The Essay: New Generation Thinkers

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The Essay: New Generation Thinkers: A Norwegian Morality Tale

A Norwegian Morality Tale

New Generation Thinkers

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Lucy Weir learns dark lessons from newspaper coverage of Black Metal and satanic rituals.

New Generation Thinker Lucy Weir's Essay looks at a 1990s music cult that resulted in church fires and deaths involving band members - a dark tale of excess and moral panic.

Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting.  

Producer: Emma Wallace

Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc and her thoughts on dance and stillness https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k33s 

She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Ten academics make and present radio programmes for Radio 3 based on their research.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select ten academics each year to make radio programmes based on their research.

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