Alright, you win. Reading all these blogs, I can’t avoid the subject of fist-pumping Heavy Metal any longer. A metaller since the tender age of 13 (coincidence?), I’ve been worshipping the gods of rock’n’roll even longer. But, don’t worry, that doesn’t stop me from being a proud Orthodox Christian.
I’ll use my seasoned veteran status in an attempt to explain why this seemingly unorthodox subject keeps returning to Takimag. In fact, I’ll use it shamelessly, because I don’t believe that these recent pieces did a particularly good job justifying the importance of Heavy Metal to an uninformed audience.
Love it or hate it, Metal has been contributing to a European cultural revival of sorts. This focus on the West, including (gasp!) the classics, makes this genre’s youthful demographic—the largest constituent group of fans is, indeed, in their late teens and 20s—an asset. You and I both know what kind of culture, or lack thereof, youth is normally subjected to at academic institutions and through popular media.
Speaking of which, it is the North American media that largely bears the responsibility for your negative perception of heavy metal. Individual exceptions notwithstanding, metal is depicted in the States as a sex-drugs-and-rock’n’roll genre that peaked during the exuberant 1980s and then pretty much died. The only scholars of the genre are Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar of Aurora, Illinois.
By contrast, European popular culture acknowledges that metal, with its multivalent genres and intellectual themes, is alive and well (and not necessarily in hell, either, officially.) Take Dimmu Borgir’s and Enslaved’s wins at Norwegian Grammys, for example. This broad cultural acceptance is the reason why dozens of European, particularly German, metal festivals offer something for everyone: middle-of-nowhere underground events with a couple a hundred people, the ones I prefer, like United Metal Maniacs, and mainstream ones like Wacken, with tens of thousands in attendance.
What attracts all these people to heavy metal? The beer? The rocking out? The girls dressed in black leather? All of the above. But recently sociologists have revealed a few surprising facts about metalheads, at least with regard to the European scene. In Hard rock, heavy metal, metal. Histoire, cultures et pratiquants, for example, Fabien Hein writes that a significant percentage of metal fans are not the “Beavis and Butthead” types, but rather successful people who pursues post-secondary education and beyond. Of course, I don’t need a professional researcher to tell me how many of my friends and acquaintances all over the world manage to combine day jobs and/or college with bands, sometimes fairly well known ones.
In addition to the social aspects of heavy metal, its fans are, of course, consuming the product of creative autonomy. There are certainly well known bands like Nuclear Blast (though it would be a stretch to compare them to popular music giants.) However, self-produced, self-distributed works have always comprised a significant component of this subculture, which largely functions on the word of mouth. More importantly, this autonomy lets metal bands—the worthy ones—delve into a variety of forbidden subjects both lyrically and musically, whatever their dark hearts desire!
And what they desire often happens to be European cultural survivalism. For example, Norway’s Kampfar, the Iceland’s and Germany’s Falkenbach, and Russia’s Temnozor write about ancient pagan pride, Nordic and Slavic, respectively. You may be turned off by the fact that many of such bands are either anti-Christian or, at least, pagan. However, this direction is always and necessarily linked to indigenous European traditions. “It’s been more than a thousand years, but still I am proud, still I am Norse,” in Kampfar’s case. There are certain exceptions, like the Christian band Horde. More important, these musicians inspire a general interest in the Death of the West. Canada’s Thesyre, for example, advocates against the “welfare state protect[ing] the weak” in order to “save our culture and heritage.”
What I find more worthwhile and an intellectual step above local European mythologies is the fact that certain bands “cover” literary classics: Britain’s Iron Maiden has done Tennyson’s and Coleridge’s poetry, Norway’s Ulver, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Australia’s Destroyer 666, various Nietzsche works, and Russia’s Aria, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, to name just a few. Have you ever stood in a large concert crowd which chanted direct quotations from such works? It’s a powerful experience. Many fans, particularly younger ones, admitted to me that they would not have shown an active interest in pursuing literature if it were not for their favorite band.
Is it really a surprise that heavy metal is popular gateway to classical music as well? Finland’s Alexi Laiho shreds Vivaldi, while his mentor of sorts, Sweden’s Yngwie Malmsteen, “does his thing” with a bouquet of Classics. Good American boys aren’t exempt from this phenomenon either: how about Jason Becker and Paganini? And neither are girls: Beethoven meets jaw-dropping Great Kat.
Metal is so Eurocentric that even Japanese bands pride themselves on emulating old-school German thrash. And others like to sing about Russians and Germans in World War II. In fact, when I was in Japan this year, I wanted to hear all about “German power!...Russian power!” so much that I caught Sex Machineguns’ performance in Morioka, Japan. And just like the band’s leader Anchang, “I believe heavy metal power”!
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Apart from “rogue” politicians like Geert Wilders, Europeans leaders seem only willing to speak of the problem of dismal birth rates in the Old World by resorting to euphemism and wishful thinking. Faced with its disastrous postcolonial migration policies, the guilt-ridden establishment is only interested in maintaining domestic peace and order, when (not if) Europeans become ethnic minorities in their own lands.
It hasn’t always been this way. Modern European states, both democratic and authoritarian, have periodically attempted to boost indigenous population growth, especially after manmade catastrophes. France did it after the First World War and the USSR after the Second.
The USSR’s pro-natalist experience hasn’t been forgotten. What today’s Russia shares with “Europe-proper” is a quasi-colonial past and a poor demographic present. However, rather than mimicking Europe’s defeatism, the Russian government not only took the proverbial bull by the horns, but also forced it to mate!
The Soviet Union is peculiar case study because its social policy rapidly changed in the first decades of its existence. Immediately after the Bolshevik takeover, the state tried to closely adhere to Marxist ideology by legalizing abortion, establishing simpler divorce procedures, and promoting the “new woman,” among other measures. Certain hardcore communist feminists like Alexandra Kollontai rejected morality altogether. However, by and large, people avoided this adventurism and chose to preserve families as socio-economic units.
If the 1920s were a failed attempt to implement Marxist immorality, then the 1930s demonstrated a successful turn toward social conservatism. Abortion was banned, and divorce became more difficult to obtain. The government began rewarding women with multiple children—the so-called “heroic mothers,” who rescued the nation after the fertility drop as a result of collectivization, industrialization, and consequent famines.
Soviet “public service” posters reflected these changes. One 1930 advertisment, for example, urged women to take care of their breasts. A more subtle 1934 poster emphasized honest peasant labor by depicting a happy nuclear Slavic family. After 1945, the government attempted to make up for the near thirty-million population loss due to war and labor camps. And so, posters like “Grow, warrior! The Soviet Army protects you!” were used, featuring a blond Slavic baby underneath the red Communist flag.
Beautiful blond Slavic babies appear in contemporary Russian pro-natalist advertising, too. It emerged in May of 2006, when Vladimir Putin had made Russia’s demographic crisis problem Number One. A year prior, the net human decrease in this country amounted to an alarming six hundred thousand people. At this rate, Russia is projected to lose 11 million people by 2025. Not unlike the case of “heroic mothers” of the past, he proposed to reverse depopulation pragmatically: better social services for new mothers, additional funding for multi-child families, a substantial amount of capital in the form of investments into children’s future education, and so on.
Putin’s critics immediately suggested that women might start reproducing out of greed, and they argued that Putin’s programs would lead to misleading short-term population boosts. Furthermore, they urged the government to address the poor health of the aging population, particularly men, whose life expectancy is at least a decade less than that of men in Western Europe and North America.
In 2008, Russia’s pro-natalism resulted in record birth rates—the highest since the Soviet Union’s collapse. However, while these measures have been covered by the media, two crucial aspects of Putin’s plan have been consistently ignored. First, this plan involves a significant cultural initiative which feeds into Russian traditions and contemporary advertising methods alike. Most important, this plan specifically targets people of European descent.
My temporary relocation to Moscow to conduct dissertation research has given me the opportunity to observe this sweeping initiative “live.” In general, the state offers its citizens cultural celebrations, secular federal and Eastern Orthodox Christian holidays, soccer matches, city jubilees, historic blockbuster films, military parades—all in the name of the Motherland. Russians are left with a sense of a glorious past—the kind of past that Western and American academic and government institutions are constantly telling us is outdated and oppressive.
More specifically, Russians are also rather conservative when it comes to marriage and children, despite the high divorce rate. So, it’s not surprising that the subjects of demographics, child rearing, a woman’s traditional role in the home, and even adoptions and surrogate motherhood receive extensive coverage in countless television miniseries, soaps, silly gossip talk shows, serious political programs, and “public service” advertising on major state-funded channels. For example, eligible bachelorettes and bachelors on a popular award-winning show “Let’s Get Married!” on state channel 1 systematically mention a multi-child family as their primary goal for resorting to television dating.
Yet, the most explicit pro-natalist messages appear within the confines of the 75-year old architectural wonder of the world—the Moscow metro system. This type of advertising grabs the attention of over six million people (90% of users), according to the recent study conducted by TNS Gallup Media. Long escalator rides deep underground and even longer commutes across the city make billboards on walls and posters inside trains simply unavoidable.
One frequently encountered advertisement features colorful matryoshka nesting dolls and reads, “’Love for the Motherland begins with family’—F. Bacon.”
Another billboard is a photograph of good-looking European grandparents, parents, and children enjoying the outdoors together and captioned with, “’Family is one of nature’s masterpieces’—Philosopher George Santayana.” The most distinct feature of both ads is the fact that they don’t simply depict happy nuclear families, but, rather, emphasize genetic and historic continuity through multi-generational family “clans.”
The most overt image in this campaign states that “The country needs our records. Every minute, three people are born in Russia” and shows a young Slavic woman holding three blond, blue-eyed babies. While enormous Moscow is quite multiethnic, here, too, the government’s demographic target market is very clear.
Whether this country’s current pro-natalist experiment, in conjunction with the recent anti-alcohol and anti-smoking campaigns, achieves significant results remains to be seen. But for those concerned with the “Death of West,” some comfort can be found in the fact that what is taboo in western Europe and America is a national priority in the Motherland.
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Fidel Castro received a warm welcome in Moscow, and finally left alone with Nikita Khrushchev, ripped off his wig, detached his beard, and collapsed, “I can’t do this anymore…”
“You must, Fedya, you must!”
Jokes like this circulated in abundance in the USSR. Khrushchev was teased for his questionable attempts to revive lagging socialist agriculture—“Communism is Soviet power plus cornization of the whole country”—and generally mocked for his lack of sophistication—“And what kind of ass with ears is this?” asked Khrushchev at a modern art exhibit, confronted with his own reflection in a mirror.
The screw were clearly loosening—jokes about a General Secretary would have landed you in the Gulag in the last administration.
Despite his ties of blood, Stalin had liquidated “class enemies” at a disproportionate rate in his former homeland. So, when Dzhugashvili flipped onto his back, his six hairy legs twitching, and croaked at last, many Georgians—especially Georgians—felt emancipated. Tbilisi, which etymologically means “warm place,” began to return to its usual temperature, and Georgians’ new freedom (however relative) found expression in a distinctly Georgian way.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had strengthened the ties between two awkward Communist allies. In April and May of 1963, Fidel Castro extensively toured the Union, visiting major cities including Moscow, Kiev, and, of course, Tbilisi. The government of the Soviet Republic of Georgia needed to amass an impressive audience for a guest of this caliber. Khrushchev and Castro were to ride along the narrow streets of this ancient city on the historic border of Christendom in a convertible vehicle accompanied by a slate-colored motorcade and routinely waving at the adoring crowds.
People were pulled away from their daily activities to stand along the parade route and look festive. Despite the state-prescribed nature of this event, the excitement was real. Particularly thrilled were school children from Sabutarlo district—including my mother, Leli. A warm spring day outdoors was much preferred to cramming inside the stuffy halls of knowledge! And Leli probably had hours of much-dreaded piano lessons to look forward to after all that cramming.
There is an old legend that God had divided the earth amongst all the different people, but easy-going Georgians showed up very late and thus received nothing. Yet, God so enjoyed their unpunctual joie de vivre, toasting, and jokes, that in the end He gave them the best piece of vineyard-rich land He had reserved for Himself. And that is how Sakartvelo—likely called “Georgia” after its patron Saint George—came into being.
At least, its inhabitants like to think so.
Shortly afterward, Medea helped Jason obtain the Golden Fleece. Saint Nina, my namesake and Constantine’s contemporary, evangelized the region. King Vakhtang chased a pheasant, which fell into sulfuric hot springs, and founded Tbilisi in the process (the hunter, not his game). During the course of its fifteen hundred-year history, Persians, natural disasters, and Turks destroyed this city 29 times. David the Builder brought about an artistic golden age. Female King of Kings Tamar ruled much of Transcaucasia as an emissary of Christian light. Constantinople was overrun by the infidel. King Erekle begged for Russian protection to avoid further Islamic de-civilization. Finally, Byzantium’s northern dual-headed heir too was ravaged by another kind of infidel, as were its territorial splinters.
All of this was history by the time Khrushchev paid Tbilisi a visit, but Soviet Kartvelians had preserved most of their revelry surrounding their homeland’s creation myth. And a few inhabitants, more industrious and organized than the rest of their brethren, saw the perfect opportunity for a practical joke in the new friendship between petite Cuba and One-Sixth of the Earth’s Land Surface. More industrious because they decided to reenact the entire official procession, replete with the two Communist leaders and their vehicular retinue, on the city streets that same day; and more organized because their amateur theater, of sorts, succeeded!
First, these pranksters recruited Kika. History no longer recalls whether this was that man’s actual name or a pseudonym. Suffice it to say that everybody knew and loved this friendly, cheerful local who was stricken with the Down syndrome. And apart from the vacant look in his eyes, Kika’s stature and bald head uncannily resembled the General Secretary’s. Tbilisi’s Holy Fool took his role very seriously, and this was not the first time he was granted the opportunity to represent Nikita Sergeyevich. Unofficially, of course.
Khrushchev’s visits to India had been widely publicized, and a press photograph of Jawaharlal Nehru placing a floral wreath onto the Soviet leader’s neck as a sign of solidarity had become particularly well known. And thus Tbilisian jokesters replicated the General Secretary’s eastern adventures—only the wreath they threw over Kika’s head was funerary. Close enough.
Fidel’s role was to be performed by a local beggar. A thoughtful casting director ensured that the sun-kissed Chosen One exuded masculinity through and through, at least when it came to generous hair growth in the facial region. Attention to detail was everything, and the drifter even put on a recognizable cap to mimic the radical fashion sense of the bearded prophet of Latin American Communism.
This practical joke was not at all maliciously inspired, and its instigators easily found willing participants to drive the well-matched pair through the city. Adolescents on wheels volunteered to play the motorcade escort as the final touch. The route was not difficult to locate either. The city dwellers had already gathered outside along Pavlov Street and Rustaveli Avenue, waving streamers and holding balloons, obeying municipal directives, but needing no convincing to join the festivities. They were Georgian after all!
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And so they rode along the main roads of Tbilisi: the holy fool, the beggar, and rowdy Kartvelian youth.
Today, Leli is convinced that her friend witnessed the doppelgangers elsewhere in the city, while she and her classmates merely saw the Khrushchev-Castro team.
“Are you sure, mom?”
“The real Nikita Sergeyevich had a really pink face!”
The theatrical imposters had gotten intercepted by the authorities prior to reaching my mother’s spot on the route. The Georgian KGB seems to have been just as relaxed as its ancestors at God’s land distribution party.
History is silent about grand finale of this elaborate prank. The motorcade youth dispersed as spontaneously and quickly as it gathered. Not much could be asked of the two well-meaning charlatans. The bona fide Castro successfully partook in divinely sanctioned Georgian hospitality with wine consumption out of sheep horns and never-ending, but eloquent—but never-ending—toasts delivered by a witty tamada.
Anyway, regardless of Kika’s acting skills, how could he possibly compete with the warm glow of the General Secretary’s cheeks?
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Despite sharing much in the way of popular culture and language, Canadians like to establish their identity as explicitly distinct from their powerful neighbor to the south. And they often do so according to a collection of “Us > Them” stereotypes, all which contain small kernels of truth: Americans invade, Canadians keep peace; Americans are obnoxious, Canadians exude proper etiquette; Americans leave their citizens to fend for themselves and suffer in dire poverty; the Canadian social contract funds human welfare through adequate taxation of its grateful citizenry.
Canadians are also quick to mention that they know much, much more about the rest of the world than Americans. Their public school system teaches that the United States has a cultural “melting pot,” which leads to assimilation and the loss of ethnic identity—and is therefore bad! By contrast, Canada uses the cultural “mosaic” approach, which leads to integration—and is therefore good! Furthermore, unable to resist the spread of American entertainment, and American trade, many Canucks like to argue for greater self-sufficiency.
So, if Canadians value sovereignty and perceive themselves as overtly distinct from—if not totally better than—Americans, then why the messianic “celebrification” of another country’s politician? The Canadian national news media has been releasing a flood of articles regarding Obama’s upcoming visit to Ottawa on February 19th. These articles venture beyond any nation’s expected interest in another’s foreign policy. They underscore Obama’s approval of Canada, as this will be his very first presidential visit abroad. The only thing criticized is the appalling brevity of the great man’s sojourn up north.
Social networking sites like MySpace regularly demonstrate how much the Canadian youth demographic admires the new American president. One user blogged about the historic nature of attending the inauguration as a Canadian (?). Another blogger went further and wrote that Canadian politics desperately needs someone like Obama. Canada’s own politicians never dream of receiving such coverage, even ones who are said to resonate with the youth.
The new American president has even become the centerpiece of the Canadian Black History Month, which until 1995 had been known as “February.”
Why do we have this? In 2002, the Parliament of Canada also transformed May into Asian Heritage Month. Both cases are somewhat inconsistent with the official Canadian cultural policy. Whereas the United States’ “original sin” was African slavery, Canada chooses to hold a month-long celebration/dirge for the Aboriginal peoples. In part, this is related to the fact that Canada avoided slavery, abolished by the British Empire in 1807 before the formation of the Canadian state. The country did not practice legal racial segregation either. Aboriginal history and questions of land claims, reservations, and self-government are regularly spot-lit in schools, the media, and politics. Yet, Aboriginal interest groups like RAPA are still lobbying the House of Commons to declare June the Aboriginal History Month, thus far only municipally successful in the prairie city of Regina.
Anyway, what do Canadian ethnic interest-group battles have to do with Barack Obama? Well, the current American leader is featured on the 2009 Legacy Festival poster. This promotional piece for the Canadian Black History month depicts a number of close-ups of prominent African-Canadians in the foreground. The background contains golden-hued clouds, in which ... hovers Barack Obama’s giant, near-disembodied head inside a maple leaf. Canadian artist Robert Small, responsible for the artwork’s creation, emphasized the importance of history with significant moments like that of Barack Obama.
The new American president’s inclusion in this Canadian poster is therefore meant to be “motivational.”
But doesn’t seeking racial inspiration outside of Canada clash with our long tradition of “We’re not Americans!” national identity? And doesn’t the poster challenge the Canadian multicultural paradigm? Even more troublesome, what’s with the overtly neoclassical title, “The Birth of Change,” and the unambiguously mythic treatment of The (Foreign!) Leader? Throughout the history of art, such artificial visual hierarchy has been used to glorify religious and royal figures ... and living Communist party secretaries in Socialist Realism. By sanctioning this cult of personality focused on the new American president, the Canadian government gets more than just a raised eyebrow.
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