Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
The Auschwitz Sonderkommando in Extreme Metal and Superhero Comics: The Holocaust Consciousness of Stigmatized Subcultures
Dr Dominic Williams - University of Leeds
Email: d.p.williams@leeds.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
Scholars of the cultural memory of the Holocaust have moved beyond simply asserting that only high modernist artworks can convey the enormity of this historical catastrophe. However, the belief that certain cultural forms have no business addressing the Shoah is still widespread. Subcultures, such as superhero comics and metal, which carry a degree of stigma (which has varied historically between outright moral panic to contemptuous indifference to even a kind of patronising affection) have met with particular resistance to attempts to encroach upon this territory. The Wikipedia page for the Auschwitz Sonderkommando (SK – the almost exclusively Jewish group of prisoners in Auschwitz forced to work in the crematoria) used to contain a reference to Magneto, the X-Men antihero/supervillain, but it was removed after editors agreed that his backstory as part of the SK was ‘pathologically tasteless, if not revolting, ignorant, and offensive’. The Meads of Asphodel’s concept album Sonderkommando (2013) was greeted by many reviews asking whether choosing to represent the Holocaust revealed far-right sympathies.
And yet, as both of these examples reveal, comics and metal have been attracted not only to the Holocaust, but to one of its most difficult topics, the so-called ‘grey zone’ of privilege and collaboration in which Primo Levi placed the Sonderkommando. My paper will consider the ways in which this stigmatized group of prisoners figure as part of these subcultures’ ways of managing their own stigma: not only to reduce it but also to reimpose it upon themselves as a mark of distinction.
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
The Auschwitz Sonderkommando in Extreme Metal and Superhero Comics: The Holocaust Consciousness of Stigmatized Subcultures
Dr Dominic Williams - University of Leeds
Email: d.p.williams@leeds.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
Scholars of the cultural memory of the Holocaust have moved beyond simply asserting that only high modernist artworks can convey the enormity of this historical catastrophe. However, the belief that certain cultural forms have no business addressing the Shoah is still widespread. Subcultures, such as superhero comics and metal, which carry a degree of stigma (which has varied historically between outright moral panic to contemptuous indifference to even a kind of patronising affection) have met with particular resistance to attempts to encroach upon this territory. The Wikipedia page for the Auschwitz Sonderkommando (SK – the almost exclusively Jewish group of prisoners in Auschwitz forced to work in the crematoria) used to contain a reference to Magneto, the X-Men antihero/supervillain, but it was removed after editors agreed that his backstory as part of the SK was ‘pathologically tasteless, if not revolting, ignorant, and offensive’. The Meads of Asphodel’s concept album Sonderkommando (2013) was greeted by many reviews asking whether choosing to represent the Holocaust revealed far-right sympathies.
And yet, as both of these examples reveal, comics and metal have been attracted not only to the Holocaust, but to one of its most difficult topics, the so-called ‘grey zone’ of privilege and collaboration in which Primo Levi placed the Sonderkommando. My paper will consider the ways in which this stigmatized group of prisoners figure as part of these subcultures’ ways of managing their own stigma: not only to reduce it but also to reimpose it upon themselves as a mark of distinction.
