30 MINUTES OR LESS AND HOLLYWOOD’S ONGOING EQUATION OF METAL WITH HOOLIGANISM
30 Minutes or Less is an action comedy about a pair of redneck buffoon assholes, played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, who strap a bomb to the chest of a pizza boy, played by Danny Eisenberg, and force him a rob a bank on their behalf, lest he be blown up. (The pizza boy’s best friend, played by Aziz Ansari, is also there for some reason.) And while I have no idea if the movie will be good or bad, I do know that McBride’s villainous character wears metal band shirts in every scene.
Now, maybe my reaction to this costuming decision should be “Awesome! More exposure for Napalm Death!” (Fuck Metallica. They obviously need more exposure like the dude from Asking Alexandria needs another beer.) Or maybe it should be “It’s just a dumb movie, and you can barely see the shirt anyway.” Or maybe it should be “You make your living from a website called MetalSucks, idiot. Get over yourself.” Those would all be fair reactions, I think.
Of course, none of those are the reactions I had.
Napalm Death’s moniker, and the design of their shirts, will surely intimidate the norms — fuck, it’s supposed to intimidate the norms. If Napalm Death wanted to appeal to more doctors, lawyers, and accountants, they would have called themselves Sunshine Life and played pop music. Obviously that was never their goal.
But the bottom line is this: Hollywood keeps metal as a shorthand for “bad.” No one who sees 30 Minutes or Less is gonna be rooting for McBride’s character, and — SPOILER ALERT! — I’d wager he either dies or goes to jail at the conclusion of the flick. Whether or not people are consciously aware of the shirts he’s wearing, they will notice, on some level, the design of those shirts, and they will think, “He’s cretinous, I can tell because of his shirt.” (Endangering both the life of the movie’s heroes and other innocent bystanders won’t help his cause, either.) It’s part of mainstream culture’s ongoing portrayal of metal as a music enjoyed only by immoral idiots, as opposed to, say, an outlet for negative emotions that has probably prevented more than one of us from doing some terrible, dumb shit.
(And, by the way, I’m not saying that everyone who listens to metal is a rocket scientist and a good person. Obviously, that’s not the case. I’m just saying, how come Eisenberg’s character ain’t go no Napalm Death shirt on?)
And that’s the conclusion of me over-thinking this movie and the message its characters’ wardrobes send to audiences.
Here’s the red band trailer (read: NSFW) if you’re interested. 30 Minutes or Less is in theaters tomorrow.
