I agree that there are, as you so delicately put it, 'issues.' Where I diverge from LotFP (and, apparently from you) is that I think it's silly to blame outsiders for problems that are entirely self-created. The problems with metal are problems of a congenitally underconfident subculture of burnouts and losers, not problems created by evil outsiders and their filthy money and contempt for metal.
I'd never blame a grand hidden masterplan where every-day idiocy can do the job just right. In my opinions the problems that plague metal are threefold:
An industry machine that underhandedly manipulates the scene and promotes bland and bad metal because it's more marketable, leaving smaller bands on their labels to suffer. This isn't a megalomanical conspiracy theory. I don't think this is to die for. Even if Heavy Metal was completely underground and only a few worthwhile cds came out every year, that's totally fine with me (the 90s). The worthwhile fight is for these bands to be able to live off of their music, not to replace the Iced Earths and the Lacuna Coils.
Second, there's usurpers that take metal and dress it in an ideological framework that suits their political ends (some more or less fitting to HM fundamentally), therefore they are making into a form of propaganda to use for recruiting people into 'organisations' or even Oganisations. I'm sure you're very well aware of the various shades of this phenomenon. From Resistance records getting into NSBM even though 'they hate the music' to recruit kids to the anus.com 'rock and roll has nothing to do with my death metal and black metal. Ambient! Neoclassical! Folk! Sugar spice everything nice!' aspect.
Third, is that Heavy Metal is indeed an outlet for various lowlives that don't understand the music and just congregate to it because of the violent imagery, the carefree do what thou wilt surface and the beers and chicks, but that's to be expected with any underground form of music. I never identified with that crowd, and was for a long time despondent that this was supposedly 'my natural habitat' as a Heavy Metal listener.
I cannot do anything about issue 1. It's simply beyond my control on any level and I'm not one for activism anyway. But certainly critical thinking and pieces like Impure/False metal, if read and discussed can't do anything but good for this. The only thing I can do is not buy bad music. 2 is a more immediate concern on the internet, and on the internet it can be fought. From the resultant discource can only come better things. 3, which you seem to find most important, for me is a byproduct of how a scene is created, and as such I don't think we'll ever be rid of it, or that it is very important generally. Just rising above personally and creating my own Heavy Metal context was enough for me personally.
should have just turned their cameras off when Gaahl didn't play to form, but doesn't that let Gaahl off the hook for failing to exercise his own discretion?
Your scemantics betray a concept I do not adhere to. 'let off'? A guy making a documentary about you - we finally disagree on an ethical point and not 'Helm VS The Real World' - shouldn't have any power on you. They should stimulate and create the context for worthwhile things to happen.
Gaahl's stupidity is entirely relevant to the question. Respect is something that is earned, not an obligation owed to every hairless ape due to mere existence.
I believe a modicum of respect is deserved for every person one chooses to interact with initially. Once for whichever reason one feels that respect is not deserved anymore, they should not have any further direct contact with the person. It is for me, the sign of a base mind bereft of integrity, to mess around with a person for whom one feels no respect for. This vital difference in how we think about the world lessens drastically our common ground.
Making a stupid person look stupid isn't disrespectful, it's an acknowledgment of the actual structure of reality.
I think that this as an end in itself is crass and ridiculous and that, this level of discourse in social commentary discredits critical thinking on the whole. If one is to point at George W. Bush and go 'LOL, STOOPID' then that does more harm than good. The whys and the hows are what I expect from people creating meaningful social commentary, while you seem again again again intent on gathering some sort of sadistic pleasure out of 'acknowledging the actual structure of reality' by telling me who is stupid and a 'twat'.
The difference of course, stems from my desire for good things for the majority, while I'm certain you will aristocratically tell me the majority can go fall in a mass grave or something. Oh well.
This persuit is aimless, reactionary and does not promote anything else but unpleasant connotations of ones psychological dependency of making himself look better on the backs of the stupids. Check how often in a day you refer to somebody else on their lack of ability. It is not
groundless(as the stupids often are stupids) but as a persuit to which one puts significant time, it is a philosophical dead-end.
Socrates tells to Anaxagoras "let us discuss on the nature of the universe" and Anaxagoras says "WELL THE UNIVERSE IS MOSTLY STUPID".
True, but a waste of time.
Because the filmmakers don't have an obligation to be nice to Gaahl, but they do need to not lose their shirts. That means that what the public expects is more important than what the subject desires.
Simply... no. When you're in someone's house, you do as the subject desires (within reasonable lengths) and act courteously and respectfully, or you go away. If I were Gaahl, when they would tell me 'GUIDE ME' I would say 'okay' and take that camera and break it in two.
You're busting people's chops for trying to make a living, which, to me, is a lot less fair than anything they did or didn't do to Gaahl.
Holy shit yes I will bust people's chops for making a living if they're being immoral about it! Fuck their living. Go back to film-school and take a few courses in artistic ethics.
Moore does what it takes to effectively and dramatically communicate his vision. That is the essence of filmmaking. Documentaries aren't about truth or respect, they're about making the point the filmmakers want to make.
Propaganda, I'm sure you know, is exactly this. Where it doesn't matter what you say and how valid what you say is as far as you convey your message in blood-red authoritative type that will leave a lasting impression. As you might expect I find this... worrying.
I don't give a shit what filmmakers want to make unless they can muster the courage (and I know this is hard) to stand upright like men and carry the weight of their ideological beliefs. Against discourse, consequence, and truth, yes.
Truth is a concept, and is unattainable. Born out of antithesis to the far more attaniable various falsehoods of reality. I am a relativist (hm, uh, almost a solipsist, I guess? epistemologically at least) more than anything. But my personal philosophy, born out of a despondency to the world around me and a desire for solitude and secret release (probably similar how you, no coal-miner yourself, subscribe to your black metal ideology, yes?), still doesn't allow me anything but to realise that when one expects good for the world at large,
socially one either debates with this malfunctioning concept of truth (/epistemological stability) against him, or nothing at all.
Social commentary that doesn't persue to describe a functional model of reality (I stress again: I don't think such a model can be formulated by a human mind. Reality is simply too dense an interfacing system to track without basically looking at 'machine code'. But one should always TRY, when he wants to tell me something about the social situation) is worthless for the educated mind.
