The genre Quentin Tarantino called the “heavy metal of cinema”
In 1979, The New York Times’ music critic John Rockwell defined heavy metal as “brutally aggressive music played mostly for minds clouded by drugs”.
Considering most experts agree that the genre was only codified less than a decade earlier with the release of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut opus, Rockwell’s definition was pretty on the money, if a little bit snooty. After all, you don’t need to be on drugs to enjoy banging your head to heavy metal, but it certainly helps.
However, in a different article, Rockwell’s backhanded compliment toward a fairly new genre turned into outright dismissal. This time, he called heavy metal “a crude exaggeration of rock basics that appeals to white teenagers”, which is simultaneously not entirely inaccurate and a bit of an oversimplification. Sure, white teenagers make up a big swathe of the metal fanbase, but many sustain their fandom well into adulthood and middle age. Also, the genre holds an appeal for most young people who are angry at the world, regardless of race or gender.
In the main, it would be easy to argue that there will always be people who like their music loud, dramatic, and full of a “fuck you!” attitude. Rockwell’s quotes inadvertently illustrate how metal was historically frowned upon by the musical elite, too, meaning it attracted fans who wanted to belong outside the mainstream, and revelled in loving something they were told wasn’t highbrow or worthy.
You know what else isn’t viewed as highbrow or worthy, and is beloved by young people who like their entertainment loud, brash, and full of attitude? The humble action movie. Indeed, if you conduct a thought exercise about the parallels that exist between music and film genres, heavy metal and action are a pretty good one-to-one comparison. Don’t just take my word for it, either; Quentin Tarantino was pondering this very topic in the mid-1990s, and he thought there was a lot of truth to it.
“A friend of mine said action movies are the heavy metal of cinema, and that’s not that far off,” Tarantino told Premiere magazine, adding, “Action movies have become the mainstay for young male cinemagoers, and they don’t have the Good Housekeeping ‘Seal of Approval’. Even a mediocre action movie has a couple of good sequences you can enjoy to some degree.”
With this thought-provoking quote, the Kill Bill filmmaker pinpointed the same audience for action cinema as Rockwell did for heavy metal back in 1979: teenagers. However, Tarantino tagged male teenagers as the primary audience for both genres, and perhaps there’s something to that. Throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, did metal start appealing to boys more than girls with its breakneck riffs, fantasy-based lyrics, and associated beer/partying culture? Similarly, did the gun-toting, baby-oiled, ‘roided-out action heroes of that era alienate women while also being the coolest thing most teen boys had ever seen? Heads or tails, they certainly seem plausible.
When it comes down to it, do people get the same kind of pleasure from listening to an epic Metallica riff as they do watching Die Hard? Does furiously headbanging to Slayer achieve the same result as watching the ludicrously fast-paced martial arts action in The Raid? Can the guttural roar of Gojira be compared to the primal rush of The Northman? I’d argue, “Yes. Yes, it can”, and QT agrees with me.
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