ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the history and development of documentary film about metal as homologous with the changing social and academic position of heavy metal cultures and practices, and addresses how representations respond to, challenge and affirm notions of global metal “others.” The first section discusses the impact and legacy of two early documentary pieces, Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986) and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988), and interrogates how these films affirmed popular understandings of metal as a site of violence, substance abuse and hypersexuality. The second section examines how the shift toward more “serious” forms of metal documentary such as Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005) corresponds with dominant directions in research and scholarship on heavy metal. The third and final section interrogates how, since the mid-2000s, heavy metal documentaries such as Global Metal (2007) and Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2007) have begun to focus on scenes beyond the “traditional” centers of metal. This discussion builds on existing scholarship which has called into focus the discourses of exoticism, exclusivity and hierarchical difference which have accompanied studies of “global” media, and extends this research tradition into Metal Music Studies.
