Man in the Box: Salvaging Masculinity in Heavy Metal Music

Abstract: As each successive generation of musicians pushes the boundaries of gender and its accompanying expectations, how has metal music remained so strongly masculine-coded? This project investigates the current circumstances of American masculinities, their diversity, and their relationships with this type of music. Building on the foundational work of Raewyn Connell, Deena Weinstein, and other preeminent masculinities scholars, I have a created a mathematical matrix and ranking system with which I have evaluated the levels of association of different presentations of masculinity with the multiple subgenres of metal music. Utilizing a hybrid of quantitative and qualitative data collected via this matrix, I will argue for heavy metal music as a site for reimagining masculinities through the act of salvaging: engaging with relics of bygone forms of masculinities which modern social and economic circumstances have rendered irrelevant and applying attributes of them to practices of masculinities today. I conclude with a critique of the way discourse in this field is currently conducted, offering an alternative framing of the relationship between masculinity and metal alongside suggestions for continued research in this field.

Keywords: Musicology, Gender, Philosophy, Feminist Theory, Masculinities, Heavy Metal

View the full article here.