ at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow in 2012 and the Russian reaction to it made feminism appear newly relevant and contemporary within the United States, and stabilised the idea that feminism was indeed a US national value. On a micro or subcultural level, their criticism and mockery of the Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church in musical form, actualised Western riot grrrl feminism, through the international attention and political effect (see Wiedlack, 2015; Wiedlack & Neufeld, 2014). On the broader sociopolitical level, the mediatised suffering or martyrdom of Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, who spent 20 months in prison, seemingly confirmed that potential of pop feminism.2 Pussy Riot became a major part of New Cold War discourses within US media. Such discourses used metaphors and imageries of past decades (Neumann, 1999; Wolff, 1994), creating notions of US or Western progress and Russian stagnation 2

The academic literature on Pussy Riot is ever growing. ‘Researchers from various academic disciplines were early on mapping and accounting for new turns of events, contextualizing them for the media. While updating and staying updated, they engaged in a first stage of analysis, aiming at explanation and contextual overview. By the time of the release of the imprisoned activists, advanced theoretical perspectives from an array of disciplines – ranging from feminist theory to studies of religion – were being applied’ (Steinholt & Wickström, 2016, p. 394). Most of the academic analyses focused on the interpretation and sociopolitical context of their lyrics and performances (Bernstein, 2013; Zychowicz, 2012), as well as their reception and reactions within Russia (Gapova, 2014; Sperling, 2014; Smyth & Soboleva, 2013). Only view explicitly addressed the perception within the Western context. Among these works is my own work on Western Free Pussy Riot solidarity (Wiedlack, 2015; Wiedlack & Neufeld, 2014) as well as Frank Weij’s and Pauwke Berkers’ (2017) text that investigates the political discourses within You Tube viewer comments to the Pussy Riot videos.

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    139 or backwardness. Notions of an ‘uncivilized Russia’ (Dutkiewicz, 2011, p. 10) go back way before the cold war as historians such as Larry Wolff (1994) and Iver Neumann (1999) have shown. The foundations of these contemporary cultural significations were established with the Enlightenment’s invention of Eastern Europe as a cultural and intellectual construction with the goal to create a stable concept of North/Western superiority and development. Within this framework, philosophers stigmatised Russia, as a paradoxical locus of difference and similarity, in between Western European civilisation and the ‘barbarian Orient’. Building on this tradition, US media used Western history as a scale to evaluate the respective developmental state of Russia. The Daily Beast called the persecution of Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova ‘a form of Russian McCarthyism’ and a ‘witch hunt’ (Nemtsova, 2012); The New Yorker labelled the court verdict as ‘a triumph of anti-modern obscurantism over young Russian modernity, the crushing power of the state over the individual, servility over independence’ (Lipman, 2012). Tolokonnikova contributed to the construction of a distinction between a modern free North/West and unfree (Cold War) Russia, describing Russia as a ‘totalitarian machine’ (Tolokonnikova qtd. in Elder, 2012; Newshub, 2014; Stanglin, 2013). Her statements regularly confirm ‘the dominant conceptualisation of the last two decades of […] Putin’s regime [as] a new authoritarian empire, within which one can already discern the resurrection of the Soviet Union’ (Dutkiewicz, 2011, p. 10). In this sense, Russia is increasingly understood as threatening ‘not only the rights and freedoms of ordinary Russian citizens but also the former Soviet republics, East and North/Western Europe, and, in fact … the entire world’ (Dutkiewicz 10). It is not only threatening in terms of military power, rather, the danger of Russia resides in its strong commitment to homophobia, sexism and authoritarianism, and its constant attempt to subvert the West through means of hacking or economic influence. These ideas became undeniably visible during the past year, when media and national political discourses in general were preoccupied with allegations of Russian influence to the victory and politics of President Donald Trump, also known as ‘Russia-gate’ (Parry, 2017). Some go even so far as to say that Trump and his indifference ‘to Western moral values’ and his abandonment of flagship of ‘Western moral leadership’ jeopardises Western civilisation and support of a ‘post-West world order’ (Frank, 2017) lead by Russia. Tolokonnikova and her Pussy Riot activism become frequent reference points within such discourses, as figureheads of enlightened progressive values and ‘emissary from a dystopian political-media environment that seemed to be heading our way, with governmental threats against dissent, disinformation from the presidential level and increasingly assertive propagandists who stoke the perception that there can be no honest arbiter of truth’ (Rutenberg, 2016, p. B1) as The New York Times recently wrote. In other words, what happened to Tolokonnikova in Russia, will soon happen to the liberal US citizens, thanks to Donald Trump and his commitment to Russian backward, instead of Western progressive values. Tolokonnikova has the ear of Western audiences. Her history of Russian oppression is marketable, as is her looks. She is good in front of the camera. Most importantly, her feminism fits contemporary oppositional politics.

140    M. Katharina Wiedlack Mindful observers of contemporary feminist mass-appearances suggest that the popculturalisation of feminism is simply a reflection of the relative power gain of white women within broader US culture. ‘At this moment’, NPR journalist Amy Alexander (2017) wrote, ‘it seems that “feminism” in 2017 is [nothing more but] superficial trappings of genuine equality’, no matter if represented by second-wavers, such as Ms. Magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem, or third wavers, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, or Girls writer, TV-show producer and actress Lena Dunham. It is a white and middle-, upper-class feminism that has nothing to do with the real hard facts of gendered and racial inequality that working-class women have to face (Alexander, 2017). Alexander, as well as Jessa Crispin (2017), Jessica Xiao (2017) and many others criticise that the issues women within mainstream popular culture bring forward, are not representative of the average black or Latina women’s struggle. I think the mentioned critiques of white dominance and inequality among women are important to understand contemporary pop culture feminism. However, Tolokonnikova’s and Gessen’s popularity speak to a couple of additional aspects worth considering. First, the popularisation of the term and some versions of feminism are not just a reflection of the power white middle-class women gained within mainstream society. They are a reflection of the changing notions of the concept of modernity and progress, and its conceptual inclusion of gender equality (for white people). In addition, feminism became a popular trope within popular culture. On occasions, the experience of black and Latina women became tropes within popular music, due to the success of Beyoncé or J-Lo and a few other women of colour musicians. They became viewed and indeed appreciated as feminists, and female others within US society. It seems that their presence and world fame became understood as US-American otherness per se. This is not a new phenomenon. Black experience, for example slavery has often been commoditised or carelessly been used as a metaphor to describe other phenomena, for example coerced sex work, etc. Academics such as Anca Parvulescu (2014) have used labels such as ‘not-quite-white’, to signify the othering of white bodies; writers such as Norman Mailer (2011) have used the n-word to signify their experience of cultural otherness in the context of the hipster, and punks such as Patty Smith have equated their own with black experience to signify themselves as opposition to the mainstream. Similarly, imagery of black and poc oppression are used to signify othering and discrimination of a white non-citizen in the video of Make America Great Again; or to put it in the words of Gender Studies researcher Tatsyana Shchurko, ‘watching the video you’d think that Tolokonnikova doesn’t understand that she is white’.

Making America Great again with Orange Lip Gloss? The video and song ‘Make America Great Again’3 is one of the three Pussy Riot productions that are not concerned with Russian, but with US-American politics.

3

The song and video have little in common with the first Pussy Riot videos such as

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    141 All of these three videos were released within one week in October 2016 (Leight, 2017). ‘Make America Great Again’, whose title repeats Donald Trumps’ notorious electoral campaign slogan, was introduced with the statement: ‘YOU decide elections, and if we get together, we could blow this shit up, take action and reverse this erosion of rights. Because fuck it’ according to the Rolling Stone (ibid.). The video clip, which was made with regards to, but before the US presidential elections of November 2016 imagines a dystopia ruled by Trump. Scenes from proTrump rallies are interlaced with clips, showing police brutality against rioters and scenes where Tolokonnikova plays both, a perpetrator/dictator Trump, as well as herself as his victim. ‘Under the imagined Trump regime, American police are shown morphing into a version of the Gestapo, using a hot poker to burn Tolokonnikova’s supposed transgressions into her skin before torturing, raping and shooting her dead’ (Shuster, 2016). The refrain ‘Let other people in’ addresses US-American immigration policies. President Barack Obama deported ‘more than 2.5 million people between 2009 and 2015’ (Barros, 2017), according to the Migration Policy Institute (Barros, 2017). It also speaks to President Trump’s infamous promise to build a 30-foot high wall on the Mexican border (Caldwell, 2017); ‘Listen to your women’, speaks to the many critical female voices opposing Trump and his politics, and it might be an attempt to support the 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It might also speak to the widely shared view by liberal commentators that Ivanka Trump could have a positive influence on her father, due to her support of paid maternity leave and equal pay (Geiling, 2017; Rampell, 2016); ‘Stop killing black children” refers to the fact that “[a] cross the United States, black infants die at a rate that’s more than twice as high as that of white infants’ (Carpenter, 2017). The line additionally brings up the accusations of ‘environmental racism’ (Martinez, 2016) in the case of the Flint, Michigan water scandal that surfaced in 2015. Different advocates, such as the NAACP argued that the contamination of Flints’ drinking water with lead, had been ignored ‘because it is mostly black and about 40% poor’ (Martinez, 2016). Pussy Riots refrain also addresses the extremely high number of fatal shootings of black citizens by police. ‘U.S. police killed at least 258 black people in 2016, according to a project by The Guardian that tracks police killings in America’ (Craven, 2017). The brutal events depicted on screen contrast with the cheerful, carefree music. The problem with the representation of these tropes in the video ‘Make America Great Again’ is, however, that the experience is presented by a white women, through self-othering. The images used in the video remind of the nineteenth century practice of measuring body parts to determine racial differences and equate them with The Punk Prayer. The American musician and producer Ricky Reed (Leight, 2017), who has previously worked released albums on Warner Bros., Columbia and Sony Music contributed to the song. Moreover, Jonas Akerlund (Shuster, 2016), famous for his work with the 1990s pop legends Roxette, directed the clip. American musician, guitarist and record producer Dave Sitek (Leight, 2017), known for his own band TV on the Radio as well as his work with bands such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, contributed to the song.

142    M. Katharina Wiedlack morality and intelligence. But race-based measurements still persist. Africana studies and medical science scholars such as Lundy Braun reveal in their work how racist ideas about bodily difference continue to shape contemporary science and technology (Braun, 2014). Yet, not only the technology of measuring bodily difference is reminiscent of racist views; Tolokonnikova, whose body is arguable very much confirming to the contemporary beauty standard becomes measured by two border control policemen. Fig. 1 suggests that her individual measurements are compared to a chart behind her, showing large breasts, wide hips and a very pronounced butt. Research investigating the history of US-American racial stereotypes within popular culture point out that the black women have been traditionally ‘objectified as strictly an object of sexual pleasure’ with a ‘typically curvaceous buttocks and body’ (Andrews, 2015). The emergence of ‘the hyper sexualised black female butt’ dates back to the early nineteenth century (Andrews, 2015). In her book Black looks: race and representation (1992), bell hooks describes how black female sexuality and bodies have traditionally been associated with sexual deviance and primitiveness, and availability. Ashley Andrews traces the sexualisation of the exaggerated black female buttock from the American Ante-bellum to ­contemporary hip hop culture. ‘Music videos, musical artists and performers, [b]oth male and female’ contribute to the objectification of black females’ buttocks through songs ‘such as “Rump Shaker” by WrecknEffect, “Too Much Booty in the Pants” by 2 Live Crew, “Donk” by Soulja Boy Tell’ Em, “Back That Ass Up” by Juvenille, and “Ms. Fat Booty” by Mos Def ” (ibid.). They ‘all highlight the importance of a big butt in Black popular culture’ (ibid.). Tolokonnikova’s chart, in combination with the hip hop style of her song, reminds in an uncanny way of those cultural practices and racial stereotypes. In the course of the video’s story, she becomes incarcerated in a prison. The videos’ visual language brings up the

Fig. 1:  Screenshot: Make America Great Again. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-bKFo30o2o

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    143 racist structures of the US-American prison industrial complex, where ­millions of African-American men and women are incarcerated (Alexander, 2010), as well as the nexus between anti-Mexican, and anti-Muslim racism and immigration policies, Tolokonnikova’s imprisonment for being a ‘visitor’ and ‘freak’ – these are the two words burned into her flesh with the glowing branding irons. Yet, Tolokonnikova does not speak of race, and racism against people of colour (aside from the marginal refrain, pleading to ‘stop killing black children’). Her white body is the only embodiment of otherness, or freakishness. Her feminism is addressed through the iconic Pussy Riot balaclava in sparkling camp-fashion. Tolokonnikova’s is a marketable modern feminism. Such ‘feminism, and the oxygen-sucking place it holds in the public imagination, is largely occupied by white women’ (Alexander, 2017), who use black and people of colour experience to ‘explain’ oppression. In ‘Becoming Visible in The Digital Age’, sociologist Elena Gapova points out that Western media represented Pussy Riot from the beginning: as a feminist plight for rights (2015, p. 18). From the very start, feminism was in the foreground of the Pussy Riot affair […]. The group had defined their convictions as: ‘feminism, resisting the institutions of law enforcement, protecting LGBT individuals, promoting anti-Putinism and a radical decentralization of power, saving the Khimki forest near Moscow [from a new railroad] and moving the capital city of the Russian Federation to Eastern Siberia’. (Pussy Riot, 2011 in Gapova, 2015, p. 22) Naming feminism first, and including LGBT issues, and ‘using an explicit name for the female sex organ as a symbol of women’s power and rebellion, Pussy Riot sent a clear message about their allegiances’ (ibid.) Gapova argues. This message, however, was recognised by Western allies only; Pussy Riot seemed to be ‘specifically calibrated for the Western media market’ (Ryzik, 2012). This interpretation was, as I have explained elsewhere, partly a wilful and well-meant misinterpretation on the side of Western allies (Wiedlack, 2015; Wiedlack & Neufeld, 2014). Yet, Tolokonnikova kept feeding Western media with interviews, opinion pieces and other forms of writing. Most importantly, she kept releasing videos under the label of Pussy Riot, even long after many of her colleagues had expressed their discomfort with her cooptation of the group name for her personal politics (Anonymous, 2014; Kozlov, 2014). An important reason for the marketability of Pussy Riot was, as I have suggested earlier, that the group ‘became an international symbol of Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free speech; of how his regime uses falsehood and deflection to sow confusion and undermine critics’ (Rutenberg, 2016, p. B1). Their story, ‘was appealing [for Western onlookers] because it seemed to be a familiar story with a modern twist. Once again, authoritarian Russia was oppressing dissident artists – but this time, instead of being “grumpy old men” like Solzhenitsyn, retyping dogeared manuscripts in dingy communal apartments, the artists in question were young, attractive, charismatic women who invoked riot grrrl and Slavoj Žižek’,

144    M. Katharina Wiedlack as Sophie Pinkham (2014, p. 85) puts it. Pussy Riot allow for an interpretation of the world’s power distribution in binary oppositions, East versus West, Russia versus America, bad versus good, backward versus progressive. ‘Now that the political-media environment that we smugly thought to be “over there” seems to be arriving over here’, (Rutenberg, 2016, p. B1) it seems only logical to understand Tolokonnikova’s story as harbinger of bad times to come. Over time, Tolokonnikova became the other of contemporary US-American popular culture. She places herself there, putting herself in the position of the immigrant, the othered body, the cultural other. Her recent video ‘Make America Great Again’ confirms the New Cold War discourses that understand Trump, as Putin in disguise. Her statements such as ‘I don’t want [Trump’s] rhetoric to be acceptable in America and to influence the rest of the world’ (Tolokonnikova qtd. in Leight, 2017), confirm US exceptionalism and global hegemony.

Expertise in all Things Putin… Since her first appearance in US-American media, Tolokonnikova has become a frequently consulted expert on all things Russian. ‘She has spoken before the US Congress and British Parliament and has appeared on stage with figures such as Bill Clinton and Muhammad Yunus’, (LAVIN, 2015), she has met ‘with Julian Assange [and] became a board member of his Courage Foundation’ (LAVIN, 2015). The Russian journalist and lesbian activist, who significantly helped to increase her popularity with her book Words will break cement: The passion of Pussy Riot (2014), Masha Gessen, is also one of the very few other Russian feminists within US media. Although her presence within popular culture does not reach Tolokonnikova’s span, Gessen has enjoyed a steady presence within US news media for some time now. She is familiar to US readers, due to her articles in the New Yorker, the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, New Republic, to Slate, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, and U.S. News & World Report. Additionally, her ‘case’ was reported on in those and many other newspapers and she appeared on TV programs such as NPR News Hour and MSNBC. Her books on Vladimir Putin (2012), was named Best Book of 2012 by Slate (Slate Staff 2012) and the Boston Bombers (2015) won the Best Book Award by the San Francisco Chronicle ­(LibraryThing, 2017). Gessen had been a known figure within media, famous for her critical views on Vladimir Putin within popular media for a while, and to academics, she was also known as participant of Russian lesbian activism due to sociologist Laurie Essig’s book Queer in Russia (1999) among other things. In September 2013 however, she became famous as gay voice of Russia. Her interview to Michelangelo Signorile from the Huffington Post, where she argued that it had gotten so bad in Russia, that the only hope for Russian LGBT was at this point to get US asylum with the words ‘get us the hell out of here’ (Signorile, 2013) was republished widely (Badash, 2013; ReBrn, 2013). Especially US-American LGBT media – from The American Blog (Aravosis, 2013), to Queer Nation NY (2014), the Webblog Women Born Transsexual (Suzan, 2013), to the Bernie Sanders supporting Democratic Underground (MN Brewer, 2013) – echoed her plea, distributing knowledge about Russian anti-gay agenda’s all over the country.

The Spectacle of Russian Feminism    145 Gessen’s spectacularly personal account, although arguably a privileged one, resonated well within US media. The activist and writer, although born in Moscow, had immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s (Chotiner, 2017) and holds US citizenship. She had been back to Russia, working as a journalist and political activist in Moscow during the 1990s and 2000s until the so-called antigay propaganda law was introduced in summer 2013, and she eventually moved back to the United States. Her way of writing neatly fits into contemporary media culture that shapes political and social life as media spectacle (see Kellner, 2003, p. 1); ‘spectacles such as sensational murder cases, terrorist bombings, celebrity and political sex scandals, and the explosive violence of everyday life’ (ibid.). Her portrayal of Russian president ‘Putin [as] an uneducated, unintelligent, uncultured man who has no plan’ (Gessen qtd. in Chotiner, 2017) fits nicely into the ‘society of the spectacle’ (Debord, 1967, Section 10), ‘a media and consumer society organised around the production and consumption of images, commodities, and staged events’ (Kellner, 2003, p. 2). According to Kellner, ‘media spectacles are those phenomena of media culture that embody contemporary society’s basic values, serve to initiate individuals into its way of life, and dramatise its controversies and struggles, as well as its modes of conflict resolution’ (ibid.). Gessen spectacularises contemporary politics, through her writing, for example about the description of Trump winning the 2016 election as ‘Time to panic: It’s like the early days of AIDS all over again’ (Gessen, 2016). Her words weigh even more, so it seems, because her persona embodies spectacular world events – the oppression of gays and lesbians, the backlash against human rights, and the murders of opposition journalists in Russia. Like Tolokonnikova her experience in Russia is seen and used as evidence of what could happen in the United States, if liberals will not change track immediately, if progressive values and morals will not succeed in modelling the future. The problem with Gessen’s account on Russia, however, as with Tolokonnikova’s, is that they reduce Russia to a backward authoritarian place, and paint the Russian opposition in exclusively Western terms. In Words will break cement, Gessen craft[ed] a heroic story[, …] easily digestible for Western readers. She does not engage with the thornier questions raised by the Pussy Riot affair, such as Russian liberals’ disgust with the cathedral action, or the claims made by Russian feminists that Pussy Riot members didn’t know what they were talking about. Words Will Break Cement also seems torn between two competing theses: one about the power of words, indebted to the history of Soviet dissidence, and one about using the body when words have lost their power. This seems a false binary given the close connection, in Soviet history and Russian art, between protest through language and protest with the body. Eager to make its members heroes, Gessen diminishes the complexity of Pussy Riot’s art and downplays its largely negative reception within Russia (Pinkham, 2014, p. 88)

146    M. Katharina Wiedlack Circulating within media, feminism alla Pussy Riot or Masha Gessen becomes a feminism whose main message is a message against Russia. Moreover, such feminism confirms US-American liberalism and national superiority.

Conclusion Russian feminists such as Tolokonnikova and her group Pussy Riot, as well as journalist and activist Gessen inhabit a spectacular place within contemporary US media. Their marginal power within Russia, where they face violence and occasionally persecution is incorporated or used within US media to create a media spectacle. Their alternativity to the Russian political establishment makes them the perfect adversaries to all things Russian in the eye of US onlookers, as recent allegations of Russian influence in US-American politics and New Cold War discourses emerge. Not surprisingly, many anti-Putin signs and slogans emerge within US-American political events, for example in the various Women’s Marches in ‘Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, and numerous other U.S. cities’ (Kramer in PONARS, 2017) in January 2017. ‘There were […] Pussy Riot balaklava’s, many depictions of shirtless President Putin, and signs that used historical themes and Stalinist-style posters with photo-shopped faces of Trump and Putin. There was also a great deal of Soviet-era Cold War imagery. The signs linking Russia, Putin and Trump invoked existing language and memes that were often bawdy and hilarious’. (Smyth in PONARS, 2017). The many ‘[p]osters and slogans featured Trump as little more than a sinister stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin’ (Kramer in PONARS, 2017) signify more than factual or alleged attempts of Russia to influence US politics; They speak to the symbolic connection between the meanings and concept of feminism and anti-Russian views. Pussy Riot as well as Masha Gessen support the paranoia of many liberal thinkers, believing that Russia influences US politics through ‘voluminous pro-Trump propaganda, […] sophisticated state-financed news networks (one, Sputnik, featured #CrookedHillary hashtags on its Twitter feed) [and] state-supported internet skulduggery’ (Rutenberg, 2016, p. B1).

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Chapter 9

Out of Time: Anohni and Transgendered/ Trans Age Transgression Abigail Gardner Abstract In early 2017 I was watching YouTube, and being bounced around by its algorithmic recommendations. One suggestion appearing down the side bar column of jpegs was MARROW, from Anohni’s 2016 album Hopelessness. It figures a black background and foregrounds an ageing, smiling, bejewelled woman lip-syncing to the song. She is the American artist Lorraine O’Grady. Watching it felt odd, as if something was `out of place’. Anohni speaks through her, using ventriloquist tactics to displace her own body and O’Grady’s voice. This interested me. It was the first time I had been presented with the body of an ageing woman without knowing what she looked like in youth (unlike Madonna or Aretha Franklin for example). And it was the first time I had seen lip syncing done in such an eerie fashion. The tactic is used on other music videos for tracks taken from the album where ageing women and women of colour are centre stage. Using the idea of a place that it is `out of time’ , in that the music videos are set in a blank space and the lip- syncing upsets the idea of a single sutured speaking author, the chapter explores the idea of `queer temporality’ by using Judith Halberstam’s 2005 work. It suggests that the music videos are potentially transgressive in their presentation of a non-normative and fractured bodies. It uses work from ageing studies (Baars, 2012) and transageing (Moglen, 2008) to suggest the transgressive potential of Anonhi’s music videos in how they position transgendered voices and ageing bodies. Keywords: Ageing; trans age; temporality; queer time; music video; transgression

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 153–167 Copyright © 2018 by Abigail Gardner All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181010

154    Abigail Gardner

Introduction The 82-year-old black avant-garde artist Lorraine O’Grady stares out of a black screen, she is unclothed bar a pair of silver earrings and choker; her mouth is painted a bright vermilion red. She lip-syncs to Anohni’s single ‘Marrow’ taken from the 2016 album Hopelessness. This ageing black female artist is Anohni’s avatar, the image that represents her within a popular audio-visual culture, circulating on YouTube. Anohni is a transgender musician whose recent 2016 and 2017 musical work and artistic collaborations emphasise intersectionality and feminism’s relationship with ecology. This chapter uses two music videos for Hopelessness as a springboard from which to argue the complexity of transgressive potential in relation to ageing and ‘othered’ femininities. All except one of the videos use a similar method of inserting Anohni’s transgendered voice into the mouths of black, ageing, non-normative women in what is a strategy of displacement that doubles up the transgressive potential of Anohni’s work. She upsets a singular subjectivity through this process and also, by considering her voice and its vocalisation as being somehow out of sync, in so far as it is displaced or dissociated (Connor, 2006), then her work also prioritises a sense of being ‘out of time’. This chapter mobilises two of Judith Halberstam’s (2005) concepts from her 2005 work on ‘Queer temporality’ where she argues for the concept of a ‘queer time’ that lies beyond the logics of heteronormative and capitalist temporal certitude and trajectory, and for the ‘patina of transgression’ (p. 19) that transgendered bodies suggest. Using these, it formulates how the audio-visual contributions of one transgendered artist ushers into popular culture versions of liminal and flexible subjectivities in relation to gender and age that also encompass race and sexuality. This chapter concentrates on age and its transcendence to approach the video performances, appreciating that it is but one of many vectors that could be used for analysis, chief among them being race. Campbell and O’Grady exist in these video’s ‘sunken places’ as silenced Black bodies, having been robbed of their voices and that yet again Black bodies exist as receptacles for white articulations, their bodies puppets of white mastery. This is a convincing route into the album’s videos and is one that I explore in ongoing work on contemporary female musicians (Gardner, forthcoming). This is a lot to deal with but it uses O’Grady’s work on miscegenation ‘When Margins become Centers’ (CCVA exhibition, 10/2015–01/2016) and work on trans-ageing (Moglen, 2008) to ask questions about the transgressive potential of both transgendered voices and ageing bodies, whose presence is emblematic of a ‘queer time’ (Halberstam, 2005, p. 4), a kind of temporality that is ‘wilfully eccentric’ (Halberstam, 2005, p. 1) and subject to a non-normative life-course.

Music Video as a ‘Queer’ Space Anohni is the chosen name of the musician formerly known as Anthony Hegarty. Born in the UK in 1971 and raised in the US, she studied at New York University and established the avant-garde drag theatre group known as ‘The Blacklips

Out of Time    155 Performance Cult’ (1992–1995) that performed plays in small clubs such as The Crow Bar and The Pyramid Club, a gay bar in Manhattan. She produced four albums with her band The Johnsons, started in 1998, winning critical acclaim for the 2005 album I am a Bird Now, which won The Mercury Award the same year. In 2014, she publicly referred to herself in the feminine in an interview with Flavorwire (Halperin, 2014) and since then, has performed as Anohni. Throughout her career she has worked across both audio and visual media, singing and producing music and curating and exhibiting artworks, both installation pieces, drawings and sculpture and has worked with fashion houses on campaign projects (Prada), and recruited fashion art directors to work on her music videos (Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci art-directed DRONE BOMB ME). Alongside the four albums released as Anthony and The Johnsons, she curated the cuttingedge music festival ‘Meltdown’ at London’s Southbank (2012), was part of the ‘Future Feminism’ show at The Hole in New York (2014), exhibited art work at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2017) and is artist-in-residence at Aarhus, Denmark, Europe’s 2017 City of Culture. As Anthony and Anohni s/he has collaborated with musicians such as Bjork, Lou Reed and Rufus Wainwright and has worked with Marina Abramovic´, Yoko Ono and Willem Dafoe. These alliances situate her as an artist firmly ensconced into a particular ‘art’ establishment; she has avant-garde pedigree. Anohni’s work is trans-disciplinary. It sits within and beyond a number of current ‘genres’; she is marketed as ‘chamber-pop’ and has utilised dance and electronic, singer-songwriter and ballad tropes in her work, which includes film, dance and music video as well as recordings. She is a transartist, both in her output and her gender identification. I want to establish a connection between this trans-ness, of gender, of medium, of voice and of age, and the trans-ness of music video, notably, its potential ‘queerness’ and Halberstam’s (2005) work on queer spaces offers an illuminating tool with which to do this. Halberstam’s articulation of ‘queer’ encapsulates not only non-normative sexualities but also extra-normative life courses and activities that lie beyond or deny the normative. She argues how clubbers perform a ‘queerness’ by their refusal to obey established capitalist rules of time and paid activity; how homeless people actively ‘queer’ urban spaces with their presence. Her extension of the adjective allows activities that lie outside the rules of capitalist, heteronormative narratives to be rendered ‘queer’. The term becomes not merely a statement of sexual orientation but an avowal of maverick anti-normative intent. It also obscures and obfuscates the lines which have come to delineate place and time; it queries what is day/night, what is street/home, what is work/pleasure. Music video shares some of this particular type of ontological queerness; Is it a short film? Is it an ad? Is it progressive? Is it representational? Is it art? From the late 1980s up to the present day, music video has been arguably ‘queer’. It shares a reluctance to be any ‘one’ thing as opposed to ‘another’; it is a trans-medium. Writers in the field have long considered it to be ambiguous in both its status and its internal meaning (Cubitt, 1993, 2002; Kaplan, 1987; Goodwin, 1992; Vernallis, 2004). It lies between the promotional and the artistic, between music and sound (Gardner, 2015). This liminal status does not discount it from being an integral part of the contemporary popular music industry, one wherein music video may

156    Abigail Gardner be the primary portal through which musicians’ work is encountered. As Railton and Watson (2011) write, marketing music digitally for different platforms means that ‘sound and image are now frequently welded together in the very acts of purchase and consumption’ (p. 143). The music video is also accorded an ‘emerging sense of artistic respectability which is part and parcel of the process of institutionalization’ (Railton & Watson, 2011, p. 1), courtesy of being ushered into the halls of artistic fame of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the British Film Institute (Railton and Watson, 2011, p. 7). Music video is a ‘pervasive’ and ‘ubiquitous’ cultural form (Railton & Watson, 2011, p. 1). It is our digital wallpaper. It is also enigmatic. Critics have noted how features that often resist any definitive meaning populate its internal landscape; it can be, on many occasions, a mystery. This is part of a promotional rhetoric whereby the audience are encouraged to view repeatedly; to try to ‘work it out’. It is a slippery, complex medium. This inherent complexity that Railton and Watson refer to (2011, p. 28, 142) is also apparent with respect to representations of gender within it. They are unconvinced of a binary approach to representation, seeing attempts at claiming resistance or recuperation as flawed, over simplistic and ignorant of the nuanced complexity of music video (Railton & Watson, 2011, p. 28). They argue, following Richard Dyer’s (1993) argument, that representation takes place within a complex nexus of instances that are resistant to closure. This makes the representational relationship to the world ‘too complex, too messy, too elusive and in the end, too interesting to be explained by an either/or logic’ (Railton & Watson, 2011, p. 28). Their argument is in relation to representation and I want to extend it to the structures within which that representation takes place. Notwithstanding the extensive debates on the oppositional nature of a dual popular cultural economy characterised by a mainstream and an alternative, or underground, the roots of which lie in Adorno’s critique of mass culture, that model is too rigid to account for movements across and within the popular music industry and how audiences encounter and re-use it. Anohni’s work might be considered ‘art-pop’ and released on ‘independent’ labels, with all that lineage evokes, but it refuses to be only that. To use Lorrraine O’Grady and Naomi Campbell in her music videos, to embrace the ‘plasticity’ of pop (Nixon, 2017), illustrates her awareness of the parameters and conventions of pop and to mess with them in such a manner that can be called ‘queer’, where queer is that which refuses to be contained either within genre or gender. And so Anohni is invested in producing cultural work that disputes the binary, both structurally and in relation to representation. ‘Cultural work’ is a term referred to by Carol Vernallis (2004), one of the leading academics working on music video in relation to gender. She claims that videos do ‘cultural work’ (p. 75) because they are art forms that have a specific mode of ‘representing race, gender and sexuality’ (Vernallis, 2004, p. 210). They can provide platforms from which new spaces might be carved out but which might not always and ever be obviously and neatly, radical. This position is similar to Railton and Watson (2011) for whom music video offers the potential for women to perform ‘ways of inhabiting a female body’ which are ‘too various and complex to be reduced to a simple either/or game’ (p. 21). Extending Railton and Watson’s idea of ‘ways of inhabiting the female body’ to note not just how Anohni and her characters

Out of Time    157 inhabit the internal music video but how her voice inhabits them in turn, enables an understanding of the complex relationship between place/d (identity) and (aged) time that her work upsets (I return to ideas about ‘upset’ below). The subject matter for the Hopelessness videos is war, unjust imprisonment and ecological catastrophe. In two of the videos (DRONE BOMB ME and CRISIS), the women cry; the subject matter is death; of children, of adults and of the Earth. One video (OBAMA) is accompanied by a letter written by Anohni pleading for Chelsea Manning to be released from prison. Five of the music videos released to accompany singles from the album share a similar format; a close-up head and shoulders shot of a woman lip-syncing to the track. Only one video has Anohni on camera, for I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. The model Naomi Campbell is in DRONE BOMB ME, Storm Lever, a US actress, in CRISIS, a late middle aged, partially sighted woman and a younger woman of colour in OBAMA and Lorraine O’Grady in MARROW. They exemplify a diversity of femininity, intersecting across race, age, dis/ability, fame and obscurity. They utilise and subvert the codes of looking that have been foundational to the western scopic regime. Shot in close up, four of them bare shouldered, they invite a gaze that is then confounded by the addition of Anohni’s vocalic body. This term (Connor, 2000, p. 35), is used to conceptualise a ‘body that is produced by the voice when it is heard’ (Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 7). This type of body, one whose voice is not its own, is queer because it evokes a strangeness, as Jarman-Ivens argues, ‘to queer is also to make strange, to render unfamiliar, an act that…is intimately linked to the Freudian uncanny’ (Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 16). Voices not fixed to bodies are strange, they are upsetting, we expect a correlation between the body, an expectation that relies on historical, cultural context and recognition and one that Anohni upsets.

Queer Sounds The idea of ‘upset’ is threaded through this particular section to indicate what might constitute a sonic disruption and so, be marked out as ‘sounding’ queer. It looks in turn at Halberstam’s notion of queer spaces and Jose Munoz’s (2009) work on futurity to consider their use for understanding Anohni’s audio-visual work. Queer spaces are where difference and non-normativity can begin to ‘upset’ a status quo driven by sexual and economic normativity. ‘Upsetting’ focuses on the process of not fitting in and of positive flux, two key areas wherein Anohni’s work inserts queerness into contemporary popular culture. Stan Hawkins (2016) claims Anohni as queer. He is writing about Hegarty prior to the public change of name to Anohni, so the pronoun ‘he’ is used here. Hawkins (2016) argues that Hegarty is audibly queer and second, that the medium within which he works, pop, is grounded in an awareness of the microphoned voice as disembodied, and so, I argue, is suggestive of a potentially dislocated subjectivity, both in terms of provenance and temporality. He describes the duet that Hegarty sings with Boy George on ‘You are My Sister’, a song about the ‘fragility of gender’ (p. 169) as a ‘passionate declaration of love and a release from the constraints of normative masculinity’ (p. 169). His ‘mid-range baritone to mid-range tenor’ voice has

158    Abigail Gardner ‘an immediacy that is touching. Something soft and delicate makes is expression sublime’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 169). Through close textual analysis of the duet with Boy George, Hawkins’ argument rests on the idea that gender is encoded into an expected pitch, range, timbre and texture; music is perceived performatively, in terms of its coalesced meanings. Steinskog (2008) has also mused on the queer nature of Antony Hegarty’s voice; it has a ‘vocal “difference” in terms of its erotic sensuality and the gender and ambivalence of his vocal costuming connotes queerness’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 169). Hegarty’s voice cannot, for Hawkins, be positioned as a particular gender and so he is audibly queer. He writes how ‘Steinskog has described Hegarty’s vocal “difference” in terms of its erotic sensuality, and the gender ambivalence of his vocal costuming connotes queerness’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 169). The idea that Hegarty’s vocals are ambivalent, in so far as they cannot be firmly ascribed to any one gender as far as experiencing vocal performances are understood, works to position him outside of a binary, both in terms of how he sounds and what he is. Freya Jarman-Ivens identifies the voice as having a ‘mediatory function between body and language, and insofar as the former has long carried the burden of a feminising discourse and the latter has been considered a privilege of rational masculinity, its sitting at the borders of such gendered spaces makes it a queer thing’ (Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 1). Seen this way, the voice is disembodied and so untethered to a particular body or temporality. It is in-between things, in a third space. The sense of being liminal to an agreed binary matrix is what marks a body as ‘queer’, where queer is both a process, a verb and a potential. Freya Jarman-Ivens argues that the voice is always queer, first because it exists within this ‘third space’ (somewhere between the voicer and the listener), second since it is somewhere between the body (coded as feminine) and language (coded as masculine) and third, because of its semantics: ‘As a verb “to queer” suggests a process, and one of upsetting, making strange, unsettling, perhaps an act of trickery or deceit’ (­Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 15). The idea that voice and body do not enjoy such a close ­relationship, that they are not one and the same, is further underpinned by arguments around the recording process. Hawkins looks to ‘Wicke’s assertion that the pop artist’s voice is disembodied because of the microphone’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 170) and ‘through technical production’ (Wicke, 2009, p. 27 in H ­ awkins, 2016, p. 170). He goes on to say that ‘We do not hear the “real” Hegarty, but rather a version of “his natural voice”’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 170). So the key signifier of the ‘real’ person, the ‘authentic’ self, the voice, is, in pop, a lie. It is already out of place, engineered, produced, compressed, layered, mixed. Hawkins’ writing on Antony’s earlier work therefore positions her as audibly queer via processes of recognition, expectation and recording techniques. She upsets, by blurring and obfuscating what masculinity or femininity might sound like, and so queries both a heteronormative and male queer audio trajectory. All these characters in Anohni’s music videos, O’Grady, Campbell and the others, lip-sync; Anohni’s voice comes out of their mouths. In his book on the cultural history of ventriloquism, Steven Connor (2000) goes as far to say that the voice ‘is not something that I merely have …. Rather, it is something that I do’, echoing Butler’s (1990) famous assertion that gender is something that we do (repeatedly)

Out of Time    159 as opposed to what we are (see also Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 19). This position also foregrounds first the performative potential of the voice and second, its inherent strangeness. The voice is a queer thing. Anohni’s music videos for Hopelessness generate a queer space, that is, they demarcate the online and screen environments where they sit acting as portals to difference and trans-potential. In this respect, Judith Halberstam’s writing on the subject of queer spaces and places offers a constructive prism through which to gauge the significance of Anohni’s audio-visual work. Halberstam’s reading of queer time as ‘wilfully eccentric’ implies a resistance to clock time, to work time and to calendar time, all of which might be read in the activities of ravers and the homeless. But what it also lends itself too is the idea that the time it takes for the voice to emerge from the body, for it to be identified ‘as’ that person, is too, upset by the recording process that Wicke describes, and even more so, by the imposition of the transgendered vocals of Anohni onto the ageing black body of Lorraine O’Grady (and the younger one of Naomi Campbell). These layers of potential queerness denote a ‘trans’ quality both in substance and process; Anohni’s work and subjectivity are ‘trans’ and how she lends her voice across to older, younger, black and differently abled women inserts the trans-subjectivity into them and is itself a process of positive ‘trans’ference. Hawkins (2016) noted that what was important about Anohni (as Antony) at the time was that it was new for a transgendered artist to reach a mass audience (pp. 170–171), surprising for someone versed in the New York drag and avant-garde art scene. Perhaps it was something to do with duetting with Boy George, a long established and yet unthreatening queer (and comfortably camp) figure on the Anglo-American pop scene, perhaps too it was something to do with the cover of the 2011 album having a 1974 photo of Andy Warhol favourite, Candy Darling on it, suturing Anthony into a history of the New York avant-garde of Warhol and The Velvet Underground, whose art pedigree had been a strand within certain sections of British popular music since Bowie and Roxy Music. As Antony, she represented a vulnerability that had artistic and historical credentials. But whereas Boy George was queer within a tradition of camp and avowed homosexuality, what was new about Anohni was her disavowal of any position within such a binary. Hawkins notes how she had always been clear in her identity as transgendered, how she never had to come out to family or friends, how there were no disruptions or clear statements of belonging. She writes of how she has a unique experience that ‘isn’t just being stranded between two things. It’s another frontier, with its own expansive possibilities’ (Hawkins, 2016, p. 173). This potential utopianism appears in Jose Munoz’ (2009) writing on queer futurity in Cruising Utopia: The then and there of queer futurity, where he argues that queer aspiration needs to be directed away from the present (time and space) towards a more utopian future. This is arguably present in Anohni’s non- performances in her music videos, which are, in their queerness, transgressive.

Marks of Trans/Gression Transgression is, as Jencks (2003) stipulates, a recurring feature in both modernity and postmodernity and acts as ‘a dynamic force in cultural reproduction’

160    Abigail Gardner (p. 7). Working with Freud, taboo and Bataille, he notes how ‘sex marks the spot … it is the local playground for the transgressive’ (Jencks, 2003, p. 36). Pop is a similar type of playground which has consistently offered a space within which gender and sexuality particularly, are explored and this is apparent in Charles Atlas’ (2004) Turning, a documentary film of a 2004 performance involving 13  mainly transgender performance artists who interspersed performance footage of Anthony and The Johnsons with interviews. In the film, the interviewees, mainly trans-women, talk a lot about turning, growth and newness. These positive terms accompany their admissions of ‘freakishness’ and ‘outsiderness’ and work to narrate their journey to (self) acceptance through a pseudo-therapy narrative of growth. This mirrors Munoz’s idea of the futurity of queer temporality, the idea of a something beyond the now. But as well as acknowledging the importance of (trans) transgression as a dynamic that crosses, it is always in flux, always shifting and so, fundamentally opposed to an idea of stasis and boundary marking. Its progressive potential lies not (only) in its refusal to be bound by binary gender limitations (which as Butler has noted, collapse back in on themselves) but in its refusal to declare any such position as finalised. This is the key to Anohni’s work. It is both mainstream (in terms of its exposure) and marginal, in that it incorporates voices from trans-histories and subjectivities, pushing the liminal into the limelight. Liminality, the refusal to be placed within a binary and to sit in a threshold space, is further underpinned by the ventriloquist tactics of Anohni in the Hopelessness videos. When older black women, young differently abled white women, black supermodels and actresses mouths open and the voice of a transgendered musician comes out of them, then that moment is transgressive on two levels. First, it projects a trans-voice as a uni-gendered voice. This makes the non-normative normative, and quietly refutes the idea of a distinction between the two. In an interview with Edward. J. Nixon (1 June 2017), a colleague who mixed the Hopelessness album, this strategy was explicit. Nixon notes that in conversations with Anohni while working on the album, they discussed, for ‘Marrow’ ‘What Mother Earth would sound like?’ and that by removing her body from her voice and using the ventriloquist tactic of focussing on O’Grady (and particularly Naomi Campbell) she hoped to relay the possibility that she was ‘speaking for all of us’. So, the message is heard over and above the messenger, the feminist ecology of Anohni supersedes her trans-ness. Nixon recalls that the desire was to ‘make this vocal sound like its coming from everywhere, make it sound like earth, not the voice of one person’ (1 June 2017). This does not make her trans-nature invisible since we can still hear her, because ‘the voice has an inescapably bodily nature both in its production and its reception’ (Jarman-Ivens, 2011, p. 8); it simply makes it unremarkable, which in itself, may be the transgressive moment. Nixon refers to Campbell in DRONE BOMB ME as a ‘Trojan Horse’ in so far as ‘if she had been in the video it wouldn’t have been as potent – this way it had a much more (taking the person out of the equation) powerful way of delivering the message’. Second, this displacement of Anohni’s voice onto different female bodies suggests the potential seepage between sex, age, race and gender. When the transvoice is taken out of the trans-body, it becomes free floating while carrying traces of its trans-ness. The speaking subjects in the videos become multi-layered and

Out of Time    161 Moglen’s (2008) writing on trans-age has something to offer in this respect. Her work is a psychoanalytical exploration of ageing and the self; an attempt to think outside of the expected narrative trajectory. She writes about her own ageing process and re-reads Freud in order to do so. Her argument calls for two models of thinking about ageing, the vertical and the horizontal. The vertical model is driven by repression whereas the horizontal is constituted by dissociation. This in turn takes two forms, the incorporative or the introjective function. The incorporative model is defensive, maintaining ‘ghostly spectres of youth as consuming objects of loss and desire’ (Moglen, 2008, p. 297). The introjective model, by contrast, ‘initiates a dynamic and creative process in which multiple self-states of past and present are available for recognition and enactment’ (Moglen, 2008, p. 297). This embraces the ‘endlessly overlapping states of being and stages of life’ (Moglen, 2008, p. 306). It starts to see the potential for a non-linear model of ageing, one disarticulated from a rigid chronology and characterised instead, by relations, moments, experience and memory. A model like this, ‘overlapping’ one resonates with Anohni’s music videos for Hopelessness and their trans/ageism, especially the video for ‘Marrow’ starring Lorraine O’Grady.

MARROW and DRONE BOMB ME O’Grady has a long history of artistic commentary. Emerging onto the New York art scene in the early 1980s, her work encompasses performance pieces, photo­ graphy, film and writing which have deconstructed the visual and ideological constructs around race, sexuality, power and desire. Using her own body and the bodies of others, she questions ownership and agency specifically with respect to relationships that are scored with historical weights and expectations. In ‘Where Margins Become Centers’ at The Carpenter Center of Visual Arts, she plays with ideas of racial re-location and the colonial/raced gaze. So for her to be centre stage in an Anohni music video means something because she brings to the performance her own history as a black woman who has tried to subvert norms of representation. As she lip-syncs to the song, ‘Marrow’ we hear a harrowing tale of despair told from the point of view of Mother Earth, who is being plundered. Anohni uses the language of cancer treatment to narrate Earth’s tale, a story of repeated abuse, rape and plunder. O’Grady smiles at us as she silently mouths the lyrics, the willing conduit of Anohni’s trans-gendered vocalic body. She is there as an elderly, proud, naked, black female artist, red lipped, bejewelled, with the song sung from a white transgendered musician emanating from her. Moglen’s notion of the ‘endlessly overlapping states of being and stages of life’ (Moglen, 2008, p. 306) which characterise the positive mode of ageing she explores as being possible within one person, are operating here, in this video. But here, rather than the layers being within the singular subject, they are across subjects; the overlapping states, the different ages are shared by O’Grady and Anohni. We have a composite subject comprising two people for whom marginality, within a dominant heterosexual, racial and aged matrix, should determine their position as outsiders. As artists who confuse boundaries of gender (Anohni) and medium (O’Grady) by their refusals to observe imposed limits, they create between them, a music video

162    Abigail Gardner performance that shatters the illusion of any one secure, singular subjectivity. They offer up a performing body that is made of differing components, black, white, ageing, female, trans and in so doing are involved in a transgressive act, where ‘Transgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial and affirmation’ (Jencks, 2003, p. 2). They deny the predominance of a fixed speaking normative subject. They affirm the potential of the multi-aged and multi-vocal, refuting the tenacity of linearity both in terms of chronology (the younger Anohni speaking through the older O’Grady) and in terms of an understanding of a direct link between voice and body. These music videos are therefore queer, in that they put forward a different kind of performing body, one that brings with it two or more of his and herstories, and one that is plural rather than singular. The O’Grady/Anohni subject then becomes the liminar, where Jencks positions this as a thing that is ‘marked out by ambiguity – that is, they are not marked out at all. Their image is hazy, they occupy a cultural miasma rather than any identifiable class or fixed position’ (Jencks, 2003, p. 44). Miasma has within it, semantic connotations of pollution, of the unhealthy and of potential evil. It is both all-encompassing and intangible and this is how the transgressor may threaten, by occupying or suggesting an ambiguity that just does not ‘fit in’ with logics of identification. These are the voices and bodies of the oppressed, of Black women, transgendered subjects, and they are united. DRONE BOMB ME (dir. Elderkin) works in a similar way to MARROW. The internationally renowned model, Naomi Campbell sits centre screen, dressed in camouflage. Surrounded by what appear to be militia, she lip-syncs to Anohni narrating a first-person account of a young girl pleading for a US drone to kill her, as it did the rest of her family. As the song goes on, Campbell begins to cry, and tears roll down her face. Here again, there is the famous model body, with its history of fortitude in a fashion industry whose racist practices in relation to representation have been endemic. This is a body too marked by anger and upset, that has been found guilty of misdemeanour, that has on it the marks of the diva (Bradshaw, 2008). This body, lauded for its aesthetic beauty, marker of feminine body ideals, hosts the plea of a bereaved girl somewhere in the Middle East, Afghanistan maybe? Iraq? Beauty is being used here as ‘the Trojan Horse’. While the male and queer gaze is satisfied and the texture of Anohni’s voice, as Hawkins refers to her earlier vocal abilities, is sublime, the lyrical content is a clear critique of US foreign policy through the voice of its victims. Therefore, in one audio-visual text we have the body of a supermodel, the vocalic body of the transgendered Anohni and the narrative of an anonymous young girl made suicidal by grief caused by American intervention. There are many layers here, and they work to encode a model of displacement. This process of displacement along with this act of disjuncture, of a confusion over provenance, marks her work out as transgressive. There is, in these audiovisual pieces, a kind of ‘unruliness ‘whereby men and women, black and white, refuse to speak as such, and so the privileging of the singular and monolithic speaking subject is brought into question, even while the camera focuses in on ‘one’ body. These voices cannot be ‘placed’.

Out of Time    163

How then to Place these Music Videos? Early work on music video was largely an academic effort to wrench the medium away from the disciplinary scope of film and television screen theory (Goodwin, 1992; Kaplan, 1987), and attempts have been made to set up internal generic parameters for locating and thus reading music video (Goodwin, 1992; Railton & Watson, 2011). Railton and Watson suggest that there might be four different types of music video; the pseudo-documentary, the staged performance, the narrative and the ‘art’ video. Similar in spirt to Goodwin’s early work on the medium, where he proposed that music video fell into one of three types, the illustrative, the amplificatory or the disjunctured, they all try to taxonomise music video in relation to musical genre and market. There are obvious limitations to such approaches, not least where music videos fall into more that one category or refute them altogether. But it is worth holding onto Goodwin’s notion of ‘amplification’ alongside Railton and Watson’s ‘art’ category, in order to place Anohni’s creative work within the arguably mainstream popular music industry and music video media platforms where it circulates. As well as locating videos as generically typical within a broader cultural structure, there is work which looks to music video’s internal structures to understand it. Carol Vernallis (2004, 2013) offers up a toolkit for deconstructing music video. She takes apart music video texts by honing in on settings, edit styles, hues, props and overall production values. O’Grady ‘speaks’ to us (via the transgendered vocalic body) from a black screen. There is nothing else in view. Throughout this video (and the other three for Hopelessness, OBAMA, CRISIS, I DON’ T LOVE YOU ANYMORE), the ‘speaking’ heads are set against this blackness. They are set in a void, in a no-where place, a displaced place. Animated portraits, they offer us no locational vectors, no stage, no sense of place. Unanchored and untethered they then become universal, something that Anohni was trying to capture by using the lip-syncing method. There are no props in view, bar O’Grady’s head and shoulders. It is her lipsticked mouth, silver earrings and necklace that command attention; the markers of an assured femininity on this ageing body, which we see, as we see the others, in close up. Feminist writers on film have considered the close up as both a tool to ‘dramatize the body to express inner turmoil’ (Geraghty in Campbell, 2005, p. 200) and as a method that ‘transforms the face into an instance of the gigantic, the monstrous, it overwhelms’ (Doane, 1991, p. 47). The close up shows us ‘too much’. (Gardner, 2015, p. 80). Focussing on music video, Vernallis (2004) warns against using such observations, since although it does ‘disclose something intimate about a character…the close-up can work similarly to showcase a star, but just as often it serves to underscore a lyric, a musical hook, or a peak of a phrase’ (p. 33, 54) and moreover, it serves as an advertising trick enabling the record company to ‘sell’ its star to an audience (Vernallis, 2004, p. 63). The trick here is the ventriloquist’s; to offer up an ‘overlapping’ star, an amalgam of Anohni, O’Grady and both of their herstories, resulting in an uncanny lip-syncing body that offers critique from bodies and vocalic bodies who have been marginalised. DRONE BOMB ME shares similar aesthetic characteristics to the other videos released but the significant difference is that while there are close ups of Naomi Campbell, there is more action in the video; there are other people and props. It opens with the focus on a wooden chair, set centre stage within what looks like an empty

164    Abigail Gardner warehouse. The floor is cracked and concrete and the colours are dark greens, greys and browns. The chair shares similarities to those used in The United States for executions by electrocution. Might this be an interrogation room? As the opening chords play a descending harmonic, we see flickered images of people, different people, sat on the chair, before, at 17 seconds in, a close up of Campbell appears on a long-held note, blinking. She holds the gaze, tears rolling down her face, set against a now black background. Clad in a beret, a choker, what appears to be a crucifix, hair cascading down her shoulders to cover her breasts she holds the camera’s gaze before we see her sat on the chair, now clothed in camouflage, military clothing, her legs splayed in plastic thigh length boots. She is the strong feminine, both as body (and here she brings her model past with her) that upsets the gaze, unclothed (we see most of her bare flesh) but in control and in despair, and as soldier. Again, Anohni, via Campbell, acts out the displaced person; between femininity and masculinity (comfortable in both), in settings that evoke torture and death. Lip-syncing to ‘Drone Bomb Me’, she enacts shooting herself in the head at the lyrics that incite her to bomb her head off, before she appears in full, standing partially clad; beret, boots, a black sequinned body/bathing suit as the room seems to fill with smoke behind her. As she looks up, her hands imploring, the beret is revealed to have spikes on it that are reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. She is America ashamed. One minute in and the focus moves to men behind her, their faces uplit by spotlights (or search lights). As Anohni sings about wanting to die, the video starts to move between focussing on her, crying and the male dancers behind her. The setting changes at 2.18 into the video where Campbell is stood, arms in crucifixion mode, in a long graffiti-lined tunnel. As the song progresses, we move from bare torso dancers back to Campbell, while the darkness is illuminated intermittingly by what seems like search lights. Campbell looks at the camera, then down as the credits roll. Campbell has a history of being an ‘unruly’ woman, one whose behaviour has upset rules of appropriate behaviour. Known as a diva, not always a mark of respect (Bradshaw, 2008), but another way of situating women as ‘difficult’, she is used here, as O’Grady is, to foreground femininities that have upset or questioned what it is to be black women.

Conclusion Anohni’s audio-visual work has a transgressive quality that has links to both liminality and universality. Her work is about displaced people, voices, bodies; bodies in-between. Both videos set their ‘narrators’ in ‘no where’ places; be it the interrogation room and tunnel of DRONE BOMB ME or the black, blank space of MARROW (and CRISIS, OBAMA and I DON’ T LOVE YOU ANYMORE). These are all liminal locations, on the thresholds between certainty. Either refusing to ‘be’ any one place (the blank backdrop of MARROW), secret spaces (the interrogation room/chair) that are redolent of questioning, of torture, and of tunnels, these are conduits to other places whose psychoanalytical and mythical reverberations run deep. Anohni’s projected bodies are displaced people in displaced places. It just so happens that these places are also those of a mainstream popular culture. The videos circulate alongside any number of popular music videos on the YouTube platform (and on Vimeo); the constitution of which will

Out of Time    165 be dictated by personal algorithmic calculus and browsing history. This placement, on these platforms, of these performances, is where Anohni’s transgressive potential lies. The music video performances for Hopelessness articulate an ecofeminist call for action, which in and of itself not overly transgressive in so far as they might be considered protest songs, and so within a lineage of popular music protest. This is suggested by Nixon, who said in an interview how it was Anohni’s wish that the album sound ‘plastic’; ‘packaging it in plastic pop was a great way to get the message across’ (Nixon, 2017). The strategy of using the sonic tropes of what might be considered that most ‘artificial’ of genres, pop, to make political comment, illustrates Anohni’s understanding of the channels and platforms across which popular music travels and how best to use those conduits to add her ‘vocalic body’. It is here, in this non-presentation of her body, where her ability to insert the non-normative, the queer, the strange into the centre/mainstream becomes apparent. It is how Anohni doesn’t present herself rather than what she says that her real challenge lies; her refusal to be identified as any one body is where her ability to disrupt normative notions of gendered subjectivity emerges and to suggest that her vocalic body be every woman’s voice. Importantly, it is this opening up of gendered potential as universally voiced that her contribution lies. Her work indicates that living in-between, in liminal spaces; discomfort or disjuncture over gender is common. Displacement could be the new normative. This positive space affords its subjects the joy of being in-between, it collapses the distinctions between age and youth, male and female, black and white. It is truly utopian in that sense. Anohni’s music videos are thus emblematic of some very ‘queer’ times across a popular culture that cannot be split across a binary of mainstream and underground, despite prevailing industry discourses that suggest such a split. Patinas of transgression may bubble up through texts whose plasticity and artificiality has been strategically engineered as a vehicle through which to make other voices heard. These voices circulate across and within transgendered, black and ageing bodies, upsetting a secure monolithic speaking subjectivity in relation to gender and age. These non-normative, queer alliances make political comment on climate change and current affairs. They do so in a medium that floats around online media platforms. They are truly out of time and in this, they are of their time.

References Atlas, C. (2012). Turning: A Film by Charles Atlas and Antony. Bullitt Film, Turning Film, LLC. Baars, J. (2012). Critical Turns of Aging, Narrative and Time. International Journal of Aging and Later Life, 7(2), 143–165. Bradshaw, M. (2008). Devouring the Diva: Martyrdom as Feminist Backlash in The Rose. Camera Obscura, 23(1), 68–88. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and The Subversion of Identity. New York, London: Routledge.

166    Abigail Gardner Campbell, J. (2005). Cinema and Spectatorship: Melodrama and Mimesis. Oxford: Polity Press. Connor, S. (2000). Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cubitt, S. (1993). Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture. London: MacMillan. Cubitt, S. (2002). Visual and Audiovisual: From Image to Moving Image. Journal of Visual Culture, 1(3), 359–368. Doane, M, A. (1991). Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York, London: Routledge. Dyer, R. (1993). The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. London: Routledge. Gardner, A. (2015). PJ Harvey and Music Video Performance. New York, London: Routledge. Goodwin, A. (1992). Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music, Television and Popular Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York, NY: New York University Press. Halperin, M. (2014, November 24). ‘We Will All Howl: Anthony Hegarty on the State of Transfeminism’. Flavorwire. Retrieved from http://flavorwire.com/489997/we-will-allhowl-antony-hegarty-on-the-state-of-transfeminism. Accessed April 27, 2017. Hawkins, S. (2016). Queerness in Pop Music: Aesthetics, Gender Norms and Temporality. New York, NY: London, Routledge. Jarman-Ivens, F. (2011). Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities and the Musical Flaw. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jencks, C. (2003). Transgression. London and New York: Routledge. Kaplan, A. (1987). Rocking Round the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. New York; London: Routledge. May, J. & Thrift, N. (2001). TimeSpace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge. Moglen, H. (2008). Ageing and Transageing: Trangenerational Hauntings of the Self. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 9, 297–311. Munoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York and London: New York University Press. Railton, D., & Watson, P. (2011). Music Video and the Politics of Representation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Steinskog, E. (2008). Voice of Hope: Queer Pop Subjectivities. Retrieved from http://trikster.net/1/steinskog/1.html Vernallis, C. (2004). Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Vernallis, C. (2013). Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wicke, P. (2009). The Art of Phonography: Sound, Technology and Music. In D. B. Scott (Ed.), The Ashgate Companion to Popular Musicology (pp. 147–170). Farnham: Ashgate.

Discography Antony and The Johnsons. (2005). ‘You are My Sister’, producer, Anthony Hegarty, Secretly Canadian (US), Rough Trade (UK). Anohni. (2016). Hopelessness, Producer, Anohni, Hudson Mohawke, Oneohtrix Point Never, Secretly.

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Film/Videography DRONE BOMB ME (2016) dir. Nabil Elderkin, Secretly Canadian. CRISIS (2016) dir. Unlisted, Rebis Music. MARROW (2016) dir. Unlisted, Rebis Music. OBAMA (2016) dir. Unlisted, Rebis Music. Turning: A Film by Charles Atlas and Antony, (2012) dir. Charles Atlas, Bullitt Film, Turning Film LLC, Canadian (US), Rough Trade (UK) Hostess (Japan).

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Chapter 10

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions: Sociology, Madness and Disability Kay Inckle Abstract In this chapter, the author critically examines the relationship between sociology and the identities/experiences of disability and ‘mental illness’ (referred to throughout as distress). The author argues that despite sociology having an ethos of social justice and frequently producing critical accounts of inequalities – such as anti-racism and gender equality – it nonetheless uncritically reiterates the marginalisation of disability and distress. As such, sociology not only reflects the increasing ‘medicalisation of everyday life’ and shores up the essentialist discourses of genetics and neuroscience, but also consigns research and knowledge production about disability and distress to the medical sciences. The author challenges these sociological conventions and highlights the ways in which both disability and distress are socially structured, embodied experiences. The author argues that a sociological account of distress and disability are important not only in and of themselves, but also because they highlight the ways and means to challenge essentialism, inequality and the ever-narrowing definition of what is considered a normal or acceptable part of human experience. Furthermore, vibrant streams of user-led research, activism and practice-interventions – resulting in widespread social, legal and identity transformations – have emerged from the experiences of disability and distress. These user-led perspectives highlight the importance and potential of knowledge produced from the margins, not only for those experiencing disability and/or distress but also for the ways in which we perceive, theorise and research the social world more broadly. Keywords: Disability; madness/distress; research; sociology; theory; user-led

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 169–188 Copyright © 2018 by Kay Inckle All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181011

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Introduction and Context If anything can be shown in some way to affect the workings of the body and to a lesser extent the mind, then it can be labelled an illness itself or jurisdictionally a medical problem. (Zola, 1977, p. 56) In this chapter, I explore alternativity via the experiences of disability and madness and the epistemological and empirical positions they give rise to. I challenge the marginalisation of these perspectives within sociology (and society more broadly). But, rather than demanding inclusion/assimilation within preexisting sociological structures, these positions highlight the urgency of thinking, researching and living differently if we are to achieve social and environmental justice. Madness and disability have not always been entirely marginal to sociology. Some of the ‘classic’ (e.g. ‘dead white men’ or malestream) sociologists showed significant interest in issues relating to mental health and illness (hereon referred to as ‘mental distress’ or ‘madness’) including Durkheim’s (1897) famous, but problematic, study of suicide. Later, and more subversively, Goffman (1961) published Asylums, in which he argued that as a ‘total institution’, the psychiatric hospital functioned for the benefit of those who worked there rather than those confined within it.1 Likewise, sociologists such as Zola (1977) drew attention to the sociological aspects of mental distress and disability, highlighting the ways in which they operate as moralised forms of social control legitimated via the institution of medicine. Moreover, despite Foucault’s (e.g. [1969] 2009) work gaining significant traction within sociology, more attention is paid to the theoretical implications of his work rather than the substantive issues of madness and distress. However, despite these early contributions, and a more recent burgeoning of sub-disciplines within sociology in response to rights movements within, for example, sexuality, racialised minorities and gender, sociology has largely ignored and marginalised studies of disability and mental distress – despite their having equivalent rights movements and much to contribute sociologically. To evidence the marginalisation and/or total absence of disability in sociology I conducted a brief review of the six sociology textbooks shelved as core sociology texts in the London School of Economics library in June 2017. This review revealed that out of the six texts, only the most recent, Giddens and Sutton (2013), had a specific section dealing with disability which explored both medical and social models as well as analysing disability in a legal and global context. Even so, this was within a subsection within a chapter on ‘health, illness and disability’ rather than linked to social identities. Social identities and inequalities such as class, ‘race’ and gender all had a dedicated chapter, and this was true of the other textbooks (Fulcher & Scott, 2005; Harlambos & Holborn, 2000; Marsh, 2000; Taylor, 1999; Taylor et al., 1998). Textbooks by Fulcher and 1

Goffman’s later work on stigma is much more problematic in terms of reinforcing rather than challenging the stigmatization that he highlights.

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    171 Scott (2005) and Marsh (2000) had one page out of 933, and two pages out of 840, respectively, on disability located within chapters on health and illness. And, notwithstanding Taylor’s (1999) indication of progressive tendencies in titling a chapter ‘racism’ rather than ‘race’, the only discussion of disability was in a chapter which, despite a brief discussion of ‘impairment’ (a social model term), nonetheless conflated disability with sickness, the sick role, labelling and stigma. Haralambos and Holborn (2000) had neither disability nor health and illness as chapter headings, but disability was discussed once in relation to poverty and four times in relation to media representation totalling approximately one full page out of 1,116 pages. Taylor et al. (1998) fared worst, not only neglecting to mention disability either in its own right, or in regards to health and illness, but using the word ‘handicap’ (p. 71) when discussing causes of disadvantage. Thus, even where disability is considered within sociology, it remains positioned as a ‘health’ issue rather than a socially produced and socially structured identity akin to class, ‘race’, sexuality and gender. In contrast to this sociological landscape, I demonstrate the ways in which the experiences of disability and mental distress epitomise core sociological issues in terms of theory and method, social justice and politics. I suggest that the experience of disability not only epitomizes Mills’ (2002 [1959]) classic sociological distinction between private trouble and public issue, but it also highlights the political salience and limitations of social constructionism. Moreover, disability emphasises the importance of intersectional analysis through, for example, considerations of white and able-bodied privilege, perspectives on gender and sexuality (in Crip Theory) and environmental and animal rights (in eco-ability). Theorisations of mental distress prove to be similarly useful sociologically and yet equally marginalised within the discipline. I explore how survivor research provides one of the most robust challenges to positivist empiricism and medical ‘evidence’. Moreover, because survivor research emerged from, and remains practically aligned with social movements, it facilitates the development of alternative identities and models of support. As such I argue that both disability and mental distress epitomise core sociological issues in terms of theory, method and the underpinning ethos of social justice and social change. Therefore, the absence of disability and mental distress not only weakens the discipline as a whole but also highlights how sociology reflects wider social marginalisation and inequality with ongoing consequences for sustainability and social justice.

Untenable Positions: Sociology, Social Justice and Disability In the social system in which we live, the able body is privileged over the disabled body. (Inahara, 2009, p. 47) Although sociology is not exclusively a progressive discipline, and elements of it may reinforce reactionary beliefs and social hierarchies (such as the work of functionalists, socio-biologists and the ‘new’ right), on the whole, it tends towards

172    Kay Inckle an ethos of social justice. This is largely because the focus on social factors, social structures and social products is the antithesis of a neo-liberal, individualizing agenda which emphasises individual, essentialist causes and responsibilities in a construct which presupposes meritocracy. In Mills’ (2002) terms, sociology rearticulates what are positioned as personal (e.g., individual) troubles as public (e.g., social) issues. Public issues are experiences which emerge from social (and material) structures and, while they may be framed in the public or policy consciousness as an individual problem or failing (such as ill health, unemployment or lack of education), a sociological perspective – or imagination – conceives and responds to them otherwise. As such, sociological perspectives are often closely aligned with social justice and social change; it is a discipline which uncovers the social/structural causes of problems in order to redress them. Mills’ work has long been considered a classic in sociology and taught in many introductory courses, however, disability is rarely foregrounded in illustration. The neglect of disability here is particularly notable since, from the 1970s onwards, disability scholars and activists have emphasised the conflicting medico/ personal tragedy and social/rights-based models of disability which fit exactly into Mills’ schema. Indeed, the private trouble/public issue dichotomy is at the core of the social model of disability (see Borsay, 1986) which is discussed below in regard to the political potentials and limitations of social constructionist approaches. However, before moving on to a theoretical analysis of social constructionism and the social model of disability, I will briefly discuss some empirical data surrounding disability which once again illustrates key sociological issues of inequalities, social attitudes and interactions. In 2017, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published research which indicated that in the UK ‘disabled people are facing more barriers and falling further behind’: Millions of disabled people in Britain are still not being treated as equal citizens and continue to be denied the everyday rights non-disabled people take for granted, such as being able to access transport, appropriate health services and housing, or benefit from education and employment. The disability pay gap is persistent and widening, access to justice has deteriorated, and welfare reforms have significantly affected the already low living standards of disabled people. (EHRC, 2017, p. 7) Data from the research bears out these claims, for example, in education not only are children with disabilities subject to chronic levels of bullying in schools, they are also three times more likely than able-bodied children to leave school with no qualifications, they are less likely to access degree level qualifications, and less likely to be employed upon achieving a degree. Just under 48% of adults (and only 20% of women [Lennard Cheshire Disability, 2008]) with disabilities are in employment compared to 80% of able-bodied people (ABP) (EHRC, 2017). Thirty percent of families which include a person with a disability have an income of 60% below the national median compared to 18% of households with

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    173 no disabled member. Fifty-nine percent of families with a disabled householder were in ‘income poverty’ compared to a population average of 20%, and the material deprivation rate was 23% higher for families with a disabled member than the overall population (59% and 36% respectively). The EHRC (2017) also highlight that recent health and welfare cuts have impacted most severely on people with disabilities (PWD). Indeed, in 2015–2016 a United Nations’ investigation found the British Government to have committed ‘grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities’ (UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2016, p. 20) because of the ways in which these cuts specifically targeted and impacted on PWD. The ­British government responded by claiming that the UN had an ‘offensive’ definition of disability, that their findings were not relevant (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-37899305).2 The EHRC findings around broader social attitudes and perceptions towards PWD also highlight prejudice and marginalisation: Thirteen percent of ABP saw PWD as ‘getting in the way’, and 76% assumed PWD needed care. Thirty-eight percent of ABP viewed PWD as ‘unproductive’, and only 33% said they would feel comfortable talking to PWD (EHRC, 2017). Prejudice against disabled people is also expressed in hate crime – the subject of an earlier damning report by the EHRC (2013) – and in which there has been a 44% rise in the last year (EHRC, 2017).3 These findings point to structural inequalities, social attitudes and social phenomena which are at the core of much contemporary sociology. The sociological silence on these issues speaks volubly of the hierarchy and marginalisation within the discipline, particularly in light of the very public sociological responses to other recent issues such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. So far, I have argued that foundational sociological principles (articulated in Mills’ private trouble/public issue dichotomy), and the underpinning ethos of sociology (social justice), alongside empirically evidenced social and material inequalities (e.g., the EHRC and UN reports), are particularly well illustrated by disability identity and experience. As such, it is difficult to justify the marginalisation of disability within sociology other than to suggest that sociology itself reflects and reinforces these social inequalities. Moreover, the absence of disability perspectives stultifies the development of the discipline since disability is also theoretically productive in a number of ways. First, theorizing disability highlights the conceptual and political salience and limitations of social constructionist perspectives; second, theorizing from disability perspectives forge new, intersectional approaches to issues such as privilege, sexualities and environmental and animal rights.

2

The full text of the government’s response can be found along with the original UN report on the UN Office of the High Commissioner website: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/InquiryProcedure.aspx 3 People who experience mental distress and/or have a psychiatric diagnosis are also frequent victims of hate crime – see Clement, Brohan, Sayce, Pool, & Thornicroft (2011).

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Untenable Positions: Sociological Theory and Disability What kinds of knowledge might be produced through having a body radically marked out by its own particularity, a body that materialises at the ends of the curve of human variation? (Garland Thompson, 2002, p. 20) Social constructionism is a core element of the discipline of sociology which both legitimates the discipline (e.g., interventions from the social rather than natural sciences) and offers an important analytic framework. Social constructionist perspectives view ‘social institutions and social life generally [a]s socially produced rather than naturally given or determined’ (Jary & Jary, 2005, p. 565). This means that rather than individual, biological or even ‘social facts’ being the cause of things, all issues and experiences can be traced back to social roots and/or processes. However, much like the concepts of personal trouble/public issue, disability has been widely neglected in analysis of and debates around social constructionism, despite the social model of disability epitomizing the political and conceptual strengths and challenges of the concept. The social model of disability emerged as a result of activism by the Union of Impaired People Against Segregation (UIPAS) in the UK in the 1970s. This group challenged the prevailing social, policy, legal and medical frameworks which positioned disabled people as lacking the capacity to take up full citizenship, exercise rights or social participation, and thus confined them to ‘specialist’ institutions. UIPAS not only fought a campaign based on civil rights, but they also re-theorised disability away from the simplistic notion that a failed body or capacity inevitably negated life chances. Instead, they suggested that it was not the lack of a physical or sensory capacity – an ‘impairment’ (such as being blind or a wheelchair-user) – which created disability, but rather, the social structures, norms and practices which excluded people with impairment from participating in society (Barnes, Mercer, & Shakespeare,1999; Barnes, Oliver, & Barton, 2002). These structures included segregated education whereby students with disabilities were confined to ‘special schools’ which did not deliver the same curriculum and qualifications as mainstream schools. Other structural barriers which are still in evidence today (see EHRC, above), include inaccessible public spaces (including transport, the built environment, workplaces and leisure facilities) and social attitudes towards PWD including direct discrimination (such as perceiving disabled people as incompetent, dependent, deviant or less than fully human) and violence. In the UK this approach spread to academia, first the Open University, and then becoming established at Leeds University before slowly reaching other institutions in what we now refer to as ‘Disability Studies’. In this constituent, social modelists re-asserted the challenge to what they defined as the medical or personal tragedy model of disability which, at the time, was epitomised by the World Health Organisation’s (1980) document the International classification of

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    175 impairments, disabilities and handicaps (in Barnes et al., 1999; Thomas, 2002).4 In this model, straightforward causation is drawn between ‘impairment’, which is the loss or ‘abnormality’ of a bodily function, ‘disability’, which is the subsequent restriction that results from an impairment, and ‘handicap’ (a pejorative term), which is the ‘inevitable’ disadvantage that arises from impairment and disability. Thus, the flawed or ‘impaired’ body (or capacity) is the root cause of problems faced by people with impairments. Furthermore, since the body is an individual, biological entity, then recourse is via medical science whose goal is to correct the deviant body and restore normal functioning. As such, those with impairment are unfortunate, pitiable individuals; simultaneously objects of derision and charity. In contrast to this supposed inevitable pattern of causation, social modelists, consistent with the UIPAS definition, asserted that impairment did not inevitably lead to disability (or handicap) but, rather, that social attitudes and barriers (including environmental barriers) caused disability by excluding people with impairments (Barnes et al., 1999, 2002; Thomas, 2002). This repositioned disability not as a biological given but, rather, as a social identity produced through social structures, interactions and inequalities akin to identities of ‘race’ and gender. Refiguring disability in this way laid the foundation for rights claims and the legal protections set out in the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act and the 2010 Equality Act. Disability was no longer an individual or medical problem, but a protected social identity subject to the same rights and expectations as other identity groups. It is notable then, that within sociology, disability continues to be framed as a health issue rather than a social identity. This leaves the discipline in the rather awkward position of lagging behind a government that has been found to be in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities! In theoretical terms the social model of disability is also a useful but neglected aspect of sociology since it illustrates the strengths and limitations of a purist social constructionist perspective. The social model refutes what are positioned as ‘inevitable’ inequalities emerging from biologically determined characteristics (e.g., impairment) by highlighting the socially produced nature of disability. As such ‘impairment’ and bodily experience have no place in the social model, in the same way that an original sexed body is an anathema to social constructionist perspectives of gender (e.g., Butler, 1993).5 In further similarity to social constructionist perspectives of gender, the social model of disability has informed a range of 4

In response to the challenges by disability activists and scholars the WHO revised their document and in 2002 produced the International classification of functioning disability and health. However, while claiming that ‘environmental factors’ (e.g., a social model approach) constituted a radical new direction in the WHOs approach, the document nonetheless foregrounds body functions, structures and impairments, and in a later publication (WHO & World Bank, 2011), rehabilitation and health care, rather than rights, equality and social/environmental factors. 5 Butler is perhaps not the best illustration of a social constructionism and gender, since her work is equated with Queer Theory, a distinct category of social theory albeit informed by social constructionism.

176    Kay Inckle critical social thought. For example, Roddy Slorach (2016) uses the social model as the foundation for a Marxist analysis of disability. He explores the ways in which industrial capitalism moved production away from households and small communities, which were formed around a diversity of bodies, to monolithic factory systems in which only a standardised body was considered functional and productive. Non-standard bodies were deemed useless and burdensome. Similarly, Lennard Davis (2014) combines the social model of disability with a Foucauldian perspective to highlight the ways in which the concept of a normal body, and its binary opposite the abnormal or disabled body, only emerged in the eighteenth century during the establishment of the institutions medicine and law and the dispersal of their discursive power. The social model has, then, been hugely productive both in terms of civil rights and social justice, and in terms of its theoretical potential. However, like social constructionism more broadly, it is not without its problems – which have been highlighted by feminist disability scholars. Early feminist disability scholars pointed out that the formation of the social model of disability, largely among white, male activists and academics within a colonialist culture, significantly influenced the core principles and problems of the model (e.g., Morris, 1993). For example, the social constructionist abandonment of the body, and the refusal to include any bodily capacity or experience within the social model, reiterates the politics of white, male privilege. Here ‘bodilyness’ equates with low social status, such as raced, gendered or queer/sexualised bodies, and the neglect of the body illustrates an attempt to forge a discipline in alignment with structures of privilege and power – in much the same way that the body was historically absent from sociology (see Inckle, 2007). Furthermore, the assumptions of white, male privilege have relegated the perspectives of those with multiple intersecting minoritised identities to the margins of disability studies which has ‘emphasised unity rather than diversity’ (Fawcett, 2000, p. 4). It should be noted, however, that some ‘malestream’ disability theorists have also critiqued the absence of the body from the social model and called for a ‘social model of impairment’ (Hughes & Paterson, 1997), or emphasised the importance of sexuality (Shakespeare, Gillespie-Sells, & Davis, 1998). However, these remain problematic in their ongoing use of the term ‘impairment’ which is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it is a medical term and therefore the social model of disability remains bound up in, and subordinate to, medical power and perspectives even as it attempts to challenge them. This is replicated in the paradoxes of service delivery where, for example, university disability services whose stated ethos is to operate on a social model of disability nonetheless require medical authentication before services can be accessed. Second, as a medical term, ‘impairment’ originates from a binary structure in which impairment is a deviation from the normal/ideal and therefore always a negative category. Thus, the social model of disability is unable to conceive the disabled body as productive and thereby reinforces a simplistic binary of able/disabled rather than highlighting a diversity of abilities and the potentials of disabled bodies (Inahara, 2009). Indeed, ABP are not unilaterally able, there are many things they cannot do, but they are not judged and defined by their inabilities in the way that the socalled disabled people are. Furthermore, the uncritical reiteration of ‘impairment’

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    177 within the social model (and subsequent legislation) means that a term which emerged from a hierarchical value system is employed as if it is value-free, thereby legitimating and reinforcing the kinds of prejudice against PWD highlighted in the EHRC research (above). Third, Minae Inahara (2009) critiques the whole binary structure upon which the concepts of impairment and disability, medical and social models are founded. She argues that the concept of disability itself needs to be called into question given that it emerges from able-bodied perspective as the imaginary binary Other. As such ‘the definition has no anchorage in the lived experiences of those so labelled’ (p. 52) yet it frames disabled people as if it is a universal truth. Thus, the concept of impairment is far from neutral, it is rather, bound up in and reflective of, power, inequality and prejudice. As such, Penson (2015) has called for a ‘double social model’ of disability, in recognition that what is considered normal and functional, or abnormal and impaired, are socially produced and vary across time and culture rather than being medical or biological facts (see also Slorach and Davis above). The social model of disability and the concept of impairment are also contentious within critical perspectives on mental health (Mad Studies), despite being the vehicle by which mental health/illness are incorporated within the 2010 Equality Act. Many Mad scholars and activists object to the social model of disability despite offering some legal protection and redress (see debates in Spandler, Anderson, & Sapey, 2015). This is because to accept the social model is to agree that mental distress (e.g., ‘disability’) emerges from an organic impairment of the mind/brain. This is precisely the view of bio-psychiatry which survivors and activists have been challenging for decades, as well as countering with more complex understandings of how human distress and diversity manifest (e.g., Adame, 2014; Blackman, 2007; Sedgewick, 1982). Indeed, I have argued elsewhere, that it is more productive to apply a Mad Studies model of diversity to disability, rather than a social model of disability to mental distress (Inckle, 2017a). To summarise, feminist disability scholars have highlighted that just as the medical model is bound up in power and prejudice, so too is the social model of disability. This is epitomised by the concept of impairment and the absence embodied and intersectional experiences from the social model. However, feminist disability studies are not just a critical enterprise. The embodied and intersectional phenomena of disability is a fertile vantage point from which to develop critical social theory and practice more broadly. For example, Susan Wendell (1996) argues that Not only do physically disabled people have experiences which are not available to the able-bodied, they are in a better position to transcend cultural mythologies about the body because they cannot do things that the able-bodied feel they must do in order to be happy, ‘normal’ and sane…. Few able-bodied people know these things, and to my knowledge no one has explored their implications for the able-bodied. (p. 274; see also Garland-Thomson, above) For me, these propositions are addressed in theorisations of sexuality, white privilege and environmental and animal rights that emerged from disabled embodiment. For example, in Crip Theory, rather than the able-bodied norm

178    Kay Inckle constituting the analytical starting point, a critical non-binary approach to disability is used to explore the ways in which compulsory able-bodiedness is materialized as an illusory origin and ideal in parallel to the means by which heteronormativity (and compulsory heterosexuality) operates as the illusory origin underpinning binary structure of gender, sex and sexuality (McRuer, 2006). Cripping the concept compulsory heterosexuality and refiguring ableism as compulsory able-bodiedness is productive in revealing the operations of privilege (Inckle, 2015). Forms of privilege which render themselves invisible to those who possess them such as whiteness, able-bodiedness and maleness, all require critical interventions which place the onus not on the minoritised (‘bodily’) Other, but rather on the possessor of privilege. This in itself already challenges conventional power structures in which it is the minoritised Other who has to perform the intellectual, emotional and political labour of challenging their oppression, while the majority group/s continue to enjoy their privileged position and status. Compulsory ablebodiedness, then, challenges intersecting privileges as well as disadvantages and points to political and theoretical congruences between able-bodiedness, heterosexuality (McRuer, 2006) and white privilege (Inckle, 2015). Finally, disability is also productive in redressing one of the most pressing current issues facing the planet, that of sustainability – or animal and environmental rights. It is rare that non-human animals, and even less so the environment (nature, the planet), are positioned as minoritised groups, and yet the oppression of the earth and its non-human inhabitants is devastating: ‘considering our current ecological crises, the living world we term “nature” is certainly a casualty of human dominance and unbridled technological advances’ (Socha, Bently, & Schatz, 2014, p. 2). Eco-ability challenges the ideologies and practices which underpin human, non-human and environmental exploitation. It emerges from the disabled positionality which recognises that all bodies have abilities, but only a certain set of abilities and characteristics are valued and included within the ‘moral community’ (Socha et al., 2014, p. 2). Those outside the moral community, those who do not have ‘ability-privilege’ (Wolbring, 2014), are the collateral damage strewn in the wake of ‘neo-capitalist, techno-scientific ableism and speciesism’ (Richter, 2014, p. 84). As such, eco-ability challenges structures of speciesism, ableism and the dualisms (e.g., civilised/non-civilised; nature/science; human/non-human; subject (e.g., person)/object (e.g., possession)) which have eviscerated the planet we live on (Nocella, 2012). Eco-ability is premised on the importance of diversity and interdependence of all life, emphasizing that diversity of capacity does not equate with differing rights, value or inequality. Indeed, diversity is the key to existence of all life forms: ‘difference was and is the essential ingredient for human and global survival’ (Nocellain Socha et al., 2014, p. 2). We live in an interdependent eco-system made up of life forms with a whole range of capacities and abilities. There are beings with multiple legs numbering from 0 to 100, beings who can swim, fly, crawl, run and/or walk a vast range of distances and speeds. These differences cannot be quantified in a hierarchy which proves that, for example, walking is better than flying, but flying is better than swimming, or moreover, that walking on 2 legs is better than walking on 4, 6 or 8 legs, and that sliding

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    179 or crawling on the front has no value at all (Nocella II, 2012; Socha et al., 2014). It is precisely these hierarchies that have allowed those who are not classified as human, which has historically included people of African descent, females, children, intersexed people, PWD, conjoined twins as well as non-human animals and the environment to be exploited, abused and destroyed in the goal of human ‘progress’. The suffering of these groups has been translated into the ‘material privilege’ of able-bodied (white, male) humans (Richter, 2014, p. 90). For example, PWD have often shared similar fates to laboratory animals in terms of the kinds of medical and behavioural ‘experimentation’ (e.g., torture) inflicted upon them, likewise the environment and ‘indigenous’ peoples have been subject to devastating colonisation and commodification (Nocella II, 2012). Eco-ability highlights the philosophical underpinnings of a colonizing ideology which positions PWD, non-human animals and the environment as objects of exploitation, and highlights the shared fate of the these groups. As such it informs activism, theoretical analysis and an ethos (veganism) which conceptualises and embodies nonoppressive and sustainable structures. Overall then, eco-ability highlights that not only is disability important sociologically in terms of empirical and theoretical aspects, but it also offers a position from which to reassess and rearticulate contemporary planetary problems and to conceive alternative interdependent and non-oppressive ways of living and being. Integral to this is the challenge to western constructs of knowledge and value, and this is also an important feature of survivor research which unpacks the phallacy of scientific, objective neutrality of empirical research.

Irrational Perspectives: Madness and the Epistemology of Research Those designated mad and their positioning as the apex of unreason … dates from the enlightenment valorisation of reason. In this argument the mad can never have credibility in science. (Rose, 2014, p. 155) Like disability, the experience of mental distress receives little attention in sociology which, despite the influence of Foucault, seems unable to move beyond a biomedical position whereby mental distress and disability constitute something ‘wrong’ with distinct individuals rather than socially structured, contextualised and implicated experiences and identities. In this section I explore the ways in which the epistemology of survivor research is another highly significant but neglected resource for sociology. First, however, it is important to define survivor research and the survivor movement, as distinct from consumer movements in mental health, both of which are sometimes referred to as ‘service-user movements’. The psychiatric survivor movement developed following the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s in which both psychiatrists and their ‘patients’ challenged the principles, foundations and practices of psychiatry. Most famous among these was RD Laing,

180    Kay Inckle and the anti-psychiatry movement still has vocal advocates among contemporary psychiatrists including Thomas Szasz (2007), Peter Breggin (2008), Bonnie Burstow (2015) and ‘post-psychiatrists’ such as Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas (2005). The survivor movement, however, is made up of those who have been subject to psychiatric interventions, and the term ‘survivor’ is used to highlight survival of the psychiatric system rather than the ‘mental illness’ per se (Adame, 2014). The survivor movement operates at the margins of the mental health system, advocating for human rights within the system, challenging the system itself, and providing alternative interventions for those in distress – it is a movement based on a libationary politics (Adame, 2014; Blackman, 2007; Sweeny, 2009). This contrasts with the consumer movement in mental health, which is not underpinned by a critique of psychiatry/biomedicine or informed by the politics of radical social movements (Russo & Beresford, 2015; Sweeny, 2009). Rather, consumer-led groups have emerged as a result of the neo-liberalisation of health and welfare which promotes services based on ‘consumer managerialist’ structures (McLaughlin, 2010, p. 1592). As such, while consumer or ‘user’ involvement is often mandated by policy and research funding bodies, such involvement is often tokenistic and has little impact on the overall designs, structures, outcomes or delivery of services, and certainly does not challenge the broader structures of power (Lewis, 2014; McLaughlin, 2010; Russo, 2012; Sweeny, 2009): ‘consumerist user involvement result[s] from a shift to the right in political ideology’ (Russo & Beresford, 2015, p. 155). In contrast, the survivor movement, and the research which has grown from it, critically addresses the biomedical model upon which psychiatry is precariously balanced, as well as the positivistic, modernist structures of knowledge and power that underpin psychiatric research. Psychiatry emerged in Europe following the Enlightenment, when the power of religion was declining and industrialisation and secularisation were causing immense social changes. This era gave rise to a modernist perspective, founded on ‘a self-evident [single] truth free from doubt. The path to truth and knowledge [i]s via science and rationality” (Faulkner & Thomas, 2002, p. 1). Following these ideals, like medicine more generally, psychiatry legitimated itself on the basis of the principles of natural science: measurement, rationality, objectivity (­Beresford & Rose, 2009; Faulkner & Thomas, 2002) alongside a binary structure in which illness constitutes deviance from a quantifiable normal, ideal state of being ­(Nettleton, 2006). Here, human experience is deemed knowable in the same way, and through the same methods as, for example, rock formation. However, psychiatry is much less securely positioned than physical medicine within this modernist structure. First, because in order to legitimate itself as a science psychiatry must operate from the basis that the mind/brain functions in a mechanistic way, akin to the lungs, blood system (or rock formation). However, as Faulkner (2017) points out, there is no existing physical evidence or test for any mental illness. As such, clinicians have to rely on subjective descriptions of inner experiences (by those already deemed ‘mad’/‘irrational’ and thereby illegitimate sources of knowledge), which clinicians then interpret with reference to abstract diagnostic criteria. The diagnosis then becomes the evidence of the ‘illness’ itself, reversing the process of evidence and causation which operates in natural science

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    181 (see Proctor [2007] for an analysis of this process in relation to Borderline Personality Disorder). As such psychiatry occupies a tenuous position within the very epistemological structures from which it emerges. Second, the enlightenment emphasis on reason and the individual subject are also foundational to psychiatric practice. Madness/distress is defined as a purely internal force or disorder: biological, chemical, neurological or genetic. It belies consideration of social and contextual factors (Bracken & Thomas, 2005) even when there is direct evidence of social factors within manifestations of distress. For example, survivors who hear negative persecutory voices often report that the voices replicate abusive social-contextual experiences such as racism or sexual violence (Blackman, 2015). These kinds of experiences clearly originate outside the individual, emerging from structural violence and power inequalities rather than inner brain disease, yet psychiatry views both the problem and its resolution as an individual enterprise. Third, in line with the biomedical model, madness is a mechanistic issue to be resolved through technical interventions (Bracken & Thomas, 2005), despite the absence of physical evidence (above). This leads to paradoxes such as the use of physical treatments to ‘cure’ what are defined brain diseases which have included lobotomy, electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), insulin comas, kidney dialysis, clitodorectomoy, removal of teeth, aversion therapy and ingestation of drugs (Dickinson, 2015; Sedgwick, 1982). Moreover, if the brain is simply a physical mechanism of the body, then there is no need for a separate mental health discipline. For Szasz (2007) psychiatry legitimated itself by filling the role of moral arbiter left vacant by the decline of religion in society: Thus, psychiatry ‘medicalised human problems traditionally perceived in religious terms, transforming sins and crimes – such as self-murder [suicide], self-abuse [masturbation], and self-medication [addiction] – into sickness’ (Szasz, 2007, p. 46). This role is still evident today in terms of the legal power of psychiatry to determine culpability in criminal cases and to assess moral fitness. More significantly, the binary in which rationality, science and health are weighted against unreason, subjectivity and disease, alongside the location of power with the former and dependence/incompetence within the latter, legitimates coercive institutionalisation and treatment (Bracken & Thomas, 2001). As such, far from being value-neutral and objective, psychiatry is bound up in and legitimated by the moral prescriptions it makes, and the social norms it reinforces – as illustrated by the medicalisation, and later demedicalisation, of homosexuality (see Dickenson, 2015). At the same time the ‘values and assumptions that underpin psychiatric classification’ are obfuscated by its claims of objectivity and science (Bracken & Thomas, 2001, p. 726). Since the medical model and positivistic research originate from the same enlightenment beliefs and principles these values and assumptions are equally prevalent and problematic in academic research in mental health (Faulkner, 2004). Indeed, many psychiatric survivors, especially those from black and minority ethnic groups, report that participating in mental health research is an equally negative experience to receiving psychiatric intervention (Faulkner, 2004; Russo & Beresford, 2015; Wallcraft, Read, & Sweeny, 2003). Academic research in mental health reiterates the power and inequality between psychiatrists and patients: ‘the power differentials that exist in the clinical

182    Kay Inckle setting are perpetuated through research production and continue to influence the knowledge that is given the most status, funding and authority’ (Faulkner, 2017, p. 504). For example, many peer-review academic journals refuse to include survivor research (Sweeny, 2009), while academic research often constitutes an unequal, ‘non-transparent and also dishonest exchange’ between researcher and subject (Russo & Beresford, 2013, p. 154) which is uncritically bound up in treatment contexts (Russo, 2012). Most psychiatric research is funded and conducted by pharmaceutical companies, jettisoning any claim to neutrality (Faulkner, 2017; Russo, 2012), and indeed, even where funding is mediated through academic institutions, influence is still evident in research findings (Sismundo, 2008). At the same time, survivor research, is defined as partial and biased, not only because of who is conducting the research (psychiatric survivors), but also because of its association with qualitative and therefore irrational and low status forms of knowledge (Rose, 2014; Russo, 2012). In this context, evidence-based medicine constitutes a ‘modernist backlash’ (Faulkner & Thomas, 2002 p. 1) ensuring that only the perspectives of clinicians and practitioners, and not those with lived experience, constitute the material basis of research. Survivor researchers, who have often experienced brutal implications of these values and inequalities, highlight the empirical and epistemological limitations of psychiatric practice and research. Instead of positivistic, enlightenment-based values, survivor research acknowledges that all research (practice and human action) is inseparable from values, beliefs, power and context (Bracken & Thomas, 2001; Faulkner & Thomas, 2002) – even, or especially where that context is objective detachment. Survivor research is explicitly grounded in experiential knowledge and emphasises the ethical and epistemological positions that underpin it, which include survivor control, democracy, closeness and transparency (Faulkner, 2004; 2012; Rose, 2014; Russo, 2012; Sweeny, 2009). This produces research which has rigorous integrity (Rose & Beresford, 2009) and results in empowerment for all those involved (Russo, 2012). While the field of survivor research is continually developing and debating its principles and practices, it is unilaterally agreed that the all survivor research is experientially based (Beresford & Rose, 2009; Faulkner, 2004, 2017; Russo, 2012; Sweeny, 2009). This is a profound challenge to the positivist rationale which values distance and separateness, that is, objectivity. Survivor researchers argue that experiential knowledge improves the ‘ecological validity’ of research (Faulkner & Thomas, 2002, p. 2), ensuring that the research methods, questions and ethics are all context-sensitive and appropriate, as well as producing findings and outputs which have direct impacts for those involved. Indeed, far from neutral, the term objectivity literally means ‘standing against’ a position which can hardly be interpreted as value-free or without implication (see Inckle, 2012). Survivor research shares some epistemological and ethical grounding with feminist research (which is also based in activism) particularly in terms of the combination of experiential knowledge, openness and democracy (Faulkner, 2004, 2017; Sweeny Beresford, Faulkner, Nettle, & Rose, 2009; Rose, 2012; Wallcraft, 2003). This combination means that there is less distance and power imbalance between the researcher/s and the researched and that qualitative methods

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    183 are often – although not exclusively – favoured. This promotes deeper research relationships and interactions for all involved and adds to the richness and the depth of the data (see Inckle, 2007). Likewise, the democratic, inclusive and nonhierarchical research methods and relationships that survivor researchers employ are crucial to engendering an alternative experience to psychiatric practice and research (above) and thereby producing alternative knowledge (below). As such, in survivor research, closeness is both an empirical and epistemological location which offers direct outcomes for practice, since the experience, epistemology, methods, outputs and interventions are inextricably interconnected. Openness about the experiential and theoretical underpinning, aims, methods and motivations of the research are also key to democratic research practices (Beresford & Rose, 2009; Faulkner, 2004, 2017; Russo, 2012; Sweeny, 2009). Together these constitute what feminist researchers have referred to as ‘strong objectivity’ whereby rather than a lack of bias emerging from (a pretence at) neutrality, openly acknowledging the subjectivity of the researcher, the motivations and practices of the research enables informed decision making throughout the research by all those connected with it (Rose, 2009). The principles of democracy, equality and control emerge from the activist basis of survivor research and its challenge to the power structures within psychiatric practice and research. Moreover, because survivor research emerged as a result of survivor activism, which recognised the need to both give voice to and provide evidence of the violent implications of psychiatry, testimony and peer support have been crucial to the development of alternative epistemologies and methods (Russo & Beresford, 2015). This means survivor research is user/survivor owned and controlled from design to dissemination, not only to ensure closeness and experiential knowledge but also to avoid tokenism, co-option and power differentials. This reverses the traditional formation of knowledge and power, researcher and subject, thus in survivor research there are no ‘research subjects’ in the traditional sense (Russo, 2012). The principles of survivor research coupled with its activist basis have had dramatic implications for both understanding and developing interventions in a range of experiences such as hearing voices, eating distress and self-harm, including ‘bidirectional healing’, harm-reduction and peer support (Adame, 2014, p. 461; Blackman, 2007, 2015; Faulkner, 2004, 2017; Inckle, 2017b; Russo, 2012). Survivor research also highlights the limitations and biases within peer-reviewed psychiatric research. For example, it is common for psychiatric survivors to report negative experiences of ECT, while psychiatric research indicates no negative outcomes or ‘side effects’. To explore this contradiction a team of survivor researchers conducted a systematic review of ECT research (Rose, 2014). They found that while both survivor and psychiatric researchers produced evidence of negative impacts of ECT, this was omitted from the discussion and findings in the psychiatric peerreviewed papers. The psychiatric researchers interpreted the findings in line with the interests of psychiatric practice, that is, that these ‘side effects’ were not significant, while at the same time claiming objective detachment. Likewise, psychiatric research, never reveals issues such as abuse and discrimination which are significant themes in survivor research findings (Faulkner, 2017). Thus, in psychiatric research ‘changing the knowledge-producers changes the knowledge’ (Rose, 2014, p. 152).

184    Kay Inckle Changing the knowledge-producers is also significant in terms of the outcome measures that are used in mental health research. First, in that user-defined outcome measures originate from user-focussed methods and which reflect user experiences and priorities, rather than medically defined goals and objectives. The processes for developing user-oriented outcomes are lengthy and complex and include focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, the results of which are then reviewed by panels of users (Rose, 2014). Underpinning these processes are the principles of inclusion, democracy and equality, which ensure that a diversity of lived experience is incorporated into and represented by the measures. The development of user-generated outcome measures has highlighted that in psychiatry there is ‘little relationship … between consumer-defined recovery and clinical measures … clinical measures do not assess important aspects of recovery’ (Andreson, Caputi, & Oades, 2009, p. 309). Likewise, clinical measures which focus on ‘reduction of symptoms [do] not automatically lead to psychological recovery’ (Andreson et al., 2009, p. 309). Thus, psychiatric goals, targets and measures have little relation to the experience and needs of psychiatric survivors and service-users. Likewise, the quantitative measures employed in medical research do little to elucidate the necessarily subjective experiences of mental distress and recovery from it. In contrast, qualitative measures of recovery have validated a range of non-clinical interventions including peer support, financial security and community integration (Andreson et al., 2009).6 These are significant not only because they relate to social structures rather than disease patterns, but also because they are precisely the interventions that have been developed by the survivor movement (above). Thus, survivor research highlights the limitations of psychiatric research and the practices which emerge from its epistemological and empirical foundations in modernism. Conversely, survivor research, with its critical and post-modernist empirical and epistemological roots, its ethics of democracy and libationary politics provides theoretical, empirical and practical alternatives to the medical model of distress. Overall then, rather than constituting a rational, objective science, psychiatric practice, knowledge and research is a cultural and historical product, enmeshed in structures of power and vales, which in turn reinforce its legitimacy. The experience of both mental distress and the practice of survivor research disrupt these structures and highlight their contradictions, weaknesses and limitations. The insights and politics of survivor research are valuable sociologically – especially within for example, the sociology of health and medicine, the sociology of knowledge and sociological research methods and ethics. They also offer important challenges to healthcare policy and provision, particularly its increasing neo-­ liberalisation. They highlight that objective distance and neutrality is not only a phallacy in psychiatric practice and research, but that it also has significant 6

There is a growing interest ‘recovery’ within mainstream psychiatric practice and research. However, some survivor groups, such as Recovery in the Bin (https://recoveryinthebin.org/), have argued that psychiatry has co-opted and depoliticized the term ‘recovery’, shifting the focus away from social-structural experiences and back to the individual.

Irrational Perspectives and Untenable Positions    185 epistemic and practice implications, including injustice (Russo & Beresford, 2015). It is once again to the detriment of sociology that survivor research remains on the margins of the discipline.

Conclusion Only by bringing awareness to … forgotten modes of oppression can we begin to approach the idea of liberation for all (Socha et al., 2014, p. 3). In this chapter, I have argued that despite historical engagements with madness and disability, notwithstanding roots in social justice and critical perspectives, and regardless of interests in inequalities and social identities, sociology has marginalised madness and disability (and the mad and disabled). As such, disability and mental distress provide significant, but as yet unrealised, contributions in terms of theory and method and invigorating social justice and social change. However, the questions for sociology do not end with a simple acknowledgement of madness and disability and an assimilation of them into the discipline. Rather, it is about radical shifts in ways of knowing and being that are engendered by such positions of alternativity. These ways of knowing and being raise questions in regard to the reiteration of power and privilege within the discipline in multiple ways. First, in terms of the hierarchy and marginalisation of knowledges which do not emerge from privileged identities and discourses (white, male, able-bodied, colonialist). Second, it highlights the ways in which those in privileged positions may be co-opted into shoring up the neoliberal marketisation of education and research at the expense of the rights (and lives) of those who are minoritised and marginalised – for example, the mad, disabled, colonised, non-human, Other. Similarly, we need to challenge why a discipline which is founded on the basis of the social nature of human society becomes complicit in reinforcing modernist ideologies rooted in essentialism and colonial power through its empirical and epistemological practices. A power which is thrown into stark relief by the knowledges, ethics and practices which emerge form survivor research and eco-ability. These lessons in alternativity are not just theoretical points. The lives of many humans and non-humans, and the future of the eco-system which sustains us all, depends – more and more precariously – on our development of new ways of understanding and engaging with one another and the world around us.

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Part III Spaces

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Chapter 11

Ageing Alternative Women: Discourses of Authenticity, Resistance and ‘Coolness’ Samantha Holland Abstract Authenticity is a key issue in any study of subcultures or groups who define themselves as alternative. I will discuss three different stages of research about ‘alternative’ women, with interviews conducted in the late 1990s, and then return interviews with some of the original participants in 2010 and 2018. At all three stages of data collection, the participants were at pains to place themselves as distanced or marginalised from the mainstream, by choice, articulated in various ways. At the same time, they placed themselves as being authentic or at the centre, with people they termed as parttimers, newbies, tourists and weekenders existing on the periphery and at the margins. How do they measure their place in the hierarchy, and whose hierarchy is it? The chapter asks, what is authenticity in alternative subcultures, why is it so important that such marginalised groups are authentic (to themselves, as well as to outsiders), and how do they achieve it. The chapter also explores how ageing and gender impacts on the participants’ identities as alternative women. Keywords: Gender; alternative; femininities; ageing; authenticity; subcultures

In this chapter, I will draw on qualitative data collected in three different stages of research spanning almost two decades, with women who identify as ‘alternative’. The data were collected in 1997/1998, in summer 2010 and in early 2018. I did not set out for the research to be longitudinal. In fact, the first stage of the research was for my PhD in the late 1990s, and my initial intention was to examine teenage

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 191–203 Copyright © 2018 by Samantha Holland All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181012

192    Samantha Holland girls’ best friendships and how they might act as a sort of training ground for heterosexual relationships. However, on undertaking my literature review I was struck by the absence of ‘older’ (by which I meant over 21) women in subcultural literature and I entirely changed the subject of my studies. I knew that alternative people did not necessarily ‘grow out’ of their identities in their twenties and thirties; I knew because of my own experience and that of many people. As a result, I interviewed 20 women between the ages of 27 and 48 years. I thought they might tell me tales of glorious resistance (which they did) but they also talked about their anxieties about ageing, and how to balance being ‘freaky’ enough with being feminine enough. I found that they utilised various strategies – similar across all the participants – which included ‘toning down’ (Holland, 2004, pp. 127–132); ‘flashing’ their femininity (Holland, 2004, pp. 44–50); and placing themselves in opposition to traditional sorts of ‘fluffy’ femininity (the ‘girly girl’) rather than against femininity per se (Holland, 2004, 148–149). Later my PhD was published as a book (Holland, 2004), which was at the forefront of the current interest in ageing and subcultures. Some years later I was invited to write a book chapter for an edited collection about youth culture and middle-age (see Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012) and realised that finally enough time had elapsed for the original women’s lives to have moved on and for them to have experienced changes and different challenges. I was interested to know whether they had retained any or all of their alternative appearance, lifestyle or attitudes. I was able to trace eight (over one-third) of the original 20 participants, mainly through the Internet or through tattoo studios, which proved to be time-consuming but easier than I had imagined. At that time they were aged between 40 and 60 years, and we discussed how their relationships to body image, appearance and ‘resistance’ shifted and changed as they aged. When Karl Spracklen and I began to plan to collaborate on co-editing a book series and editing this volume to launch it, I decided to see who I could trace from the original cohort of ‘alt fems’ participants, as well as the women who I had already revisited. Even since the second round of interviews, social media has made it ever easier to trace people which meant that I was able to trace two more of the original cohort. Even finding just two more felt like an accomplishment considering I had met them both two decades before and had no contact since. Both had previously stated they would be happy to be re-interviewed at a future date, and both said that they had always wondered if I would return to them. Obviously I was careful to make it clear that they were under no obligation to participate again, and to outline the project (what it was for, the scale of it, what I would ask, and so on). And this time I still had some email addresses or mobile numbers from 2010, or I had added them on social media which meant I got in touch with seven of the women I had re-interviewed in 2010. I also found out that the eighth, ‘Gemini’ passed away in 2012 after a short illness, the year that the book chapter was published; I found out from a Facebook memorial page. Her daughter and I exchanged some emails about her death, and her life, and her input into (and enjoyment of) the alt fems research. Her daughter gave permission (in fact, suggested) that I mention Gemini in this chapter. I felt very shocked and sad about her death; she was 48 when I interviewed her the first time, and 60 the second time. She

Ageing Alternative Women    193 was the oldest participant. The first time I interviewed her she was in the process of having several very large tattoos, to her own design, with personal meanings to them all. The second time she ‘was not happy because she was single and lonely … She also felt isolated in her job’ (Holland, 2012, p. 124). She felt she was struggling with her age: ‘I am the crone now … I am the tattooed granny’ (ibid. 125), even though she was only 60 years at the time. Gemini was the first of my original participants to die, but if I return to this project every seven to ten years it is very possible that someone else may have passed away during the intervening years. To be honest, this is not something that had occurred to me when I decided to trace them for the third time, for this chapter. The oldest participant is now 59 years; whereas if Gemini was still alive she would be the oldest participant at 67 years. The age range in the most recent interviews was therefore between 47 and 59 years. In this chapter, I will compare the original findings to the second stage of data collection and to the latest set of interviews, and examine whether their age and sex impacted on their alternativity, subcultural capital and authenticity. To date I have worked with and researched a variety of groups to investigate issues around the broad themes of gender and leisure, ageing, embodiment and home – from women in pole dancing classes, to three generations of women in families, to women who live alone. By no coincidence they are almost all groups which are somehow marginalised, or marginal, sometimes by choice or design, but more often not by choice. There have been differences between groups as to how or why the group protects its cohesion and authenticity, and whether they knowingly adopted a marginalised identity (such as membership of a subculture) or a first world lifestyle choice, such as veganism. For example, in fieldwork for research projects with elderly south Asian women at a day centre and with black and south Asian women footballers (very different groups, and very different individuals within those groups) the sense of those women feeling part of something and against something else was prevalent, with that tension creating a strong sense of community and collectivity across diverse ages and interests. In these cases, the ‘something’ they were part of was the unique life experiences which came out of being black or south Asian, female, working class, ageing and British. The ‘something else’ that they were against was daily racism and misogyny, and the struggles they faced as a result of the material realities of their ‘race’, ethnicities, sex and class. While the women I discuss in this chapter experience some of those categories of oppression, race and ethnicity were not – for them – the main overarching issue. Rather, because their alternativity was by choice (an adopted identity in their teenage years) their marginalisation was mostly due to their sex, and age, and the strictly gendered expectations and limitations around both.

The Participants and the Data Collection Initially the participants identified themselves as ‘not traditionally feminine’ and chose a range of self-appellations to further elucidate that category, which included non-conforming, individual, unconventional, resisting and not mainstream. I discuss this again later in the chapter. The first interviews were all conducted in person; the second interviews were five in person and three online; and

194    Samantha Holland the most recent data collection consisted of seven face-to-face interviews and two online via skype (where one participant was in Canada and the other in the United States). The online interviews were conducted at a time convenient to the participant, taking into account time differences, and both lasted around two hours. The face-to-face interviews were at a venue of the participants’ choosing, ranging from someone’s home to a café to a park across from where one of them worked. The latter was on a sunny day but it was very cold; nonetheless, the interview lasted well over an hour; the other six lasted about two hours. The interviews were transcribed and the transcripts were analysed for key themes, repetitions, contradictions and tensions. Issues of confidentiality, anonymity and informed consent were discussed with the participants; many of them said they remembered it all from the previous time we met but I repeated it anyway. I must stress that some of the two hours was not formally part of the interview but was time where the participant and I caught up with each other and talked more broadly about related issues. Since my last visit the participants had experienced a range of life changes, from job changes, relationships ending or beginning, one participant had become a grandmother, one had experienced debilitating ill health, one had lost a huge amount of weight, and another had taken early retirement from work. Four of the nine had had one or more tattoos since I last saw them; five still dyed their hair ‘unnatural’ bright colours (See Table 1) for a list of the participants, and their ages at each stage of the data collection. The interviews covered such topics as work, family, children and dress; including black clothes, footwear and tattoos (see Holland, 2012, p. 121). As with the 2010 interviews I was interested to see how much they had ‘toned down’ as they aged, as they were with me – and again, my own appearance was about on a par with theirs, in terms of what we had retained, what we felt was now inappropriate, or too ‘out there’ or that we simply didn’t like any more. For this chapter, I am working only with the sections of the interviews which referred to authenticity, subcultural capital, Table 1:  Ages of Participants. Participant Pseudonym Bee Claudia Delilah Edie Gemini Jody Kiki Lara Sparkle Vash

Age 1997/1998

Age Summer 2010

Age Early 2018

38 37 36 39 48 33 29 31 27 37

51 49 48 50 60 – – 43 40 50

58 56 55 58 Died 2012 53 48 50 48 57

Ageing Alternative Women    195 belonging and marginalisation. ‘Subcultural capital is an index of status within and outside of subcultural groups’ (Hodkinson, 2002, p. 81); but subcultural capital is only possible if one is recognised as ‘authentic’. It is worth revisiting the concept of authenticity and its application, especially for a volume such as this, not least because it is synonymous with discourses about subcultural capital. I had a limited interview schedule, as I believe that too many questions limits how much the participant is able to talk about their own experience. Overall I asked five main questions, with some prompts, including ‘tell me about your appearance, as it is now’, ‘could you talk about how you place yourself in relation to being alternative; are you as “authentic” as when you were younger’ and ‘do you still see yourself as part of a subculture or similar group?’ Several participants described their place as being at the authentic core or centre of their group in the past, but that their authenticity was, to varying degrees still current because they had had it in the past and had worked on maintaining it. The word that several of the participants used this time that they had not used previously was ‘cool’; the concept of coolness stood in for authenticity and subcultural capital, and they described how they felt they themselves had (or had not) retained their coolness as they aged. They described how outsiders or interlopers had been at the margins, keenly watched and measured for authenticity and the right to belong. Additionally, as my participants were aware, the people on the periphery did not necessarily define themselves in the same ways, nor see themselves as being on the margins – and people who currently were considered to be authentic may lose their authenticity if they changed their appearance and lifestyle. Muggleton (2000, p. 108) is just one of the subcultural theorists who found the same issue: Attempts to stratify members according to their strengths of affiliation are fraught with problems. All individuals portray themselves as no less committed and genuine than any other member. The stories that the participants told me around authenticity, ageing and gender were similar in places despite the different personalities and life experiences of the participants, and here I examine how women create their own hierarchies of authenticity, much of it using the strategies they were using 20 years ago. These are stories of femininities, and of different sorts of alternativity, making the participants doubly marginalised.

Authenticity in Subcultures How do members of a subculture measure their place in their particular ‘alternative’ hierarchy, and whose hierarchy is it? This is crucial because whoever defines the hierarchy also gets to define their place in it – in theory, at least. Authenticity communicates status to those in the know, and ‘the know’ is carefully guarded; therefore, authenticity is ‘an ongoing process’ (Haenfler, 2014, p. 84) and negotiated constantly. As David Muggleton (2000, p. 99) notes, subcultural authenticity demands certain particular elements (bodily, stylistically) but must avoid becoming conformist or a uniform: ‘both transience and permanence are potential markers of the superficial and inauthentic’. In this chapter,

196    Samantha Holland I use the term ‘subcultures’ rather than terms such as tribes or post-subcultures because it is a useful term for my participants; they see themselves as current or former members of a subculture, and their alternative identities and femininities are based on that membership. At all three points of data collection, so far the participants were careful to place themselves as distanced or marginalised from the mainstream, by choice, articulated in various ways and to varying extents, often as a result of gendered experiences inflicted on them as a result of being alternative and women. Some form of struggle and the accruing of particular knowledge (such as the maintenance of a suitable appearance, knowing the ‘right’ people, using the right language, listening to the right music, going to the right places as well as being physically appropriate and able) was necessary to indicate full and proper authenticity of the group as a whole and membership of that group, all conditions which become harder as a woman ages. I do specifically say woman in that previous sentence, and not person, because the participants reported ever-increasing difficulty in maintaining their authenticity and capital as they aged. Authenticity in subcultural theory is all about the alternative and the marginal. Sarah Thornton (1995, p. 4 & 11) notes that there is a distinction between the authentic and inauthentic’; with ‘”hipness” as a form of subcultural capital … [which] confers status on the owner in the eyes of the relevant beholder … [It] can be objectified or embodied … in the form of “being in the know”. Being in the know, and being allowed to be in the know, is central to being in a subculture. It is an ongoing and key issue in any study of subcultures or groups who define themselves as alternative, for example, neotribes and scenes, and also about groups such as those who practice extreme sports or people who adopt alternative ways of living. Achieving and maintaining authenticity, for oneself and ones’ subculture, is about protecting and policing the margins and thus the alternative credentials. It is all about distance – mapping oneself onto the subculture as far away from people without capital – and proximity, siting oneself as close to people who are cool and in the know as possible. It is a way to keep undesirable outsiders out, but also functions as a set of signposts and tasks to let certain interested, appropriate and committed outsiders in. Still, we should ask whether it can apply to people who are often themselves on the margins, in this case women, and particularly ageing women. Women have been historically and systematically marginalised within the structures of patriarchy because of their sexed bodies; through the experiences of menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breast feeding, menopause and so on, women’s bodies have been seen to be commodities or property, or unclean or out of control. Unfortunately those structures have often been replicated within subcultures, prioritising the bodies, activities and experiences of boys and men, which often differ from those of girls and women; for example, the physicality and visibility of men in moshpits (Riches, 2014), boys and men in bands, or boys in the street enacting the physical activities of subcultural membership (Willis, 1977).

Ageing Alternative Women    197 The objectification of … women … [is] a position statement made by youth of both [sexes] about girls who are not culturally “one of the boys”. Subcultural capital would seem to be a currency which correlates with and legitimizes unequal statues’. (Thornton, 1995, p. 104) Women do have capital within subcultures but it is often about different things. The most important thing to remember is that women have an extra barrier to authenticity and thus to authenticity and membership: quite simply, that barrier is that they are not men.

Alternativity and Femininities As Beverly Skeggs (2002) argues, women are taught that heterosexuality desirability is essential for a sense of identity, security and subjectivity, where ‘male approval is cultural approval’. Dunja Brill (2008, p. 72) describes a participant of her study who distanced herself from other women, citing femininity as vacant and claiming instead the masculinised empowerment of rebellion. I found similar attitudes among some of my participants (Holland, 2004, 2012) where they derided ‘townie’ (mainstream) women, and said they had more in common with alternative men; and in later research with Julie Harpin about tomboys (Holland & Harpin, 2015), which implies that for women to claim some kind of authenticity or capital for themselves they must distance themselves from certain types of other women, who are perceived as carriers of inauthenticity. Sometimes the only option seems to be to embrace a form of masculinity, because the options within ‘gender’ are so narrow and oppressive; sometimes the option is to remake one’s own concept of femininity, but set it apart from traditional femininity. For example, the girly-girl is the most-cited illustration of hyper femininity and therefore of derision; the girly-girl is treated as the very embodiment of ‘un-cool’, the template of who/what not to be. I have heard a lot about the girly-girl but never met anyone who identifies as her, and yet have heard many descriptions of her which are all very similar. As David Muggleton (2000, p. 90) found, authenticity was judged by his participants to be about the body, dress, but also image, demeanour, physical actions, stylistic expression and a manner which is unconcerned, not trying too hard – which is an attitude echoed the participants of my study about people who styled themselves as entirely vintage. For that study I found that subcultural capital (in that case knowledge and detailed accurate replication) is key but must be worn lightly; credentials should be obvious but not explicitly stated (Holland, 2018, p. 239). The participants were now all of the age of perimenopause or menopause, and some of them talked about the bodily changes they had experienced. But they were more preoccupied with how to maintain their appearance to a level which didn’t make them feel they had become frumpy or less alternative; and how misogyny impacted on the sometimes fragile sense of self which resulted. Between the original data collection and the second lot of interviews the growth in Internet use had created an unexpected by-product, which ‘remind[ed] them of the capital they

198    Samantha Holland once had … [serving] to reinforce their feelings of being successfully alternative, of having subcultural capital – both then and, in a more limited way, now’ (Holland, 2012, p. 123). Sparkle, Vash, Edie, Lara, Bee and Delilah all commented on the experience of unexpectedly seeing photos of their younger selves on social media – and all of them found it a positive experience, not something which made them feel old. Four participants in particular were very active online in groups which focussed on spaces, music and styles from when they were younger. But the negative results of ageing was, as ever, a thread which ran constantly through all the interviews, such as in these excerpts from Jody and Delilah: JODY: Getting older and being female and looking a bit different is just hard. I mean, we talked before [in the first set of interviews in the 1990s] about how I am not a high-heel wearing type of female, I don’t wear makeup, I am not a tomboy I am just not, not – SH:

High maintenance?

JODY: Exactly. And the sexism, the all that bullshit, it just gets more. It doesn’t get less. And it changes, it’s about different things, like being ugly and old. But it’s still there. It never goes. You never become invisible as such, they see you still, in fact they see you more because they don’t expect older women to be alternative so they just call you different names. DELILAH: I haven’t given up on being sexy, on feeling sexy and on being myself, on being alternative-looking. I am still flying the freak flag … But I doubt many people see me that way, I don’t think I get seen as the hip beautiful thing any more, and I did, I was seen like that. Now I am that old freak, hanging on, still looking cool but no sexy now, not exactly in the thick of things. SH: Do you think being an artist helps you seem more different, more alternative? DELILAH: Funnily enough I have thought about that, and I think it actually makes me seem more eccentric, rather than cool. There is a line that I crossed, I don’t know when but I definitely crossed it, when being eccentric and being cool, I was suddenly too old to be both at once. And I was too old to be cool. So – what did that leave me with? The options narrow all the time. Dunja Brill (2008, p. 111) discusses the ‘gendering’ of subcultural capital: female subcultural capital resides mainly in highly visible factors like corporeal capital (i.e. physical beauty, styling) and social capital (i.e. who, that is mainly which men, they associate themselves with), while males can more easily shift their status struggles to seemingly less superficial sphere (e.g. expertise in subcultural fields of knowledge, like music).

Ageing Alternative Women    199 Ageing is an issue for authenticity, as my participants noted, and none of them shifted their ‘status struggles’ from their appearance to something else. Instead of drawing attention to one’s authenticity and subcultural capital multiple body modifications begin instead to point increasingly to one’s ageing body, with weight gain or fluctuation being the main issue that the participants complained about. It’s hard to feel edgy and cool and that, when you are having hot flushes every ten fucking minutes. (Kiki) I feel less like myself now I am in menopause. I was never an apple shape before this started. But I am not going to have grey hair and start knitting or whatever. I am still going to be myself. (Edie) I had no idea this would all start so soon, I didn’t even know about perimenopause. I thought it was menopause all the way, not that there was some crazy warm-up in your 40s … I still dye my hair, I had a period of not doing it then I started again … But when I have a hot sweat it’s been so bad, [sweat] on my scalp, that I had blue [dye] running down my forehead! (Sparkle) The participants were aware that the choices available to them as they aged were narrowing, but overall they were trying to find ways not to accept the sense of themselves as alternative and with a certain amount of cool. This feeling of having residual ‘cool’, amassed when they were younger, was shared by all the participants. It was noticeable to me that there seemed to be less ‘toning down’ than they had experienced in the interim between first and second interviews. The third interviews, while acknowledging bodily changes and shifting attitudes to them as they grew older, were more positive and less anxious than the second interviews. If anything, the most recent interviews illustrated how the alternative women were adjusting to ageing much more easily than they had previously, even though the material realities of age (including misogyny) had not improved.

Who is Authentic, and How Do We Know? David Muggleton (2000, p. 20) provides an extensive examination of subculture, class and authenticity; and, as he states at the outset, ‘the problem of authenticity is really the issue as to what constitutes “proper” or “genuine” membership’. So how do you recognise it in others? This question brought to mind a different project I had undertaken and a reply in an interview with a roller derby player called ‘Ruby’ who said, ‘you meet another player and it’s yeah, we get it, we are roller derby players. No-one else gets it the same’. One way of marking out the authentic from the inauthentic is to name those who are ‘outsiders’. Different nomenclature for people on the margins from across all the research I have conducted, not just the alternative femininities participants, includes the terms newbies or noobs (a variation on newbies); part-timers, visitors, faux-ers (Holland, 2018, p. 220), tourists, weekenders and fakes. ‘Subculturalists might only rarely speak directly about

200    Samantha Holland authenticity, but many still divide people, practices, and objects into cool/true/real and lame/false/fake’ (Haenfler, 2014, p. 83). All the terms were used in a satirical tone but were terms freighted with disapproval or disappointment, used seriously to define another person or group’s level of membership and claim to subcultural capital. Once those other people were their contemporaries or near-contemporaries, now they are more likely to be younger than the participants, and judging the participants in turn. Andy Bennett (2013, p. 124) suggests that there are intergenerational differences between older and younger members of a subculture, with the older generation wishing to site themselves as central and knowledgeable, to avoid being ousted by the new young arrivals. ‘Even among youth [sic] subcultures, there is a double articulation of the lowly and the feminine: disparaged other cultures are characterised as feminine and girls’ cultures are devalued as imitative and passive. Authentic culture is, by contrast, depicted in gender-free or masculine terms and remains the prerogative of boys’ (Thornton, 1995, pp. 104–105). So alternative women who are ageing doubly disparaged: as not-men and as not-young. VASH: Well it was always that boys were seen as the – well, the leaders … Boys were in the bands, mostly. There were some girls in bands but not nearly as many. Girls just turned up to listen, we bought pints, and smoked fags, and were the fans, we mostly weren’t the band. And that doesn’t seem to have changed much does it, not proper song-writing instrument-playing bands. SH:

Has that changed? Where do you see yourself now?

VASH: Oh the periphery, the – yes, it’s different, but now I don’t go out as much anyway, not to clubs. But I go to see bands with [husband] quite a bit and we feel old – old but cool, actually [laughter]. I think yeah, you can stop gawking at me, I’ve been doing this for ages, don’t assume you are cooler than me sonny. Angela Partington (2013, p.12) argues that street styles and subcultures influence the catwalks via the process of trickle-up (Hebdige, 1979), rather than vice versa. But trickle-up – where the high street and fashion designers imitate street styles - ensures that subcultural and alternative styles are continually encroached upon (Hebdige, 1979; Partington, 2013; Holland, 2018), and there is no better example of that than the change in the popularity of tattoos. The permanence of tattoos once ensured their outsider/marginal status but not now; full sleeve tattoos, even facial and hand tattoos, are increasingly common. As several authors in this volume argue, for women tattoos still represent a battleground over their bodily autonomy. Nonetheless, more women – and not just ‘alternative’ – identified women – now have tattoos. The more a group is defined against the mainstream (tellingly, one term for the mainstream is ‘the man’), the more extreme are the acts which denote true membership and authenticity: Yes. Which means we have to keep having more. We have to be just more of everything. We have to guard it. It is hard though. You get

Ageing Alternative Women    201 all these beard-wearing lads, or girls who don’t even dye their hair, and they have tattoos galore with brown hair. That never used to happen! It does piss me off, I’ll be honest. (Lara) I think that is true. Even dyed hair is common now. It leaves very little space for us to work in, you know, to be different, to be ourselves. Dyed hair and piercings and tattoos, it marked you out, people knew who you were you, what you were. Now you might just be some posh white kid who wants to look a bit fashionable, a bit different. There is no real – they are not alternative, at all. (Kiki) In a discussion about authenticity in subcultures we cannot avoid acknowledging the impact of the media as Muggleton (2000) notes. ‘There was a privileged moment of “authentic” subcultural inception untainted by media, commercial and entrepreneurial influences’ (Muggleton, 2000, p. 45). It is significant that since Muggleton was writing, almost 20 years ago, the Internet has become prevalent, with social media now a daily and accepted way of exchanging ideas, images and opinions. The increased popularity of tattoos is arguably influenced by the sharing of images on social media. In my return interview with Edie she described how alternative girls were now able to go to her shop and buy their ‘identity’ off the shelf. You know, I see all these very young gothy girls come in to my shop and … it’s all pre-packaged for them. And I think it’s so different, so much less creative, so much less hard work (Holland, 2012, p. 129). Edie said she had felt like an interloper in her own shop, a shop which sold alternative clothes and accessories, until she acquired more piercings and tattoos which bolstered her feelings of having adequate authenticity (Holland, 2012, p. 129). (In my most recent interview with Edie she told me that she had closed her bricks-and-mortar shop and moved her business to being online only: ‘so now I don’t have to keep up with the freaky Jones’s’ she joked.) Edie’s experience echoed Flong’s comment in the original study that ‘Joe Bloggs in the street’ kept having body modifications meaning that ‘true’ alternative people also had to have more and more in order to retain their cool and subcultural capital (Holland, 2004, p. 157). I mentioned Flong’s comment to Vash in our most recent interview: SH: One of the original women, the first time, said that Joe Bloggs in the street kept having more piercings and tattoos which meant that true alternative people had to keep having more. Do you see that? I mean, tattoos are entirely mainstream now, really. Do you think – VASH: Oh god yes. I mean, you see them, townies, people like that, with full sleeves of tattoos. What is that about?! It was the, like, the preserve of people like me, people like us, the freaks. We had the tattoos, not them. So I do get annoyed about it. Get your own bloody styles. Honestly, it’s obvious they have no ideas of their own.

202    Samantha Holland SH:

And would you think they were like-minded, part of the same - ?

VASH: No. No, no. They never look quite right, they still wear mainstream clothes, like Topshop or whatever. Somehow they are still conforming, with their massive eyebrows and their massive false eyelashes and all that. I just think that most of the ones with lots of body mods or brightly coloured hair, they don’t fool people like me, the old punks, the old goths. We look at them and see, just, kids in a herd following a fashion. They aren’t in it for life. Belinda Wheaton and Becky Beal (2003, p.156) discuss how alternative sports participants experience the commercialisation and commodification of alternative sports. They explore how to make sense of the meanings and how we can ‘understand theoretically, and make sense of methodologically, the ‘creative’ role that consumers play in the construction of meaning, whether it is in mainstream media culture, or the context of more differentiated subcultures’. Wheaton and Beal (ibid. 157) call this ‘the structures of authenticity’. The meanings that individuals make can be then used as a prism to understand authenticity; where authenticity is as subjective as each person who claims it.

Conclusion Authenticity – and therefore subcultural capital, and being ‘cool’ – is predicated overwhelmingly on sex and age, in that order. It is clear from my data that one of the common patterns across all sets of data is the need to site oneself within the authentic ‘centre’ of the subcultural group, and to feel that one can remain there. The key issues for women remain structures, ageing and access to subcultural production. I would like to revisit the participants in approximately 10 years, if I am able, to see if those issues remain the same. If so, the oldest participant would be almost 70 years old, and the youngest almost 60 years. I would also like to try to trace more of the original 20 participants. Authenticity means individuality. The idea and performance of this individuality is central to the membership of a subculture, but for women must be balanced as they age: they must remain feminine enough, but they must retain their alternativity in order to retain their subcultural capital and authenticity. It is a complex and sometimes fraught path to navigate. Affinity continues to be expressed with a wider collectivity of likeminded others … But [it is not] predicated upon a uniformity … but a diverse unity that can encompass and accommodate individual difference. This is necessarily so, for it is individuality that is the basis of subcultural authenticity. (Muggleton, 2000, p. 77) Even in an alternative subculture this great ‘individual difference’ refers, in the main, to men, and young men at that. And even in a subculture (as scattered as the realities as that term may be) an individual can become subsumed by commercialisation, commodification or the vagaries of ‘trickle-up’. A subculture is not immune

Ageing Alternative Women    203 to the encroachment of ‘Joe Bloggs in the street’, as we saw above. What matters to the participants is the idea of a core, a constant centre, to which they can continue to belong. It is important to protect the margins against all-comers so as not to dilute the reality of the subculture and dissipate the (mutable) knowledge and traditions. Generally, we can argue that culture and tradition are not stable unchangeable realities handed down through generations (Holland, 2018). Instead our understandings of tradition, heritage and nostalgia change and adapt to current social modes and mores – and the same is true of subcultures. There may be many different types of goth, but we would recognise a goth from the northern Europe in the 1980s just as easily as we would recognise a goth from 2018 in Japan or San Francisco. Being authentic is about belonging. You may have found yourself (or situated yourself) on the margins all your life except within a subculture. For these reasons the term subculture continues to be a meaningful term for members of those subcultures. For women, who are historically marginalised, being relegated to the margins after feeling oneself to be at the authentic ‘centre’, must be guarded against.

References Bennett, A. (2013). Music, Style and Ageing. Growing Old Disgracefully. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Bennett, A., & Hodkinson, P. (Eds.). (2012). Ageing and Youth Cultures. Music, Style and Identity. London: Berg. Brill, D. (2008). Goth Culture. London: Berg. Haenfler, R. (2014). Subcultures. The Basics. London: Routledge. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture. The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Hodkinson, P. (2002). Goth. London: Berg. Holland, S. (2004). Alternative Femininities. Body, Age and Identity. Oxford: Berg. Holland, S. (2012). Alternative Women Adjusting to Ageing, or How to Stay Freaky at 50. In A. Bennett & P. Hodkinson (Eds.), Ageing and Youth Cultures. Music, Style and Identity (pp. 119–130). London: Berg. Holland, S., & Harpin, J. (2015). Who Is The ‘Girly’ Girl? Tomboys, Hyper-femininity and Gender. Journal of Gender Studies, 24(3), 293–309. Holland, S. (2018). Vintage Homes and Leisure Lives: Ghosts and Glamour. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Muggleton, D. (2000). Inside Subculture. The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Berg. Partington, A. (2013). Class, Clothes and Co-Creativity. Clothing Cultures, 1(1), 7–21. Riches, G. (2014). Brothers of Metal! Heavy Metal Masculinities, Moshpit Practices and Homosociality. In S. Roberts (Ed.), Debating Modern Masculinities: Change, Continuity, Crisis? (pp. 88–105). London: Palgrave Pivot. Skeggs, B. (2002). Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage. Thornton, S. (1995). Club Cultures. Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. London: Polity Press. Wheaton, B., & Beal, B. (2003). “Keeping It Real”: Subcultural Media and the Discourses of Authenticity in Alternative Sport, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(2), 155–176. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour. How Working Class Kids get Working Class jobs. Aldershot: Gower.

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Chapter 12

Girls to the Front! Gender and Alternative Spaces Laura Way Abstract For some, gender remains a mechanism of marginalisation within mainstream popular culture because of expectations concerning what femininity and masculinity entail. This marginalisation refers both broadly to the way girls/women are marginalised as well as the marginalisation of those boys/men who fail to conform to societal gendered expectations. If alternativity is synonymous with resistance to this mainstream popular culture it would be logical to then assume that alternative spaces could provide opportunities for pursuing alternative understandings of gender. But to what extent does empirical work support this proposition? Are alternative spaces created or used in ways which envision gender differently to hegemonic discourses concerning femininity/ masculinity? Or do normative gendered beliefs and practices prevail? This chapter will critically explore these questions through a number of alternative spaces, drawing out key themes and emerging gaps. This exploration will take the subcultural work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies as its starting point, acknowledging the limitations of such work in theorising gender within alternative spaces, before exploring what empirical work across a number of subcultural spaces ‘offers’ in relation to gender. Before concluding the chapter will, more briefly, consider a relatively more recent consideration of online alternative spaces. Keywords: Gender; alternativity; subcultures; space; femininity; masculinity

For some, gender remains a mechanism of marginalisation within mainstream popular culture because of expectations concerning what femininity and masculinity entail. This marginalisation refers both broadly to the way girls/women are Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 205–218 Copyright © 2018 by Laura Way All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181013

206    Laura Way marginalised as well as the marginalisation of those boys/men who fail to conform to societal gendered expectations. If alternativity is synonymous with resistance to this mainstream popular culture it would be logical to then assume that alternative spaces could provide opportunities for pursuing alternative understandings of gender. But to what extent does empirical work support this proposition? Are alternative spaces created or used in ways which envision gender differently to hegemonic discourses concerning femininity/masculinity? Or do normative gendered beliefs and practices prevail? This chapter will critically explore these questions through a number of alternative spaces, drawing out key themes and emerging gaps. This exploration will take the subcultural work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS) as its starting point, acknowledging the limitations of such work in theorising gender within alternative spaces. Next it will turn to empirical work across a number of subcultural spaces and what these ‘offer’ in relation to gender; namely punk, straight-edge, riot grrrl, metal, and hip-hop. Before concluding the chapter will, more briefly, consider a relatively more recent consideration of online alternative spaces.

Introduction As should be clear from the title of this chapter gender is the central focus of what follows and so it is logical to first consider, albeit it fairly briefly, what is being understood by this. The following definition from Jackson and Scott (2003) serves this purpose well. They write that gender ‘denotes a hierarchal division between women and men embedded in both social institutions and social practices. Gender is thus a social structural phenomenon but is also produced, negotiated and sustained at the level of everyday interaction’ (Jackson & Scott, 2003, p. 2). Gender is therefore socially produced and reproduced; which moves thinking away from a division between women and men grounded in biological roots. And if gender rests, as a feminist would argue, on a hierarchical division in which power resides with men, then this justifies the focus on women predominantly within this chapter. Femininity therefore refers to ‘a set of gendered behaviours and practices’ (Holland, 2004, p. 8) but Holland notes the difficulty in pinning down the concept of femininity. The fact that we can speak of femininities in the plural – which can also be the case with masculinities – demonstrates that as a concept femininity is ‘fluid and not fixed, and can mean as many different things as there are women’ (Holland, 2004). Despite the presence of multiple femininities (and masculinities), Connell (1987) proposes the existence of culturally dominant forms of gendered being; referred to as ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘emphasized femininity’. This hegemonic masculinity is seen as an ideal, despite not necessarily corresponding to the reality among men – it is the most public and many collaborate in sustaining this form of masculinity (Connell, 1987). The oppression of women is bounded up in this form of masculinity. Emphasised femininity therefore involves compliancy with this subordination and is ‘orientated to accommodating the interests and desires of men’ (Connell, 1987, p. 183). Based on these conceptualisations, we can speak of a prevailing gender binary within society based on normative ideas

Girls to the Front!    207 of gender. However, there can be resistance to or noncompliance with emphasised femininity. An example of this can be found in Kelly, Pomerantz and Currie’s (2005) study of 20 ‘skater girls’. Despite all of the sample being capable of identifying a discourse of femininity that the researchers conceptualised as Connell’s (1987) emphasised femininity, the skater girls saw themselves as participating in a girlhood which was seen as an alternative to emphasised femininity; even oppositional to it (Kelly et al., 2005). It might be suggested by studies such as Kelly et al.’s (2005), then, that subcultural spaces can provide girls and women with opportunities for both resisting emphasised femininity and crafting new feminine forms. Indeed, subcultural participation technically should be capable of becoming a form of feminist activity, providing girls and women who have previously felt unheard with an alternative (Williams, 2011). Yet in the same breath Williams (2011) highlights the danger of making such an assumption and points to numerous studies of subcultures which reflect how girls and women are still pressured to conform to emphasised femininity.

The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Initial work by the BCCCS conceptualised youth cultures, or subcultures, as bounded, homogenous groupings of committed youth with an emphasis placed on shared behaviours, musical tastes and stylistic choices (Clark, 2003). This concept of ‘subculture’ has been argued as having little relevance to current youth culture. Such critique has come from the development of post-subcultural approaches which are constituted in notions of fluidity, reflexivity and temporality because if one is to believe we are in a period of high or late modernity, then identity can be viewed as changeable and unstable which has implications for the nature of ‘subculture’. Weinzierl and Muggleton (2005) suggest that a post-subcultural approach is able to recognise the existence of complex stratification whereas the BCCCS merely saw a subculture as existing in opposition to a ‘parent culture’. More relevant to this chapter is the criticism that the BCCCS received for the absence of girls and women in its analysis. Through a feminist re-reading of the work of Willis (1977) and Hebdige (1979), McRobbie (1991) argues that such pieces structurally excluded women through their concepts, adhered to patriarchal meanings in their analysis and failed to explore sexual divisions (even as they played out in the studies themselves). In early work concerning girls and subcultures McRobbie (1991) sought to move away from the almost exclusive interest in boys found in such ‘classic’ work of the BCCCS (e.g., Corrigan, 1979; Frith, 1981; Taylor, Walton, & Young, 1973; Willis, 1977). It can be argued that this interest in boys (in turn decreeing invisibility of girls) was not reflective of girls’ actual non-presence. Girls were present but perhaps compared to their male counterparts their subcultural involvement was different in form and arguably, where present, their subordination was retained and reproduced (McRobbie & Garber, 1991). Moving away from the classic conceptualisation of subculture as oppositional or creative can be a way of recognising that girls have alternative ways of organising their cultural life which may offer them different possibilities for resistance (McRobbie & Garber, 1991).

208    Laura Way Indeed research on youth culture and more widely subculture has broadened out to encapsulate both genders. But how exactly is gender played out in such spaces and what are the experiences of girls and women? Evans and Thornton (1989) note that, with the exception of punk, girls have been ‘contained’ when present in subcultures, limiting their ability to play an active role in their construction and create new forms of femininities. Punk, on the other hand, allowed women to use oppositional dress to craft new ways of being female (Evans & Thornton, 1989). This logic will guide the rest of this chapter as it critically examines through its selected examples the degree to which gendered experiences within subcultures reflect gendered positions in wider society and reinforce a gender binary. Are girls/women able to evade marginalisation when they engage in alternative (subcultural) spaces?

Punk and Gender Punk has traditionally been theorised as a male-dominated subculture within which women are marginalised despite the claim made by Evans and Thornton (1989) above. Yet the lack of empirical research examining female punks (with exceptions, such as Leblanc, 2002) could be said to be disproportionate to the number of those that do exist. The idea of punk as a male-dominated subculture may have been merely reinforced through the publication of work focussing either exclusively on male punks or looking at groups of punk which might include one or two females – both of which purport the notion of male dominance or the male punk as norm. Therefore despite the increased focus on females within subcultural literature more broadly research on punks still predominantly focuses on males (or females will be included as part of a wider generalised sample). Bar some exceptions discussed below, there is still a lack of empirical research focussing solely on female punks’ voices and as yet, there is none which considers solely older punk women and their experiences. Where academia focuses on female punks, rather than female punk musicians, the attention is usually framed by the fact that these girls/women are seen as exceptions within a masculine subculture (in terms of males participants outnumbering females and punk being seen to rest upon particular notions of masculinity) (Griffin, 2012; Leblanc, 2002; Roman, 1988). The most notable piece of work which considers punk females comes from Leblanc (2002) whose research considers how these individuals negotiated gender within a subcultural which is typically, as noted above, coded as male (in terms of the themes, behaviours and so forth). A key issue for Leblanc (2002), which runs throughout a number of pieces on punk, is that of ‘resistance’. It is understandable why this might be chosen as the forefront of research since it is considering female participants within a male-dominated/masculine subculture their motivations for participating might automatically be deemed as gender resistance. The conclusion from the research is that these punk girls engage in strategies of resistance which arises from the conflicting expectations concerning femininity (from mainstream ‘non punks’ and also from male punks) that they experience due to their gender (Leblanc, 2002). They result in constructing their gender to actively resist both these expectations.

Girls to the Front!    209 While Leblanc’s (2002) research does in part fulfil its aim to give these female punks ‘a voice’, there are still limitations and gaps where subsequent research could delve. For example, Leblanc (2002) focuses on what she terms ‘punk girls’ and this is reflected in the demography of her sample with only 2 participants out of 40 being 30 years and above therefore there is limited scope for considering the relationships between punk, gender and ageing. There is also the critique that the driving force behind Leblanc’s (2002) research is the concept of ‘resistance’ and this might act as somewhat of an epistemological straitjacket. While research on punk and subcultures more broadly has often pursued this issue, such a focus might potentially limit the exploration of other relevant issues, particularly when the concept of resistance in relation to punk is often conceptually framed through ‘youth’. Research has also considered space in research focussing on female punks (Griffin, 2012; Roman, 1988). Roman (1988), for example, considers the pit as a space at gigs in which women can embody a rejection of traditional femininity. Entering the pit might therefore be seen as a way women can challenge emphasised femininity; however, Roman (1988) notes that those who do are often mocked for their unwillingness to cope with pain and perception that they are not tough. To date, Griffin’s (2012) is the only known piece which includes UK participants. Applying geographical theories about gender roles and performing gender, Griffin (2012) focuses on the context of a local UK ‘do it yourself’ (DIY) punk scene finding that the space was made less inclusive for women due to a reinforcement of the public versus private gendered dichotomy (with males being the public musicians, promoters/organisers) and the importance given to masculine body performances (e.g., through dancing). Both of these studies suggest that while punk may offer opportunities for gender resistance and the construction of alternative femininities, emphasised femininity still prevails because of the masculinist culture on which punk is based and as such.

Straight-Edge As argued for riot grrrl, straight-edge (sXe) can be seen as a subgenre or offshoot of punk and one which traditionally purported to be egalitarian. This egalitarian value, however, does not seem to have been upheld in terms of gender despite the third, most recent, wave of sXe having argued to have moved away from the masculinised first and second waves to instead promote a gender-progressive image (Mullaney, 2007). There has been some academic consideration given to women within sXe (Haenfler, 2006; Mullaney, 2007) which supports the proposition that women within punk can be subjected to particular expectations or treatment because of their gender. Haenfler claims that participants of sXe are ‘constantly reinforcing and recreating a masculine context’ (Haenfler, 2004, p. 95). Haenfler (2006) found, for example, that through sXe women felt pressure within the scene not to look mainstream (e.g., by wearing make-up) therefore having to fulfil certain subcultural gender expectations and they were still subjected to more scrutiny than sXe males concerning their motivations for being sXe. This was mirrored in Mullaney’s (2007) research with respondents of both gender seemed to

210    Laura Way equate sXe men with lifelong commitment whereas for women it was seen more as a phase. Achieving authenticity as an sXer is achieved through doing ‘hardness’ (predominantly achieved through dancing) and the non-doings of ‘control’ such as abstinence; two concepts which have traditionally been associated with masculinity (Mullaney, 2007). Interviews demonstrated that men were seen as more capable of doing these elements which the sXe identity relied on (Mullaney, 2007). When women do dance, it is viewed through a gendered lens; just as was the case with Roman’s (1998) punk girls – they are women dancing in masculine spaces (Mullaney, 2007). In addition, when women sXers display hardness through physical appearance, this is usually seen by men as an attractive quality rather than a means of achieving equal footing as authentic sXers (Mullaney, 2007). The masculinist codes built into the sXe subculture might therefore be viewed as restricting opportunities for the creation of alternative femininities.

Riot Grrrl As has been noted, punk is often considered a male-dominated subculture. Whether in show attendance numbers or in band participation, punk women have themselves said they continue to feel under-represented in punk (Davis, 2001). As summarised by Downes, punk itself is not essentially male but its ‘corporeal practices and sounds become vital sites for the construction, exploration and consolidation of heterosexual masculinities’ (Downes, 2012, p. 207). Downes (2012) highlights how girls and women are only able to achieve powerful roles within punk through two routes – as one of the boys or as sex objects. Punk therefore limits gender transgression as it reinforces hegemonic gender relations through the symbolic repression of the feminine by women or through them enacting heterosexual femininity (Downes, 2012). Such feelings contributed to the emergence of the riot grrrl movement. Some argue that the feminist indebted riot grrrl movement helped women to counteract the subordination they felt they experienced within punk subculture – it gave them the opportunity to be musicians, express themselves through ‘zines and use DIY as a feminist tool (Piano, 2003). Riot grrrl’s use of the DIY movement which emerged from British punk can be seen then as a way for women to open up subcultural space for the transgression of gender and sexual hegemony (Downes, 2012). Downes (2012) consider how riot grrrl offers strategies for resisting and reordering gender power relations within British Indie music culture. First, through the use of unconventional gig locations and times – whereas gigs typically are held at night, riot grrrl gigs might be held during the day to challenge a situation which might limit girls’/women’s participation (Downes, 2012). Other strategies might include breaking down the performer/audience distinction and riot grrrl bands’ attempts at policing their audiences through the manifesto of ‘girls to the front’ (therefore creating safe spaces) (Downes, 2012). The idea of the riot grrrl movement providing safe spaces for girls and women can also be seen as played out in the use of ‘zines with these being used as safe spaces for creators to talk about their lives to an audience of choice (Schilt, 2003).

Girls to the Front!    211 Further to this, zines when traded can also allow creators/participants to form a support network (Schilt, 2003). Zines, and the broader DIY movement drawn upon within riot grrrl, can be seen as a way for participants to reject passive consumerism; becoming cultural producers making cultural products relevant to their own lives (Schilt, 2003). If punk and sXe limit the construction of alternative femininities/visions of gender due to embedded behaviours/practices associated with traditional masculinity, then riot grrrl offers one example of how subcultural space can be used to transgress gender. But this transgression has only been realised arguably due to the creation of a ‘new’ subcultural form. This might suggest that gender resistance within existing masculine subcultures is limited – the subculture instead has to be ‘rewrote’, leading to a differing form. This too might be the case with the example of hip-hop feminism discussed later in the chapter.

Metal If punk has often been characterised as based upon masculine values, metal or more specifically death metal, has been proposed as the most male centred of any type of popular music (Vasan, 2011). This might suggest that participants’ experience of the metal subculture, or scene, will be highly gendered with women marginalised and limited in their construction of alternative femininities. A growing body of empirical work concerned with exploring gender within metal has emerged. Kahn-Harris (2007) notes the marginalisation of women within the scene through this prevailing metal masculinity. Strategies for doing so include overt sexism and the encouragement of hyper-femininity. Women must follow the masculinist rules and are often required to prove their ‘seriousness’ when it comes to being a metal scene member/fan (Kahn-Harris, 2007); not too dissimilar to the ideas discussed above with sXers and gendered commitment. Kahn-Harris (2007) draws upon McRobbie’s (1991) argument that young women’s subcultural involvement is limited due to the limits placed on their public sphere presence and argues that metal should technically enable female participation as gig attendance is not vital. However, women still rarely enter the scene alone (Kahn-Harris, 2007). This adherence by women to the masculinist values of the death metal culture has also been seen in work by Nordström and Hertz (2013) which sees women moving their gender position to a greater extent than men as a result. For example, women are required to display masculinity in their heavy metal actions while retaining femininity in their appearance (Nordström & Hertz, 2013) – something seen above too with sXers. This may suggest then that women are limited in their construction of alternative femininities, consistently judged by their metal peers ultimately through a heteronormative gender binary. Being a girl/woman within a masculinist metal culture does not have to necessitate a negative experience or indeed a gendered experience which reflects the traditional femininity/masculinity inequality of mainstream society. Many of the women in Riches’ (2011) study, for example, expressed pleasure in occupying and participating in such a space/scene. Additionally, despite its marginalisation of

212    Laura Way and sexism towards women, Kahn-Harris (2007) suggests that involvement in the metal scene and its aggressive music can take the form of a quiet subversion of mainstream femininity as it’s not something nice girls should listen to. Interviews with women from the metal scene by Vasan (2011) revealed that they were not only aware of sexism within the scene but tolerated it. Vasan (2011) explores this through social exchange theory. By conforming to metal’s androcentric culture, these women in return are granted continued participation and this in turn provides a certain level of empowerment and liberation for them (Vasan, 2011). This conformity might involve, for example, adhering to patriarchal thoughts concerning how females dress and behave though women who took on male codes for such gained more respect in the scene (Vasan, 2011). An additional example might be the way participants rationalised the misogynistic lyrics often present in death metal (Vasan, 2011) – by not challenging the sexism here they were able to maintain their participation which they gained more benefit from. To continue with this issue of sexism within metal but present an alternative view, Hill’s (2016) interview participants constructed the metal scene as less sexist, and therefore more ‘safe’, in comparison to mainstream society; something Hill (2016) finds surprising given the hyper-masculinity which prevails in metal. Still, sexism is present. Hill (2016) presents metal masculinity as based on a contradiction in which equality is presented as a value and this ideal of equality then prohibiting challenges to sexism. Women fans can experience a feeling of genderlessness (therefore escaping stereotypical femininity) but this freedom from both femininity and sexism can only be realised through assimilation of metal masculinity – for example, not questioning misogyny as to challenge sexism is to be reminded of one’s gender (Hill, 2016). Hill (2016) argues that assumptions/behaviours associated with femininity can act as an intrusion with sexism then becoming a means for re-inscribing traditional gender expectations. This can be seen in Riches’ (2011) work around the mosh pit. Within the mosh pit, a space traditionally reserved for boys/men, women can resist dominant expectations concerning gendered bodies and femininity. Yet this transgression is limited by sexism within the pit when, for example, male participants refrain from pushing females out of worry of hurting them and this serves as a re-inscription of traditional femininity (Riches, 2011). Again, this is the idea, as seen above with punk and sXe too, that women’s experience of dancing (a common practice within these subcultures) takes place within what has already been inscribed as a masculine space.

Hip-Hop Hip-hop might be, as we have seen above with punk and metal, another subcultural space within which hegemonic or normative gender reign. Hip-hop as a musical genre has historically been dominated by black male rappers with female rappers often playing into the stereotypical image of black female hyper-sexuality, resulting in a dominant masculine hegemony (Mohammed-baksh & Callison, 2015). Song lyrics are also known for their limited positive representation of women (Weitzer & Kubrin, 2009). Tracing the historical emergence of hip-hop, Shabazz (2014) argues that the link between masculinity and hip-hop is grounded in the

Girls to the Front!    213 hip-hop’s origins as spatial resistance by black men. Being blocked in accessing dominant masculinity, black men produced an overly compensatory form of masculinity involving the access to and control of the public domain (Shabazz, 2014). This would involve black occupation of public spaces in their creation/production of hip-hop music, for example, a car park might become a place to practise and perform (Shabazz, 2014). However, young men also used this access to public spaces within black geographies to exclude women which in turn led to distorted perceptions of women; the curtailing of women’s access to creative labour; the undermining of women’s talents and the normalisation of misogyny (Shabazz, 2014). As Sasaki-Picou writes, ‘Hip-hop functions as a weapon of resistance with the intention of reinforcing male power’ (Sasaki-Picou, 2014, p. 104). The places where hip-hop culture takes place, such as the dance floor, can therefore involve gender work. In an ethnographic study of young women and men in the New York hip-hop scene, Muñoz-Laboy, Weinstein and Parker (2007) found the dance floor could be a place in which gender relations were negotiated. The study demonstrated that hip-hop club dancing reproduced gender power inequalities and unequal gender identities through, for example, the pressure placed on young women to demonstrate their sexual womanhood through their dancing and young men dancing in ways that reflected male sexual dominance and control (Muñoz-Laboy et al., 2007). This was in spite of there being some suggestion of women being in control, for example while dancing they could set the physical boundaries and walk away if a dancing partner did not respect these (MuñozLaboy et al., 2007). It was found that some women even reversed the expected roles of men on the dance floor by taking on the role of the ‘aggressor’ (MuñozLaboy et al., 2007). Yet Muñoz-Laboy et al. (2007) concluded that despite the young women being aware that they were little more than objects of the male gaze in the hip-hop scene they presented little resistance in their narratives. Yet, perhaps not too dissimilar to the riot grrrl movement that emerged out of punk, there are women within hip-hop who are trying to challenge such practices. Shabazz (2014) notes how black women have created spaces of hip-hop production in which they can challenge and change the uneven geography of hip-hop – allowing them to voice counterhegemonic ideas (Rose, 1994) and, as shown below, could give a platform for feminism (Morgan, 2006). One such example used by Shabazz (2014) is that of the New York-based Black Girls Rock! Challenges might also emerge from the musicians. An analysis of lyrics by a sample of 12 female rap artists demonstrated, for example, that many female rappers incorporated traditionally masculine elements in their lyrics while mobilising them to challenge masculine norms (Berggren, 2014). More specifically has been the emergence of a broad movement which can be referred to as ‘hip hop feminism’. This movement draws upon the situated knowledge of black women and uses culture as a site for political intervention; dismantling exploitative systems through challenging, resisting and mobilising collectives (Durham, 2007). Hip-hop feminism also draws upon the intersectional approaches developed by earlier black feminists (Durham, Cooper, & Morris, 2013). What hip-hop feminism offers then, like riot grrrl, is an example of the creation of a ‘new’ subcultural form in which alternative femininities might be pursued.

214    Laura Way

Online In response to the increasing importance of the Internet in people’s lives, empirical attention has been given to identity and online/virtual spaces (see, e.g., Castells, 2010 or Turkle, 1996). So what do these online spaces mean for gender? Is it the case as some cyberfeminists such as Haraway (1991) would argue that gender neutrality can be achieved and dualisms escaped? Or do these online spaces merely reflect the prevailing gender binary that exists ‘offline’. The logical step in this chapter would be to next consider gender within online communities formed around the music subcultures which have been discussed above (punk, sXe, riot grrrl, metal and hip-hop). There has been research exploring these subcultures online – for example, Murthy’s (2010) work on Muslim punks online or Williams’ (2006) ethnography of an sXe online community. There has been, however, limited research focussing on gender within these specific online communities. One exception is Guzzetti (2006). Guzzetti (2006) considered two adolescent girls’ interactions with interactive cybersites; two girls who also happened to be, as the author describes them, punk rock fans. The girls used cybersites as sites of identity formation and representation, including their identity as punks. What is perhaps the most relevant aspect of this research concerns one of the girls, Saundra, and her identity representation within an electronic punk community. Within this community Saundra successfully established a place of recognition and regard, however, Guzzetti (2006) highlights how this was achieved through a particular enactment of gender which involved displaying behaviours and expressions deemed masculine. This was through, for example, the screen name/email address Saundra used and her use of language which was typically associated with males like the use of expletives (Guzzetti, 2006). What this demonstrates – as seen in various studies referenced in this chapter – is that Saundra’s success within this online punk community relied on being perceived as masculine rather than feminine; something which, arguably, is more achievable within an online world in which your body (a marker of gender) can be ‘hidden’. This lack of empirical research on gender in the specified online communities leads to a somewhat different example, one which is not situated around a musical genre and would not by the BCCCS’ standards be conceptualised as a subculture. The last example presented within this chapter is the online gaming culture. A culture which, like the subcultures considered in this chapter, can be seen as male-dominated and in which girls and women, as a result, could be considered marginalised. As alluded to previously, perhaps online spaces can offer potential for individuals to exert agency in identity construction and perhaps resistance; however, Crowe and Watts (2014) dampen this optimism, arguing instead that online spaces often mirror the norms and practices of the offline world. Within a massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Runescape, Crowe and Watts (2014) highlight how gender-bending is a fully recognised and accepted practice. Men were more likely to partake in this gender bending than women. Yet this practice of gender bending still reinforced a heteronormative gender binary. Within Runescape representations of women were highly sexualised and men’s

Girls to the Front!    215 choice to gender bend came as a structural decision to let the player advance within the game’s narrative as, for example, women were helped more by other players (Crowe & Watts, 2014). This alternative gender discourse then was not seen to conflict with more traditional masculinity as the representations of women in Runescape restricted it from being a challenging discourse (Crowe & Watts, 2014). Gender bending as a normative practice within online gaming culture was also found by Todd (2012) who similarly concluded that, as a result, such acts fail to greatly challenge the gender binary found within mainstream gaming. The design of the game itself can uphold heteronormative femininity, regardless of how participants engage with the game. Some games, for example, present gendered avatar templates/accessories in stereotypical ways, for example, more choices of hair colour/style, clothing and accessories for women (Todd, 2012). A further example of how the binary conception of femininity/masculinity still prevails in the online gaming community comes from Beavis and Charles’ (2007) work on the ‘girl gamer’. The notion of the ‘girl gamer’ is constructed through the binary conception of femininity/masculinity, for example, this was seen in the girls’ narratives concerning their initiation into a local area network cafe and gaming culture. Drawing upon Butler’s (1997) ‘performative resignification’, the authors found however further complexity with the young women within the study both playing with and resisting the subordinate feminine identity in which their male peers sought to place them (Beavis & Charles, 2007). Some girls, by embracing or even exaggerating their ‘otherness’ as a girl gamer were able to enact agency (Beavis & Charles, 2007). Though not broad in its discussion, this brief consideration of online gaming cultures suggests that the virtual world can still pose limitations in gender construction and performance. However, there is also some suggestion that there can be possibilities for agency and resistance. Just as was the case with various subcultural examples discussed in this chapter, the heteronormative gender binary can still take precedence, however, thus limiting the construction of alternative femininities and instead ensuring the marginalisation of women is sustained.

Conclusion As this chapter has illustrated, it would be naive to assume that alternative (subcultural) spaces would automatically become places where the construction of alternative understandings of gender were possible; understandings which did not entail the marginalisation of women. Some subcultures could be viewed as masculinist but gender resistance can emerge from these. This resistance, however, is achieved by creating something ‘new’ (e.g., riot grrrl, hip-hop feminism) more so than working within the existing subculture. This might suggest that cultural production is important as within riot grrrl and hip-hop feminism production is more so in the control of women than men. Based on the discussion above, some key gaps in empirical work also emerge concerning gender, or specifically femininity, and subcultural spaces. First, there is a notable lack of empirical work on online communities based around subcultures such as punk, metal and so forth which explore gender. It would be

216    Laura Way beneficial in extending understanding of gender within these subcultures to consider the online world in addition to the offline. Second, while subcultural work has now endeavoured to consider the experiences of both genders, Schilt and Giffort (2012) still note an absence of literature on women’s subcultural participation when it comes to ageing and based on the discussion presented in this chapter that still stands to be the case. Intersectionality more broadly could be pursued in considering not just age and gender but also class, ethnicity and sexuality.

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Girls to the Front!    217 Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Hill, R. (2016). Gender, metal and the media: women fans and the gendered experience of music. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Holland, S. (2004). Alternative Femininities. Body, Age and Identity. Oxford: Berg. Jackson, S., & Scott, S. (2003). Introduction: The gendering of sociology. In S. Jackson & S. Scott (Eds.), Gender. A Sociological Reader. London: Routledge. Kahn-Harris, K. (2007). Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg. Kelly, D. M., Pomerantz, S., & Currie, D. (2005). Skater girlhood and emphasized femininity: ‘you can’t land an ollie properly in heels’. Gender and Education, 17(3), 129–148. Leblanc, L. (2002). Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture. London: Rutgers University Press. McRobbie, A. (1991). Feminism and Youth Culture. From Jackie to Just Seventeen. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education Ltd. McRobbie, A., & Garber, J. (1991). Girls and Subcultures. In A. McRobbie (Ed.), Feminism and Youth Culture. From Jackie to Just Seventeen. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education Ltd. Mohammed-baksh, S., & Callison, C. (2015). Hegemonic Masculinity in Hip-Hop Music? Difference in Brand Mention in Rap Music Based on the Rapper’s Gender. Journal of Promotion Management, 21(3), 351–370. Morgan, J. (2006). Hip-Hop Feminism. In L. Heywood, (Ed.). The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism (pp. 172–175). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Mullaney, J. (2007). ‘Unity Admirable but Not Necessarily Heeded’: Going Rates and Gender Boundaries in the Straight Edge Hardcore Music Scene. Gender and Society, 21(3), 384–408. Muñoz-Laboy, M., Weinstein, H., & Parker, R. (2007). The Hip-Hop Club Scene: Gender, Grinding and Sex. Culture, Health and Sexuality, 9(6), 615–628. Murthy, D. (2010). Muslim punks online: A diasporic Pakistani music subculture on the Internet. South Asian Popular Culture, 8(2), 181–194. Nordström, S., & Herz, M. (2013). ‘It’s a matter of eating or being eaten’ Gender positioning and difference making in the heavy metal subculture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(4), 453–467. Piano, D. (2003). Resisting Subjects: DIY Feminism and the Politics of Style in Subcultural Production. In D. Muggleton & R. Weinzierl (Eds.), The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg. Riches, G. (2011). Embracing the Chaos: Mosh Pits, Extreme Metal Music and Liminality. Journal for Cultural Research, 15(3), 315–332. Roman, L. (1988). Intimacy, Labor and Class: Ideologies of Feminine Sexuality in the Punk Slam Dance. In L. Roman, L. Christian-Smith, & E. Ellsorth (Eds.), Becoming Feminine: The Politics of Popular Culture. London: The Falmer Press. Rose, T. (1994). Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Music/Culture. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Sasaki-Picou, N. (2014). Performing gender: The construction of black males in the hip-hop industry. Contingent Horizons: The York University Student Journal of Anthropology, 1(1), 103–107. Schilt, K. (2003). ‘I’ll Resist with Every Inch and Every Breath’ Girls and Zine Making as a Form of Resistance. Youth & Society, 35(1), 71–97. Schilt, K., & Giffort, D. (2012). Strong Riot Women: The Continuity of Feminist Subcultural Participation. In A. Bennett & P. Hodkinson (Eds.), Ageing and Youth Cultures. Oxford: Berg.

218    Laura Way Shabazz, R. (2014). Masculinity and the mic: confronting the uneven geography of hiphop. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(3), 370–386. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Todd, C. (2012). Troubling gender in virtual gaming spaces. New Zealand Geographer, 68, 101–110. Turkle, S. (1996). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Vasan, S. (2011). The Price of Rebellion: Gender Boundaries in the Death Metal Scene. Journal for Cultural Research, 15(3), 333–349. Weinzierl, R. and Muggleton, D. (2005) What is ‘Post-Subcultural Studies’ Anyway? In (Eds.), The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg. Weitzer, R., & Kubrin, C. E. (2009). Misogyny in Rap Music. A Content Analysis of Prevalence and Meanings. Men and Masculinities, 12(1), 3–29. Williams, J. P. (2006). Authentic Identities: straightedge subculture, music and the internet. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(2), 173–200. Williams, J. P. (2011). Subcultural Theory. Traditions and Concepts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour. Aldershot: Saxon House.

Chapter 13

No Blue Plaques ‘In the Land of Grey and Pink’: The Canterbury Sound, Heritage and the Alternative Relationships of Popular Music and Place Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman Abstract The term Canterbury Sound emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s to refer to a signature style within psychedelic and progressive rock developed by bands such as Caravan and Soft Machine as well as key artists including Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers. This chapter explores Canterbury as a metaphor and reality, a symbolic space of music inspiration which has produced its distinctive ‘sound’. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, particularly observations and interviews with music artists and cultural intermediates (Bourdieu, 1993), we suggest that the notion of the Canterbury Sound – with its affinity for experimentation, distinctive chord progressions and jazz allusions in a rock music format – is perceived as a continuing artistic and aesthetic influence. We interpret the genealogy of the Canterbury Sound alternativity through discussions focused on the position of the ‘Sound’ within contemporary heritage discourses, the metaphorical and geographical implications of place in relation to popular music, and cultural longevity of the phenomenon. Keywords: Canterbury Sound, popular music, place, heritage, alternativity

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 219–237 Copyright © 2018 by Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181014

220    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman

Introduction This chapter reflects on our study of popular music within the cultural economy of the heritage city of Canterbury. It draws on ethnographic research, particularly observations and interviews with music artists and intermediaries from the ‘original’ Canterbury Sound and newer figures associated with the phenomenon. The research and theoretical approaches are derived from popular music studies in relation to discourses of heritage and intergenerational scenes. We explore the contemporary meaning of the Canterbury Sound where musicians are intermediaries within the city as a cultural field. For Bourdieu (1984, p. 366), ‘cultural intermediaries are inclined to sympathise with discourses aimed at challenging the cultural order and the hierarchies’. Thus, we explore the contemporary meaning of the Canterbury Sound to suggest it is organically preserved, rather than distinctly institutionalised, and it embodies an alternative take on Canterbury’s heritage and contemporary image. The chapter will focus on, first, defining the mythological character and marketing potential of the Canterbury Sound; second, we will explore the Canterbury Sound in terms of institutional heritage and DiY cultural memory; finally, we will address the marginalisation of performance venues, in contrast with the international growth of the Canterbury Sound through Internet communication, to argue that the Canterbury Sound is a both a local and an imaginative space for alternativity.

Methodological Approach The work has employed two broad research methods focused on data collection: ethnographic and textual. The research employs ethnographic strategies developed and applied from the contemporary legacies of the Chicago School of Sociology (Hart, 2010). Namely, it aims at constructing a ‘mosaic’ of meanings derived through a variety of methods and the exploration of multitude positions from within the field (Blackman, 2010, pp. 195–205; Denzin & Lincoln, 1997, pp. xi–xiii). The collection of empirical data has taken place within a holistic paradigm to include interviews as conversation, ethnographic observations, and participation at relevant events such as the Crash of Moons nights and the Free Range performance series in Canterbury. There were 30 research interviews and informal discussions lasting from 15 minutes to about 3 hours. The research draws on the authors’ engagement with theoretical devices derived from cultural studies, sociology and popular music studies as well as reflections from biographical immersion (Merrill & West, 2009) within Canterbury as a city and cultural field, which allowed for the creation of empathetic fieldwork relations (Blackman, 2007, p. 669 & 716). We used reflexivity within the data collection so that responses from research participants could be taken forward as data collection proceeded so that we offered and enabled priority to the conversation of interviewees (Bourdieu, 1992). Asya is a researcher, guitarist and singer who has been involved with both live music performance and recording music in Canterbury. Shane is actively involved with popular music through his DJ work, research, publications and teaching. The ‘critical insider’ researcher positionality within

Canterbury Sound    221 the processes of fieldwork data collection, analysis and interpretation, allowed for pursuing research reflexivity as well as longevity and depth of fieldwork relations (Hodkinson, 2005, pp. 143–145; Savin-Baden & Major, 2012). Snowball sampling has been used as a technique for the establishment of networks of accessing insight (Heckathorn, 1997, p. 174). We also employ textual analysis in relation to the collection of visual, and written texts referring to the Canterbury Sound such as the collection Canterburied Sounds (assembled by Hopper, 1998), the film Romantic Warriors (2010), a full set of Facelift fanzines (1989–1999) and the podcasts Canterbury Soundwaves (2010–2013) and Canterbury Sans Frontières (2013 – to date). A multiplicity of documents and representations associated with a field of study creates the opportunities for producing a substantial, ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973). The chapter articulates a substantive rather than formal ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser, 2011, pp. 257–260; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), while some of the findings and arguments are applicable to musical and cultural phenomena outside the Canterbury Sound, the chapter also maintains the specificity of its relatedness to the studied field.

Myth and Metaphor: Defining the Canterbury Sound Part of the title of this chapter has been taken from Caravan’s (1971) album In the Land of Grey and Pink, as it seeks to allude to the symbolic and lived relationships between place and music. In the 1960s and 1970s, the term Canterbury Sound emerged to refer to psychedelic and progressive rock, with jazz, avant garde and folk allusions and an experimental approach, developed by founding figures such as David Sinclair, Pye Hastings, Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Brian and Hugh Hopper who all attended Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, Canterbury; Kevin Ayers, who was born in Herne Bay, and went to the private boarding Junior Kings School, Canterbury, for three years; and Daevid Allen who lived at Robert Wyatt’s parents’ home Wellington House in the 1960s. Key bands include The Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Caravan, Hatfield and the North and Gong (Bennett, 2002). More recently, musical artists linked to Canterbury and having links with its distinct ‘sound’ include Syd Arthur, Lapis Lazuli, Coco and the Butterfields, The Boot Lagoon, Bison Bonasus, Jack Hues and the Quartet and Koloto. The Canterbury Sound could be described as a musical style that features improvisation, use of minor second chords, certain harmonic combinations, lyrical humour and English tonalities that build from Church music hundreds of years ago. We support Andy Bennett’s (2002, p. 89) use of the phrase the Canterbury Sound in relation to identifying and exploring the collective values and sense of community with popular music practice. Geographical location as part of both creativity and marketing, for example Caravan’s 1976 compilation album was titled Canterbury Tales: The Best of Caravan, which was expended, repackaged and re-released in 1994. Dave Sinclair’s 2010 PianoWorks 1, track 2 is titled ‘Canterbury’, and in the album Stream 2011, the liner notes are titled ‘From Canterbury to Kyoto’. Syd Arthur (2016c) in the video Off Main St: Syd Arthur in Canterbury, UK, speaks about discovering the Canterbury Sound, as belonging to their city. They explore parts of the city, play

222    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman live and speak about the exploration of Canterbury Sound bands in relation to their own trajectory. Also, Syd Arthur’s (2014) “Hometown blues” video consists of a pre-Second World War black and white footage from the city and the lyrics offer a critical and personal reflection of growing up, leaving and coming back to Canterbury. Evidence suggests that both original and recent bands have grasped using the term Canterbury Sound for marketing purposes. However, Andy Bennett (2002, p. 97) argues that artists within the Canterbury Sound such as Richard Sinclair construct a highly romanticised narrative of past and present, underpinned by an appeal to Englishness or myths of Canterbury. For example, the DVD Romantic Warriors III (2016) on the Canterbury Sound is also subtitled Canterbury Tales. In the film, Pye Hastings states that ‘The Canterbury Sound was a name made up by journalists writing about bands.’ From the Calyx website, this is added to by Hugh Hopper who stated, ‘I think it’s a rather artificial label, a journalistic thing.’ He continues: ‘Robert [Wyatt], he in fact hates that idea.’ On the name Canterbury Sound, Robert Wyatt points out, ‘I didn’t even know what it meant until an interviewer started asking me about it.’ This view was also found by Andy Bennett (2002, p. 91) who interacted with a music shop owner who stated on the Canterbury Sound: ‘I think it’s been blown up and exaggerated quite a bit to be honest. I’ve lived in Canterbury all my life and I was never aware of it.’ Joel Magill (research interview, 2016) of Syd Arthur, echoes this notion of marginality, stating in our interview: For some reason the bands that I hear that are from here have something that is unique, a bit different from the rest. The funny thing is that with what we are doing with Syd Arthur, we have been quite successful and have been going to America loads. Everyone there interested in music seems to know about the Canterbury Sound. Everywhere we go they know what the Canterbury thing is. I bet you can speak with everyone down at High Street that pretty much no one would know what Canterbury scene is. Reflecting on the ‘in-conversation’ event at the University of Kent, Robert Wyatt (2016) stated in an informal discussion: This [the High Street] used to be just another tarmac road, like every other, with cars, buses, and everything. Canterbury used to be a lot more provincial and this image of a historic city is something new to me. I have not been back for years. I find the city very different, yet still the same: like in a dream, where everything changes, yet you recognise it somehow. The above comments by Magill and Wyatt point to the marginality of the Canterbury Sound and the centrality of a creative practice that has been acquired while being in the city of ‘dreams’. At his ‘in-conversation’ interview Robert Wyatt (2016), when asked to reflect on his musical experiences from his youth in Canterbury, frequently asked Brian Hopper, who was performing with the

Canterbury Sound    223 SoupSongs at the event, for confirmation and commentary. This demonstrated that at the centre of the genesis of the Canterbury Sound there were and remain closely knit networks of cultural intermediaries (Maguire & Matthews, 2014). These biographical comments counteract the critique of the constructed nature of the Canterbury Sound suggesting that the phenomenon is both ‘mythological’ and organic, but at the same time it is used as a creative marketing genre (Forman, 2002). Brian Hopper states: Everything started in Canterbury when all were schooled here in the local grammar school Simon Langton. My brother Hugh, Mike Ratledge, and I all went to the same primary school, too. Mike and I got together quite a lot outside school and we played. I played clarinet, he played piano and some other things. We started doing some experimental things around 13 or14 with old tape recorders, creating loops and things like that, very early and crude experiments. And we were keen on modern 20th century European music. […] My brother was the same age as Robert Wyatt, so they grew up together; they got into bass guitar and rhythm and blues. And it grew from there. […] In 1964, we became the Wilde Flowers, so it was Robert on drums, my brother on bass guitar and saxophone and at the time Kevin Ayers was part of it too … Will Greenham (research interview, 2016) from Smugglers Records, based in Deal, and the band Cocos Lovers, presented a different perspective on the Canterbury Sound, as a contemporary influence: I think that inspiration from the Canterbury Sound is very genuine. The Canterbury Sound is seen as something that was so free and wild. I think this is the point of inspiration. I think contemporary musicians listen to the music and then go ‘wow’; I am taking inspiration from this group of musicians and how free they were to play their music. It’s not about copying riffs or anything else as direct as that. Greenham’s (2016) statement is consistent with Robert Wyatt’s response to a question about the nature of the Canterbury Sound asked by Asya during the ‘In-conversation’ session with Gavin Esler. Wyatt states: The real legacy of the Canterbury Sound is about being free to make music in any way you like; it is about artistic freedom, about organic experimentation. Original and recent musicians associated with Canterbury and its suggested specific Sound, use geographical location as a metaphor for an aesthetic alongside commercial opportunities. Brian Hopper (research interview, 2016) states:

224    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman Things like unusual time signatures, unusual chord sequences and that sort of thing that makes the music far less predictable. Some of the lyrics, too, I would say are alternative and deal with abstract topics. When seeking to locate Canterbury and its ‘Sound’ to accommodate both for specificity and openness, coherence and relatedness to broader artistic aesthetics, its cultural intermediates struggle with the breadth of its definition as well as questions regarding the time to which the Canterbury Sound belongs or through which it attains longevity to allow for innovation in contemporary musicianship. The continued influence of the Canterbury Sound, as described within the data, represents a search for artistic authenticity; an attempt to establish links with a musical phenomenon that contains a grain of organic experimentation and a form of aesthetic misrule (Davis, 1971). The formulation of distinctive categories like the Canterbury Sound is linked to the notion of networks of alternative sound and style (Crossley, 2015; Webb, 2007, 2010). This ambition to connect with a core of meanings formulated in a romanticised past, is an embodiment of the struggle for attaining artistic legitimacy within the cultural field of production where marketing also plays a role (Bourdieu, 1993).

Music and Place: Heritage or Cultural Memory? Popular music encompasses cosmopolitan cultural phenomena which act as spaces for communication and transformation, rather than a conglomeration of texts with fixed cultural meaning (Frith, 1996; Middleton, 1990). We suggest that place and space in popular music creation, articulation and meaning are fluid and ever evolving. Popular music’s relationship with place has been be characterised by histories of origin and location. Charlie Gillett (1970/1983, p. 23) described the emergence of five distinctive musical styles that collectively became known as rock ‘n’ roll in terms of regional development within the US. He insists ‘each style was developed in particular regions or locales and expressed personal responses to certain experiences in a way that would make sense to people with comparable experiences’. Thus, place and location of Northern bands, vocal group rock ‘n’ roll, New Orleans dance blues, Memphis country rock and Chicago rhythm and blues all contributed to the black dance beat of rock ‘n’ roll. At the same time, he tries to tease out a similar process of the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll in the UK in terms of regional differences, including the Mersey Sound, and the development of beat music in the Midlands, Newcastle and London. This link between music and place has significantly continued with the Sound of Young Scotland and Ma(n)dchester Scene during the 1980/90s, through the respective record companies Postcard and Factory (Garratt, 1998; Reynolds, 2006, p. 348). More recently, there has been a link between trip-hop in Bristol and grime within South London (Collins & Rose, 2017; Johnson, 1996). Genres within popular music are fields for the construction of cosmopolitan cultural phenomena encompassing sound, style and ritual, which transform within diverse social, political, geographically spread context. According to Street (2006, p. 45),

Canterbury Sound    225 the communicative and fluid qualities of music create opportunities for its participation in alternative cultural practices able to carry connotations of resistance. The search for artistic distinctiveness and legitimacy can happen through establishing intergenerational continuity expressed in the ways in which the creation and articulation of musical alternativity are approached. Place, in this context, can be both symbolic and real: a point of reference that enables a creative milieu. For Cohen, Knifton, Leonard, and Roberts (2015, p. 4) there is a tension between popular music origins and the more recent development of heritage sites of popular music. They suggest that ‘cultural memory’ may hold more meaning than the usage of the term heritage, citing Stuart Hall’s (1999) argument questioning whose heritage we are preserving. Sara Cohen (2012, p. 578) identifies that the music industry is centrally concerned with preserving or repackaging the heritage of popular music through compilations and the politics of regional economic development. She describes the closure of three popular music clubs in Liverpool: The Cavern Club, demolished in 1973, Eric’s closed in 1980 and Cream closed in 2002 and demolished in 2016 (although the brand continues.) Bennett (2009, p. 477) also points to the tension that defines popular music in terms of heritage, in that popular music with its ‘mass-produced, commercial and global properties’ is ‘the antithesis of authentic cultural values as conceived in conventional heritage discourse’. From the ethnographic data, we suggest that the ‘legacy’ of the Canterbury Sound as a ‘site of popular music heritage’ (Cohen, Knifton, Marion, & Roberts, 2015, p. 10) is one of a metaphorical space for artistic inspiration and described by contrast with the dominant heritage discourse identified within Canterbury itself. Popular music origin and history narratives produce sites of ‘fan’ pilgrimage, which contribute to the distinctiveness, and appeal of cities and regions within a heritage cultural economy. The holistic heritage discourse encompasses ‘institutionalised’ processes of canonisation such as the blue plaque allocation carried out by local councils and organisations such as English Heritage (Brandellero & Janssen, 2014, p. 224; Roberts & Cohen, 2015, p. 193;) as well as online and offline DiY practices including vernacular commemoration and archiving (Bennett, 2009, p. 480; Collins & Long, 2015, p. 90; Long, 2015, p. 62). However, we see no blue plaques in Canterbury dedicated to the development of the Canterbury Sound. While relationships between music and places of origin are central to heritage and memory discourses, they are complex and evolve around both lived experiences and through the mechanisms of the imaginary (Ward, 2015, p. 195), which, in the context of a city like Canterbury, can contribute to the creation of ‘urban mythscapes’ (Bennett, 2002, p. 89). The Canterbury Sound can therefore be interpreted as a musical and cultural memory that draws both on its suggested connectedness to place and to its positioning within broader categories of artistic genre and aesthetic.

Bubbles of Inspiration vs. The Hegemony of Heritage: The Place of Music in Romanticising the City of Canterbury The dominant modern representation of heritage within Canterbury relates to what we call the hegemony of the medieval Cathedral. Thus, the contemporary image of the cathedral city of Canterbury in the South-East of England is

226    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman defined by its status of a heritage city, consolidated by the recognition of international organisations such as UNESCO. Canterbury’s economy is reliant on tourism (Santomil & O’Donoghue, 2016, p. 14) as well as student communities within higher-education institutions such as University of Kent, Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Creative Art. Attracting visitors and prospective university students, the cultural value and significance of Canterbury are interwoven into the urban landscape through medieval historic references. A recent example of this hegemony of heritage is found at the new student halls building in central Canterbury which is surrounded by advertising panels promoting luxury living through translating illustrations, motifs and characters from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales into the popular culture of hedonistic youth student lifestyle. The Canterbury Tales, written in the late fourteenth century, is a famous collection of stories dedicated to the pilgrims travelling to Canterbury in honour of Saint Thomas Becket. The ‘tales are a repetitive theme exploited throughout the city with an interactive museum, a pub, and even the restaurant, Canterbury Tails Fish & Chips. In relation to popular music shops in the city, only one carries a name containing a reference to locality – St Dunstan’s Canterbury Rock. Even alternative shops like the headshop Third Eye in Canterbury High Street has no reference to the Canterbury Sound. In contrast, Canterbury Rock features in the video Off Main St: Syd Arthur (2016c) in Canterbury. Here we see the band in discussion with the record shop owner about certain albums and genres of music. The title of the video, Off Main St. fits alongside the record shop which is situated outside the City Wall, and integrally relates to the Canterbury Sound as a marginalised music genre outside the musical mainstream and the city itself. Earlier Robert Wyatt described Canterbury as an eclectic, dream-like combination of present and past, which evokes a comparison with Syd Arthur’s visual and lyrical song ‘Hometown blues’ from 2014 album Sound Mirror (Harvest Records), which articulates the complex, yet persistent and inspiring relationship with place. The protagonist of the song walks through the city that has changed much, yet it stays the same, as the lyrics invite nostalgic feelings in a dreamy landscape, where futures are described as ‘forbidden’. The hometown portrayed in the song, an allusion of Canterbury, offers graceful sights to contemplate, but the lyrics’ protagonist highlights their need to leave the city in pursuit of a life somewhere else, with the intention and hope to eventually return to the city, never to be forgotten. The lyrics present an abstract, misplaced in time, dream-like, yet lived relationship with a hometown space. While Canterbury is not addressed directly in the song lyrics, the members of Syd Arthur grew up and formed the band there, which invites the assumption that Canterbury is the inspiration for the song. Furthermore, the lines ‘pondering your grace from the hills to the city’ allude, to those who have lived in Canterbury, the familiar and distinctive view of the cathedral and the town around it visible from the hills which surround, especially St Stephens’s Hill and the Chaucer Fields near University of Kent’s campus. These locations, Brian Hopper and Robert Wyatt described as the origin of the Canterbury Sound with informal music jam sessions near Giles Lane.

Canterbury Sound    227 The relationship between ‘Hometown blues’ and Canterbury is consolidated in Syd Arthur’s (2016a) video, which consists of a pre-war footage from the city. Beginning and ending with views of Canterbury Cathedral, the video takes its viewer on a ‘walk’ from Westgate Towers to the other end of the High Street. Using black and white, imperfect old footage of Canterbury to make a video for a contemporary song, reaffirms the city’s inextricable relationship with a sense of ‘retro’ aesthetic reminiscent of the city’s overall image based on its heritage and past. The song ‘Hometown blues’ also contains a solemn element: ‘Forbidden futures are distant to dream; I will return to you, but first I must live’ which alludes towards the limitations of the city, the necessity to leave it to live and achieve before, inevitably, returning. Robert Wyatt and Joel Magill rehearse these limitations associated with Canterbury’s small size and its ‘peripheral’ positionality in relation to prolific spaces of contemporary cultural production such as London. Positively, Brian Hopper identifies linkage between the old and new Canterbury Sound. He states: The continuation [of the Canterbury Sound] is quite organic, because it has involved individuals who interact with other people, who have similar influences or musical philosophies that they seek to diversify. […] New musicians’ styles have evolved a long way away from what we worked on in the early days, but there are certain elements of the so-called Canterbury Sound, which are common to someone as modern as Syd Arthur. I had a lot to do with them when they were starting up and I was very aware of what they were trying to do and the relationships they wanted to establish. As cultural intermediaries Joel Magill and Brain Hopper are working through the idea of popular music as memory while aware of the cultural economics of the Canterbury Sound. For example, a walk through Canterbury would not reveal the ‘sites’ where music that defined the ‘Sound’ of the city was created, on its way of achieving widespread national and international success. For example, the pub The Cricketers on the High Street, where Caravan founding member drummer Richard Coughlan lived with his family for many years, carries no markers of commemoration. The Canterbury Sound is excluded the dominant heritage discourse and narratives: thus, it can be interpreted as alternative to the mainstream approach to the city’s heritage-led image. The marginalisation of popular music in the construction of Canterbury’s contemporary image creates spaces for DiY commemoration of the perceived relationships between place and music. For example, street artist Stewy has decorated a plain white building on 56 Dover Street in Canterbury with a mural depicting Robert Wyatt, sitting right next to the door. At first, it does not become clear what the reasoning behind the choice of location for the mural is. Opposite the building, however, there is a venue currently functioning as a strip club which, until a few years ago was a key live music location named The Farmhouse, where Syd Arthur, Zoo for You, and other artists performed music and organised gigs which, drawing on an experimental stance,

228    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman derived from fusion of jazz, rock, folk and blues, and echoed the aesthetics of the ‘original’ acts of the Canterbury Sound. In an interview with Brian Hopper, it became clear that the location of Robert Wyatt’s mural carries connotations that lead further back to the early days of the genesis of the Canterbury Sound: it was on Dover Road that a public house called the Bee Hive (now a Chinese restaurant) provided space for Brian, his brother Hugh, Robert Wyatt and other musicians from the first generation of the ‘Sound’ to perform regularly. Yet, the Robert Wyatt mural on Dover Street is a DiY artefact, which can only be read by somebody already immersed in Canterbury and its popular music history. Appiah (2006, pp. 134–135) argues that ‘The connection people feel to cultural objects that are symbolically theirs […] – the connection of art through identity is powerful. It should be acknowledged. The cosmopolitan, though, wants to remind us of other connections.’ The important roles of the Farmhouse and the Bee Hive, placed at different times just outside the city walls, which surround the touristic centre of Canterbury, are both subject of interpretation through oral history that may be inaccessible to the visitors or new residents of the city. And while Robert Wyatt’s mural is on a building, inextricably bound to the specificity of location, DiY practices of commemoration and curation of past and present related to the Canterbury Sound often celebrate its global, virtual character within a cosmopolitan cultural mind-set (Bennett, 2004). This is demonstrated by the sense of borderlessness, fluidity and openness articulated in titles such as Facelift: The Canterbury sound and beyond, a fanzine published by Phil Howitt (1989–1999) near Manchester between 1989 and 1999, which is also now available through a website. The titles of Matt Watkins’s podcasts Canterbury soundwaves (2010–2013) and Canterbury sans Frontières (2013–till date) also illustrate the fluidity of a perception of place rather than an isolating fixation of locality. In an interview, Watkins (2010–2013) said: The Canterbury Soundwaves podcast is what I dreamed of as a possibility: basically, an exploration of the old sounds, all sort of sounds, in an almost-documentary style approach to a body of work in the past with a few references to things going on in the present. I interviewed local fans and it became a monthly thing. Enough people were interested locally, but also internationally, and I did 28 episodes. […] I started again as Canterbury Sans Frontiers and the new format gave me the excuse to put on elements of the old Canterbury music and update it with music that I feel carries the same spirit, which is so broad that I can put anything I want. But still feel that is, it is not any music I like. There is a lot of music that I like that I would not play. I feel that it would not be thematically coherent…. Here the Canterbury Sound is to be defined less by space of origination but by a specific, intangible musical ‘spirit’ or aesthetic. While it is difficult to outline the concrete relationship between the Canterbury Sound and broader popular music

Canterbury Sound    229 genre categorisations (Bennett, 2002), there are areas of similarity, which formulate a coherent musical cluster while also maintaining its ‘soundwave’-like, ‘sans frontières’ universality beyond location. Matt Watkins’ podcast Canterbury sans Frontières can be seen as DiY online work focused on articulating the ‘spirit’ of a borderless Canterbury musical aesthetic, and is accessible globally. According to the map of listening patterns featured on Canterbury sans Frontières, there are audiences situated geographically very far from the city of Canterbury in England. The Canterbury Sound has created a fan base around the world as a result from a ‘heritage rock’ DiY discourse, particularly evident in online practices (Bennett, 2004, 2009) which enable intergenerational, globalised involvement with the cluster of music and its relationship with place as symbol and geographical location. From interview data as well as online observations, it appears that some of the most prominent communities of interest and recognition of a Canterbury Sound phenomenon have emerged in Italy, France, Japan, and the United States. Key documentations of the Canterbury Sound include the collection Canterburied sounds (Voiceprint Records, 1998), which has four volumes and is assembled by Brian Hopper (2016) who says these were early recordings from ‘somewhere under the bed or in the loft’, and the film Romantic Warriors III: Canterbury Tales (Zeitgeist Media). These visual texts play an archival and curative role in relation to the genesis and contribution of the Canterbury Sound, and are produced through initiatives undertaken outside Canterbury or the South-East region of England. The Canterbury Sound, while creatively sourced to its origins and cultural intermediaries of the city, is also an imagined aesthetic beyond geographic location.

Venues: Marginalisation of Performance In an interview, Brian Hopper stated: ‘gigs were always difficult to get’. But The Wild Flowers played at Christ Church College, in November 1965 and Soft Machine and The Wild Flowers with the Graham Bond Organisation played together at Canterbury Technical College on 6 May 1967. The evidence from the listing of The Wild Flowers gigs shows that they played more venues in Kent than within Canterbury. Steve Piper, a singer-songwriter from Kent, points out: ‘It is not merely getting venues to play at, but today there is even the pressure to pay to play a gig.’ On this basis we can see that original and recent bands share a marginalisation of performance. The Canterbury Sound remains alternative to the heritage identity and economies that its place of origin has acquired. Therefore, it is relevant to question the role of the Canterbury Sound and its possible continuations within the music life of contemporary Canterbury. We identify two contributing factors to the marginalisation of the Canterbury Sound; first, in Canterbury large-scale venues tend to be dominated by student-orientated leisure economies, which are often inclined to position music less central in favour of more profitable services facilitating alcohol consumption (Spracklen, 2014). Second, cultural intermediaries have spoken about the central role of the cathedral of the city and the conservative connotation that this may carry as to what is appropriate popular music. However, there remain a number of smaller venues dedicated to live performance of popular music

230    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman with experimental nuances such as Lapis Lazuli’s regular Crash of Moons nights in Bramley’s bar. We found that the Canterbury Sound spirit in relation to the creation and dissemination of new music is linked to other locations in the area, such as Deal, rather than Canterbury. For example, Will Greenham of Smugglers Records states: There are bubbles of inspiration that people in Canterbury don’t get to see or hear. I think a lot of the bands are quite apathetic, estranged from Canterbury. We put more nights on in Thanet than we did in Canterbury: there is nowhere to play in Canterbury. But our connection, musically, is much deeper with Canterbury, with all its bands, amazing bands from Canterbury like Bison Bonasus, Boot Lagoon. Syd Arthur […] So I find it amazing that, still, in Canterbury you have this amazing music thing, bubbling and underway, but none of those bands play Canterbury, really. There are lots of theories about that with Canterbury; there is the city wall and the restrictions of music and… the Cathedral. And the money you need to make to keep a place in Canterbury, it can only come from doing DJ nights, it is a commercial business, really… the music in Canterbury is often just a thing… on the side; it is not music that’s at the centre. The ‘bubbles of inspiration’ is a metaphorical device that addresses the sense of isolation experienced by musicians in Canterbury; while there is a ‘Sound’ that has been continuously associated with Canterbury, this is not synonymous with the existence of a strong scene within the city. According to Joel Magill of Syd Arthur, bands emerging from the city and establishing aesthetic links with the ‘original’ incarnations of the Canterbury Sound have better opportunities for recognition abroad. Joel’s band Syd Arthur (2016b) had not played in Canterbury for years until their 2016 performance at University of Kent’s Gulbenkian Theatre and at the local Vinylstore Jr. shop. Overall, the city appears to be limiting the role of music not only in relation to developing in a heritage discursive trajectory, but also when it comes to contemporary live performance and music economies. Cultural intermediaries spoke of a nostalgic theme of remembering the role of venues such as Orange Street and the Farmhouse emerged. Music artists considered those locations to facilitate a music community in the first decade of the twenty-first century, which led to the formulation of a network of musicians such as Syd Arthur, Lapis Lazuli, Delta Sleep, Zoo for You and Boot Lagoon. The lack of a place to accommodate a music community is a key theme dominating interview data. At the same time, there are a number of small-scale music events with a DiY approach (Baker & Huber, 2013), which are considered valuable to the contemporary local scenes, especially Sam Bailey’s Free Range series and Adam Brodigan’s Crash of Moons. Adam, who plays in the band Lapis Lazuli, suggested that while Canterbury is a space of cultural conservatism, it offers freedom of expression, which is worth exploring. Adam Brodigan (research interview, 2016) states:

Canterbury Sound    231 Canterbury is where we went as teenagers to wear colourful clothes I just wanted, to provide Canterbury with what the other guys did years ago. It was lucky finding a venue that would let me sit at the door, take all the door money, and give it to the bands. […] It is about keeping it going. We can see that new artists linked with the experimental aesthetic of the Canterbury Sound, such as Lapis Lazuli, also experience similar venue marginalisation as generations of musicians linked with the ‘original’ Canterbury Sound. The lack of space for live music performance to facilitate distinct music networked communities and milieux are considered as a threat to Canterbury’s music proliferation. While the city has become associated with its ‘Sound’ within the cosmopolitan popular music aesthetic, this is not synonymous with the existence of a sizeable or growing music scene enabling the aesthetic continuation of that ‘Sound’.

Aesthetic Alternativity, Marginality and DIY Alternativity for the Canterbury Sound is explored in the experimental fusions of jazz, psychedelic rock and folk. It is also expressed both in relation to the lack of institutionalised popular music commemorations heritage and in the ‘underground’, small-scale character of music events. On the one hand, this approach is synonymous to marginalisation of popular music in relation to Canterbury’s heritage-oriented cultural economic discourses; on the other hand, it could be suggested that this context allows for the preservation of alternative or, for some, even subcultural connotations of the ‘original’ Canterbury Sound and its more recent embodiments. For Brian Hopper, the Canterbury Sound was, in the days of its pre-label genesis, a subcultural phenomenon in a relatively provincial cathedral city. Brian Hopper (2016) states: The Canterbury Sound is a definite subculture. Certainly, and in the early days it was. You would consider very weird, if you go in the local archives of the Kentish Gazette you can find photographs, we were thrown out from I think it was what is now the Black Griffin, because we had long hair, that sort of hippie culture. The hippie culture in a provincial city like Canterbury, there must have been a very few people at the time. While the early participants in the formulation of the Canterbury Sound accumulated subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995) through their style, considered deviant at the time, since then processes of normalisation and commodification of style have taken place. Furthermore, with the emergence of multiple HE institutions, commodified youth styles central to the marketing strategies of key clothing outlets, became part of everyday life of Canterbury. Furthermore, while the Canterbury Sound is not a visible aspect of the heritage layout of the city, there have been some efforts for institutional recognition, particularly in relation to

232    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman Robert Wyatt’s contribution. He received an honorary doctorate and was a visiting speaker at a discussion/performance dedicated to his work at the University of Kent. These institution-led events, however, have been interpreted as controversial or inconsistent with the character of the music’s meanings by some of its intermediaries such as Matt Watkins (2016) states: It’s nice to be recognised, if you live here. But Robert Wyatt left Canterbury as soon as he could. The University is a profit-driven institution after all and their key interest to attain counter-cultural credibility. Now they have invited Robert to come be interviewed in public by the vice-chancellor. Now, the vice-chancellor is genuinely a fan, he grew up with progressive rock but I think it will be awkward… We identify this awkwardness as ambivalence in relation to the Canterbury Sound with the official canonising acts through inclusion with mainstream heritage discourse which Bennett (2015) sees as a related ‘problem’ with popular music heritage. While ‘museumising’ (Nettl, 1992, p. 382) the Canterbury Sound is a danger to the evolution of a cultural phenomenon, the DiY, vernacular approach to collecting and curating popular music histories and new re-incarnations, especially from within a circle of actively involved artists and intermediates, is perceived as an authentic route that enables longevity (Fremaux, 2015). We found a tension within the use of the term Canterbury Sound, where the connotations of Canterbury can be used by artists who belong to the original ‘sound’ as a marketing category, while at the same time new artists such as Syd Arthur romanticise this Sound from the 1960s and 1970s alongside their relationship to it. The ethnographic data informing this chapter, illustrate the struggle between Canterbury as ‘myth’ and ‘reality’. The organic genesis of the Canterbury Sound that Brian Hopper describes echoes the networked formations of other popular music phenomena such as Birmingham’s post-industrial metal (Weinstein, 2014), the ‘Bristol Sound’ associated with the genesis of trip hop (Johnson, 1996; Webb, 2004) and the ‘mythologised’ Brisbane punk within Australian popular music (Rogers, 2010). These examples articulate narratives of music origin in relation to place and invite for investigating the longevity of music aesthetics and cultural meanings (Lashua et al., 2014). The Canterbury Sound has also become the subject to music performances and events, which demonstrate intergenerational interaction through aesthetic influence. For example, on 28 October 2017 the event Canterbury Sound: Place, music and myth, organised by the authors of this chapter took place; in July 2017 Lapis Lazuli played with Gong, originating from Daevid Allen, in Ramsgate, only half an hour away from Canterbury; in 2015, young band Boot Lagoon performed with Brian Hopper and Jack Hues at University of Kent; and Syd Arthur (2014) articulating the positionality of the Canterbury Sound within a broader progressive, rock-orientated music-world, were Yes’s warm-up act on their US tour. Such practices demonstrating the relatedness between younger and older generations of artists invite an investigation into their links outside staged performances.

Canterbury Sound    233 From the interview data, it emerged that within the Canterbury area, there are key figures such as Brian Hopper and Jack Hues who, with their personal involvement with education and creative processes with young artists, enable the lived, as well as symbolic, practices of artistic and knowledge inheritance in relation to the Canterbury Sound. For example, key artists such as Joel Magill and Adam Brodigan graduated from the Commercial Music course at Canterbury Christ Church University, where they interacted with lecturer musician Jack Hues. He is known for his participation in rock band Wang Chung and work with Sam Bailey as part of Jack Hues’ Quartet, which has embraced a conscious relatedness to the Canterbury Sound aesthetic sensibility. The longevity and continuation of the Canterbury Sound have been, at least partially, enabled by the networks of cultural intermediaries. According Maria Sullivan-Koloto, who was a bass guitar player at Delta Sleep and is now an electronic musician, the Canterbury Sound is a cyclical phenomenon with peaks and dips, which are dependent on the availability of a designated, physical space for music communities such as ‘Orange Street’ (now Ballroom) and Farmhouse (now Flats). At the same time, the ethnographic insights accessed by this research, suggest that Canterbury is only a starting point, or a place of short-term interactions between musicians, prior to mature stages of their careers, when many of them leave the city in search of recording and opportunities. Therefore, the Canterbury Sound often occurs with little geographical connection with the city itself. This has become the basis of critical comments, suggesting that the title of the phenomenon is a myth, a chimera that romanticises a place where little happens. In out interview, Matt Watkins elaborated on the tensions between symbolic and lived realities in relation to Canterbury and its ‘Sound.’ Matt Watkins (2016) states: The relationship between place and music is complicated there are many layers to it. There is that huge body of music that has the name attached to Canterbury; for example, in the 1960s’ it was the Daevid Allen Trio and the Wilde Flowers and up to the 80s’ a whole body of work including Soft Machine and Caravan emerged. […] But almost all the music was recorded in London, very little happened here. If you had to put a label on this cluster of music, if you were going to call it something - Canterbury is as good as any, because it isolates the origins of it, as I see it. But it does not mean it happened here and that is a problem. Here the tension between music origins and music development is apparent. Matt’s reflections on the loose relationships between geographical place and the body of musical work, suggests that the longevity and continuations of the Canterbury Sound are also more fluid, rather than fixed, to the territories of the city. Thus, we see a juxtaposition between the reality and symbolism of place and its role for music as expressed by Robert Wyatt (research correspondence, 2017) in a personal message to confirm that the Canterbury Sound was ‘intuitive as a musician to make him feel like fish out of water’. Both Wyatt and Hopper emphasised that they were unaware at the time of the impact that their work was going to attain

234    Asya Draganova and Shane Blackman over time. The relationship between the Canterbury Sound and suggested place of origination is multi-layered, fluid and contested. It unites both lived geographical contexts where milieux of cultural production emerge, and the creation of a symbolic mythologised place that inspires a specific approach to artistic creativity.

Conclusion: Music and the Immaterial Experiences of Place The alternativity of the Canterbury Sound can be defined as an aesthetic of misrule, which the cultural intermediaries past and present have explored on a romantic and commercial basis. The ‘Sound’ is excluded from the dominant image of heritage within the city of Canterbury. The Canterbury Sound’s authenticity is promoted through social media and DiY sites of vernacular popular music heritage practices. The chapter contributes to discussion on the relationships between places and their assigned ‘sounds’ within popular music as well as the ways in which heritage discourses incorporate them. The Canterbury Sound and its contemporary continuations experience limitations in their relationship with the local scene, if scene here is to be interpreted as a conglomeration of spaces within the city that enable the formation and consolidation of music communities around creation and performance of music (Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Straw, 1991). The disconnectedness between music and location relates to the struggles of cultural environments on the ‘periphery’ (Chambers, 1993, p. 205), where there is not an abundance of opportunities in large urban cities. The longevity of the relationship of Canterbury with the Canterbury Sound as a genealogy of alternativity acts as a confirmation that association between place and music can be immaterial, ones that carry an ‘aura’ of authenticity (Benjamin, 1939: pp. 182–185, 211–244) without creating tangible boundaries.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the editors of this collection – Dr Samantha Holland and Professor Karl Spracklen – for supporting our contribution to the book. Special thanks to Birmingham City University and Canterbury Christ Church University for encouraging us to invest our research time into developing our Canterbury Sound study and chapter. We would also like to express our gratitude here to everyone who took part in our ethnographic fieldwork. As co-ordinators of the event, Canterbury Sound: Place, Music and Myth, which took place in October 2017 and also emerged from our research, we would like to thank the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church University as well as Canterbury Festival for funding our initiative and providing guidance. This event is partially reflected in this chapter and has provided material for further work and publications linked to the Canterbury Sound. The Canterbury Sound day-event combined a series of performances from contemporary artists linked with the phenomenon; talks and interactive sessions with cultural researchers, artists and intermediaries; and an archival and art exhibition.

Canterbury Sound    235

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Conclusion

Making Sense of Alternativity in Leisure and Culture: Back to Subculture? Karl Spracklen Abstract What does it mean to be alternative? What is alternativity, and how does it relate to other attempts to make sense of those on the margins? In the first part of this chapter, I will undertake a history and philosophy of alternativity, from deviance through subcultures to neo-tribes. This will focus partly on popular notions of alternativity, and partly on academic attempts to understand it in various disciplines and subject fields. In the second part of the chapter, the author will focus on how alternativity has been explored in two specific subject fields – leisure studies and popular cultural studies – to make the claim that both subject fields have failed through different means to get to groups with the idea of the alternative: leisure studies have failed through a lack of theory, and cultural studies have failed through a lack of empirical research. In the final part of the chapter, I will attempt to reconcile leisure and culture, and I will sketch out a new theory and empirical programme of alternative leisure that returns to the idea of subculture as counterculture. Keywords: Alternativity; culture; deviance; history; leisure; theory

Introduction What does it mean to be alternative? What is alternativity, and how does it relate to other attempts to make sense of those on the margins? The contents of this

Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Emerald Studies in Alternativity and Marginalization (ESAM), 239–253 Copyright © 2018 by Karl Spracklen All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi:10.1108/978-1-78756-511-120181015

240    Karl Spracklen edited book show that academics are beginning to grapple with these questions. Our contributors are already tackling the problem and building a picture of alternativity today – from the wonderful fashions of mediated sea-punk and heavy metal to gender fluidity and radical politics. The contents of the book so far show the seriousness of the research programme, and the complexity of the theoretical frameworks put into place: feminist, Marxist, post-Marxist, post-structuralist, postmodern, liquid. But there is still much work to be done to turn this work into a working theory and empirical programme about the alternative. This chapter is informed by the diversity and depth of the chapters that have come before it, as well as my own interest in leisure studies and what might be called the sociology of leisure and culture. In the first part of this chapter, I will undertake a history and philosophy of alternativity, from deviance through subcultures to neo-tribes. This will focus on four related conceptual frames: the deep history of alternativity; notions of alternativity in classical Greece and Rome and in the Abrahamic religions; popular notions of alternativity in what might be called the age of modernity; and academic attempts to understand it in various disciplines and subject fields. In the second part of the chapter, I will focus on how alternativity has been explored in two specific subject fields – leisure studies and popular cultural studies – to make the claim that both subject fields have failed, for different reasons, to get to grips with the idea of the alternative: leisure studies have failed through a lack of theory; and cultural studies have failed through a lack of empirical research. In the final part of the chapter, I will attempt to reconcile leisure and culture, and sketch out a new theory and empirical programme of alternative leisure that returns to the idea of subculture as counterculture.

A History and Philosophy of Alternativity A Deep History of Alternativity Modern humans have evolved from earlier mammal species, and have retained the social hierarchies and social behaviour of those ancestors, which we can see at work in our evolutionary cousins: chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys and so on (Smail, 2007). These animals develop closely related groups in which dominance hierarchies operate as a social norm. Individuals know their place in the pecking order, and the social norms of acceptable behaviour are learned through imitation, learning and experience. In the long, deep history of human evolution, humans acquired language, culture and self-consciousness, but retained much of the social order of our ancestors. Being alternative, thinking differently to the norm, must have emerged in this unknowable period.1 In the thousands of years of pre-history in which we retained a hunter–gatherer lifestyle, the small communities in which we lived did not generally allow for individual rejection of the norms and values of the group: this is the period in which families, customs and 1

One could argue that thinking differently conferred an evolutionary advantage in a world that changed dramatically over the time humans evolved. But there is no way to test this.

Conclusion    241 ultimately religion are constructed through culture to maintain the social order. The norms of the community could be used to reject those who did not contribute to the community, and those who rejected the values of the community. Behaviour, then, was strictly controlled, as can be evidenced in similar cultures explored by anthropologists (Britt & Cuffel, 2007; Turner, 1969). Although some individuals presumably rejected the norms and values of their communities because they wanted to live in an alternative fashion according to different rules, it is difficult to know for certain what happened to them in the tens of thousands of years of pre-history. We can speculate that some individuals may have chosen to leave their communities to try to live alone or with others, and some individuals were certainly ostracised or killed for rejecting the norms and values. In many other cases, those individuals were probably the original exemplars of the liminal types who lived on the margins of pre-modern cultures: the magicians, the wise women, and others co-opted by the community and its social order to serve variously as scapegoats and interlocutors between the gods and humans (Turner, 1969). This liminal function served the hegemonic order of the ruling powers of the community: alternativity was a way of marking out those who were to be blamed for any problem such as famine or plague; it was also a way of showing the rest of the community what happened when people transgressed. With the development of agriculture, new social norms and values emerged in human communities (Scott, 2017). Surplus resources led to more humans, which led to the rise of villages, towns and cities. Formal religions established complicated rituals of prayers and sacrifice. Political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of fewer people, who constructed for themselves myths of divine favour and purity of blood. In the rural spaces that underpinned these cultures, the social order was essentially constructed as it had been before agriculture, but conformity was also policed through the power of the ruling elites: farm-workers became bonded serfs, or slaves, brutalised and kept in their place (Britt & Cuffel, 2007). Thinking or behaving alternative must have continued as always, but there was no tolerance of dissent in such conditions. However, the towns and cities that emerged in this period of history were spaces that provided the opportunity to be alternative. First, the new towns and cities enabled individual citizens to build their own wealth and find time to be at leisure. Second, the new towns and cities developed new forms of culture and leisure that questioned the old order’s norms and values. And finally, the new towns and cities helped the dissemination of ideas through the invention of writing and the rise of literacy.

The Alternative in the Classical Period and in the Abrahamic Religions We can see evidence of alternativity in the literature that has survived from this period, which has shaped and defined much of Western society: the secular literature of Classical Rome and Greece; and the sacred literature of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both these literatures have been used to define belonging and exclusion through the last few thousand years, but that belonging and exclusion has been re-shaped through the years of transmission and reception.

242    Karl Spracklen In the culture and society of Classical Greece, there was some freedom to be alternative and to disagree with the norms and values of mainstream society – providing one was a free (male) citizen of the city in which you lived, or one had the protection of a city’s ruling elites. In the city-states of Greece, free men with wealth could debate matters of state and matters of philosophy: asking questions about how to live the good life could mean rejecting the social order, the norms and values, and the stories. It was possible to be a philosopher who challenged myths and struggled with the gods; it is possible to be an atheist, to be a cynic about morals or a sceptic about true knowledge (Whitmarsh, 2016, 2017). Similarly, it was possible to write plays for the theatre that played with this theme of struggling with and rejecting the norms of the mainstream (Walton, 2015). And beyond philosophy and the arts, alternativity – or rather, liminality – was tolerated in the diversity of religious practices that took place in the Greek world, and the hybrid nature of cults that originated in Greek city-states in the East and in Africa and Egypt. All these ideas – rejecting norms and values in philosophy and theatre, embracing hybridity and liminality in the adoption of Othered cults – were adopted by the Romans, who adopted Greek culture whole-heartedly, especially following the invasion and conquest of Greece. With the spread of Roman cities and Roman society came an elite culture that valued – or at least allowed – alternative, counter-hegemonic ideas to be discussed. Alongside that was an urban popular culture in which the liminal, transgressive could be celebrated through festivals and sacred rites (Teixidor, 2015). Both forms of alternative culture suffered attacks and legislation from moralists among the ruling elites, and the Stoicism that dominated Roman philosophy is a school that embraces conformity for the good of the soul – but these spaces and modes of transmission for alternativity survived hundreds of years (Whitmarsh, 2016). The decline of these classical forms of alternativity was a direct result of the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. Under successive Christian Roman emperors, polytheism and variants of Christianity not acknowledged as orthodox were banned. Secular philosophy was constrained and Christianised, and secular culture was limited or banned altogether (Cameron, 2010; Whitmarsh, 2016). Christianity took its idea of exclusive divine truth from Judaism: both of these religions had lists of things banned and things allowed, and both of these religions saw their believers as the only people with the moral guide to ­immortality.2 It was Catholic Christianity, though, which became the most important force in shaping Western society, as that society developed out of the Roman Empire into Medieval Christendom. In this society, the Pope controlled orthodox belief, and the Church justified the divine right of kings to rule and make laws (Southern, 2016). Christian Europe in this period believed that any deviation from – or transgression of – the norms and values of society was the work of the Devil, or the work of individual sinners inspired by the Devil (Stanford, 2010). Being

2

The exact same moral certainty about belonging through following the rules in the book can be found in other religions, and Islam is a close relation of Judaism and Christianity not just in terms of geography and history, but in moral philosophy too.

Conclusion    243 alternative was severely limited and subject to punishments, whether it was being Jewish outside the spaces allowed to Jews, or wearing clothes not allowed for one’s social class, or reading a text banned from the university curriculum. When Luther rejected Papal authority and Christendom was torn between Catholicism and Protestantism, both halves of western Europe believed in Good and Evil culture and behaviour, and the work and influence of the Devil in everyday life (Stanford, 2010). Indeed, the more extreme forms of Protestantism believed firmly in moral rectitude in a way that reflects the behaviour of conservatives in Islam: rejecting music, dancing and alcohol as ways of temptation in the profane space, and rejecting idolatry in the scared (Acheson, 2014). In this long Christian millennium, alternativity was not allowed, or it was identified with the work of the Devil and subject to the fires of purification.3

Popular Notions of Alternativity Being alternative was made possible by the Enlightenment. As Habermas (1989) shows, the Enlightenment was a result of the rise of capitalism, the rise of mercantile classes and the free exchange of ideas possible in the coffee shops and urban spaces of Europe. In this period, philosophers, poets and other writers started to explore the possibility of challenging the norms and values of Church and Palace. Young people growing into adulthood could read books which argued that all the assumptions about the truth and timelessness of polite society were a nonsense (Israel, 2009). Young people stated to wear fashions and do things in their leisure that marked them as alternative. In Rousseau, these people found alternative ways to live away from the evils of society (O’Dea, 2016); in Voltaire, they found alternative political spaces that rejected received wisdom (Pearson, 2005); in Goethe’s young Werther, they found the idea of the doomed romantic, someone who rejects the awfulness and fakeness of modernity with his own life (Jack, 2014). As the radical ideology of the Enlightenment was defeated by the combination of the reactionary traditional conservative elites and the new industrialists, alternativity as anti-modernity was expressed through the nineteenth century (McFarland, 2014). Following Rousseau and Goethe, this counter-hegemonic movement retreated from the cities to find meaning and purpose in utopian communities, farms and anarcho-syndicalist organisations (Guarneri, 1994). At the same time, modern capitalism started to commodify the young Romantics in Europe and the West, with books, plays and magazines and newspapers sold that explored the idea of rejecting the mainstream and finding one’s true self through being alternative. These ideas of alternativity were consumed by young people 3

Liminal spaces and transgressive practices and identities continued, for example harvest festivals, taverns and carnivals. The intrinsic need by some humans to be alternative, the need to transgress, had to be met somehow. Medieval states and Popes did not have the structures or resources to successfully police transgression, so people could evade censure and punishment – but as Elias (1978, 1982) shows, the controls got tighter and more effective the nearer Europe came to modernity.

244    Karl Spracklen searching for meaning in the brutal reality of empire and industry: these searchers at the end of the nineteenth century found atheism and science, socialism and communism, vegetarianism and feminism, but also nationalism and antiSemitism (Miller, 2013). The two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century were a consequence of this break with tradition and the search for something alternative, authentic, new. The wars did not disrupt the commodification of alternativity, though entire generations of consumers were lost in the horror. The brutality did not stop the development of the culture industries, and the rise of popular culture as mass culture. The brutality did encourage many young people to reject the nationalism and mainstream values that had shaped it, and these people continued to shape their alternative lifestyles and values. The invention of cinema, radio, music records and television focussed the energy of marketing divisions on targeting those consumers still able to consume: young people in the West, factory workers with disposable income, the growing number of whitecollar workers. All these were sold products that made them feel good, and made them feel that they belonged to the West (Briggs & Burke, 2009). But part of that capitalist market was designed to appeal to people who did not feel they belonged, and wanted something to buy that allowed them to feel they rejected the mainstream. So, as individuals experimented with alternative lifestyles and politics in the second-half of the last century, trying to reject capitalism and the mainstream, they found capitalists trying to sell them the alternative lifestyle through material culture and leisure. Today, then, alternativity has a specific place in popular culture. It is a form of disobedience exemplified by the bikers in The Wild One, something that is transgressive and dangerous but only up to a point. It is tolerated, and tolerable. The fashions and nihilism attract young people to them as a phase of teenage rebellion – but most grow up and grow out of it. If this stereotype from popular culture is true, what does it mean for those who stay alternative? I will answer that later in the chapter.

Academic Theories of Alternativity Most of the research about alternativity comes from social scientific attempts to make sense about the problem of deviancy. This research has been funded by governments trying to keep order in the period of late modernity (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2010). Individuals who are alternative are deemed to be abnormal, deviant and lacking some psychosocial that nurtures conformity and respect for the social order (Akers, 2011). This academic literature on deviancy has increased as the problems of rationalisation and modernity have led to entire generations of young people left with uncertain futures. These young people have been identified as potential sources of social unrest, and what is euphemistically called anti-social behaviour. Policy-makers trying to tackle this deviancy look for easy solutions, such as predicting the likelihood of anti-social behaviour from other forms of abnormal behaviour (having a tattoo, listening to heavy metal music – that is all the things we might call alternative); or asking

Conclusion    245 if there is a genetic cause of deviancy. Academics working on deviancy often provide easy answers that give the policy-makers the link between alternative culture and deviancy: heavy metal, in particular, has been claimed to be the source of a multitude of sins against decent Western society by hundreds of social psychologists (Brown, 2011). The more interesting sustained academic lens on alternativity has come from radical sociology, feminist sociology and radical youth studies. All this work takes a structuralist epistemology to the notion of the alternative, and it is all inspired by the work of Stuart Hall, and his colleagues at the CCCS. For Hall (2016), youth cultures have the possibility of being countercultural when they provide Gramscian counter-hegemonic agency to the youth who are in those cultural spaces (Gramsci, 1971). Drawing on ideas about emergent, dominant and residual culture sketched out by Raymond Williams (1977), Hall finds that the countercultural status of any given youth culture is contingent on the circumstances of its formation, and on the stage in Williams’ model at which it sits. For Hall, then, to be an alternative culture is to be genuinely countercultural, running against the dominant popular culture’s hegemony, and challenging that hegemonic status. Historically, in the second half of the twentieth century and into the current century, few if any alternative youth cultures have been genuinely transformative of the mainstream in the way Hall hoped.4 Most countercultural movements have either been co-opted by capitalism and commodification into the mainstream (such as soap operas having token goths dressed a bit spookily as main characters, as Coronation Street in the United Kingdom did with Sophie Webster), or they have faded away as residual cultures like the Teddy Boys. In response to Hall, others have posited that alternative youth cultures might be better understood as subcultures. Hebdige (1979) suggests that alternative cultures are spaces where individuals can do identity work, adapting and changing previous fashions and tastes to make novel subcultures. Hebdige agrees with Hall that most alternative youth culture is a product of capitalism and the mainstream culture, and essentially dismisses the subculture around him at the time (punk and skinhead) as failing to be countercultural and counter-hegemonic. Despite that, Hebdige’s notion of subculture has been adopted by most academics over the years who have studied alternativity, and has been taken to indicate individual agency and autonomy in people choosing to be alternative. More recently, Bennett (1999, 2005) and others have argued that subculture is a term fixed in the Gramscian worldview of Hall and Hebdige, and the world has changed since they were mapping the struggle between capitalism and the working classes. In this new world of fluid identities, postmodern power relationships and globalisation, it is better to see alternative cultures as being neo-tribes. These neo-tribes are identities, fashions and tastes individuals can choose to inhabit and belong to as they wish – we all, says Maffesoli (1996), have multiple neo-tribes we choose to belong to, crossing from one to the other as easy as switching websites. 4

Hall had hopes for Rastafarianism, but it has (so far) failed to effect change.

246    Karl Spracklen

Alternativity in Leisure Studies and Popular Cultural Studies Alternativity in Leisure Studies5 In leisure studies, there is a glaring absence of theories on alternativity. There is a small but significant portfolio of research on alternativity, subcultures, neo-tribes, transgression, music and lifestyles. There is a clear interest in the leisure lives of the marginal, but that interest comes with a belief in social justice and the emancipatory potential of good forms of leisure (Spracklen, 2009, 2011). The most salient theories on alternativity in leisure studies come from debates about dark leisure – or, rather, from arguments about deviant leisure and abnormal leisure. The first and most significant theory of deviant leisure appears in the work of Robert Stebbins (1996, 1997, 2001), as another category of leisure alongside the categories of serious leisure and casual leisure previously defined and explored by Stebbins (1982), and what he later called project-based leisure (Stebbins, 2005). Deviant leisure can be casual or serious, with casual deviant leisure being the tolerable kind undertaken for pleasure, and serious deviant leisure being more pre-planned and intolerable (such as murdering someone). Stebbins (1997) is working here with a traditional, psychological model of what is considered to be deviance. Deviance is un-problematically accepted as unacceptable behaviour, the actions of those considered by priests, law-makers and elites as beyond the pale of ‘normal’ society. But what is intolerable, what is tolerable and what is not deviant at all in leisure according to Stebbins is defined by societal norms and values that frame his worldview. The consequences for Stebbins (2001) is that hedonist leisure behaviour brings dangers to health and to society. The most important contribution to dark leisure in leisure theory comes in the work of Chris Rojek (1995, 1999, 2000, 2010). In Rojek (1999) he defines and discusses what he calls abnormal leisure, a synonym for deviant leisure or dark leisure. Rojek argues that there are three specific forms of abnormal leisure: invasive; mephitic; and wild. All these three forms can be combined to account for and explain the need for all kinds of abnormal leisure. Rojek believes that abnormal leisure is a product of the crisis of the self in late modernity: a consequence of the rise of alienation, post-industrialisation and liquidity (a theme he returns to in Rojek, 2010). Each of the three forms are particular responses to this existential condition. In describing the three forms, Rojek comes closest to the idea of alternativity emerging in my brief history and philosophy. Mephitic leisure is a long-term and carefully planned response to alienation. It is a rational turn for individuals. But mephitic leisure is related to the third, most transgressive form of abnormal leisure, wild leisure. Wild leisure is an intermittent and truly liminal response to contemporary conditions, although Rojek is drawing on older ideas of the carnivalesque and transgression in the work of Bakhtin (1984). Historically, societies have always experienced mephitic and wild leisure, with individuals 5

I base much of this analysis of Stebbins and Rojek on a paper I published critiquing their theories of dark leisure (Spracklen, 2017).

Conclusion    247 and groups profaning laws and morals, and with organised mephitic leisure being transformed into wild leisure by those actors who take it too far. Rojek seems to believe that wild leisure is more likely to occur than mephitic leisure these days, because the rules that govern and control mephitic leisure are so harsh in late modernity that individuals feel they have no choice than to be wild. So far, Stebbins and Rojek are the only theorists in leisure studies who have contemplated alternativity, but only through the lens of dark leisure. In Stebbins’ social psychological modelling, being alternative becomes morally questionable deviant leisure. For Rojek, being alternative is a way of resisting capitalism and the alienation of modernity. He sees alternativity as mephitic leisure when it is mimetic and a response to alienation, or wild leisure when it is truly transgressive. The problem with Rojek’s abnormal leisure is the circularity of its argument: abnormal leisure is leisure that is abnormal. This leaves little room to provide a critical analysis of the abnormal in culture and leisure, what is the alternative culture. Can a way forward be found in cultural sociology, cultural studies and media and communication studies – what might collectively be called popular cultural studies?

Alternativity in Popular Cultural Studies An analysis of the sprawling range of popular cultural studies shows that although there are many academic writings on alternativity (witness the contributors to this book), there is no consistent critical approach to the problem of the alternative. I contend that there are four related reasons what this is the case. The first reason for the lack of consistency is the problem of aesthetics and assumptions about the importance of particular cultural or subcultural forms. We can see this at work in popular music studies. This subject field has been dominated by researchers and theorists who have established a canon of artists and genres, which is aesthetically and politically acceptable as the subject of criticism. So, for instance, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley and punk are considered to be worthy of special issues, edited collections and conferences. The taste-makers in the subject field like these artists and genres and think the music is worthy, and people who write about these artists and genres and the others in the canon find it easier to have their work accepted. Punk is seen as truly alternative so that is in the canon, but until recently heavy metal was dismissed as unauthentic and hence not alternative and not worthy of being considered for serious critical analysis. This is tied up with a related problem of the fetishisation of formal aesthetic theory and material practice over sociological critique. Again, in popular music studies, this can be seen in the favouring of work that provides musicological analysis over ethnographic analysis in the writing of Tagg (2011) and others like him. The second reason for the lack of consistency in the critical analysis of alternativity is the continued adherence to some form of postmodernism, poststructuralism and/or some other form of postmodern epistemology and ontology. There are too many authors claiming there is no truth, just one narrative or discourse among many others, with every truth and no truth being equally true.

248    Karl Spracklen The slide towards neo-tribes is a perfect example of this post-something fallacy: essentially all choice and all agency is identified as having equal value, and we are left with the idea that the poor of the world just need to change the music they are streaming (through their nonexistent phones? – Spracklen, 2015) to find meaning and purpose and equality. There is some value in the work of post-modernists and post-structuralists, but much of it is complete nonsense. If we deny social reality and the ability to identify it, we deny doing any sociology and making any difference to the world. We want to be able to say people with power are egregious, and we want to be able to say that they maintain that power through the manipulation of popular culture and the repression of the lower classes, women, minorities and others. The third reason for the lack of consistency is the geographical or methodological turn. Following Thrift (2007), many academics in popular cultural studies have abandoned thinking in terms of culture as culture is representational. Instead these academics try to capture snapshots of people and objects interacting in spaces. This produces some marvellous narratives, and some outstanding description. But if we as academics fail to try to explain what we are trying to research, then it becomes a form of voyeurism and Othering: we just go to the space and point at the people in it. The final reason is the relational turn in cultural sociology: too many academics in this subject field have been mesmerised by Bourdieu (1986), and want either to defend him and his methods strongly, or to argue about the weaknesses of his work and his methods. There is much that is useful in Bourdieu’s work, and I have used him myself to make sense of cultural capital, fields and habitus. But he has become over-referenced in cultural sociology. Just as Derrida and Foucault were fashionable in the 1990s among academics, Bourdieu is the latest French philosopher-sociologist who has become the star around which sociologists shape their own ideas. His networked approach to data analysis has allowed cultural sociologists to indulge in positivism and scientism, making grand inferences from pretty models (Bottero & Crossley, 2011; Crossley, 2015). And while this social-network analysis work is useful, it is limited in what it can tell us about the thoughts and lived experiences of actors as constrained agents. The dominance of Bourdieu in cultural sociology is replicated by the dominance of other post-modern theorists in cultural studies. What this means is an overtheorisation of culture and alternativity, and an absence of qualitative, empirical research.

Summary Both subject fields have failed through different means to get to groups with the idea of the alternative and the marginal: leisure studies have failed through a lack of theory, and cultural studies have failed through a lack of empirical research. In the final part of the chapter, I will attempt to reconcile leisure and culture, and sketch out a new theory and empirical programme of alternative leisure that returns to the idea of subculture as counterculture.

Conclusion    249

Towards a New Theory and Empirical Programme Leisure and culture actually represent the same human desire, the same human need for expression and freedom. What we want is meaning and purpose: we want to prosper, we want to be liked, we want to belong and we want to believe that our culture and our leisure are our own choices that allow us to express that meaning and purpose (Spracklen, 2009, 2011). If we believe in some sort of deity or afterlife we may feel this meaning and purpose is directed towards the goal of getting satisfaction beyond this world. If we accept the wisdom of modern science we reject such extrinsically motivated behaviours and are forced to find meaning and purpose on this world: in the moral framework we set in our own heads for what we believe to be right or wrong; in the ethical behaviour that shapes our interactions with others; and in the people and the work we leave behind when our living cells decay into the atoms and molecules from which we are formed. The problem we humans face is the inhuman nature of the world in modernity. We live in a cruel world where the powerful have increased their grip on us. With the rise of the modern nation-state we became citizens in the callous hands of bureaucracies and systems that monitor our every move, and our every request for support or information (Habermas, 1984, 1987). The modern nation-state measures our health, decides what food and drink we can consume, and regulates the sports and leisure activities it thinks are morally bad for us. Our children’s education is shaped by politicians seeking re-election and support from rightwing newspapers. Universities are judged not by their ability to make fully mature humans but by the proportion of graduates in employment. Nation-states inculcate in their citizens discipline and obedience, designing nationalist ceremonies and practices, from saluting the flag to allowing the obscene notion of hereditary monarchy (the divine right to rule) to continue. Modern nation-states do have some things in their favour, where they have them: equality before the law, universal franchises, human rights and democratic policy-making. But especially in this new century, these rights and freedoms have been challenged and reversed. It is no longer clear that governments work in our best interests. In the West, people have become dis-enfranchised and alienated from the political systems dominated by corporate lobbyists: politicians and civil servants are reviled by citizens across the political spectrum for their self-interest, their cultivation of connections with bankers and industrialists, their appointment of friends and family to well-paid jobs in the system. Beyond the West, the practices and words of democracy are used by evil people to establish ugly dictatorships with ideology (socialism, nationalism, Islamism), a patina for self-enrichment. In the aftermath of the Second World War, politicians and policy-makers seemed to be determined to build a better world, where there was social welfare, education for all, universal human rights and more equality. The public sphere was dominated by people working to the goal of making other people’s lives better, at the level of nation-states and in transnational organisation such as the European Union and the United Nations. There was an awareness about the huge structural inequalities that dominated modernity as they dominated pre-modern cultures.

250    Karl Spracklen On structural inequalities associated with race and gender, legislation was passed in many countries that outlawed racial and gender discrimination. Racial inequality in the West was a deeply problematic product of early modernity, specifically the American use of slaves and the imperialist expansion of European countries into countries beyond Europe. As neither of these historical circumstances has been fully addressed, the problems of inequality continue. Gender inequality, while legislated against and fought against in the cultural space of the public sphere, also continues to shape the modern world and make women less free and less powerful than men. And the victories earned by radical feminists in the late twentieth century – from autonomy to abortion rights – are being questioned by two kinds of gender traditionalists: by religious fundamentalists in Christianity and Islam, who insist on women being subservient, modest and secondary to men in the family because their god says so; and by the men’s movement in the altright, who believe women to be biologically inferior and therefore unable to have the same rights in the public sphere as men. The inequality and injustice in the modern world is caused by the gross acceptance of the instrumental rationality of capitalism. The neoliberal form of global capitalism argues that any given society or nation-state will be better off if markets are allowed to operate freely (Habermas, 1989). The theory goes that people can make better deals as buyers and sellers at the market rate. Better deals mean more profits, and more wealth, which is used by the rich to spend on goods, which returns the money to the economy. There is no doubt that capitalism has increased the overall wealth of the world, and some of that wealth transfers to the poor through rich people buying the services and goods of the poor – and some of the wealth created can be taken by nation-states in the form of taxes, which can be and has been directed at the welfare of citizens. Capitalism has historically been the driver behind the Industrial Revolution, the development of modern science and more recently the digital revolution (Briggs & Burke, 2009; Spracklen, 2011, 2015). But there are huge problems with the theory of capitalism, and the neoliberal ideology in which it operates today. In the West at the height of modernity, capitalism needed well-trained and relatively contented working classes. Workers were of course cheated out of the worth of their labour in the mills and the factories, and capitalists stamped down on trade-union activity as much as they could, but the capitalists knew they needed the workers: from the utopian settlements of Saltaire and Port Sunlight to legislation on working hours and unemployment benefits, capitalists recognised the value of their workers and the working-classes more generally. With the rise of global capitalism and neoliberalism, there has been a shattering of the symbiotic relationship between the classes in the West: the traditional working-classes have lost their well-paid jobs because global capitalism has re-located mining and industry to cheaper countries, and are now reduced to social welfare or temporary, part-time labour in the ‘precariat’; at the same time, the ruling classes have become a global elite making their billions, while the middle-classes feel increasingly squeezed by the austerity enforced by governments too scared to tax the global rich who are taking all the money being made and keeping it. It is no surprise that in these strange, uncertain times, people turn to religion for solace. There is much alienation, despair, anger and unhappiness. In the period

Conclusion    251 of high modernity, it was easier to find belonging and meaning and purpose in the workplace, or in radical politics. In this world dominated by neoliberalism and global capitalism, where work is precarious and monotonous, where the public sphere has been co-opted by corporate interests, leisure and culture offer the only spaces where meaning can be found. Becoming alternative is one of the few freedoms we have to express what Habermas (1984, 1987) calls communicative rationality. Becoming alternative is, as it always was, a way to express dissent with the norms and values of the ruling elites. Being alternative, one enlists in the maintenance of communicative leisure, of communicative culture, resisting the hegemony of the instrumentality of the corporate mainstream (Spracklen, 2009). Communicative leisure is the form of leisure we freely choose as human agents, agreeing with each other about what we would like to do with our free time, finding our own space to pursue happiness, wellbeing and pleasure. Communicative culture is the form of culture we construct in a free exchange of ideas about what constitutes good culture. Being alternative, then, is truly counter-hegemonic, and an expression of our humanity and our rejection of the betrayal of the lifeworld. Therefore, if being alternative ceases to be counterhegemonic, if counterculture becomes merely subculture or trend or neo-tribe, it stops being true to its original purpose. In that instance, the alternative is no longer marginal because it is part of the cultural industries, part of the discourse of production and consumption, part of the discourse of hegemony and legitimation. A new theory of alternativity, then, sees it as an expression of communicative leisure and culture and a rejection of instrumental leisure and culture. This new theory sees alternativity’s only moral value in being a counter-hegemonic, countercultural space – which is only what Stuart Hall recognised many years ago. But this new theory uses the insight of Habermas to map the hegemonic power onto the logic of instrumentality: we can see how genuine alternativity, by definition marginal, is commodified and made non-alternative wherever instrumentality works unquestioned and unopposed. But how can we oppose instrumentality? Habermas is not entirely clear we can. But I think it should be possible to resist through alternativity, because alternativity has such a deep history in human cultures. There is always a feeling of dissatisfaction with the things we are told are right and true. Hence we need an empirical research programme to explore precisely how a different alternative spaces and activities may be counter-hegemonic, or lost to instrumentality, so we can help humans continue to make sense of their place in the world as free-thinking humans.

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Index Note: Page numbers followed by “n” with numbers indicate footnotes. Able-bodied people (ABP), 172–173 Aborted (‘Whoremaggedon’), 35 Abrahamic religions, alternativity in, 241–243 Academic theories of alternativity, 244–245 Academy Studio sound, 92 Aesthetic alternativity, 231–234 Aesthetic qualities, 52 Ageing, 154 Ageing alternative women (see also Women’s bodies in heavy metal), 8 alternativity and femininities, 197–199 authentic, 199–202 authenticity in subcultures, 195–197 participants and data collection, 193–195 Alternative space, 82, 205 Alternative subculture, 28, 33 Alternative women, 191–192, 200 Alternativity, 1, 2, 197–199, 225, 239 academic theories, 244–245 aesthetic, 231–234 in classical period and in Abrahamic religions, 241–243 and femininities, 197–199 in leisure studies and popular cultural studies, 246–248 philosophy, 240 popular notions, 243–244 American vaudeville aesthetic, 66 Anathema (band), 82, 88–90, 93 from Liverpool, 5 music, 85

Anglo-American world, 51 Anime, 49 Anime convention, 49 Anohni and transgendered/trans age transgression, 154 marks of transgression, 159–161 MARROW and DRONE BOMB ME, 161–162 music video as ‘queer’ space, 154–157 music videos, 163–164 queer sounds, 157–159 Anti-racism, 7 Antigay propaganda law, 145 Arab pop music, 47 ‘Atlantis’ (song), 17 Attractiveness, 52 Audio-visual contributions, 154 Augustinian theology, 39 Authentic culture, 199–202 Authentic subcultural inception, 201 Authenticity, 14, 19, 21, 194–195 in subcultures, 123, 195–197 Babylon, 35 Babylon (album), 78 Bacon tattoo, 113 Barghest o’ Whitby, The (2011), 5, 81 Bee Hive, 228 Behemoth (‘Amen’), 32, 33, 38–39 Biomedical model, 181 Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS), 206–208 Black Metal (BM), 34 Blacklips Performance Cult, The, 154–155 Bodies, 105–106

256   Index Body art, 127 Body Modification Ezine (BME), 15 Borneo BN bands, 34 Bubbles of inspiration, 225–229, 230 Cannibal Holocaust (1980), 75 Canterburied Sounds, 221, 229 Canterbury Cathedral, 227 Canterbury Sans Frontières, 221, 228 ‘Canterbury scene’, 9, 222 Canterbury Sound, 9, 220, 227 aesthetic alternativity, marginality and DIY, 231–234 bubbles of inspiration vs. hegemony of heritage, 225–229 marginalisation of performance, 229–231 methodological approach, 220–221 music and place, 224–225 myth and metaphor, 221–224 Canterbury Sound: Place, music and myth (event), 232 Canterbury Soundwaves, 221, 228 Canterbury Tales: The Best of Caravan, 221–222, 226 Capitalism, 2, 176, 243–245, 247, 250–251 Catholicism, 243 Cavern Club, 225 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 121 Chamber-pop, 155 Chicago School of Sociology, 220 Chicana canvas, 125 Cis-gendering, 39–40 City of Canterbury, place of music in, 225–229 Class, 170–171 Clockwork Orange, A, 46, 51 Cloven Hoof (‘Whore of Babylon’), 32, 33, 35–36 Communication, 107 Communicative culture, 251 Communism, 244 Compensation, 33

Conflict, 107, 120, 126, 215 ‘Conservative’ method, 62n1 ‘Consumer managerialist’ structures, 180 Context, 82–83 Copyright issues, 32 Counterculture, 1–2 Cradle of Filth (‘Lilith Immaculate’), 32, 33, 36–38 Crash of Moons (Brodigan), 220, 230 Crimson Idol, The (album), 77 ‘Critical insider’ researcher, 220–221 Cultural memory, 224–225 Cultural work, 156–157 Culture, 1 Cunts, 35 ‘Custom’ tattoos, 128 Cybercultures, 16 Daily Beast, The, 139 Dann’s analysis, 5 Data collection, participants and, 193–195 De-metaling, 62n1 Death/doom music world, 5, 83, 84, 86–90, 93 Defilement, 35 Desert Tide (video), 17 Deviance, 124–125 ‘Diamonds’ on Saturday Night Live (Rihanna), 17 Disability, 170–171 sociological theory and, 174–179 sociology, social justice and, 171–173 Disability Discrimination Act, 175 Distress, 181 Distress (see Mental illness) ‘Diva Satanica’, 32 ‘Do it yourself’ movement (DiY approach), 91, 209, 210, 225, 230, 231–234 ‘Double social model’ of disability, 177 Dreadful Hours, The (album), 95 Dress of subcultures, 22

Index    257 Driller Killer (1979), 75 ‘Drone Bomb Me’ (song), 161–162 Dumbbells, 109–110 Dungeonmaster, The (movie), 77n18 Dynamic force in cultural reproduction, 159–160 Eco-ability challenges, 178 Ecological validity, 182 Electric-vaudeville, 65 Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), 181 Elite tattoo collector, 123 Embodied production, 124 Embodiment, 104–107, 143 Emotion, 32 Emphasized femininity, 206 Empirical programme, new theory and, 249–251 English identity, 48 English language skills, 50–51 English ‘Northernness’, 90–96 Environmental racism, 141 Epistemology of research, 179–185 Equality Act, 177 Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), 172 Ethnographies of tattoo artists and collectors, 121 Evil mothers, 38 Ex nihilo, 1 Expressive facial gestures, 68–69 Facelift: The Canterbury sound and beyond (Howitt), 228 Facial expressions, 67, 71 Farmhouse, 227, 228 Fashion, 49 subcultural experiences, 14 Female sexuality, 74 Feminine standards, 126 Feminine-identified fashions, 64 Femininities, 103–107, 206, 207 alternativity and, 197–199 negotiating, 108–112 traditional, 108 Feminism, 33, 134–135, 244

Feminists, 136, 240 disability scholars, 176 textual criticism, 31–32 Filthy 15, 75n16 Flavorwire (magazine), 155 ‘Fluffy’ femininity, 192 Folk metal, 29 Free Range performance series in Canterbury, 220 Free Range series (Bailey), 230 Frog and Toad band, 92–93 From Soup to Nuts (1928), 68 Frozen Illusion (1989), 86 Gender, 106, 130, 170–171, 193, 205, 208–211 Gender equality, 7 Gender-bending, 214–215 General culture, 51 ‘Girl gamer’, 215 Glam metal (1980), 4, 62–63 Global metal music and culture (Hill), 28 Globalisation, 5, 44–45 Goth subcultural aesthetics, 23 Gothic (album), 86 Gulf, subculture logic in, 46–48 Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST), 48 Gypsy Queens (band), 129 Health Goth, 18–19 Health Goth subculture, 23 “Heavily tattooed” impacts (see also Tattooed female bodies) methodology, 125–126 resistance, subculture and gender, 130 self-expression through tattoo art, 126–130 subcultures, neo-tribal style and women’s prominence in tattooing, 121–125 women in tattoo subculture, 119–121 Heavy metal, 29, 64 music textuality, 28

258   Index Hegemonic masculinity, 29, 206 Hegemony of heritage, 225–229 Heritage, 224–225 Heterosexual norms, 106 Hip-Hop, 212–213 culture, 46 feminism, 213 ‘Hometown blues’ (song), 222, 226, 227 Hopelessness (album), 7, 154, 157, 159–161, 163, 165 Humanity, 35 Hyper-masculine bodies, 122 Hyper-masculine environment, 120 I am a Bird Now (album), 155 In my opinion (IMO), 86 In the Land of Grey and Pink (album), 9, 221 Inauthenticity, 197 Inclusion/assimilation, 170 Individualism, 91 Industrial capitalism, 176 Industrial Revolution, 95 ‘Integrated professional’ category, 87 Internet, 14, 46 functions, 5, 44 Internet-based economy, 137 troll, 22n1 Inversion of convention, 28 of morality, 28, 34 Irrational perspectives, 179–185 J-rock, 49 Japanese culture, 4, 43–44 contrasts with Kuwaiti culture, 52–54 Japanophilia in Kuwait, 44, 50 attractiveness, 52 different from other people in society, 57–59 English language skills, 50–51 general culture, 51 globalisation, 44–45

interest in Japanese/Korean culture change, 55–57 interests, 49–50 Japanese culture, 43–44, 52–54 logic of subculture in Gulf, 46–48 Meme Café, 45–46 national identity, 51 personal research, 54–55 survey, 48 ‘Jazz metal’, 84 Juxtaposition, 37 K-Hole, 17, 19, 21 Kalevala, The, 39 Kerrang (magazine), 67, 69n9 KissAnime, 49 Korean TV dramas, 49 Kuwaiti culture, 44 Japanese culture contrasts with, 52–54 Kuwaiti Internet generation, 46 Kuwaiti media reinforce nationalism, 51 traditional, 46, 47 ‘Lain with the Wolf’ (Primordial), 32 Laurel, Stan, 68–69 Lawless with prosthetic fingers, 74 Leisure studies, 240 alternativity in, 246–247 Leisure theory, 246–247 Lemonade (album), 135 Lesbian activists, 134 ‘Lifestyle’, 121–122, 246 Lilith (goddess from later JudeoChristian demonology), 35, 38 ‘Lilith Immaculate’ (song), 32, 37 Live Death (Farrow), 86 Liverpool-based grindcore band, 88 Lobotomy, 181 Lost Paradise (album), 86, 89, 92 Lyrical content, 162

Index    259 Madness, 170, 181 and epistemology of research, 179–185 Mainstream society, 242 ‘Make America Great Again’, 136–137 with orange lip gloss, 140–144 Male-oriented subcultures, 120 Maleness, 35 Malestream, 134–135, 170 disability theorists, 176 Manga drawings, 45 Manowar (band), 77 Marginalisation, 1, 8, 19, 20–21, 22, 77, 136 of women, 28 Marginalisation, 136 Marginality, 231–234 Marks of transgression, 159–161 Marrow (song), 161–162 Marxist, 240 Masculine subcultures, 120 Masculine trait, 106 Masculinity, 40, 205, 206 Mass debasement, 35 Mass destruction, 35 ‘Massive’ tattoo, 109 Massively multi-player online roleplaying game (MMORPG), 214 Melody Maker (music magazine), 66 Membership of subculture, 193 Meme Café, 45–46 Meme Curry (see Meme Café) Mental distress, 170 Mental illness, 7, 180 Mephitic leisure, 246–247 Metal, 28, 211–212 cultural collusion with mainstream morality, 33–34 music, 28 text, 32 women’s bodies in metal lyrics, 35–39 ‘Micro music’ scene reality, 9

Middle East Film and ComicCon (MEFCC), 49 Misogynist-themed aesthetics, 63 Misogyny as artistic device discourse analysis, 63 glam metal bands, 62–63 methods, 67 observational analyses, 67–77 W.A.S.P.’s Post ‘80s marginalization, 77–78 W.A.S.P., 65–66 Monster (film), 73, 76 Monsters of Rock festival (1978), 66, 70, 71 Morality, 35–39 traditional language of, 40 Multimedia discourse analysis, 6 Music video, 63, 156, 163–164 for Hopelessness and Paradise, 7 as ‘queer’ space, 154–157 to Seapunk subculture, 17 Musical subcultures, 127 My Dying Bride (band), 5, 82, 86–88, 90, 92–95 Naming, 21 National identity, 51 Negotiation, 107 femininities, 108–112 Neo-tribes, 121–125, 246 Neoliberalism, 250 Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), 73, 75 Nightmare On Elm Street 5, A (1989), 77n18 Ninnghizhidda – ‘Rape (The Virgin Mary)’, 32, 33, 39 Niqab girl, 44 Non-formulaic behaviour, 51 Non-normative women, 154 Normcore subculture, 17–18, 20, 21, 23 Normcore-desired sartorial experiences, 24 Norms, 105 Northern England-based bands, 5 Northernness, 5, 82

260   Index Off Main St: Syd Arthur in Canterbury, UK, 221 Online, 214–215 Online subcultures, 16, 19, 21 ideologies, 21 ‘Ontological’ style, 82–83 Outrageous movies, 75 Paradise (music video), 7 Paradise Lost (band), 5, 82, 84–86, 89–90, 92–93 Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), 62, 73, 77 Participants and data collection, 193–195 Peaceville Records, 82, 84 Peaceville Three, 5, 82, 84, 89, 90–96 Penetration, 40 People with disabilities (PWD), 173 PianoWorks 1 (Sinclair), 221 Piper, Steve, 229 PlamoQ8, 4, 43 Pop music, 44 Popular cultural studies, 240 alternativity in, 247–248 Popular culture, 33 Popular music, 4, 220, 224 Popular notions of alternativity, 243–244 Post ‘80s marginalization, 77–78 Post-authenticity, 19–24 Post-Marxist, 240 Post-structuralist, 240 ‘Post-subcultural’ studies, 121–122, 207 Post-Subcultures Reader, The, 14 Postmodernism, 21 Pre-modern cultures, 241 Primordial (‘Lain with the Wolf’), 32, 33, 38 Program and Review theory, 22 Protestantism, 243 Psychiatric survivor movement, 179–180 Psychoanalytical exploration of ageing, 161

Psychodrama, 65 Psychological androgyny, 64 Psychological androgyny theory (Bem), 64 Punk, 208 origins, 84 Riot Grrrl, 210–211 sXe, 209–210 ‘Putin’s victims’, 6 Q8con, 4, 43 Quasi-subcultures, 3, 14 Queer sounds, 157–159 Queer temporality, 7, 154 ‘Queer time’, 154 ‘Queer’ space, music video as, 154–157 Race, 29, 170–171 Racism, 181 ‘Rack, The’, 65–66 Rape (The Virgin Mary), 32, 39 Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand (Primordial), 38 Reflexivity, 5 Regulation, 103–104 Reight Mardy Tykes anathema, 88–90 methods, 83–84 My Dying Bride, 86–88 paradise lost, 85–86 peaceville records and punk origins, 84 The Peaceville Three and English ‘Northernness’, 90–96 Reinforce femininity, 124 Religion, 52–53 Repression, 73 Resistance, 19, 130 Riot Grrrl, 135, 138, 143, 210–211, 213–214 Robert Wyatt mural on Dover Street, 228 Rock ‘n’ roll musical styles, 224 Romantic Warriors (film), 221 Romantic Warriors III: Canterbury Tales (film), 229

Index    261 Runescape, 214–215 ‘Russia-West divide boils down to gay issue’, 136 Russian feminism, 134 Salvation, 38 Sartorially subcultural identity, 22–24 Saturnus, 92 Seapunk subculture, 16–17 Seapunk themes, 17 Seinfeld (TV series), 18 Self-expression through tattoo art, 126–130 Self-motivated community, 21 Self-regulation, 104 Self-surveillance, 104–107 Service-user movements, 179–180 7-string/baritone guitars, 89 Severed Survival (album), 84 Sexism, 212 Sexual performance, 36 Sexual violence, 181 Sexuality, 106 Silent Enigma, The (album), 5, 93 Silent movie actors, 70 Silent Waters (2007), 39 Sloat’s analysis, 63, 64 Social constructionism, 107, 171, 174 Social justice, 171–173 Social media, 14 Social processes, 107 Social Sciences, 104 Social system, 171 Socialism, 242 Sociological theory, 174–179 Sociology, 7, 171–173 Sound Mirror (album), 226 Spectacle of Russian feminism Day West found out about Russian feminism, 137–140 expertise, 144–146 ‘Make America Great Again’ with orange lip gloss, 140–144 Stainthorpe, 86 Stereotyped images, 33 Stigma, 129, 171

Straight-edge (sXe), 209–210 Street fashions style, 49 subcultural authenticity and post-authenticity, 19–24 subcultures, 14–15 subcultures online, 15–19 Student-orientated leisure economies, 229 Stylistic communities, 127 Subcultural authenticity, 19–24 Subcultural capital, 2, 194–195 Subcultural identity, 19, 20–22 Subcultural membership, 120 Subcultural theories, 127 Subcultures, 3, 14–15, 46, 121–125, 128, 130, 207, 246 aesthetics, 19 authenticity in, 195–197 Health Goth, 18–19 logic in Gulf, 46–48 Normcore, 17–18 online, 15 Seapunk, 16–17 Subversion, 28 Survivor activism, 183 Sustainability, 178 Targeted public harassment, 124 Tattooed female bodies (see also “Heavily tattooed” impacts), 103–104, 108 femininities, self-surveillance and embodiment, 104–107 methodological approach, 107–108 negotiating femininities, 108–112 ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of tattooed, 112–115 Tattoos, 105, 107 tattoo-oriented media, 6 tattooed bodies, 104–105 women in tattoo subculture, 119–121 Temporality, 154 Textual analysis, 34 Textual critical analysis, 4

262   Index ‘Textual representations reproduce gender ideology’, 33 Textuality of heavy metal music, 28 Tolikonnikova’s fame, 135, 143 Torment discourse analysis, 63 glam metal bands, 62–63 methods, 67 observational analyses, 67–77 W.A.S.P.’s Post ‘80s marginalization, 77–78 W.A.S.P., 65–66 ‘Tormentor’ (song), 66, 77, 78n22 Trans-ageing, 154 Trans-medium, 155–156 Transcendence, 154 Transgression, 246 marks of, 159–161 Transgressive, 1 Tribes or post-subcultures, 196 Uncivilized Russia, 139 Union of Impaired People Against Segregation (UIPAS), 174 Untenable positions sociological theory and disability, 174–179 sociology, social justice and disability, 171–173 US-American culture, 135–136 US-American mediatised alliance, 135–136 US-American racial stereotypes, 142 Vaudeville comedy, 67–68 Veganism, 193 Vegetarianism, 244 Veteran California-based tattooist PK, 128 ‘Video nasty’ phenomenon, 75 Video-recorded interviews, 126 Virtually constructed fashion subcultures investigation subcultural authenticity and postauthenticity, 19–24

subcultures, 14–15 subcultures online, 15–19 Voice, 159 Vulgarity and violence toward women, 62 We. Are. Sexual. Perverts (W. A. S. P.), 62, 63n2, 65–66 post ‘80s marginalization, 77–78 ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ (Snider), 31 Western cultural elements, 44, 46 Western gaze, 134 Western-style curriculum, 48 ‘Whore of Babylon’ (song), 32 ‘Whoremageddon’ (song), 32, 35 Wild Flowers, The (band), 229 Women prominence in tattooing, 121–125 in tattoo subculture, 119–121 tattooed bodies, 103–104 Women and Film (Kaplan), 37 Women’s bodies in heavy metal (see also Ageing alternative women) Behemoth (‘Amen’), 38–39 on cis-gendering, 39–40 Cloven Hoof (‘Whore of Babylon’), 35–36 Cradle of Filth (‘Lilith Immaculate’), 36–38 feminist textual criticism and choice of texts for study, 31–32 investigating morality and, 35 Ninnghizhidda (‘Rape (The Virgin Mary)’, 39 Primordial (Lain with the Wolf), 38 research on, 28–31 textual analysis, 34 Yorkshire landscape, 94 Yorkshire-based band, 93 YouTube, 46, 49, 154, 164