Mrs. Schlatt’s senior English classes recently studied satire. Definition of satire:  a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn (merriam-webster.com). The purpose of satire is often an effort to bring about change. The following piece is an example of satire modeled after Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.

The One and Only New Modest Proposal 

For the Termination of the Horrible, Demonic, Plaguing Force That is the Genre of Metal Music 

and Curing Society

By Sir Garcia

For decades, the world has been infected with millions of insane people. They are everywhere. You look to your left, you see a drunk idiot handbanging with a beer in their hand. You look to your right, there are a couple of people robbing a convenience store. You look behind you, there is a man behind you looking ready to end it all. You look right in front of you, and you see thousands of people growling out some rhythmic, satanic ritual. The force driving all of these poor souls to these insane acts, metal music.

It all began when the Beatles came to be in the late 1950s. The upbeat rock sound of their music made the snowball start to roll in terms of how heavy music became. Sure, it sounded innocent and upbeat at first, but just a few short decades later, it got out of control. The Beatles helped inspire many horrible and devilish bands such as Metallica and Pantera. With this new form of music these bands were bringing, their fans started to act insane. The fans started to carry out actions such as using drugs heavily, falling into a band frame of mind, and causing violence.

Some might say it is not the music making these people act the way they do. Rather, it is just the people letting loose any negative feelings they may have, and we should just let them be. However, I know for a fact it is the music making them do what they do, and therefore have concluded that the only logical action to take in order to drive people away from metal and cure them from it, is to throw metal fans into an insane asylum to cure them of this “sickness”. By doing this, we would be able to cure metal fans of violent behavior, drug problems, and curing negative feelings.

First of all, every single person who listens to metal music has a drinking issue, with no exceptions to this rule to be found anywhere at all. The metal community is a very upsetting one to look at due to its alcoholism problem. Just compare it to the rap music community. Everyone within rap music is a kind, Christian like samaritan. Just look at rappers like Chris Brown, he would never even dream of using drugs. While on my quest to show the world the evils of metal music, I also had scheduled an interview with a drug addicted metal head named Drew Gees Love who lived somewhere in West Virginia. I figured this person would be a decent choice for an interview, for he had a wife and son. That has to mean he wasn’t as addicted as most of the other metal lovers, right? Unfortunately, this turned out to be false. Drew Gees Love died from alcohol poisoning just two days before I could interview him. I asked his son, Coun Tree Love, for a statement, for which he said, “He was my father, and I wish metal never would have gone down the road of metal music. Maybe if he hadn’t, he might still be here to play with me.” A truly unfortunate tragedy. Metal music being the obvious cause of a death and separation of a family. Who would want that? If we were to throw all “metal heads” into an asylum, we would be able to cure these unfortunate souls of alcoholism, and possibly save hundreds of families from losing their loved ones to alcohol poisoning or drug overdoses.

People from the metal community also have problems with their mental health. They either have problems controlling their anger, or they struggle with depression. And it is no wonder why these people struggle with their mental health. If you listen to many of the lyrics in metal music, you will notice they cover some pretty serious topics, such as heartbreak, childhood trauma, and even depression itself. How dare these so-called musicians try to bring light to some serious issues that need to be addressed. If anything, they should only sing about the variety of topics that pop singers sing about, like sex, love, parties, and uh…all the other issues they sing about that definitely are not those same topics over and over again.* If we were to put metal listeners into an asylum, we would be able to pull the victims’ attention away from the depressing issues that metal music covers, and be able to protect their mental health.

Aside from just causing mental health problems, it is also proven that metal music causes physical damage in the ears. Metal music is so loud, it inflicts severe damage to the eardrums of anyone who dares listen to metal music. Recently, I participated in an interview with a very famous audiologist named Doctor Audia Mue Sheek in order to see if she agrees with the idea that metal music can damage human ears. She stated that, “Yes, metal music can cause severe damage to the eardrums if turned up too loudly. However, this damage can also occur with any other genre of…” Unfortunately the rest of the audio track was mysteriously corrupted and could not be transcribed into this article, but the point she states is very clear. Metal music damages your ability to hear, so by taking metal music away from people, we would be preserving many people’s ability to hear.

Finally, by throwing metal heads into asylums, we would be able to greatly reduce the amount of criminal actions and violent outbreaks that occur across the world. By comparing the metal music community to any other branch of the music community, it becomes very apparent that metal heads commit much more violent and criminal actions than any other community. For example, let us compare the metal community to the rap community once again. When watching the news, when do you ever hear any news of a rapper being arrested for any sort of criminal activity. It never happens. However, when you ask the same question about metal heads, you receive the complete opposite answer. Type in metal heads into Google, and you will find pages of results of something called “mosh pits”. I asked many reliable sources, which happen to be several concerned and paranoid mothers, and they say the same idea, “I’m pretty sure mosh pits are a place where black soul people go to perform devilish rituals and sacrifices. I don’t understand why my child enjoys them.” What kind of evil person would take part in these horrible, illegal rituals of violence? Metal heads, that’s who would. We must use asylums in order to stop this violence.

People may believe this overwhelmingly logical solution to the problem should not be carried out, for they believe there is no problem. They believe there is no problem with listening to metal music, and that people listen to it solely because they enjoy that genre of music. However, this claim is completely ridiculous. Saying you enjoy listening to metal is like saying you enjoy sitting in a pool of acid.* Metal music is a force driving humanity into chaos, and without metal music, the world would be a much more peaceful place to live. Saying there is nothing wrong with metal music is completely absurd.

I hope I have done enough to reach my point across to everyone reading. I have told you of a time when drugs pulled a family apart, I have told you of the threats to mental health that people have gone through, I have told you of the hearing loss you can obtain, and I have told you of the violence that occurs. All of these travesties are a direct result of metal music. Putting metal heads into asylums is the only way to cure society. It is the only way to run drugs off the streets, it is the only way to fix mental health, and it is the only way to fix rising violence. With this, I hope you realize it is completely foolish to be a metal head.