Abstract
Brown explores the contradiction that a youth subculture at the centre of a mass-mediated moral panic was also the inspiration for a string of Hollywood movies, which placed the male-teen-buddy ‘metalhead’ experience at the centre of the narrative. The fact that such films are comedies might suggest the role of satire is to ‘make safe’ a troubling youth culture by simplifying and distorting it using established comedic conventions. But, as Brown shows, while the films do comically simplify the references to heavy metal culture, including argot, electric-guitar virtuosity, bands and fandom, they also articulate a form of ‘protest masculinity’ that subverts both plot and narrative, allowing the ‘loser’ male-teen-metalhead characters to triumph against hegemonic forms of male authority that are depicted as pompous and corrupt.
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- 1.
Interview from the documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years (1988).
- 2.
Of Huey Lewis and the News, whose 1985 hit ‘The Power of Love’, features in the film. Ironically, the number the band are performing is a ‘heavy metal version’ of this song.
- 3.
Michael J. Fox confirms (2002 DVD Feature) that the choreography for this sequence was conceived as a homage to these ‘guitar heroes’.
- 4.
The band Van Halen are also named on a cassette tape of ‘future music’ that Marty plays to George McFly (Crispin Glover), while pretending to be an alien visitor to earth, to command him to take his future mother, Lorraine (Lea Thompson) to the Prom in order to break the oedipal-complex he finds himself trapped within.
- 5.
The time machine originally scripted was a 1969 Chevrolet van, not a Phone Booth. But the director (Stephen Hereck) felt this was too Scooby Do and also Back to the Future had just come out, featuring the DeLorean car.
- 6.
In the sequel, Bogus Journey (1991), the ‘dead’ Bill & Ted have a great deal of fun with their guide Death (the Grim Reaper, a pastiche of the Bergman character): ‘Ted, don’t fear the reaper.’ Death: ‘I heard that.’
- 7.
Interview included with 2001 DVD of the film.
- 8.
Interview (as above).
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Brown, A.R. (2018). You’re All Partied Out, Dude!: The Mainstreaming of Heavy Metal Subcultural Tropes, from Bill & Ted to Wayne’s World . In: Bentley, N., Johnson, B., Zieleniec, A. (eds) Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73189-6_7
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