Page - 70 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

70 | Lavinia Pflugfelder www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 ing or combining images. Music videos present, structure and combine im- ages in multiple dimensions. Camera perspective puts the viewer in differing relations to the picture; the chronological succession relates any image to its preceding and following images. Intercutting similarly framed motifs creates an analogy or contrast. The sound, the very reason for the video, structures the cutting speed, visual repetitions and emphasis. Profaning the Religious Heavy metal is a musical genre as well as a subculture or, following Keith Kahn-Harris’s terminology, a “scene”. Music, content and images follow cer- tain genre-constituting guidelines. To genre tradition and a stable canon of artists, we can add the crossing of boundaries (transgression19) as such a guideline. Transgression as a category transcends themes, but as a dis- course of groups, authority and identity it is also a defining category for metal.20 While transgression is directed outwards, it produces internal sub- cultural capital. Too great uniformity or repetition allows those transgressive acts or images to flow into the larger hegemonic structure and thereby lose their transgressive effect and the power to produce the same subcultural cap- ital. Mainstream success may become selling out, and the earlier authenticity is now perceived as inauthenticity. As mundane subcultural capital that refers to traditional powers of discourse and functions as a unifying force is needed, heavy metal bricolage fluctuates between unifying the code of its visual lan- guage and fragmenting its own traditions.21 Deena Weinstein also identified the theme of power as essential for un- derstanding and analysing heavy metal.22 In conjunction with blasphemy, we must note abjection23 and defilement.24 Defilement and abjection are striking 19 Kahn-Harris 2007. 20 Hjelm/Kahn-Harris/LeVine 2013, 10. 21 Kahn-Harris 2007, 27–51. 22 Weinstein 1991: “The essential sonic element in heavy metal is power, expressed as sheer volume” (23); “The sonic power of metal is supported and enhanced by a wide range of visual artifacts and effects that display its inherent meaning” (27); “What heavy metal takes seriously is power. The sonic power of the music—its inherent meaning—contributes to every delineated meaning that appears in its lyrics. Any lyrical theme, even despair or suicide, is empowered by the heavy metal sound” (35). 23 Kristeva 1982. 24 Unger 2016.