Heavy metal carnival and dis-alienation: The politics of grotesque realism

Based on four years of concert fieldwork and extensive music media analysis (including bands such as Cradle of Filth, GWAR, Insane Clown Posse, Marilyn Manson, and Slipknot), this article shows how heavy metal music and its carnival culture express a dis-alienating politics of resistance. Applying Bakhtin's multifaceted conceptualization of the carnival-grotesque, the author explains how grotesque realism in metal music and performances constitutes a proto-utopian liminal alternative to the impersonal, conformist, superficial, unequal, and numbing realities of commercialism and, more abstractly, a resistance to a society of spectacle and nothingness.