Unveiling Extreme Metal Festival Producers
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UNVEILING EXTREME METAL FESTIVAL PRODUCERS: THE EMERGENCE OF NARRATIVE IDENTITIES _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science _____________________________________________________ by MARK KLOEPPEL Dr. Grace Yan, Thesis Supervisor MAY 2016 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled: Unveiling Extreme Metal Festival Producers: The Emergence of Narrative Identities Presented by Mark Kloeppel, A candidate for the degree of Master of Science, and herby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Grace Yan, Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism (Chair) David Vaught, Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Timothy Vos, School of Journalism ii Acknowledgements I would like to extend my gratitude and acknowledgement to Grace Yan and the University of Missouri-Columbia Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Department for their guidance in the facilitation of this research opportunity. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................... 4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ............................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS .............................................................................................. 38 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS ................................................ 110 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 118 APPENEDIX ................................................................................................................. 127 iv Abstract Extreme Metal is a form of dark tourism and leisure activity whose artistic radicalism and underground scenes invoke intense debates from musicians as well as audiences. Traditional cultural studies have assumed that its disenfranchised and transgressive music expressions are an ideological resistance to increasing homogeneities of industrialized society. As such, considering the nature of festivals as a mechanism where culture is created and transmitted, the operations and promotions of Extreme Metal festivals are inevitably engaged in the wider cultural politics of Extreme Metal. The roles of festival producers thus must be emphasized, who act as powerful agents in engaging artists, developing audiences, arranging programs, and so forth. Indeed, no festivals can be simply described as improvised events - they are carefully programmed, planned, and constructed for audiences to hear and see. With this in mind, this study serves to explore the experiential predicament of these culturally embedded event producers. In particular, the identities of the festival producers compose the focus of investigation for this research. That is, considering the contested contexts that are at play in shaping the very existence of Extreme Metal, the producers are constantly acting as intermediaries between these contexts. The discursive practice by which they give meaning to their festival production practices, contain profound dissonance between 'what they imagine their selves to be' and 'what they actually are’ as related to their turbulent ‘referential world’ of Extreme Metal festival production. With this in mind, this study employs the theoretical framework of narrative identity in the examination of the ‘referential world’ by which identities are related. Narrative identity is considered as an approach to understand how people resolve v themselves, life events, actions, and other forces in their life. Considering that a self, in narrative, is given meaning through the narrator’s relation of the self to their referential world, analyzing the narrative moments where conflicting contexts are at play provides a sensitization to the struggle of Extreme Metal cultural transgression within festival production. Specifically, it is learned how this tourism is considered ‘dark.’ In doing so, three main research questions are asked: 1). How can we understand the festival producers’ identities as negotiated and emerged from the interview narratives? 2). In regards to the festival producers’ identities, what socio-cultural forces in relation to the apparatus of Extreme Metal are involved? 3). How do such findings illuminate the makings of tourism festivals at large? 1 Introduction “Narrative research is a voyage of discovery” (Josselson & Lieblich, 2003, p.206). In this study, narrative identity is approached as a mechanism to seek understandings towards the Extreme Metal festival producers. Considering festivals as a complex platform composed of various representational elements – aesthetics, sounds, ambience, and so forth - the Extreme Metal festival producers play an important role in determining the development and character of the festivals (Hennion, 1989). Their experiences are thus inevitably involved in the questions of how to make festivals that fit the social imagination of Extreme Metal and their own interpretations of this unique music genre. It leads to an individualized process of meaning making, struggling, and hence, an emergence of individual identities. On one hand, there is the façade of the festivals: grinding guitars and screaming vocals from the speaker system at the stage, a roaring crowd. The composition of festival participants can be comprehended from their appearances: dreadlocked and Mohawked punks in tattered and dirty clothing; Grindcore-looking people in plain black hats and Amebix and Napalm Death T-shirts; New York-influenced hardcore fans with flat brimmed hats and gym shorts, among others. The crowd itself is perpetuated with culturally-charged symbols. The group that flows in between the festivals’ front stage and backstage is volunteers. One typical moment where the volunteers constitute a visible focus is as they hand out pamphlets to the festival attendees: recycling methods, the benefits of veganism, how to eliminate oil consumption, and ideas on how to subvert dominant systems of living. Spreading such written values as contained in the pamphlets in the Extreme Metal festivals seems odd, strangely dogmatic at the surface. A second 2 glance however delineates a deeper yearning, an ideology that has taken on an ecological motive. Certainly, human activities in the festivals are situated within a mix of Extreme Metal aesthetic representations, which is bound by dark atmospheres and content, social deviance, and themes of transgression (Kahn-Harris, 2006; Podoshen, 2012; Spracklen, 2010, 2013). One may question how such festivals come into being and what continuously drive them to take place as events that bring together tourism activities and an extreme form of dark leisure. The festival producers’ experiences certainly provide a point of access, a discourse of festival management where individual identities are intricately embedded in. Granted, there are many ways for one to re-tell individual experiences. To re-tell one’s experiences is, in a sense, a process to build one’s life-stories, where telling is to unfold an implicit horizon which includes the actions, the characters and the events of the story told (Ricoeur, 1991). A great deal of scholarship suggests that narrative language contributes to the construction and display of individual identity (Bruner, 1987; Ricoeur, 1991; Schiffrin, 1996). It is through narrating that our actions and experiences gain meaning through their relationship to one another, as well as their relationship to general themes or plots (Schiffrin, 1996; Taylor, 1991). Meanwhile, each telling is socially and culturally situated, where knowledge and expectations about typical courses of action are drawn to construct story topics, themes, and points. To understand narrative construction is thus to not only understand an individual self, but also a larger ideological agenda that has assisted the formation of narratives. Borrowing this theoretical framework of narrative identity into viewing the specific group of Extreme Metal festival producers, this study seeks to understand how 3 in-depth interviews with the festival producers serve to reveal aspects of the narrators' agentive and epistemic selves; how they construct self-positions in relation to socio- cultural forces circulating the contested landscape of Extreme Metal; and how they display their social identities through the discourse of festival makings. Finally, as Stuart Hall (1990) points out, the concept of identity is a matter of ’becoming’ as well as ‘being,' which is continuously subjected to the interplays of history, culture and power. The dynamics between the festival producers and the revolving nature of Extreme Metal will continuously shape the existence of Metal festivals as a leisure phenomenon. 4 Chapter 1: Literature Review 1.1 Music Festival & Event Tourism Cultural festivals