Representation of social groups

Our particular social group consists of metal heads, two main characters, Bjorn and Olav. We draw on well known stereotypes. This would draw people from the heavy metal community to the characters they would relate to.

Our social group belongs to the world of musicians and rock stars. This means living the high life, crazy public stunts and generally unruly behaviour. Our mockumentary includes a sequence that features drinking, vomiting, falling over and a random attack on a passer by.

Who is the main social group?

Olav Yevewenwargen

Brendon Small

Stereotypes in documentary films

There is a long tradition of musicians featuring in documentary films, providing a whole range of stereotypes:• Spinal Tap• The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle• Walk the Line• Gimme Shelter• Heavy Metal Parking Lot• A Tribute to Jim Morrison and The Doors• Don’t Look Back• Metallica: Some Kind of Monster• No Direction Home: Bob DylanThese documentaries all feature famous bands

Moral panic heavy metal has long been a source of stereotypes representing controversy and counter-culture. Social critics analysed the social reactions to metal music especially the moral panics of the genre. Extreme music has been cited as inducing extreme reactions, e.g. as outlined in “I’d sell you suicide: pop music and moral panic in the age of Marilyn Manson” Robert Wright, 2000

Moral Panics created by metal stereotypes

Moral panic heavy metal has long been a source of stereotypes representing controversy and counter-culture.

Social critics analysed the social reactions to metal music especially the moral panics of the genre. Extreme music has been cited as inducing extreme reactions, e.g. as outlined in “I’d sell you suicide: pop music and moral panic in the age of Marilyn Manson” Robert Wright, 2000.

‘Heavy metal: the dangers, the bad hair, the decadence, the poor grammar, that threatens to topple a nation.’

Interviewer stereotypes

We also use stereotyped representations of interviewers.

Although the interviewer in our film is never seen, we examined some real life people who specialise in interviewing musicians- people like Alex Baker from Kerrang magazine and Pete Paphides- The Times rock critic.

We made our interviewer very articulate in his interviewing and treating both Olav and Bjorn with the reverence only a fan can have. This immediately conflicts with the attitude of the two rock stars, who go against almost every convention and protocol of interviewing by being surly, uncooperative and monosyllabic.

Alex Baker

Character stereotypes The characters of the two musicians are

based on the appearances and attitudes that come from stereotypes of rock stars as well as drawing on some actual rock stars behaviour.

These stereotypes include long hair, dark colours, masculinity, aggression, violent lyrics and disturbing imagery.

Scandinavia is also the birthplace of several sub-genres of Heavy Metal namely melodic death metal so we felt this would be a good country of origin for the characters. It also allowed us to draw some comedy from our voices as Scandinavian accents can be made to sound quite silly and entertaining.

Axl Rose

Lemmy