ABSTRACT
Rock in Finnish cinema tells the story of Finland’s infatuation with heavy metal culture. Finnish heavy metal films stand for the craze for all things heavy, which has long been read through the lens of Finnish studies. An indie flick, Heavy Metal (Zaida Bergroth 2007), a mainstream film, Dark Floors (Riski and Smithee 2008) “a.k.a. The Lordi Motion Picture” and the documentary Finland: Promised Land of Heavy Metal (Kuusniemi and Karttunen 2008), all contribute to the perception of metal music as a very Finnish experience. The cultural studies approach in this chapter aims to show that the cinematic space of Finnish metal is an answer to questions about how heavy metal is to be sold to non-domestic audiences. More than the music per se, the heavy metal films identify for local metalheads a space carved out from the Western popular culture. Visual storytelling frames perceptions of heavy metal as part of a broader discourse on Finnish cultural exports and male self-identification. Heavy metal movies give a comprehensive insight into what the country’s extreme music has to offer to English-speaking metalheads, being an example of effective practice in the commercial branding of a national metal culture.
