Representations and Social Uses of Metal Music

The Hellfest, a metal music festival held near Nantes, is publicly and politically categorized and stigmatized each year in June, as the event gets close. If “moral entrepreneurs” fail in their attemps to impose their aspirations, it is because the resources on which the festival’s organizers rely (social capital and “social peace”) and the festival goers’ social uses both help keep this type of event within the sphere of what is socially acceptable. The absence of illegal acts, the meanings conferred by the audience to the Hellfest - especially the caricature and the “desymbolization” of Catholic symbols – and the latter’s social features constitute counter-arguments to the groups opposed to the festival.