What is "the pit"?

One of the many overlapping terms between punk and metal (particularly thrash and speed metal) is the pit, or the space reserved for moshing in front of the band. The pit can be seen as a ritualized way for (mostly) young men to express their aggression during a concert. The pit is somewhat dangerous, especially for newcomers who do not understand its complex but very real etiquette, and it is advised that members of the audience know what they are getting into before they jump into the pit.

What is "Moshing"?

Moshing is an activity much like slam dancing and pit diving that originated in the punk scene but was adopted by the thrash and crossover metal scenes in the eighties and continues today, especially in the hard-edge black and death metal subgenres. Key early bands that popularized the mosh were Anthrax, who wrote one of the odes to moshing, “Caught in a Mosh,” and also Stormtroopersof Death, led by Billy Milano, who helped popularize moshing in their song “Milano Mosh.” The practice consists of members of the audience coming together in a large area on the concert floor in front of the stage, usually called “the pit,” and ritualistically bouncing off each other in a manner reminiscent of punk slamming, only occasionall quickly back into the audience or try and go for a victory lap onstage until bouncers throw them off again or much worse, they are brought backstage and ejected from the club. For fans, moshing also serves as a form of release, a way of getting rid of aggression, or as a form of catharsis. As William Tsitsos has noted, there is a distinct difference between traditional slam dancing in the early punk scene and the moshing that dominates today, in that “… moshers’ explanations for their dancing tend to focus more on the venting of individual aggression” (Tsitsos 2006, 125). Moshing is mostly a masculine activity, at last in heavy metal where the pits seem to be more aggressive and less inviting to women, who frequently find themselves groped or even attacked by newcomers who do not understand the respectful attitude that is inherent in a successful pit. To this day, for better of worse, the pit continues to be a place to be entered at one’s own risk, and moshing is still prevalent, depending on the scene and the tolerance of the band and the promoters. Rituals vary from scene to scene and band to band, and some bands openly encourage a large and active pit while others try and discourage the practice for insurance and safety issues. The ritualistic act of stage diving often accompanies the moshing, where a fan lucky enough to get up on stage with their favorite band can try and jump.

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. Originally named Sadie, she changed her name to Zadie at 14. Smith wrote her acclaimed first novel White Teeth during her final year at King’s College, Cambridge. Moving to the US, she studied at Harvard and taught creative writing at Columbia University School of Fine Arts before taking her current post at New York University. She divides her time between New York and London, with her husband, writer Nick Laird, and their two children.

  Smith has received nearly 20 nominations and awards for her writing. In recent years she has branched outm into short stories and critical essays. In an article in The Guardian newspaper she was asked to give her 10 golden rules for writing fiction, which included: “Tell the truth throughwhichever veil comes to hand— but tell it.”

Toni Morrison - Beloved - a Great American Novel

Toni Morrison is one of the America’s most powerful literary voices, and the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), among her numerous other awards. Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 into a working-class Ohio family, she grew up with a love of reading, music, and folklore. She earned a BA from Howard University and an MA from Cornell. She was married for a short time to Jamaican architect Harold Morrison, with whom she had two sons. Morrison wrote her first four novels while working as an editor in New York. Her fifth, Beloved, was widely acclaimed and made into a movie. From 1989 to 2006 Morrison held a professorship at Princeton University. In 2005 she wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner, an opera based on the story that inspired Beloved. She continues to write, and to

speak against censorship and repression of history.

Quotes:

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”

What is a caricature?

We can find caricature in the arts or literature, an exaggerated portrayal of an individual or type, aiming to ridicule or otherwise expose the subject; in art, features are often made comical or
grotesque. Classical and medieval examples of pictorial caricatures survive. Artists of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries have often used caricature as a way of satirizing society and politics. Notable exponents include the French artist Honoré Daumier and the German George Grosz. In literature, caricatures have appeared since the comedies of Aristophanes in ancient Greece. Shakespeare and Dickens were adept at creating caricatures. Grotesque drawings have been discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Pliny refers to a grotesque portrait of the poet Hipponax.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first artists to use the principles of caricature. These were developed in the humorous drawings of the Carracci family and their Bolognese followers (the Italian 'eclectic' school of the 16th century). In 1830 Charles Philipon (1800–1862) founded in Paris La Caricature, probably the first periodical to specialize in caricature.

KORN - nu metal wave of the early to mid-nineties

KORN- Jonathon Davis (vocals), James “Munky” Shaffer (guitar), Brian “Head” Welch (guitar), Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu (bass), David Silveria (drums). Korn are one of the most popular and respected of the nu metal wave of the early to mid-nineties, and one of the few bands from that time period that continue to produce listenable music to the present day. The band was founded in Bakersfield, California, in 1993, and their first album, Korn, established them as different from the usually more macho metal bands that formed around the same time. Lead singer Jonathan Davis writes lyrics that celebrate the loner and the misfit, providing the soundtrack and outlet for the dispossessed nerds of metal. While bands such as Limp Bizkit were singing empty anthems to misplaced anger, Korn was tying to articulate the anguish that the meekest members of the metal community go through and tried to articulate their rage, not against a nameless machine but at the very real oppressive teachers, parents, and school bullies. Surprisingly, the band, who tour and record infrequently, seem to be as popular today as they were in their nineties heyday, although drummer Silveria and guitarist Brian “Head” Welch both left the band in 2006. Welch apparently left to proselytize as a newly born again Christian. Korn remains one of the more emotional and honest

bands of the new metal scene, and this is probably why they survive as a band to this day.

Discography:

• Korn (album) (1994)
• Life Is Peachy (1996)
• Follow the Leader (Korn album) (1998)
• Issues (album) (1999)
• Untouchables (album) (2002)
• Take a Look in the Mirror (2003)
• See You on the Other Side (2005)
• Albumul Korn fără nume (2007)
• Korn III: Remember Who You Are (2010)
• The Path Of Totality (2011)
• The Paradigm Shift (2013)
• The Serenity of Suffering (album) (2016)

Child 44 - Tom Hardy's gloomy thriller

Tom Hardy adds another accent to his repertoire in this gloomy thriller, a grim saga of child murder and statesponsored intimidation that’s equally as bleached of colour as it is of joy. Set in Stalin’s Russia, its complex story finds Hardy’s disgraced intelligence officer hunting a killer his government won’t admit exists: an Orwellian scenario that allows director Daniel Espinosa to supply traditional genre thrills, as well as more thoughtful musings on how character is shaped under a suppressive ideology. Gary Oldman and Noomi Rapace lend solid support; at two hours plus, though, it’s a bit of a slog.