Goth subculture

of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1980 During the late 1970s, the gothic rock genre emerged from several British post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus and the Cure. However, it was not until the early 1980s that gothic rock became associated with a specific youth subculture. In February 1981, Sounds writer Steve Keaton published an article on "punk gothique", entitled "The Face of Punk Gothique", a term coined by UK Decay frontman Steve Abbott to describe their music. Writer Cathi Unsworth believes that Abbott was the first to ascribe the term to the music and the goth subculture with which it would come to be associated, citing an interview in May 1981 where he once again used the term "punk gothique".—Live in concert, 3 February 2006In Leeds, the F Club became instrumental to the development of the goth subculture in the early 1980s, though had originally opened in 1977 as a punk club. By July 1982, the opening of the Batcave in London's Soho provided a prominent meeting point for the emerging scene, which was briefly labelled "positive punk" by the NME in a special issue with a front cover in February 1983. The scene and subculture was centered around the Batcave, and spearheaded by artists such as Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, the Mob, UK Decay, Sex Gang Children, Rubella Ballet, and Southern Death Cult. On June 14, 1983, BBC radio DJ John Peel noted the NME had dropped the term "positive punk" and had now opted for "goth" to describe the scene and subculture. of the Cure|leftSome of the bands that defined and embraced the gothic rock genre included Bauhaus, the Cure, the Birthday Party, UK Decay, Virgin Prunes, Killing Joke, and the Damned. In the United States, deathrock developed in California during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a distinct branch of American punk rock, with acts such as Christian Death, Kommunity FK and 45 Grave at the forefront. By the mid-1980s, bands began proliferating and became increasingly popular, including the Sisters of Mercy, the Mission, Alien Sex Fiend, the March Violets, Xmal Deutschland, the Membranes, and Fields of the Nephilim. Record labels like Factory, 4AD and Beggars Banquet released much of this music in Europe, and through a vibrant import music market in the US, the subculture grew, especially in New York and Los Angeles, California, where many nightclubs featured "gothic/industrial" nights and bands like Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Theatre of Ice, Human Drama and The Wake became key figures for the genre to expand on an nationwide level. The 1990s saw further growth for some 1980s bands and the emergence of many new acts, as well as new goth-centric U.S. record labels such as Cleopatra Records, among others. According to Dave Simpson of The Guardian, "[I]n the 90s, goths all but disappeared as dance music became the dominant youth cult". As a result, the goth movement went underground and fractured into cyber goth, shock rock, industrial metal, gothic metal, and Medieval folk metal. ==Art, historical and cultural influences==

The Goth subculture of the 1980s drew inspiration from a variety of sources. Some of them were modern or contemporary, others were centuries-old or ancient. Michael Bibby and Lauren M. E. Goodlad liken the subculture to a bricolage. Among the music-subcultures that influenced it were punk, new wave, and glam. But it also drew inspiration from B-movies, Gothic literature, horror films, vampire cults and traditional mythology. Among the mythologies that proved influential in Goth were Celtic mythology, Christian mythology, Egyptian mythology, and various traditions of Paganism. 18th and 19th centuries' literary influences The figures that the movement counted among its historic canon of ancestors were equally diverse. They included the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844‒1900), Comte de Lautréamont (1846‒1870), Salvador Dalí (1904‒1989) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905‒1980). Writers that have had a significant influence on the movement also represent a diverse canon. They include Ann Radcliffe (1764‒1823), John William Polidori (1795‒1821), Edgar Allan Poe (1809‒1849), Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873), Bram Stoker (1847‒1912), Oscar Wilde (1854‒1900), H. P. Lovecraft (1890‒1937), Anne Rice (1941‒2021), William Gibson (1948‒), Ian McEwan (1948‒), Storm Constantine (1956‒2021), and Poppy Z. Brite (1967‒). 's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) has come to define Gothic fiction in the Romantic period. Frontispiece to 1831 edition shown. Gothic literature is a genre of fiction that combines romance and dark elements to produce mystery, suspense, terror, horror and the supernatural. According to David H. Richter, settings were framed to take place at "...ruinous castles, gloomy churchyards, claustrophobic monasteries, and lonely mountain roads". Typical characters consisted of the cruel parent, sinister priest, courageous victor, and the helpless heroine, along with supernatural figures such as demons, vampires, ghosts, and monsters. Often, the plot focused on characters ill-fated, internally conflicted, and innocently victimized by harassing malicious figures. In addition to the dismal plot focuses, the literary tradition of the gothic was to also focus on individual characters that were gradually going insane. English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto is one of the first writers who explored this genre. The American Revolutionary War-era "American Gothic" story of the Headless Horseman, immortalized in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (published in 1820) by Washington Irving, marked the arrival in the New World of dark, romantic storytelling. The tale was composed by Irving while he was living in England, and was based on popular tales told by colonial Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley, New York. The story would be adapted to film in 1922, in 1949 as the animated The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and again in 1999. Throughout the evolution of the goth subculture, classic Romantic, Gothic and horror literature has played a significant role. E. T. A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and even more frustrating to be compared with emo kids. The goth kids are usually depicted listening to gothic music, writing or reading Gothic poetry, drinking coffee, flipping their hair, and smoking. Morticia Addams from The Addams Family created by Charles Addams is a fictional character and the mother in the Addams Family. Morticia was played by Carolyn Jones in the 1964 television show The Addams Family and by Anjelica Huston in the 1991 version. A recurring sketch in the 1990s on NBC's Saturday Night Live was Goth Talk, in which a public access channel broadcast hosted by unpopular young goths would continually be interrupted by the more "normal" kids in school. The sketch featured series regulars Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, and Chris Kattan. ==Characteristics of the scene==

Icons Goth icons include several bandleaders: Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Smith of the Cure, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, Dave Vanian of The Damned; Rozz Williams of Christian Death, Olli Wisdom leader of the band Specimen, and keyboardist Jonathan Melton aka Jonny Slut, who evolved the Batcave style. Nick Cave was dubbed as "the grand lord of gothic lushness". Fashion Male and female references One female role model is Theda Bara, the 1910s femme fatale known for her dark eyeshadow. Siouxsie was particularly influential on the dress style of the gothic rock scene; Paul Morley of NME described Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1980 gig at Futurama: "[Siouxsie was] modeling her newest outfit, the one that will influence how all the girls dress over the next few months. About half the girls at Leeds had used Sioux as a basis for their appearance, hair to ankle". Other singers such as Nico, David Bowie and Lux Interior Styling Prior to the emergence of the scene in the early 1980s, Karl Lagerfeld had hosted in 1977 the Soirée Moratoire Noir party, specifying "tenue tragique noire absolument obligatoire" (black tragic dress absolutely required). The event included elements associated with leatherman style. A dark, sometimes morbid fashion and style of dress, typical gothic fashion includes colored black hair and black period-styled clothing. Gothic fashion and styling may also feature silver jewelry and piercings. Ted Polhemus described goth fashion as a "profusion of black velvets, lace, fishnets and leather tinged with scarlet or purple, accessorized with tightly laced corsets, gloves, precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes". In contrast to the LARP-based Victorian and Elizabethan pomposity of the 2000s, the more Romantic side of 1980s trad-goth—mainly represented by women—was characterized by new wave/post-punk-oriented hairstyles (both long and short, partly shaved and teased) and street-compliant clothing, including black frill blouses, midi dresses or tea-length skirts, and floral lace tights, Dr. Martens, spike heels (pumps), and pointed toe buckle boots (winklepickers), sometimes supplemented with accessories such as bracelets, chokers and bib necklaces. This style, retroactively referred to as Ethergoth, took its inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux and mid-1980s musicians from the 4AD roster like Elizabeth Fraser and Lisa Gerrard. The New York Times noted: "The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew". Valerie Steele is an expert in the history of the style. In the later part of the first decade of the 21st century, designers such as Alexander McQueen, Anna Sui, Rick Owens, and Yohji Yamamoto In Spring 2004, Riccardo Tisci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Raf Simons and Stefano Pilati dressed their models as "glamorous ghouls dressed in form-fitting suits and coal-tinted cocktail dresses". Books and magazines A prominent American literary influence on the gothic scene was provided by Anne Rice's re-imagining of the vampire in 1976. In The Vampire Chronicles, Rice's characters were depicted as self-tormentors who struggled with alienation, loneliness, and the human condition. Not only did the characters torment themselves, but they also depicted a surreal world that focused on uncovering its splendour. These Chronicles assumed goth attitudes, but they were not intentionally created to represent the gothic subculture. Their romance, beauty, and erotic appeal attracted many goth readers, making her works popular from the 1980s through the 1990s. While Goth has embraced Vampire literature both in its 19th century form and in its later incarnations, Rice's postmodern take on the vampire mythos has had a "special resonance" in the subculture. Her vampire novels feature intense emotions, period clothing, and "cultured decadence". Her vampires are socially alienated monsters, but they are also stunningly attractive. Rice's goth readers tend to envision themselves in much the same terms and view characters like Lestat de Lioncourt as role models. Richard Wright's novel Native Son contains gothic imagery and themes that demonstrate the links between blackness and the gothic; themes and images of "premonitions, curses, prophecies, spells, veils, demonic possessions, graves, skeletons" are present, suggesting gothic influence. Other classic themes of the gothic are present in the novel, such as transgression and unstable identities of race, class, gender, and nationality. many of these so-called "human counterparts" identified with the teen angst and goth music references therein, keeping the book in print. Upon release of a special 10th anniversary edition of Lost Souls, Publishers Weekly—the same periodical that criticized the novel's "amorality" a decade prior—deemed it a "modern horror classic" and acknowledged that Brite established a "cult audience". The 2002 release 21st Century Goth by Mick Mercer, an author, noted music journalist and leading historian of gothic rock, explored the modern state of the goth scene around the world, including South America, Japan, and mainland Asia. His previous 1997 release, Hex Files: The Goth Bible, similarly took an international look at the subculture. In the US, Propaganda was a gothic subculture magazine founded in 1982. In Italy, Ver Sacrum covers the Italian goth scene, including fashion, sexuality, music, art and literature. Some magazines, such as the now-defunct Dark Realms and Goth Is Dead included goth fiction and poetry. Other magazines cover fashion (e.g., Gothic Beauty); music (e.g., Severance) or culture and lifestyle (e.g., Althaus e-zine). On 31 October 2011, ECW Press published the Encyclopedia Gothica written by author and poet Liisa Ladouceur with illustrations done by Gary Pullin. This non-fiction book describes over 600 words and phrases relevant to Goth subculture. Brian Craddock's 2017 novel Eucalyptus Goth charts a year in the life of a household of 20-somethings in Brisbane, Australia. The central characters are deeply entrenched in the local gothic subculture, with the book exploring themes relevant to the characters, notably unemployment, mental health, politics, and relationships. Graphic art Visual contemporary graphic artists with this aesthetic include Gerald Brom, Dave McKean, and Trevor Brown as well as illustrators Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, and James O'Barr. The artwork of Polish surrealist painter Zdzisław Beksiński is often described as gothic. British artist Anne Sudworth published a book on gothic art in 2007. Events There are large annual goth-themed festivals in Germany, including Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig and M'era Luna in Hildesheim), both annually attracting tens of thousands of people. Castle Party is the biggest goth festival in Poland. ==Sociology==

Gender and sexuality Since the late 1970s, the UK goth scene refused "traditional standards of sexual propriety" and accepted and celebrated "unusual, bizarre or deviant sexual practices". In the 2000s, many members "... claim overlapping memberships in the queer, polyamorous, bondage-discipline/sadomasochism, and pagan communities". Though sexual empowerment is not unique to women in the goth scene, it remains an important part of many goth women's experience: The "... [s]cene's celebration of active sexuality" enables goth women "... to resist mainstream notions of passive femininity". They have an "active sexuality" approach which creates "gender egalitarianism" within the scene, as it "allows them to engage in sexual play with multiple partners while sidestepping most of the stigma and dangers that women who engage in such behavior" outside the scene frequently incur, while continuing to "... see themselves as strong". Men dress up in an androgynous way: "... Men 'gender blend,' wearing makeup and skirts". In contrast, the "... women are dressed in sexy feminine outfits" that are "... highly sexualized" and which often combine "... corsets with short skirts and fishnet stockings". Androgyny is common among the scene: "... androgyny in Goth subcultural style often disguises or even functions to reinforce conventional gender roles". It was only "valorised" for male goths, who adopt a "feminine" appearance, including "make-up, skirts and feminine accessories" to "enhance masculinity" and facilitate traditional heterosexual courting roles. Identity While goth is a music-based scene, the goth subculture is also characterized by particular aesthetics, outlooks, and a "way of seeing and of being seen". The last years, through social media, goths are able to meet people with similar interests, learn from each other, and finally, to take part in the scene. These activities on social media are the manifestation of the same practices which are taking place in goth clubs. This is not a new phenomenon since before the rise of social media on-line forums had the same function for goths. Observers have raised the issue of to what degree individuals are truly members of the goth subculture. On one end of the spectrum is the "Uber goth", a person who is described as seeking a pallor so much that they apply "...as much white foundation and white powder as possible". On the other end of the spectrum exists what another writer terms "poseurs" - "goth wannabes, usually young kids going through a goth phase who do not hold to goth sensibilities but want to be part of the goth crowd". It has been said that a "mall goth" is a teen who dresses in a goth style and spends time in malls with a Hot Topic store, but who does not know much about goth subculture or its music, thus making them a poseur. In one case, even a well-known performer has been labelled with the pejorative term - a "number of goths, especially those who belonged to this subculture before the late-1980s, reject Marilyn Manson as a poseur who undermines the true meaning of goth". Media and academic commentary The BBC described academic research that indicated that goths are "refined and sensitive, keen on poetry and books, not big on drugs or anti-social behaviour". Teens often stay in the subculture "into their adult life", and they are likely to become well-educated and enter professions such as medicine or law. The Guardian reported that a "glue binding the [goth] scene together was drug use"; however, in the scene, drug use was varied. Goth is one of the few subculture movements that is not associated with a single drug, School shootings In the weeks following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, media reports about the teen gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, portrayed them as part of a gothic cult. An increased suspicion of goth subculture subsequently manifested in the media. This led to a moral panic over teen involvement in goth subculture and a number of other activities, such as violent video games. Harris and Klebold had initially been thought to be members of "The Trenchcoat Mafia"; an informal club within Columbine High School. Later, such characterizations were considered incorrect. Media reported that the gunman in the 2006 Dawson College shooting in Montreal, Quebec, Kimveer Singh Gill, was interested in goth subculture. Gill's self-professed love of Goth culture was the topic of media interest, and it was widely reported that the word "Goth", in Gill's writings, was a reference to the alternative industrial and goth subculture rather than a reference to gothic rock music. Mick Mercer stated that Gill was "not a Goth. Never a Goth. The bands he listed as his chosen form of ear-bashing were relentlessly metal and standard grunge, rock and goth metal, with some industrial presence". Mercer stated that "Kimveer Gill listened to metal", "He had nothing whatsoever to do with Goth" and further commented "I realise that like many Neos [neophyte], Kimveer Gill may even have believed he somehow was a Goth, because they're [Neophytes] only really noted for spectacularly missing the point". Prejudice and violence directed at goths In part because of public misunderstanding surrounding gothic aesthetics, people in the goth subculture sometimes suffer prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. As is the case with members of various other subcultures and alternative lifestyles, outsiders sometimes marginalize goths, either by intention or by accident. Actress Christina Hendricks talked of being bullied as a goth at school and how difficult it was for her to deal with societal pressure: "Kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different. But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy. My mother was mortified and kept telling me how horrible and ugly I looked. Strangers would walk by with a look of shock on their face, so I never felt pretty. I just always felt awkward". On 11 August 2007, while walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, a young couple, Sophie Lancaster and Robert Maltby, were attacked by a group of teenagers. Lancaster subsequently died from the severe head injuries she suffered in the attack. It later emerged that the attackers had attacked the couple because they were goths. On 29 April 2008, two of the attackers, Ryan Herbert and Brendan Harris, were convicted for the murder of Lancaster and given life sentences. Three others were given lesser sentences for the assault on her boyfriend Robert Maltby. In delivering the sentence, Judge Anthony Russell stated, "This was a hate crime against these completely harmless people targeted because their appearance was different to yours". He went on to defend the goth community, calling goths "perfectly peaceful, law-abiding people who pose no threat to anybody". Judge Russell added that he "recognised it as a hate crime without Parliament having to tell him to do so and had included that view in his sentencing". Despite this ruling, a bill to add discrimination based on subculture affiliation to the definition of hate crime in British law was not presented to parliament. In 2013, police in Manchester announced they would be treating attacks on members of alternative subcultures, such as goths, the same as they do for attacks based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. A more recent phenomenon is the emergence of goth YouTubers who very often address the prejudice and violence against goths. These personalities create videos as a response to problems that they personally face, which include challenges such as bullying, and dealing with negative descriptions of themselves. Viewers often engage closely with these YouTubers, asking them for advice on how to deal with related personal struggles and getting responses in the form of personal messages or videos. These interactions take the form of an informal mentoring which contributes to the building of solidarity within the goth scene. The authors held that most self-harm by teens was done before joining the subculture, and that joining the subculture would actually protect them and help them deal with distress in their lives, while cautioning that the study was based on a small sample size and needed replication to confirm the results. The study was criticized for using only a small sample of goth teens and not taking into account other influences and differences between types of goths. ==See also==