“LIPSTICK AND LEATHER”: RECONTEXTUALIZATIONS OF GLAM METAL’S STYLE AND SIGNIFICATION JENNA KUMMER Bachelor of Arts, Mount Royal University, 2013 A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Lethbridge in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS Department of Sociology University of Lethbridge LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, CANADA © Jenna Kummer, 2016 “LIPSTICK AND LEATHER”: RECONTEXTUALIZATIONS OF GLAM METAL’S STYLE AND SIGNIFICATION JENNA KUMMER Date of Defence: April 12, 2016 Dr. K. Mair Assistant Professor Ph.D. Supervisor Dr. K. Granzow Assistant Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. R. Wood Professor Ph.D. Thesis Examination Committee Member Dr. J. Laurendeau Associate Professor Ph.D. Chair, Thesis Examination Committee Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the following individuals who have supported me in recent years while I wrote this thesis. Dr. Kim Mair – Your encouragement and guidance since the very beginning of this journey has meant more to me than I will ever be able to express. Thank you for everything you have taught me, every time you challenged me, and every time you encouraged me when I needed it the most. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to work with you. Dr. Kara Granzow and Dr. Rob Wood – Thank you for your support and for providing the constructive feedback that you did throughout my journey. I appreciate you both very much for your time, input and support. It was an honour learning and working with both of you. Dr. Mickey Vallee – Thank you to you for your guidance in my first year. It was instrumental in my success, and your recommendations for conferences and publications have helped me develop connections that I never thought I would have had the chance to develop. To my family and friends who have encouraged me to never give up. Special acknowledgements to my partner, Nick; my mom, Lorrie (especially for suggesting I finish this thesis by writing “And they all lived happily after. The End”); my mother-in- law, Carol; and my good friends Taylor, Katelyn, Kayla and Jessica. I could not have iii done it without your love, continued patience and endless support. To my wider cohort – I could not have asked for a better group of people to share this experience with. Despite it being filled with many ups and downs, I am so grateful to have experienced this with you all. Thank you for the laughter, the support and everything in between. iv Abstract Drawing from the methodologies of critical discourse and semiotic analysis, this study situates the recent return of glam metal style to reality television shows and commercial advertising in broader social practices by considering what attributes of contemporary culture might complement provisional identification with an extinguished subcultural style. Analysis of 1980s music videos identified three key devices, including: recruitment into a negatively defined community; social institutional critique; and carnivalesque reversals of power. In contrast, narratives portrayed in contemporary iterations of glam metal focused on family values, hope, and change. While 1980s videos revealed that the glam metal subcultural style relied upon the shared rejection of values to define group identity, contemporary iterations of the glam metal style emphasize the commonly held values of mature neoliberalism and do not assume group identification. Rather, the style is presented for viewers whose identities are presumed to be mobile and versatile. v Table of Contents Thesis Examination Committee Members………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………vi Chapter I: Introduction .........................................................................................................1 Methodology ....................................................................................................................5 Homology ........................................................................................................................8 Recontextualization ........................................................................................................12 Postmodernism ...............................................................................................................14 Post-postmodernism .......................................................................................................18 Neoliberalism .................................................................................................................20 “Look what the Cat Dragged in”: Reflecting on Reflexivity .........................................25 “Lay it Down”: Chapter Breakdown & Conclusion ......................................................30 Chapter II: Cultural Contours of Style ...............................................................................32 “Kickstart my Heart”: Heavy Metal and its ‘Apex of Popularity’ .................................35 “Mama Weer all Crazee now”: (Trans)formations of Glam Metal ...............................40 “Every Rose has its Thorn”: Censuring Glam Metal .....................................................43 “Looks that Kill”: Glam Metal’s Style and Gender Representations ............................46 “Somebody Save Me”: Music, Identity and Subculture ................................................49 “Nobody’s Fool”: Denotative and Connotative Meanings ............................................53 “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”: A Denotative Reading of the Boys’ Room ...................54 “Turn Up the Radio”: Recruitment in the Boys’ Room .................................................57 “We’re not Gonna Take it”: Social Institutional Critiques ............................................72 “Nothin’ but a Good Time”: Carnivalesque Reversals of Power ..................................79 “Rip and Tear”: Understanding the Contours of Glam Metal Style ..............................84 Chapter III: Re-emergence and Recontextualization .........................................................89 “I Remember You”: Exploring the Shifting Significations of Glam Metal ...................91 “Round and Round”: (Re)presentations of Relatable Choices in Television Commercials ..................................................................................................................95 “I Wanna Be Somebody”: Finding the “Real” in Reality TV......................................100 “No One Like You”: Family Values vs. Social Institutional Critiques .......................109 “Here I Go Again”: Addressing the Narrative of Hope and Change ...........................115 “Winds of Change”: Understanding Glam Metal’s Re-emergence and Recontextualization ......................................................................................................117 Chapter IV: Conclusion ...................................................................................................121 “Miles Away”: Areas for Future Research ..................................................................124 References ........................................................................................................................130 Analyses Sources .............................................................................................................136 Discography .....................................................................................................................138 vi Chapter I Introduction Heavy metal assumes a distinctive style evident in the adornments, gestural components, as well as in the sound and visual repertoires performed by its artists and their followers. It includes several subgenres, each with its own subculture, stylistic formations and performance personas. Glam metal constitutes a subculture that is aesthetically distinctive when it comes to its sound, visual presentations, and style. This subgenre of heavy metal gained mainstream presence with the popularity of bands such as Warrant, Twisted Sister, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, W.A.S.P., and Poison in the mid- to late 1980s, although the sound associated with it was cultivated in small-scale live performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The distinct style associated with glam metal was widely visible. During the 1980s, it was common to see it on the stage, on the television set, on magazine covers, and many glam metal followers donned it in their everyday lives. This glam metal look blurred and exaggerated gender markers and included bright makeup, big and long hair, spandex, leather and scarves. The Parents’ Music Resource Centre (PMRC) campaign for a content ratings system to be applied to popular music targeted the glam metal aesthetic expressed in lyrics, on album covers, in music videos, and on t-shirts as sexually explicit, violent, and morally suspect. This campaign’s attention to glam metal is just one example that suggests that the glam metal style may have disrupted normative expectations of self- presentation in the 1980s. The popularity of glam metal music and its style was not trending for long. While mainstream visibility of the style quickly waned in the early 1990s, the 1980s-style heavy metal has recently gained a renewed cultural presence, 1 prompting metal scholars to speculate about its revival (Griffin, 2014; Klypchak, 2011; Kahn-Harris, 2007, p. 1-2). This study seeks to understand the subcultural style of glam metal in