When cultural amnesia cross mutates with perpetual pearl-clutching, you end up with a scenario like the one that captured a bit of attention last week, concerning the cartoon-metal band Gwar.
The band (which I barely even knew still existed in some form) performed at Riot Fest in Chicago, and during their show, which was full of big, dumb, absurd shock humor and theatrics (their specialty), the heavily costumed ensemble performed mock executions of Elon Musk and president Donald Trump. When footage of this made its way to some of the far-right influencers out on the digital frontier, the predictable ripple effect ensued. In the words of one of Riot Fest’s organizers, “the dumbest people on the internet are still mad today.”
Internet pundits accused the band of promoting political violence, and post after post that I saw on the subject vilified Gwar to the point to where, well, let’s be honest, a new generation of bored kiddos are likely to check the band out now.
In a statement to Billboard magazine, the band’s vocalist, Michael “Blothar the Berserker” Bishop said that the band’s shtick is a “parody of violence,” and likened it more to the type of cartoon violence one might see on an average segment of Looney Tunes.
“It’s trying to make violence into a spectacle and show humanity’s absolute absurdity. That’s what Gwar is, it’s absurdism. To say it’s normalizing violence is really reaching,” Bishop said.
Now, as an old-school metalhead who came of age in the ‘90s when Gwar was at the peak of its powers, I felt I needed to weigh in on this bunch of nonsense. My knowledge of Gwar does not extend much past the few videos I would see on Headbangers’ Ball and the fact that one of my favorite bands, Brutal Juice, toured with them for a while. However, like me, even if you’d never bought a single Gwar album or had never gone to a show, you’d still know something of the band’s trademark gross-out ridiculousness, and its equal opportunity offender status of lampooning (and mock executing) celebrities and political figures.
A quick Google search revealed to me a short list of politicians who’d been “executed” onstage at a Gwar show. George H.W. Bush; Bill Clinton; Al Gore; George W. Bush; Dick Cheney; Barack Obama; Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have all been “sacrificed” to Gwar, so Trump and Elon are in good company.
A cursory read through some Gwar lyrics online affirms that the band’s often absurdly violent and sophomorically scatological lyrics have not evolved since the ‘90s. If anything, as a reading of the lyrics to “Jiggle the Handle” made me surmise, they’ve only gotten more ridiculous. Gwar have never been my cup o’ java, but they apparently still have a huge fanbase. I’m not going to put down what they do here, because A.) a critique of their lyrics is not the point here and B.) I’m sure some would find the lyrics of one of my favorite bands, Acid Bath, to be puerile and warped, too.
To me, when it comes to theatrics, the music has to be there first in order to justify it. That’s why Alice Cooper and David Bowie were so popular, because they had great songs to back up all of the bizarre onstage action. I never felt Gwar’s music rose to that occasion, or what I knew of it, but they’re doing one thing right, and it should be a lesson to all who are in the business of satire: if you’re going to treat one public figure like trash, treat ‘em all like trash, equally. It’s about fairness in lampooning – and why that beloved comedy institution Saturday Night Live is about to enter season number 51.
A quick perusal of some news stories about the band revealed that in 2022, at a festival in Germany, Gwar “decapitated” then-president Joe Biden. Another time, in 2015, they “killed” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton onstage.
The Billboard article that covered this topic featured a quote from Kevin Goldberg, who serves as vice president of the non-partisan Freedom Forum, an organization dedicated to First Amendment education. Goldberg said that Gwar’s performances are fully protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that the band is exercising “the right to engage in parody and satire as part of [its] performance.”
That old pole-position plank of the Bill of Rights has been getting a lot of press and conversational space, nationwide, as of late, and with good reason. Heightened discourse after the assassination of Charlie Kirk has made the country feel like more of a powder keg than normal, and the whole bit about Jimmy Kimmel has sucked up a lot of oxygen in various places within the marketplace of ideas.
The protection of free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment allows for the sharing of unpopular opinions, robust debate and even lowbrow artistic expressions – from bands like Gwar and Kid Rock to films like Toxic Avenger and Joe Dirt – and that freedom helps keep our society engaged and evolving.
Without the freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, dissent and creativity are stifled, thus weakening democracy. Whether a poet, politician, comedian, protester or member of Gwar, they all have that right and the spirit of liberty flourishes under it.
