This happens to me every time I try to sit down and watch one of those primetime procedural dramas on the major networks. The cop walks into some gross crackhouse and the killer is blasting heavy metal. Every time – the serial killer, mass murderer or rapist or lunatic whatever is always a heavy metal listener on these shows. It just happened this week on Chicago Fire and it drove me bonkers.
Criminal Minds and Law & Order – they’re guilty of this too. I can’t specifically point out which metal band the serial murderer was a fan of but I remember it happened on those shows… Stop stereotyping every whackjob as a metal fan. Don’t do it anymore. For once, tell the truth, tell the honest truth and have the spree shooter be blasting something from The Weeknd or Drake for a change. This is getting silly.
On this week’s episode of Chicago Fire, Season 4 Episode 13 ‘The Sky is Falling’, the crew shows up to an emergency to discover that a group of machine-gun armed psychopaths are shooting up the place. At one point we see one of the killers listening to some crazy ass death metal via headphones. It’s so loud of course that the cowering survivors can hear it as they hide under furniture. Everyone knows that when you listen to metal, not only does it have to be played loud as hell, but you also need to pack an arsenal for mass murder. Duh.
Holy shit. I’m tired of turning to my wife when the badguy pops up on one of her shows to say, “Hey I just listened to that band the other night,” or “Look at that dude’s Five Finger Death Punch shirt – he’s definitely the murderer – aaaaand – yup, he’s killing that chick.”
Why can’t showrunners be brave and get the rights to some unique music and use it as a backdrop for their scenes of violence. Quentin Tarantino has killed tons of people in his films and he’s certainly not used heavy metal once in his soundtracks while doing it. How about in American Psycho when Christian Bale murders Jared Leto with an axe? Remember the music he was listening to while he did that? Huey Lewis and the freaking News son. You know why everybody remembers that? Because it’s original. It’s clever. It’s memorable.
You’re not doing your series any favours by constantly having the murderer be a heavy metal fan. It’s safe, it’s becoming predictable at this point and downright offensive to someone who does listen to metal on a daily basis and shockingly enough – has never murdered anybody. Crazy right? Stop with this nonsense – your stereotype of violent murderers all being into heavy music makes you seem like an out-of-touch right wing moron who is extremely out of touch with the human race. Grow up, grow a pair and the next time you write a killer into your show – have him wear a Nicki Minaj shirt and be listening to “What do you mean” while he’s cannibalizing some poor innocent dude wearing a Slayer tanktop.