Page - 82 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

82 | Lavinia Pflugfelder www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 tradition overwrites religious symbols genre-internally. Even unintentionally, without directly addressing religion, the self-elevation and celebration of met- al stylizes its own images according to the cultural parameters of sacred im- ages. The building blocks for self-aggrandizing myth writing stem from accu- mulated religious imagery. Maintaining a recognizable visual language leads to a degree of uniformity, which in turn can support a sense of community and cohesion. A consistency of motifs arises from the fluctuation between compulsion and cliché. Religious images are no exception to this internal discourse of transgression and meaning making. Uncovering further oblique meanings requires attention to the details, in particular when obfuscation is in itself an aesthetic decision. Any repetition of a variation of religious im- agery from the cultural repertoire that relies on the religious context to em- power the bricolage solidifies this application in the visual language – even as this sedimentation further removes it from specific religious meanings. By analysing specific examples, I have sought to illustrate bricolage as a viable approach to describing the formation of heavy metal’s visual language as well as to analysing its products. In the heavy metal tradition, embedded motifs are used in differing bricolage and with differing intentions by means of as- sociative links and contextualizing framings. I argue for a way of looking at image production that includes an intertextual view of constructed lines of tradition. “Blasphemy” is only one of many factors in the appropriation of re- ligious images. The moving parts of the heavy metal bricolage are recycled in its own image-producing machinery, and through creative reproduction and new bricolage they return to popular culture as a whole. Bibliography Altglas, Véronique, 2014, “Bricolage”: Reclaiming a Conceptual Tool, Culture and Religion 15, 4, 474–493. Blumenberg, Hans, 2006, Arbeit am Mythos, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Campbell, Colin, 2002, The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization, in: Kaplan, Jeffrey / Lööw, Heléne (eds.), The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globaliza- tion, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 12–25. Doniger, Wendy, 2009, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Theoretical and Actual Approaches to Myth, in: Wiseman, Boris (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lévi-Strauss, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 169–216. Dyrendal, Asbjørn, 2008, Devilish Consumption: Popular Culture in Satanic Socialization, Numen 55, 1, 68–98. Esteban, Juan, 2019, Interview mit David von Ketzer, 19 April, https://www.metal1.info/ interviews/ketzer/ [accessed 9 May 2020]. Everly, Dave, 2019, Venom Prison Announce New Album Samsara and European Tour, Metal