Page - 66 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

66 | Lavinia Pflugfelder www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 emphasize their sound, represent ideas or lyrics, self-stylize, sell the product and generate recognition for their in-group. Like other forms of popular cul- ture, heavy metal is involved in extensive exchanges with religion. Religion can appear within popular culture in the form of explicit or implicit religious themes, content, images, symbols or language, while elements of popular cul- ture can be appropriated into religion; popular culture can itself be analysed as religion, usually using a broad functionalist definition of religion; and finally, popular culture and religion can be in dialogue.1 Even if many types of heavy metal develop their own systems of signs, heavy metal often presents itself to the outside world as a closed cultural system. Every offshoot ties itself to a shared musical tradition, recognizes fundamental “heavy metal values” and feels marginalized under real or imagined negative assessment from outside. New bands continually refer to the influence of previous bands and strength- en the “we-feeling”.2 Focusing on the incorporation of religious iconography and imagery in metal’s visual language encourages us to ask questions about the particular form of bricolage and the motivations behind the selection of individual visual elements. Which factors determine this exchange? How does bricolage help us to understand the recycling and restructuring of motifs? And how does this bricolage specifically concern religious images? To explore the interaction of image repertoire and bricolage in the visual language of heavy metal, the article is divided into a first methodological-the- oretical part on bricolage and transgression and a second investigative part with two music video examples. Bricolage “Bricolage”, a term coined by Claude Lévi-Strauss,3 refers broadly to the re- structuring of old elements in new constellations, a recycling of motifs. The audience’s shared understanding of the initial context and the reimagined context is necessary for successful bricolage. Lévi-Strauss is concerned with a universal structure of the myth, the logic of repetition in variance in myth.4 The same compulsion for repetition can be 1 Moberg/Partridge 2017, 1–3. 2 Roccor 2000, 89–90. 3 Lévi-Strauss 1989. 4 Hans Blumenberg criticizes the “Ausfällung des Zeitfaktors” (precipitation of the temporal