Interrogating Constructions of Childhood in Metal Music

• Applicant: Ruth Barratt-Peacock, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Musicology ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 520820387

Nothing reveals more about the fundamental ideals and fears of a society than how it constructs the concept of ‘the child’. The ways we imagine children sit at the nexus of the private and public, personal and political spheres. Slogans, such as those found on anti-masking stickers that read “When even a child no longer smiles like a child, then we are far from Eden” instrumentalize ideals of childhood innocence that have their own history. These images stand in strong contrast to movements such as Fridays for Future that call for children to be heard as active participants in the political sphere. These are just two examples of the multiple historical constructions of childhood that continue to be part of late 20th- 21st-century discourse. The SARS-COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing erosion of reproductive rights in the name of the pre-born child around the world now lend new urgency to the examination of the concept of ‘the child’ in all its discursive contexts. Metal music is a potent vehicle for the interrogation of society’s foundational narratives of childhood. A Google search for “metal music + childhood” in the People Ask section shows search results with many questions such as “Should I let my kid listen to metal?”, and metal-archives.com provides 3,244 results for metal songs with “children” in the title alone. This project makes a considerable contribution to popular music studies by introducing the topic of ‘the child’ as social a construct. Yet metal music gives voice to childhood experiences that are too easily overlooked, such as abuse or depression, and actively engages in ongoing discourses around childhood, not least at the nexus of religion and science. Thus, we find metal songs, such as Rammstein’s ‘Mutter’ [Mother] and (2001) Slayer’s ‘Silent Scream’ (1988), which explore the implications of artificial fertilisation and abortion. Still others dedicate entire albums to narrating experiences of a broken home from the child’s perspective (After Forever’s 2004 Invisible Circles, for instance), or explicitly depict sexual abuse (Ultra Vomit’s 1999 ‘Pedo Fuck’) to different ends, from irony to taboo-breaking. Metal music speaks of childhood in its lyrics, but also engages with dominant cultural discourses on childhood. When Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ used a voiceover of a child saying the traditional Christian children’s bedtime prayer, “if I die before I wake, pray the Lord my soul to take”, for instance, they subverted the Walled-Garden ideal of childhood in the USA, just when the country was gripped by moral panics. Metal music is a multi-media text that includes sound, music, images, lyrics, and intertexts. Using close and distant reading techniques as well as sonic analysis, the project examines how constructions of ‘the child’ function as signs in a semiotic system beyond insulate textual, visual, or musical analyses. This project will provide a multifaceted picture of metal’s engagement with the concept of childhood.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Dr. Jan-Peter Herbst