Kristen Sollee

Glamour is a glimmering thread that ties self-proclaimed witches of the present with accused witches of the past. Through the ritualized use of clothing and cosmetics, contemporary witchcraft practitioners are fashioning their bodies as sites of resistance, liberation, and magic-making. By harnessing glamour spells to hex, heal, conjure, and banish—to shape-shift their inner and outer worlds—they are engaging with the history and aesthetics of witchcraft and reckoning with cultural associations between femininity, adornment, and evil.

To undress the visual legacy of the witch, this chapter interweaves scholarly and popular perspectives on witch-hunting and witch fashion, elements of spellcraft, and interviews with contemporary witchcraft practitioners. Our exploration begins by examining the origins of the witch archetype, leaps forward onto the witchiest couture runways, veers back into the past to uncover the role of glamour magic in the witch hunts, and concludes with the words of witchcraft practitioners who spell out how they manifest their aesthetic magic.

This article analyses the metal community’s responses to Mastodon’s controversial video for ‘The Motherload’. Fans and music journalists responded critically to its premiere in September of 2014, largely condemning the highly sexualized images of women of colour onscreen, which sparked debate about objectification, racism, and sexism in metal as a whole. Using a sex positive feminist framework, I unpack the various arguments put forth by dancers in the video, the band itself, and the afore- mentioned critics and fans. I conclude that there is no easy answer to the question of how women should be represented in metal, and that while women and, specifi- cally, women of colour deserve more diverse, humanizing representations, summar- ily condemning depictions of female sexuality is no antidote to prejudice.

In stark contrast to the widespread popularity of the Gothic literary genre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, goth music and goth fashion were largely relegated to subculture from their inception in the late 1970s. Over the past decade, however, goth fashion has moved past its musical counterpart into ubiquity, stretch- ing its shadow-laced fingers across popular culture and into contemporary hip hop as artists incorporate goth aesthetics and Gothic literary themes into their expanding style lexicons. From the ‘Ghetto Gothic’ fashions of A$AP Rocky and Mykki Blanco to the monochromatic macabre videos of Jay-Z and Kanye West, the sartorial signs of the doomed undead are now de rigueur in rap, and washes of reverb-laden guitar beneath mournful Anglo-European voices are no longer prerequisites for sepulchral style. Contrary to the authenticity-obsessed goth scene, this phenomenon can be viewed as momentary ‘Gothic drag’, or more in keeping with hip hop culture, as ‘aesthetic sampling’ that mirrors the long-standing tradition of music sampling in rap. Rather than standing in opposition to classic definitions of goth subculture or Gothic literary tropes, the cultural syncretism in today’s hip hop serves to revitalize and recontextualize the entire macabre genre, rendering it more inclusive of diversity and free from its characteristic restraints.

Jennifer Milioto Matsue's ethnographic account of Tokyo hardcore in the late 1990s situates the scene both within the context ofJapanese society and underground music scenes in urban centers around the world. The author characterizes this enclave of hardcore music making as both distinctively Japanese and simultaneously comparable to other music scenes outside Japan. Matsue's research spans from 1996 to 1999 and revolves around the band Jug and the club or "livehouse" they frequent, 20,000volt. Other bands and participants on the periphery of this particular group are discussed, although the ethnographer is most intimately involved with Jug, and eventu- ally joins them during a few live performances as a guest vocalist. Crucial to Matsue's narrative is a concept of performance that includes both acts onstage and (inter)personal contributions within the scene.