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• 1 2020-09-08T02:52:33-07:00 Horror Aesthetics 4 gallery 2020-09-08T02:59:22-07:00 The nineties saw several alternative artists disrupt the status quo with aesthetics that were dark rather than violent – previously the stereotype for “extreme” rock artists. Before Slipknot, some of the more noteworthy groups following this trend include the industrial group Nine Inch Nails – especially their MTV-censored 1994 music video for “Closer” – and the infamous Marilyn Manson, one of the most controversial public figures in recent decades, in large part due to his makeup and appearance at first and then later, the media connecting him and his music to the Columbine High School shooting. The Mark Romanek directed “Closer” music video pulls heavily from gothic imagery, set in a mad scientist’s lab where singer Trent Reznor, consistently dressed in fetish gear, experiments with reanimating a removed heart and decapitated pig, surrounded by other religious and sexual symbolism. (This music video is an obvious influence on Slipknot’s stop-motion video for “Wait and Bleed,” and the artist who created the pig heart for the video, onetime musician turned special effects artist Screaming Mad George, even designed the Slipknot’s masks in addition to assets for Predator (1987) and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.[1]) Although MTV censored many scenes from the original music video, replacing them with a title card reading “Scene Missing,” the video “frequently tops lists of the best music videos ever made and somehow adds to the song that inspired it”[2] in ways that few other music videos do, but in many ways, the “Not Safe For Work” (NSFW) elements of the video are not so much scary as they are creepy. Trent Reznor does not assume the role of a horror monster but rather becomes a creep, a voyeur rather than a sadist (further emphasized by the opening lyrics in which he fantasizes about what he would do to his target, “You let me violate you/You let me desecrate you/You let me penetrate you,” and the chorus, “I want to fuck you like an animal/I want to feel you from the inside”). Similarly, Marilyn Manson made a name for himself as the shock rock icon of his generation following the release of the his sophomore – and first widely commercially successful – album, Antichrist Superstar (1996), led by the single “The Beautiful People” (coincidentally produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails). The music video for “The Beautiful People” is actually quite similar to that for “Closer” and produces similar results; it predominately features Marilyn Manson with his iconic black eye makeup and mismatched pupils (thanks to contacts) in an unnerving laboratory filled with prosthetics and medical equipment, which is used on him. The imagery is undoubtedly dark, but it is not scary – the medical instruments used on Manson act as curiosities and create a fetishistic vibe, rendering him a pervert. (This perversion is what ultimately led to the myth that he elected for surgery to remove ribs so he can pleasure himself orally.) Marilyn Manson is provocative, but he is not horrifying, at least by traditional horror film generic conventions dating back to the eighties. 
  
  
  This adoption of dark aesthetics strongly influenced by the horror film genre is significant because of the marked departure away from the aesthetics of violence (at least outside of concert settings) that defined earlier artists performing a similar cultural function in creating an anti-establishment subculture, like punk bands of the seventies and eighties.[3] What distinguishes Slipknot in this movement toward darkness as the primary aesthetic marking them as alternative is twofold: first, their efforts to combine these two approaches by counterbalancing violence – but only at their live shows – with haunting imagery and iconography in their costuming and music videos, and their ability to adopt elements from the horror film genre to create an actually horrifying rather than just weird and/or creepy (rooted in shock value) band persona like the aforementioned acts in the nineties. In this way, Slipknot’s reliance upon horror aesthetics in their pop cultural representation is more than just a departure from the stereotypically violent image of the metal genre, it is a rejection of the toxic rage that defines metal’s toxic masculinity; instead, Slipknot converted toxic energy into more socially acceptable, non-toxic horror aesthetics to be replicated by their fans.[4]
  
  
  Out of all the aesthetic influences on Slipknot’s iconography, horror is unquestionably the most obvious; the band is, after all, best known for the horrifying masks they wear when performing. The masks – including “the laughing clown, the S&M victim, and the mutilated, filthy animal” that represent the band’s horror of growing up in “a hostile, unchanging environment that would not and could not accept them”[5] – root the band in the aesthetics of horror. However, some of the incorporations of horror mythologies in the music videos are almost unforgivably derivative. In the video for “My Plague,” concert footage is intercut with clips from the 2002 action-horror movie Resident Evil (the song appeared on the film’s soundtrack as well), and, similarly, the “Spit It Out” video features the band reenacting iconic scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), again interspersed between shots of a live show. But, what these videos lack in originality with regards to content, they make up for with thoughtful editing representing the “enunciative strategies”[6] of the horror genre, especially the “disruption of the viewer’s position of coherence.”[7] Considering “horror in the cinema as a mode of address” defined by “its will to horrify the viewer,”[8] even these imitative videos accomplish this goal of the horror film. 
  
  
  The “My Plague” video “fear jerks”[9] the viewer through the juxtaposition of footage of the crowd with scenes of the protagonist from Resident Evil, Alice played by Milla Jovovich, clawing her way through a hoard of zombies. In this section of the video starting around the 1:50 mark, the viewer can hardly discern which clip is from the concert and which is from Resident Evil, and the quick edits only further disorient the viewer, bringing a sense of panic and claustrophobia from the film into the virtual concert experience via incoherent Eisensteinian metric montage. Signaled sonically by the chorus immediately following the breakdown, the camera privileges the concertgoers and crowd surfing band member rather than the main stage for the first time, making a direct appeal to the mentality and experience of the viewer as a fan. By contrast, the music video begins and ends by very switching between the easily discernable concert footage – mostly shots of the band and pyrotechnics on stage – and clips from Resident Evil; this brief crowd-oriented segment of the music video is essential to remixing pre-existing video components into a new horror experience and blurs the line of what is “real” for the viewer, bringing the anxiety and horror of Resident Evil into reality. 
  
  
  If the video for “My Plague” is a remix of a Hollywood film, “Spit It Out” is a pastiche – or even forgery – of a horror film classic. Unlike with parody that aims to ridicule original texts, pastiche copies from masterpieces to honor the works of the past. As such, pastiche requires a shared history between the viewer and the artist; Fredric Jameson asks, “Without a past, can we even continue to appeal to a shared present?”[10] Thus the pastiche of The Shining in “Spit It Out” serves to create common ground between the viewer and creator. So why pull from The Shining specifically? At the most basic level, The Shining is an easily recognizable classic that most of their audience would recognize, and as a horror masterwork, the film reinforces the horror aesthetic the band already cultivates. The randomness of the scenes reenacted – the child riding the big wheel through the halls, drinking at the phantom bar, the elevator – which have no noticeable thematic or narrative links would suggest there is no deeper meaning behind the pastiche. Yet, according the Jameson, this film that portrays the demise of a family in isolation is “all about” “the drive towards community, the longing for collectivity, [and] the envy of other, achieved collectivities,”[11] which, incidentally, is also a key motivating factor behind the band and its tightknit community of maggots. Regarding formal techniques, “Spit It Out” also uses quick edits to disorient the audience as with “My Plague,” but more importantly, the video manipulates time, alternately speeding up and slowing down the movements of the band members on stage to render them inhuman and sinister. (Perhaps the time manipulation of the band members on stage is meant to replace the supernatural phenomena of The Shining?) As a result, the band members become monsters not only in the fictional realm of the reenactments of The Shining but also in their performances in real life. The concert footage here and in “My Plague” is essential to realizing the horror spirit; regardless of the derivative content, both of these videos use horror film iconography to reinforce the connection between concertgoing, arguably the most important cite of interpellation for a maggot, and the performance of horror as equally valid outlets for ultra-violence.
  
  
  Other Slipknot music videos from this era more creatively employ the strategies of the horror genre, especially through the representation of the “spectacle of horror” as well as the “sadomasochistic relationship between the audience and the film spectacle.”[12] The band’s first narrative music video, the second for “Wait and Bleed,” “[confronts] the spectator with images of violence, of decay, of mayhem… [and] of eeriness”[13] throughout the hybrid stop motion/live action film: the opening sound of the droning of flies accompanied by the image of squirming maggots, a bleeding tree, jars of eyeballs, the disquieting dungeon-like atmosphere of the lab itself, the destruction of the lab, and the final combustion of the band’s captor. Regardless of whether the viewer aligns with the (human) captor or the (puppet) band members, the music video provides an almost textbook sample for psychoanalysis – following Linda Williams’ model – because of the viewer’s “oscillation between masochistic and sadistic poles.”[14] It is important to note that the viewer very well may identify with the band members or the captor in this music video; though the “sadomasochistic thrills”[15] are apparent from either perspective, there is no “female body” to instruct the viewer’s identification as there are in traditional slasher films dating back to the eighties. Though the music video encourages the reading that the band members are the protagonists because of their victimization by the captor – in the form of imprisonment and surgical experimentation – and concluding empowerment by setting the captor on fire, the claymation band members appear as miniature horror monsters in their own right. In many ways, the band members are more horrifying than the captor (who is at least human): the dolls have masks instead of faces, the kabuki character crawls like a spider, the clown can take off his head, and one of the members in a cage has snake-like dreadlocks that slither around him. Here, again, the aesthetics of horror become an outlet for ultra-violence by the band members-turned horror dolls.
  
  
  The videos for both “Vermilion” and “Vermilion, Pt. 2” situate the viewer in a more typical, sadomasochistic, “bisexual model of viewer identification in horror film”[16] as the spectator is meant to identify with the main female protagonist. These videos differ from the earlier horror-influenced videos by the band because the horror depicted is more psychological: the protagonist is effectively a ghost and (in part 2) a victim under control of supernatural powers, literally blowing in the wind, in both cases an outsider simultaneously imprisoned and ignored by reality. These videos together construct a horrifying portrait of the female psyche through invocations of the surreal, especially in the first when the protagonist dons a mask and the rest of the band shows up and puts on masks that look like human faces. In this scene, the only scene in which the protagonist successfully interacts with another human being, she waltzes with a member of Slipknot, metaphorically dancing with her demons that keep her from being a part of the real world. The second video features “horror as the spectacle of decay”[17] as the girl is now a lifeless corpse (her piercing blue eyes at the 3:08 mark are a haunting visualization of death), perhaps having succumbed to her demons through an implied suicide, unable to find peace even in death. Thus, though these videos are a noticeable shift for the band and predict their move toward a more inclusive fanbase – this is the first instance of femininity within their culture – they still operate within the guidelines of the horror genre while portraying a theme of existing outside the scope of “normal” society that maggots can relate to and see themselves in as powerless individuals looking for an outlet for their ultra-violence. 
  
  
  Satanism – not the actual religion, but the mainstream misconceived interpretation of the religion that created widespread moral panic about devil worshipping –  is in many ways another extension of the horror genre that frequently appears throughout the Slipknot cannon, and the band’s iconography outside of music videos often appropriates that of Satanism. An image of a black goat head is the album cover for the band’s second major-label release, Iowa, and the band's stage decoration on that tour included “666 lights... and a new banner emblazoned with a goat’s silhouette and a nine-pointed star”[18] resembling a pentagram. The goat from the album cover actually reappears in the video for “Left Behind,” one of the singles from the record. Also prominent in the video is percussionist Shawn Crahan’s mask for this album cycle, an adaptation of his traditional clown look to incorporate symbols of the devil: horns and an upside down bloody pentagram carved into the face. In many ways, the video for “Left Behind” plays like a satanic ceremony with the band playing their music in the woods as a tribute to the devil, who graces them with a baptism by rain at the end. However, Slipknot is not actually a satanic band; only one of their songs, “The Heretic Anthem” off Iowa, lyrically references satanism at all with the repeated lyrics “If you’re 555, (then) I’m 666” as the chorus. But, even so, this chorus is meant to provoke rather than pledge allegiance to the “sign of the beast” as the song is “the ultimate middle finger to anyone who tried to make the band change to become more ‘marketable’”[19] as the verses stress how the band will not give in to demands from the mainstream media or record executives. More simply, “The Heretic Anthem” is an announcement of ultra-violence in the form of resisting the pressures to conform. Anders Colsefni, the original singer before the band’s major-label record deal, asserts that Slipknot is “‘not a Satan-worshipping band – but it’s not for the queasy or weak-minded.’”[20] Drummer Joey Jordison later clarifies the band’s ambivalence toward any religious philosophy: “The only similarity we have with Satanism is that we’re self-indulgent… One of the main tenets of Satanism is self-righteousness and making yourself happy. I agree with that. It doesn’t mean it’s evil. I agree with aspects of Satanism as much as I agree with aspects of the Bible.”[21] Thus, though the iconography of Satanism plays a large part in the brand’s public identity, the adoption of these symbols is a method for the band to “classify themselves (in the eyes of others) by appropriating practices and properties that are already classified”[22] a certain way rather than as a way to assert satanic ideology. In other words, the band – striving to assert its ideology of being outsiders – borrowed symbolism that would frighten mainstream America and solidify their outsider-ness while giving maggots imagery to appropriate in the expression of their ultra-violence.
  
  
  [1] Mike Rampton, “A Deep Dive Into Nine Inch Nails’ NSFW Video for Closer,” Kerrang!, January 19, 2019, https://www.kerrang.com/features/a-deep-dive-into-nine-inch-nails-nsfw-video-for-closer/.
  [2] Rampton, “Deep Dive.”
  [3] For example, Sid Vicious became debatably more famous for his habits of self-mutilation and for killing his girlfriend Nancy Spungen than for being the bassist for the Sex Pistols, one of the most celebrated and recognizable bands of the 20th century.
  [4] In other words, a maggot feeling toxic emotions might wear a replica mask of one of the band members to scare others and express his feelings non-violently rather than (physically or emotionally) attack any oppositional group.
  [5] Joel McIver, Slipknot: Unmasked (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 33.
  [6] Edward Lowry, “Genre and Enunciation: The Case of Horror,” Journal of Film and Video 36, no. 2 (1984): 15, JSTOR.
  [7] Lowry, “Genre,” 19.
  [8] Lowry, “Genre,” 15.
  [9] Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” Film Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 5, JSTOR.
  [10] Fredric Jameson, “The Shining,” Social Text 4 (1981): 121, JSTOR.
  [11] Jameson, “Shining,” 122.
  [12] Lowry, “Genre,” 15.
  [13] Lowry, “Genre,” 15.
  [14] Williams, “Film Bodies,” 6.
  [15] Williams, “Film Bodies,” 7.
  [16] Williams, “Film Bodie]s,” 7.
  [17] Lowry, “Genre,” 16.
  [18] Bozza, “Highway.”
  [19] Hartmann et al., “Ranked.”
  [20] McIver, Slipknot, 33.
  [21] Bozza, “Highway.”
  [22] Bourdieu, “Distinction,” 250.