Goth subculture
Encyclopedia
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
found in many countries. It began in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the early 1980s in the gothic rock
Gothic rock
Gothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
scene, an offshoot of the post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from the 19th century Gothic literature along with horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
s and to a lesser extent the BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
culture.
The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion
Gothic fashion
Gothic fashion is a clothing style worn by members of the Goth subculture; a dark, sometimes morbid, eroticized fashion and style of dress. Typical Gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, black lips and black clothes. Both male and female goths wear dark eyeliner and dark fingernails. Styles are...
. Gothic music encompasses a number of different styles including Gothic rock
Gothic rock
Gothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
, Darkwave, Deathrock
Deathrock
Deathrock is a term used to identify a sub-genre of punk rock incorporating horror elements and spooky atmospherics, that emerged on the West Coast of the United States in 1979.-Characteristics:...
, Ethereal
Ethereal Wave
Ethereal Wave, also called ethereal darkwave in Europe and ethereal goth or simply ethereal in the US, is a term that describes a subgenre of Dark Wave music...
, Neo-Medieval
Neo-Medieval music
Neo-Medieval music is a term used to describe a variety of styles within modern popular music. A common characteristic of these styles is that they contain elements of Medieval music and early music in general...
and Neoclassical
Neoclassical (Dark Wave)
Neoclassical Dark Wave refers to a music genre within the Dark Wave movement. It is characterized by the use of ethereal atmosphere and angelic female voices but also adds strong influences from classical music. Neoclassical Dark Wave is distinct from the academic art music form known as...
. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock
Deathrock
Deathrock is a term used to identify a sub-genre of punk rock incorporating horror elements and spooky atmospherics, that emerged on the West Coast of the United States in 1979.-Characteristics:...
, punk
Punk fashion
Punk fashion is the clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, jewelry, and body modifications of the punk subculture. Punk fashion varies widely, ranging from Vivienne Westwood designs to styles modeled on bands like The Exploited. The distinct social dress of other subcultures and art movements, including...
and Victorian
Victorian fashion
Victorian fashion comprises the various fashions and trends in British culture that emerged and grew in province throughout the Victorian era and the reign of Queen Victoria, a period which would last from June 1837 to January 1901. Covering nearly two thirds of the 19th century, the 63 year reign...
style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with dark attire, makeup and hair.
Origins and development
The earliest significant usage of the term (as applied to music) was by Tony Wilson on a 1978 BBC TV program when he described Joy DivisionJoy Division
Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences...
as Gothic compared to the pop mainstream. In 1979, the Gothic term was later applied to "newer bands such as Bauhaus
Bauhaus (band)
Bauhaus was an English rock band formed in Northampton in 1978. The group consisted of Peter Murphy , Daniel Ash , Kevin Haskins and David J . The band was originally Bauhaus 1919 before they dropped the numerical portion within a year of formation...
who had arrived in the wake of Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees".
yet, by the late 1970s, there were a few post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
bands labelled "gothic". However, it was not until the early 1981 that gothic rock
Gothic rock
Gothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
became its own subgenre
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
within post-punk, and that followers of these bands started to come together as a distinctly recognizable movement. The scene appears to have taken its name from an article published in UK rock weekly Sounds
Sounds (magazine)
Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...
: "The face of Punk Gothique", written by Steve Keaton and published on February 21, 1981.
The opening of the Batcave in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
in July 1982 provided a prominent meeting point for the emerging scene, which had briefly been labeled "positive punk" by the New Musical Express. The term "Batcaver" was later used to describe old-school goths.
Independent from the British scene, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw death rock branch off from American punk in California.
The gothic genre
The limited number of bands that began to embrace the Gothic rock genre included Bauhaus, The Damned, The CureThe Cure
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...
, early Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants were a British rock band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original group, which existed from 1977 to 1980, became notable as a cult band marking the transition from the late-1970s punk rock era to the post-punk and New Wave era...
, The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
, Southern Death Cult
Southern Death Cult
Southern Death Cult was an English positive punk band in the early 1980s. It is now primarily known for having given its lead singer and parts of its name to the multi-platinum hard rock supergroup The Cult...
, Specimen
Specimen (band)
Specimen are a British band formed in the 1980s. Their music has been described as spanning many different genres of music, including glam, goth, punk and post-punk, and the band is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the Gothic movement, both musically and stylistically.-Early days:The band...
, Sex Gang Children
Sex Gang Children
The Sex Gang Children are a positive punk group that formed in the early 1980s in England. Although the original group only released one official studio album, they remain one of the more well-known bands out of the early Batcave scene and have reformed for new albums and touring various times...
, UK Decay
UK Decay
UK Decay are Luton-based post punk band, formed out of the ashes of another local band called The Resistors, who were Steven Abbot guitar, Steve Harle on drums, Paul Wilson vocals, and Martin Smith bass....
, Virgin Prunes
Virgin Prunes
Virgin Prunes was an Irish gothic rock band formed in 1977. They disbanded in 1986 after the departure of Gavin Friday. The other members continued under the name The Prunes until they split up in 1990.-Career:...
, Christian Death
Christian Death
Christian Death is an American deathrock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1979. The band was founded and fronted by Rozz Williams. Christian Death is most notable for their first album Only Theatre of Pain....
, and Killing Joke
Killing Joke
Killing Joke are an English post-punk band formed in October 1978 in Notting Hill, London, England; other sources report the band formed in early 1979.Related news articles: Founding members Jaz Coleman and Geordie Walker have been the only constant members.A key influence on industrial rock,...
.
By the mid-eighties, bands began proliferating and became increasingly popular, including The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters of Mercy are an English rock band that formed in 1980. After achieving early underground fame in UK, the band had their commercial breakthrough in mid-1980s and sustained it until the early 1990s, when they stopped releasing new recorded output in protest against their record company...
, The Mission
The Mission (band)
The Mission are a gothic rock band formed in 1986 from the splinters of the freshly dissolved rock band The Sisters of Mercy.The band was started by frontman Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams , soon adding...
(known as The Mission UK in the US), Alien Sex Fiend
Alien Sex Fiend
Alien Sex Fiend is a deathrock band from the UK, composed of the married couple Nik Fiend and Mrs. Fiend . Currently, the band is based in Cardiff, Wales.-History:...
, The March Violets
The March Violets
The March Violets are an English goth rock band of the 1980s, incorporating singers of both sexes, drum machine rhythms and echo laden electric guitar, much in the way of scene mates The Sisters of Mercy, who also originated from the city of Leeds...
, Ausgang
Ausgang
-History:Ausgang formed from the ashes of previous band Kabuki. Some members had also been members of another band, The Solicitors. Max , Cub and Matthew were all previously in Kabuki, the band releasing one single before splitting up...
, Kommunity FK
Kommunity FK
Kommunity FK is a Deathrock band that helped establish what came to be known as the deathrock scene in Los Angeles. The band was formed in 1978 by American rock singer Patrick Mata influenced by Throbbing Gristle, David Bowie and Joy Division...
, Xmal Deutschland
Xmal Deutschland
Xmal Deutschland , often written as X-Mal Deutschland, was a musical group from Hamburg, Germany. Founded in 1980 with a completely female line-up, they became successful outside their native country. The lead singer of the band is vocalist Anja Huwe...
, Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance
Dead Can Dance are an ethereal neoclassical duo formed in Melbourne, Australia, in August 1981, by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry. The band relocated to London in May 1982 and disbanded in 1998. Their 1996 album Spiritchaser reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums Chart...
, This Mortal Coil
This Mortal Coil
This Mortal Coil was a gothic dream pop supergroup led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD. Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were technically the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many of whom...
, The Bolshoi
The Bolshoi
The Bolshoi were a London-based music group prominent mostly in the mid-late 1980s. They are best known for the hits "Sunday Morning" and "A way" or "Away" .-History:...
, and Fields of the Nephilim
Fields of the Nephilim
Fields of the Nephilim are an English gothic rock band formed in Stevenage, Hertfordshire in 1984. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Carl McCoy, saxophonist Gary Whisker, Tony Pettitt on bass, guitarist Paul Wright and drummer Alexander "Nod" Wright...
. The nineties saw the further growth of eighties bands and emergence of many new bands. Factory Records
Factory Records
Factory Records was a Manchester based British independent record label, started in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, which featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Northside and James and...
, 4AD
4AD
4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...
Records, and Beggars Banquet Records
Beggars Banquet Records
Beggars Banquet is an English independent record label that began as a chain of record shops owned by Martin Mills and Nick Austin, and is part of the Beggars Group of labels...
released much of this music in Europe, while Cleopatra Records
Cleopatra Records
Cleopatra Records is a Los Angeles-based independent record label.- History :Founded in 1992 by Brian Perera, it specializes in gothic rock, hard rock, heavy metal and reissues of out-of-print music...
among others released the music in the United States, where the subculture grew especially in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and Orange Counties, California, where many nightclubs featured "gothic/industrial" nights. The popularity of 4AD bands resulted in the creation of a similar US label called Projekt Records
Projekt Records
This is the article for the record label. You might be looking for Pro-jekt, ProjeKct, Project Pitchfork, or Projekt RevolutionProjekt is a Brooklyn, New York-based independent record label specializing in gothic rock, ambient, ethereal, darkwave, shoegaze, dream-pop, and dark cabaret created by...
, which produces what is colloquially termed ethereal wave
Ethereal Wave
Ethereal Wave, also called ethereal darkwave in Europe and ethereal goth or simply ethereal in the US, is a term that describes a subgenre of Dark Wave music...
, a subgenre of dark wave music.
By the mid-1990s, styles of music heard in goth venues ranged from gothic rock, deathrock, industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, EBM
Electronic body music
Electronic body music or industrial dance is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic dance music...
, ambient
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
, experimental, new wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, synthpop
Synthpop
Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
and punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
.
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, and synthpop, which had taken over many goth clubs, bands with an earlier goth sound are becoming popular. Nights like Ghoul School and Release The Bats promote death rock, and the Drop Dead Festival
Drop Dead Festival
The Drop Dead Festival is the largest DIY festival for art-damaged music. It books as many as sixty five bands per event, and has been known to attract attendees from over 30+ countries...
brings in death rock fans from around the world.
Today, the goth music scene thrives in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
(especially Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
) with large festivals such as Wave-Gotik-Treffen, M'era Luna, and others drawing tens of thousands of fans worldwide.
19th and 20th centuries
The Revolutionary War-era "American Gothic" story of the Headless HorsemanHeadless Horseman
The headless horseman has been a motif of European folklore since at least the Middle ages.The Headless Horseman is a fictional character who appears in a short story called “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which is in a collection of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon written by Washington Irving...
, immortalized in Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
's story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820...
" (published in 1820), marked the arrival in the New World of dark, romantic story-telling. The tale was composed by Irving while he was living in England, and was based on popular tales told by colonial Dutch settlers of New York's Hudson River valley. The story was adapted to film in 1922, and in 1949, in the animated The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated feature produced by Walt Disney. The film was released to theaters on October 5, 1949 by RKO Radio Pictures and is the eleventh animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
. It was readapted in 1980 and again in Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
's 1999 Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollow (film)
Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 American period horror film directed by Tim Burton. It is a film adaptation loosely inspired by the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving and stars Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Marc Pickering, Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones,...
. Burton, already famous through his films Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands is a 1990 romantic fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. The film shows the story of an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands. Edward is taken in by a suburban family and falls in love with their teenage daughter...
, Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice is a 1988 American comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton, produced by The Geffen Film Company and distributed by Warner Bros...
, and Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
, created a storybook atmosphere filled with darkness and shadow.
Throughout the evolution of goth subculture, classic romantic, gothic and horror literature has played a significant role. Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, E.T.A. Hoffmann
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
, Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and other tragic and romantic writers have become as emblematic of the subculture as has using dark eyeliner or dressing in black. Baudelaire, in fact, in his preface to Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
(Flowers of Evil) penned lines that as much as anything can serve as a sort of goth malediction:
- C'est l'Ennui! —l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
- Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
- Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
- —Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!
- It is Boredom! — an eye brimming with an involuntary tear,
- He dreams of the gallows while smoking his water-pipe.
- You know him, reader, this fragile monster,
- —Hypocrite reader,—my twin,—my brother!
Elements appearing in culture
The influence of the gothic novel on the goth subculture can be seen in numerous examples of the subculture's poetry and music, though this influence sometimes came second hand, through the popular imagery of horror films and television. The powerful imagery of horror films began in German expressionist cinemaGerman Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
after the first world war and then passed onto the Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
films of the twenties and thirties, and then to the horror films of the English Hammer Studio
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
.
By the 1960s, TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series, such as The Addams Family
The Addams Family (TV series)
The Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 installments on ABC from September 18, 1964, to April 8, 1966...
and The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...
, used these stereotypes for camp comedy. The Byronic hero
Byronic hero
The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. It was characterised by Lady Caroline Lamb, later a lover of Byron's, as being "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"...
, in particular, was a key precursor to the male goth image, while Dracula's iconic portrayal by Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
appealed powerfully to early goths. They were attracted by Lugosi's aura of camp menace, elegance and mystique. Some people credit the band Bauhaus' first single "Bela Lugosi's Dead
Bela Lugosi's Dead
"Bela Lugosi's Dead" is a gothic rock song written by the band Bauhaus. The song was the band's first single, released in August 1979, and is often considered to be the first gothic rock record released. It did not enter the UK charts. The b-side features the song "Boys" and some versions also...
", released August 1979, with the start of the goth subculture, though many prior art house movements influenced gothic fashion and style, the illustrations and paintings of Swiss artist, H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger
Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien.-Early life:...
being one of the earliest. Notable examples of icons would later include several leaders of bands : Siouxsie Sioux
Siouxsie Sioux
Siouxsie Sioux is an English singer-songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer of the critically acclaimed rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees and of its splinter group The Creatures . The Banshees produced eleven studio albums and a string of hit singles including "Hong Kong Garden",...
of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Smith
Robert Smith (musician)
Robert James Smith is an English musician. He is the lead singer, guitar player and principal songwriter of the rock band The Cure, and its only constant member since its founding in 1976...
of The Cure, and Dave Vanian of The Damned. Some members of Bauhaus were, themselves, fine art students or active artists.
Tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...
, but as time went on, bands and members of the subculture took the connection more seriously. As a result, morbid, supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
, and occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
themes became more noticeably serious in the subculture. The interconnection between horror and goth was highlighted in its early days by The Hunger, a 1983 vampire film, which starred David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
, and Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...
. The film featured gothic rock group Bauhaus performing Bela Lugosi's Dead
Bela Lugosi's Dead
"Bela Lugosi's Dead" is a gothic rock song written by the band Bauhaus. The song was the band's first single, released in August 1979, and is often considered to be the first gothic rock record released. It did not enter the UK charts. The b-side features the song "Boys" and some versions also...
in a nightclub. In 1993, Whitby
Whitby
Whitby is a seaside town, port and civil parish in the Scarborough borough of North Yorkshire, England. Situated on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk, Whitby has a combined maritime, mineral and tourist heritage, and is home to the ruins of Whitby Abbey where Caedmon, the...
became the location for what became the UK's biggest goth festival as a direct result of being featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Postmodernism
A literary influence on the gothic scene was Anne RiceAnne Rice
Anne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
's re-imagining of the idea of the vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
. Rice's characters were depicted as struggling with eternity and loneliness. Their ambivalent or tragic sexuality held deep attractions for many goth readers, making her works popular in the eighties through the nineties.
The re-imagining of the vampire continued with the release of Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections...
's book Lost Souls in October 1992. Despite the fact that Brite's first novel was criticized by some mainstream sources for allegedly "lack[ing] a moral center: neither terrifyingly malevolent supernatural creatures nor (like Anne Rice's protagonists) tortured souls torn between good and evil, these vampires simply add blood-drinking to the amoral panoply of drug abuse, problem drinking and empty sex practiced by their human counterparts", 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
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
— 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."
Later media influences
As the subculture became well-established, the connection between goth and horror fiction became almost a cliché, with goths quite likely to appear as characters in horror novels and film. For example, The CrowThe Crow
The Crow is a comic book series created by James O'Barr. The series was originally written by O'Barr as a means of dealing with the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a drunk driver. It was later published by Caliber Comics in 1989, becoming an underground success, and later adapted into a...
drew directly on goth music and style. Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
's acclaimed graphic novel series The Sandman influenced goths with characters like the dark, brooding Dream
Dream (comics)
Dream is the fictional protagonist of DC Comics' Vertigo comic book series The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman. One of the seven Endless, inconceivably powerful beings older and greater than gods, Dream is both lord and personification of all dreams and stories, all that is not in reality...
and his sister Death
Death (DC Comics)
Death is a fictional character from the DC comic book series, The Sandman . The character first appeared in The Sandman vol. 2, #8 , and was created by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg....
.
Mick Mercer
Mick Mercer
Mick Mercer is a journalist and author best known for his photos and reviews of the goth, punk, and indie music scenes. He has photographed the bands Tragic Venus and Blondie in the UK and Europe.He publishes a monthly online magazine called "The Mick"....
's 2002 release 21st Century Goth explores the modern state of the goth scene around the world, including South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and mainland Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. His previous 1997 release, Hex Files: The Goth Bible similarly took an international look at the subculture.
Visual art influences
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
, Pre-Raphaelites
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
or Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
. In the Fine Art field, Anne Sudworth
Anne Sudworth
Anne Sudworth is a British artist internationally known for her paintings of magical trees and haunting moonlit landscapes. Drawing and painting since early childhood, she started her career as a professional artist in 1993 when she presented her first exhibition "Visions and Views"...
is a well known goth artist with her dark, nocturnal works and strong gothic imagery.
Some of the graphic artists close to goth are Gerald Brom
Gerald Brom
Gerald Brom is an American gothic fantasy artist and illustrator, known for his work in role-playing games, novels, and comics.-Early life:Brom was born March 9, 1965, in Albany, Georgia. As the son of a U.S...
, Luis Royo
Luis Royo
Luis Royo is a Spanish artist, known for his sensual and dark paintings, its apocalyptic imagery, his fantasy worlds and mechanical life forms...
, Dave McKean
Dave McKean
David McKean is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician....
, Trevor Brown
Trevor Brown
Trevor Brown is an English artist from London presently living in Japan whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes. Innocence, violence and Japanese popular culture all collide in Brown's art....
, Victoria Francés
Victoria Francés
Victoria Francés is a Spanish illustrator.-Life:Frances was born in Valencia but spent much of her infancy inGalicia.She attended the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where she studied Fine Arts at the Facultad de Bellas Artes de San Carlos...
as well as the American comic artist James O'Barr
James O'Barr
James O'Barr is an American graphic artist, best known as the creator of the comic book series The Crow.-Personal life:O'Barr, an orphan, was raised in the foster care system...
. H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger
Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien.-Early life:...
of Switzerland is one of the first graphic artists to make serious contributions to the gothic/industrial look of much of modern cinema with his work on the film "Alien" by Ridley Scott.
Ideology
Defining an explicit ideology for the gothic subculture is difficult for several reasons. First is the overwhelming importance of mood and aesthetic for those involved. This is, in part, inspired by romanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and neoromanticism. The allure for goths of dark, mysterious, and morbid imagery and mood lies in the same tradition of Romanticism's gothic novel. During the late 18th and 19th century, feelings of horror and supernatural dread were widespread motifs in popular literature; the process continues in the modern horror film. Balancing this emphasis on mood and aesthetics, another central element of the gothic is a deliberate sense of camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
theatricality and self-dramatization, present both in gothic literature as well as in the gothic subculture itself.
Goths, in terms of their membership in the subculture, are usually not supportive of violence, but are tolerant of alternative lifestyles that incorporate themes such as BDSM—always involving consent. Violence and hate do not form elements of goth ideology; rather, the ideology is formed in part by recognition, identification, and grief over societal and personal evils that the mainstream culture wishes to ignore or forget. These are the prevalent themes in goth music.
The second impediment to explicitly defining a gothic ideology is goth's generally apolitical nature. While individual defiance of social norms was socially risky in the 19th century, today it is far less socially radical. Thus, the significance of goth's subcultural rebellion is limited, and it draws on imagery at the heart of Western culture. Unlike the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
or punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
movements, the goth subculture has no pronounced political messages or cries for social activism. The subculture is marked by its emphasis on individualism, tolerance for diversity, and mild tendencies towards intellectualism and cynicism
Cynicism (contemporary)
Cynicism is an attitude or state of mind characterized by a general distrust of other's apparent motives, or a general lack of faith or hope in the human race. It is a form of jaded negativity, and other times, realistic criticism or skepticism...
, but even these ideas are not universal to all goths. Goth ideology is based far more on aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
and simplified ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
than politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
.
Unlike punk, there are few clashes between political affiliation and being "goth". Similarly, there is no common religious tie that binds together the goth movement, though spiritual, supernatural, and religious imagery has played a part in gothic fashion, song lyrics and visual art. In particular, aesthetic elements from Catholicism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
often appear in goth culture. Reasons for donning such imagery range from expression of religious affiliation to satire or simply decorative effect. Regardless, there is a general tolerance for religious beliefs, and everyone including strict Catholics, atheists, and polytheists are accepted.
While involvement with the subculture can be fulfilling, it also can be risky depending on where the goth lives, especially for the young, because of the negative attention it can attract due to public misconceptions of goth subculture. The value that young people find in the movement is evinced by its continuing existence after other subcultures of the eighties (such as the New Romantics) have died out.
Fashion
Clothing
Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...
. Typical gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, dark eyeliner, black fingernails, black period-styled clothing; goths may or may not have piercings. Styles are often borrowed from the Elizabethan, Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
or medieval period and often express pagan, occult or other religious imagery such as pentacle
Pentacle
A pentacle is an amulet used in magical evocation, generally made of parchment, paper or metal , on which the symbol of a spirit or energy being evoked is drawn. It is often worn around the neck, or placed within the triangle of evocation...
s or ankh
Ankh
The ankh , also known as key of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata, was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life", a triliteral sign for the consonants ʻ-n-ḫ...
s. The extent to which goths hold to this style varies amongst individuals as well as geographical locality, though virtually all goths wear some of these elements. Fashion designers, such as Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen
Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose strength with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows...
and John Galliano
John Galliano
John Charles Galliano CBE, RDI is a Gibraltan-born British fashion designer who was best known as head designer of French haute couture houses Givenchy and Christian Dior , and his own self titled fashion house.-Family:He was born in Gibraltar to a Gibraltarian father, Juan Galliano, and a...
, have also been described as practicing "Haute Goth".
Goth fashion is often confused with Heavy Metal fashion
Heavy metal fashion
Heavy metal fashion is the style of dress, body modification, make-up, hairstyle, and so on, taken on by fans of heavy metal, or, as they are often called, metalheads or headbangers.-Origins:...
and Emo
Emo
Emo is a style of rock music and its associated subcultureEmo may also refer to:- Businesses :* Emo , an Irish oil company and filling station chain* Emo Speedway, a racetrack in Emo, Ontario...
fashion: outsiders often mistake fans of heavy metal for goth, particularly those who wear black trench coats or wear "corpse paint
Corpse paint
Corpse paint or corpsepaint is a style of black-and-white makeup, used mainly by black metal bands during live concerts and photo shoots. The makeup is used to intensify the bands' imagery of evil, inhumanity, and corpse-like decay. It is most commonly used just on the face, but also on arms and...
" (a term associated with the black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
music scene).
Controversy
The gothic fascination with the macabreMacabre
In works of art, macabre is the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere. Macabre works emphasize the details and symbols of death....
has raised public concerns regarding the psychological well-being of goths. The mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
has made reports that have influenced the public view that goths, or people associated with the subculture, are malicious; however this is disputed and the goth subculture is often described as non-violent. Two non peer-reviewed studies by the A.S.H.A. concluded a higher than average propensity toward violence, and for one of the papers, self-harm
Self-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
, within the subculture. Some individuals who have either identified themselves or been identified by others as goth have committed high profile violent crime
Violent crime
A violent crime or crime of violence is a crime in which the offender uses or threatens to use violent force upon the victim. This entails both crimes in which the violent act is the objective, such as murder, as well as crimes in which violence is the means to an end, such as robbery. Violent...
s, including several school shootings. These incidents and their attribution to the goth scene have helped to propagate a wary perception of goth in the public eye.
Violence attributed to goths
Public concern with the goth subculture reached a high point in the fallout of the Columbine High School massacreColumbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
that was carried out by two students, incorrectly associated with the goth subculture. This misreporting of the roots of the massacre caused a widespread public backlash against the North American goth scene. Investigators of the incident, five months later, stated that the killers, who held goth music in contempt, were not involved with the goth subculture.
The Dawson College shooting
Dawson College shooting
The Dawson College shooting occurred on September 13, 2006 at Dawson College, a CEGEP in Westmount near downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The perpetrator, Kimveer Gill, began shooting outside the de Maisonneuve Boulevard entrance to the school, and moved towards the atrium by the cafeteria on the...
, in Canada, also raised public concern with the goth scene. Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Singh Gill was the Canadian perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting at Dawson College in Westmount, Quebec, Canada on September 13, 2006. He killed one student and wounded nineteen others before he committed suicide.-Background:Kimveer Gill was a 25-year-old Indo-Canadian born in...
, who killed one and injured nineteen, maintained an online journal at a web site, VampireFreaks, in which he "portrayed himself as a gun-loving Goth." The day after the shooting it was reported that "it are rough times for industrial / goth music fans these days as a result of yet another trench coat killing", implying that Gill was involved in the goth subculture. During a search of Gill's home, police found a letter praising the actions of Columbine shooters
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were American high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people—including teacher Dave Sanders—and injured 24 others, three of whom were injured as they escaped the attack...
and a CD titled "Shooting sprees ain't no fun without Ozzy and friends LOL". Although the shooter claimed an obsession for "Goth", his favorite music list was described, by the media, as a "who's who of heavy metal.
Mick Mercer
Mick Mercer
Mick Mercer is a journalist and author best known for his photos and reviews of the goth, punk, and indie music scenes. He has photographed the bands Tragic Venus and Blondie in the UK and Europe.He publishes a monthly online magazine called "The Mick"....
, author, noted music journalist, and world's leading historian of Goth music stated, of Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Gill
Kimveer Singh Gill was the Canadian perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting at Dawson College in Westmount, Quebec, Canada on September 13, 2006. He killed one student and wounded nineteen others before he committed suicide.-Background:Kimveer Gill was a 25-year-old Indo-Canadian born in...
, that he was "not a Goth. Never a Goth. The bands he listed as his chosen form of ear-bashing were relentlessly metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and standard grunge
Grunge
Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and goth metal, with some industrial
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
presence.", "Kimveer Gill listened to metal." "He had nothing whatsoever to do with Goth," and further commented "I realise that like many Neos this idiot may even have believed he somehow was a Goth, because they're only really noted for spectacularly missing the point." Mercer emphasized that he was not blaming heavy metal music
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
for Gill's actions and added "It doesn't matter actually what music he liked."
Another school shooting that was wrongly attributed to the goth subculture is the Red Lake High School massacre
Red Lake High School massacre
The Red Lake massacre was an incident of spree killing that occurred in two places on the Red Lake reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. The first murders began on the morning of March 21, 2005, when 16-year-old Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend...
. Jeff Weise
Jeff Weise
Jeffrey James "Jeff" Weise was an Ojibwe Native American adolescent, and a student at Red Lake Senior High School in Red Lake, Minnesota. He murdered nine people and wounded five others in a shooting spree on March 21, 2005, in the Red Lake Indian Reservation located in northwest Minnesota...
killed 7 people, and was believed by a fellow student to be into the goth culture: wearing "a big old black trench coat," and listening to heavy metal music
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
(as opposed to gothic rock
Gothic rock
Gothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
). Weise was also found to participate in neo-nazi online forums.
Other murders which are attributed to people suspected of being part of the goth culture include the Scott Dyleski
Scott Dyleski
Scott Edgar Dyleski was convicted of murdering his neighbor, Pamela Vitale, the wife of prominent attorney Daniel Horowitz. He received the maximum penalty allowed by the law, life in prison without parole. As a juvenile at the time of the murder he did not qualify for the death penalty...
killing, and the Richardson family murders
Richardson family murders
The Richardson family murders are the murders of three members of the Richardson family in Medicine Hat, Alberta in April 2006. The murders were devised and committed by the family's 12-year-old daughter and her 23-year-old boyfriend Jeremy Steinke.-Discovery:...
, although neither of these cases raised the same amount of media attention as the school shootings.
Violence against goths
In part because of public misunderstanding and ignorance surrounding gothic aesthetics, goths sometimes suffer prejudicePrejudice
Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...
, discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
, and intolerance
Toleration
Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...
. As is the case with members of various other controversial subcultures and alternative lifestyle
Alternative lifestyle
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture...
s, outsiders sometimes marginalize goths, either by intention or by accident. Goths, like any other alternative sub-culture sometimes suffer intimidation
Intimidation
Intimidation is intentional behavior "which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities" fear of injury or harm. It's not necessary to prove that the behavior was so violent as to cause terror or that the victim was actually frightened.Criminal threatening is the crime of intentionally or...
, humiliation
Humiliation
Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It can be brought about through bullying, intimidation, physical or mental mistreatment or trickery, or by embarrassment if a person is revealed to have...
, and, in many cases, physical violence for their involvement with the subculture.
In 2006, a Navy
Navy
A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
sailor, James Eric Benham, and his brother attacked four goths in San Diego California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. One goth, Jim Howard, had to be rushed to the hospital. The perpetrators of this attack were found guilty in August 2007 on four related accounts, two of which were felonies, though Benham only spent 37 days in jail. During the trial, it was made clear that the goths were assaulted due to their subculture affiliation. This can be otherwise known as a "hate crime" though the San Diego courts did not recognize this attack as such at the time.
On 11 August 2007, a couple walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, England were attacked by a group of teenagers because they were goths. Sophie Lancaster
Murder of Sophie Lancaster
The Murder of Sophie Lancaster was a murder case in the United Kingdom in 2007. The victim, along with her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, was attacked by a number of males in their mid-teens while walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Rossendale in Lancashire. As a result of her severe head injuries...
subsequently died from her injuries. On 29 April 2008, two teens 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 add 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 2008, Paul Gibbs, a Briton from Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, UK was attacked by three men. He and his group of about 20 young goths were on a camping trip in the vicinity of Rothwell when two 18-year-olds (Quinn Colley, Ryan Woodhead) and one 22-year-old (Andrew Hall) raided, stabbed four of the men and robbed two women. Quinn Colley had previously appeared in a homemade clip rapping on his love of violence. Gibbs was offered a motorbike ride by the attackers who at first insidiously befriended the group. On their way, they knocked Gibbs from the bike, rendered him unconscious with a helmet, and sliced off his ear. Afterwards, the attackers returned to the camp.
Colley and Woodhead were sentenced to at least 2.5 years of prison while Hall at least 4.5 years. Gibbs' ear was found 17 hours later, thus doctors could not immediately reattach it. Instead, they stitched it inside his abdomen with the hope that some of the tissue
Tissue (biology)
Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...
will re-grow. The ear could be reconstructed by using cartilage
Cartilage
Cartilage is a flexible connective tissue found in many areas in the bodies of humans and other animals, including the joints between bones, the rib cage, the ear, the nose, the elbow, the knee, the ankle, the bronchial tubes and the intervertebral discs...
removed from Gibbs' ribs.
Self-harm study
A study published on the British Medical JournalBritish Medical Journal
BMJ is a partially open-access peer-reviewed medical journal. Originally called the British Medical Journal, the title was officially shortened to BMJ in 1988. The journal is published by the BMJ Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association...
concluded that "identification as belonging to the Goth subculture [at some point on their lives] was the best predictor of self harm
Self-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
and attempted suicide [among young teens]", and that it was most possibly due to a selection mechanism (persons that wanted to harm themselves later identified as goths, thus raising the percentage of those persons who identify as goths). The study was based on a sample of 15 teenagers who identified as goths, of which 8 had self-harmed by any method, 7 had self-harmed by cutting, scratching or scoring, and 7 had attempted suicide.
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. The authors insisted on the study being based on small numbers and on the need of replication to confirm the results. The study was criticized for using a small sample of goth teens and not taking into account other influences and differences between types of goth.
See also
- Gothic fashionGothic fashionGothic fashion is a clothing style worn by members of the Goth subculture; a dark, sometimes morbid, eroticized fashion and style of dress. Typical Gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, black lips and black clothes. Both male and female goths wear dark eyeliner and dark fingernails. Styles are...
- Gothic lolita
- Gothic fictionGothic fictionGothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
- Gothic rockGothic rockGothic rock is a musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes...
- History of subcultures in the 20th centuryHistory of subcultures in the 20th centuryThe 20th century saw the rise and fall of many subcultures.-1900-World War I:In the early part of the 20th century, subcultures were mostly informal groupings of like-minded individuals. The Bloomsbury group in London was one example, providing a place where the diverse talents of people like...
- List of Gothic rock bands
External links
- Article from the New ScientistNew ScientistNew Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
on benefits of the Goth subculture.