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Metalhead Subculture
30 December 2009 | Author: admin

    

Metalhead is a popular term for a devoted fan of heavy metal music. Heavy metal fans exist in many countries beyond the United Kingdom and the United States, with many regions such as Scandinavia, Brazil, Greece, Turkey, Israel and Japan. Heavy metal fans have created a strongly masculine “exclusionary youth community” whose core audience in the U.S. and the UK is “white, male, lower class youth”. In continental Europe metal culture appeals to a more diverse audience, often spanning into the 30s and 40s and more frequently with a middle-class background and a higher cultural profile. However, the metal culture expands across the globe and is not limited to this. Metalheads affirm their membership in the subculture or scene by attending metal concerts, buying albums, and most recently, by contributing to metal websites and by growing their hair.

The long hair, leather jackets and band patches of heavy metal fashion help to encourage a sense of identification within the subculture. Like the music at its cultural core, these fashions have changed over the decades, from tight blue jeans, motorcycle boots and black t-shirts in the late 1970s and early 1980s to black jeans and army fatigue pants, military-style coats, and shaven or short-clipped hairstyles in the 1990s and 2000s. However, the majority of fans are conscious more towards the music, rather than the way they look, which is often just a visual that “comes with” being a fan of metal music. (For example, band merchandise such as t-shirts are often seen being worn by fans perhaps because they feel they want to support and contribute to their favourite bands).

    

SUBCULTURE

Heavy metal fans have created a “subculture of alienation” with its own standards for achieving authenticity within the group. Deena Weinstein’s book Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture argues that heavy metal “…has persisted far longer than most genres of rock music” due to the growth of an intense “subculture which identified with the music”. Metal fans formed an “exclusionary youth community” which was distinctive and marginalized from the mainstream” society. The heavy metal scene developed a strongly masculine “community with shared values, norms, and behaviors”. A “code of authenticity” is central to the heavy metal subculture ; this code requires bands to have a “disinterest in commercial appeal” and radio hits and a refusal to “sell out”. The metal code also includes “opposition to established authority, and separateness from the rest of society”. Fans expect that the metal “…vocation [for performers] includes total devotion to the music and deep loyalty to the youth subculture that grew up around it…” ; a metal performer must be an “idealized representative of the subculture”.

While the audience for metal is mainly “white, male, lower/middle class youth” , this group is “…tolerant of those outside its core demographic base who follow its codes of dress, appearance, and behavior” .The activities in the metal subculture include the ritual of attending concerts, buying albums, and most recently, contributing to metal websites. Attending concerts affirms the solidarity of the subculture, as it is one of the ritual activities by which metalheads celebrate their music. Metal magazines help the members of the subculture to connect, find information and evaluations of bands and albums, and “express their solidarity”. The long hair, leather jackets, and band patches of heavy metal fashion help to encourage a sense of identification within the subculture. However, Weinstein notes that not all metal fans are “visible members” of the heavy metal subculture.

    

AUTHENTICITY

In the musical subcultures of heavy metal and punk, the word “poseur” (or “poser”) is a pejorative term used to describe “a person who habitually pretends to be something he is not.” The term is used to refer to a person who adopts the dress, speech, and/or mannerisms of a group or subculture, generally for attaining acceptability within the group, yet who is deemed to not share or understand the values or philosophy of the subculture. In a 1993 profile of heavy metal fans’ “subculture of alienation”, the author noted that the scene classified some members as “poseurs,” that is, heavy metal performers or fans who pretended to be part of the subculture, but who were deemed to lack authenticity and sincerity. Jeffrey Arnett’s 1996 book Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation argues that the heavy metal subculture classifies members into two categories by giving “…acceptance as an authentic metalhead or rejection as a fake, a poseur.”

Since decades, heavy metal fans began using the terms “sell out” and “poseur” to refer to bands who turned their heavy metal sound into radio-friendly rock music (like Def Leppard, once a genuine NWOBHM band which later shifted to arena rock and then romantic ballads). In metal, the term is used to refer to “…someone dishonest who adopted the most rigorous pose, or identity-affirming lifestyle and opinions”. The metal bands that earned this epithet are those “… who adopt the visible aspects of the orthodoxy (sound, images) without contributing to the underlying belief system.” In the heavy metal subculture, some critics use the term to describe bands that are seen as excessively commercial, such as MTV-friendly glam metal, nu metal, or metalcore groups.

Ron Quintana’s article on “Metallica['s] Early History” argues that when Metallica was trying to find a place in the LA metal scene in the early 1980s, “American hard-rock scene was dominated by highly coiffed, smoothly-polished bands such as Styx, Journey and REO Speedwagon.” He claims that this made it hard for Metallica to “…play their [heavy] music and win over a crowd in a land where poseurs ruled and anything fast and heavy was ignored.” In David Rocher’s 1999 interview with Damian Montgomery, the frontman of Ritual Carnage, he praised Montgomery as “…an authentic, no-frills, poseur-bashing, nun-devouring kind of gentleman, an enthusiastic metalhead truly in love with the lifestyle he preaches… and unquestionably practises.

In 2002, “[m]etal guru Josh Wood” claimed that the “credibility of heavy metal” in North America is being destroyed by the genre’s demotion to “…horror movie soundtracks, wrestling events and, worst of all, the so-called ‘Mall Core’ groups like Limp Bizkit.” Wood claims that the “…true [metal] devotee’s path to metaldom is perilous and fraught with poseurs.” In an article on metal/hard rock frontman Axl Rose, entitled “Ex–‘White-Boy Poseur”, Rose admitted that he has had “…time to reflect on heavy-metal posturing” of the last few decades. He notes that “We thought we were so badass…[until] N.W.A. came out rapping about this world where you walk out of your house and you get shot.” At this point, Rose argues that “It was just so clear what stupid little white-boy poseurs we were.”

Christian heavy metal bands are often criticized within metal circles in a similar light; their faith an indicator to some extreme metal adherents as membership to an established authority, and therefore rendering Christian bands as “posers” and a contradiction to heavy metal’s purpose. Some proponents argue personal faith in right hand path beliefs should not be drawn into question within metal, but concomitantly should not be promoted within it. In spite of this, several Norwegian black metal bands have even threatened violence (and in rare instances, exhibited it) towards Christian artists or believers, as demonstrated significantly in the early 1990s through a rash of church burnings throughout Scandinavia.

    

SOCIAL ASPECTS

In place of typical dancing, metalheads are more likely to mosh or headbang, a movement in which the head is shaken up and down in time with the music (or “windmilled” in a circular motion, most often executed by fans with longer hair) while the lower body remains somewhat still (or using the arms to play the air guitar). The fast pace, tempo and time changes, and complex rhythm of most metal music makes traditional forms of dance difficult or at least very physically tiring to perform. As well, the male-oriented culture of heavy metal makes typical dancing out of place.

During the early 1980s, with the rise of thrash metal, elements of the hardcore punk culture began to be incorporated into metalhead lifestyle, some of the more prominent aspects of which included slamdancing and moshing, where fans would form rings in the crowd within which they would run into each other and/or push and shove one another and stage-diving, where fans climb onto the stage with the band and launch themselves into the crowd. Later, crowd-surfing, where individuals are lifted and carried forward over the heads of others in the audience, also became popular. While this behavior was generally restricted to the punk and metalhead cultures during the 1980s, by the early 1990s moshing, stage-diving and crowd-surfing had spilled over to all spheres of alternative rock music.

Fans from the metalhead culture often make the “Corna” hand-signal formed by a fist with the “pinkie” and index fingers extended, known variously as the “devil’s horns”, the “metal fist” and other similar descriptors. The “Corna” was originally an occult sign used to ward off the evil spirits in Southern and Eastern Europe. An example of this can be found in the early chapters of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. This gesture was first popularized by Ronnie James Dio in the 1980s and was quickly adopted into the metalhead sub-culture.

A list of metalhead interests lines up well with the song topics and lyrical content used by metal bands. The interests vary by subgenre, but in general they include horror films, Science fiction, occultism, swords and sorcery-oriented fantasy, European and US history, blood and gore imagery, swords, knives, and firearms, religion, tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption and last but not least death; the act of killing,emotions associated with, and sometimes even the glorification of it.

    

ATTIRE

Another aspect of metalhead culture is its fashion. Like the metal music, these fashions have changed over the decades, while keeping some core elements. Typically, the heavy metal fashions of the late 1970s – 1980s comprised tight blue jeans or drill pants, motorcycle boots or hi-top sneakers and black t-shirts, worn with a sleeveless kutte of denim or leather emblazoned with woven patches and button pins from heavy metal bands. Sometimes, a denim vest, emblazoned with album art “knits” (cloth patches) would be worn over a long-sleeved leather jacket. As with other musical subcultures of the era, such as punks, this jacket and its emblems and logos helped the wearer to announce their interests. During this period, metalheads often wore t-shirts with the emblem of bands.

This outfit could also be supplemented by jewellery and accessories that included studded leather wrist- and arm-bands, bullet belts (made of empty shell casings from belt-fed machine guns), chains and rings depicting skulls and other horror film-inspired designs. The hair was usually quite long, either at or beyond the shoulder or in a mullet (short top with long back). Female metal devotees did not usually dress in a similar fashion. Some female metalheads adopted dress similar to that of goths or punks, such as streaks of brightly-dyed hair, safety-pinned clothes, and torn pantyhose. By the early 1990s, metalhead fashion changed direction, as more diverse and even more extreme forms of heavy metal become more widespread. As Death metal and Black metal began to dominate the culture, metalhead fashion reflected this shift. As heavy metal music itself diversified and branched out, so did the fashions associated with it. A growing influence from goth and industrial music and hardcore punk became increasingly evident. Black jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and army fatigue pants began to replace the more traditional blue jeans and the patch-clad “battle jackets”. Some of the jewelry and accessories of the previous era also became less prominent.

While long hair had been a defining aspect of metal culture in the 1970s and 1980s, by the 1990s shorter hairstyles and even completely shaven heads had begun to grow in acceptance. A Neo-Nazist influence among some pockets of the heavy metal subculture was only partly responsible for this trend; many bands and artists of no clear political or philosophical persuasion that were choosing to either wear shorter hair or none at all. Beards and facial hair, especially goatees rose in popularity among metalheads in the 1990s.

The wave of “Hair Cutting” that has taken place throughout the more mainstream of American scenes has not seemed to effect the heavier, more underground genres. Band members and fans alike of genres such as Death Metal, and Black Metal still held true to the long hair, and tend to sport straight hair falling well below the shoulders. Long beards are also very popular and, in some cases, dreadlocks.

In the late 1990s, outside influences began infusing with metalhead culture once again. The rise of nu metal saw facets of hip-hop culture being introduced, including the adoption of sportswear, dreadlocks and African-American slang. The rising popularity of hardcore-infused metalcore since the 2000s brought with it shorter haircuts, usually dyed black, and a tendency toward favouring “label” clothing and footwear.

Most recently around the mid-2000s, a renaissance of younger audiences have become interested in 1980’s metal, and the rise of newer bands embracing older fashion ideals has led to a decidedly more 1980s-esque style of dress for metalheads. Some commentators have noted that some of the new audience are young, urban hipsters who had “previously fetishized metal from a distance”. Many young metalheads today grow hair below their shoulders (though short hair and moderate lengthed hair is still prominent) and wear black t-shirts and leather jackets as 1980s metalheads did. Tight jeans have in fact come back into fashion in various rock genres as well as in heavy metal genres, just like in the 1980s, although jeans are not always blue, they range from black to grey to even brighter colours.

    

INTERNATIONAL VARIATIONS

Heavy metal music has a following in countries beyond the UK, where it first developed. In the 2000s, fans can be found in virtually every country in the world including South Africa, Asia (especially Japan and Bangladesh), Australia and South America (especially Brazil, Chile and Argentina). Metal has a following and bands in some major cities in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. Even in some of the more conservative Muslim countries of the Middle East a tiny metal culture exists, though judicial and religious authorities do not always tolerate it. In 2003, more than a dozen members and fans of Moroccan heavy metal bands were imprisoned for “undermining the Muslim faith” through their “satanic” music. Israel, for such a small country, has a strong metal scene, particularly in the subgenres of stoner/doom and Black metal.

In Western Europe, metal has a more mainstream appeal, whereas in the US and Canada it is more of a subculture. Heavy metal artists will spend much more time touring in Europe than in the Americas. Metal has a large Japanese fanbase. England is noted as the birthplace of metal and within the major cities, such as London and Birmingham, the metal scene is especially strong.

Scandinavia, a breeding grounds for many death metal and black metal bands, also houses many fans of the genre.

Source: Wikipedia

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Subculture
15 September 2009 | Author: editor 5

The term dark culture (German Schwarze Szene, Portuguese cultura dark, Spanish escena oscura), also called “dark alternative scene”, is an umbrella term, used to describe a summary of parts of several subcultures. In this context the “culture” is not to be understood as closed subculture, but as “social environment”, a milieu, which comprises people with similar interests and preferences (e.g. dark music). Dark culture includes:
the goth and dark wave culture
elektro subculture (with genres like electro-industrial, aggrotech and dark electro)
parts of the neofolk and post-industrial subcultures
parts of the metal subculture (with genres like gothic metal, doom metal and black metal)

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. If a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counterculture.

As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, “which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a ’subculture’ which actively sought a minority style … and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values”. In his 1979 book Subculture the Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy. He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard. Hebdige argued that subcultures bring together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity.

In 1995, Sarah Thornton, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, described “subcultural capital” as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups. Ken Gelder argued in 2007 that subcultures are social, with their own shared conventions, values and rituals, but they can also seem “immersed” or self-absorbed; a feature that distinguishes them from countercultures. Gelder identified six key ways in which subcultures can be understood:

1.through their often negative relations to work (as ‘idle’, ‘parasitic’, at play or at leisure, etc.);

2.through their negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not ‘class-conscious’ and don’t conform to traditional class definitions);

3.through their association with territory (the ’street’, the ‘hood, the club, etc.), rather than property;

4.through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family);

5.through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions);

6.through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification.

Identifying subcultures

Subcultures can be distinctive because of the age, ethnicity, class, location, and/or gender of the members. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be linguistic, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, geographical, or a combination of factors. According to Dick Hebdige, members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms,and argot.They also live out particular relations to places; Ken Gelder talks about “subcultural geographies” along these lines.

The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Subcultures have been chronicled by others for a long time, documented, analysed, classified, rationalised, monitored, scrutinised. In some cases, subcultures have been legislated against, their activities regulated or curtailed.

Subcultures’ relationships with mainstream culture

It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes. Businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product. This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society. This process provides a constant stream of styles which may be commercially adopted.

Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process, and so what may be considered a subculture at one stage in its history—such as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop and rave cultures—may represent mainstream taste within a short period of time. Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation.The punk subculture’s distinctive (and initially shocking) style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest. Dick Hebdige argues that the punk subculture shares the same “radical aesthetic practices” as Dada and surrealism:

Like Duchamp’s ‘ready mades’ – manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items – a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon – could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion…Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks’ ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic ‘utility’ context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip…fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops.

URBAN TRIBES

In 1985, French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe, and it gained widespread use after the publication of his Le temps des tribus: le déclin de l’individualisme dans les sociétés postmodernes (1988). Eight years later, this book was published in the United Kingdom as The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society.

According to Maffesoli, urban tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in metropolitan areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles and behavioral patterns. Their social interactions are largely informal and emotionally-laden, different than late capitalism’s corporate-bourgeoisie cultures, based on dispassionate logic. Maffesoli claims that punks are a typical example of an “urban tribe”.

Five years after the first English translation of Le temps des tribus, writer Ethan Watters claims to have coined the same neologism in a New York Times Magazine article. This was later expanded upon the idea in his book Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment. According to Watters, urban tribes are groups of never-marrieds between the ages of 25 and 45 who gather in common-interest groups and enjoy an urban lifestyle, which offers an alternative to traditional family structures.

Source: Wikipedia

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Goth Subculture
27 August 2009 | Author: editor 5

    

The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk 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 nineteenth century Gothic literature along with horror movies and to a lesser extent the BDSM culture.

The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion, whether or not all individuals who share those tastes are in fact members of the goth subculture. Gothic music encompasses a number of different styles. Common to all is a tendency towards a lugubrious, mystical sound and outlook. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punk, androgynous, Victorian, some Renaissance and Medieval style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with black attire, makeup and hair.

    

Origins and development

By the late 1970s, there were a few post-punk bands labeled “gothic.” However, it was not until the early 1980s that gothic rock became its own subgenre 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: “The face of Punk Gothique”, written by Steve Keaton and published on February 21, 1981. The opening of the Batcave in London’s Soho 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 1980s and early 1990s, members of an emerging subculture in Germany were called Grufti[e]s (English “vault creatures” or “tomb creatures”); they generally followed a fusion of the gothic and new wave with an influence of new romantic, and formed the early stages of the “dark culture” (formerly called “dark wave culture”). Brian Lauzon of Acton, Massachusetts was an early American adopter of the movement.

    

After post-punk

After the waning in popularity of post-punk, the subculture diversified both musically and visually. This caused variations in the “types” of goth. Local scenes also contributed to this variation. By the 1990s, Victorian fashion saw a renewed popularity in the goth scene, drawing on the mid-19th century gothic revival and the more morbid aspects of Victorian culture.

Current subcultural boundaries

By the 1990s, the term “goth” and the boundaries of the associated subculture had become more contentious. New subcultures emerged, or became more popular, some of them being conflated with the goth subculture by the general public and the popular media. This conflation was primarily owing to similarities of appearance, social customs, and the fashions of the subcultures, rather than the musical genres of the bands associated with them. As time went on, the term was extended further in popular usage, sometimes to define groups that had neither musical nor fashion similarities to the original gothic subculture. This has led to the introduction of goth slang terms that some goths and others use to sort and label members of loosely related or at times unrelated subcultures.

    

The goth scene

The bands that began the gothic rock and deathrock scene were limited in number, and included Bauhaus, Specimen, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Damned, Southern Death Cult, Ausgang, Sex Gang Children, 45 Grave, UK Decay, The Virgin Prunes, Kommunity FK, Alien Sex Fiend and Christian Death.Gloria Mundi, Joy Division, The Cure, This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance, mittageisen, early Adam and the Ants and Killing Joke have also been associated.

By the mid-eighties, the number of bands began proliferating and became increasingly popular, including The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission (known as The Mission UK in the US), Xmal Deutschland, The Bolshoi and Fields of the Nephilim. The nineties saw the further growth of eighties bands and emergence of many new bands. Factory Records, 4AD Records, and Beggars Banquet Records released much of this music in Europe, while Cleopatra Records among others released much of this music in the United States, where the subculture grew especially in New York, Los Angeles, and Orange County, California, with many nightclubs featuring “gothic/industrial” nights. The popularity of 4AD bands resulted in the creation of a similar US label called Projekt Records. This produces what is colloquially termed ethereal wave, a subgenre of dark wave music.By the mid-1990s, styles of music that were heard in venues that goths attended ranged from gothic rock, death rock, industrial music, Gothabilly, EBM, ambient, experimental, synthpop, shoegazing, punk rock, to 1970s glam rock.Recent years have seen a resurgence in the early positive punk and death rock sound, in reaction to aggrotech, industrial and synthpop, which had taken over many goth clubs. Bands with an earlier goth sound like Cinema Strange, Bloody Dead And Sexy, Black Ice, and Antiworld are becoming very popular. Nights like Ghoul School and Release The Bats promote death rock heavily, and the Drop Dead Festival brings in death rock fans from all over the world.

Today, the goth music scene thrives in Western Europe – especially in Germany, with large festivals such as Wave-Gotik-Treffen, M’era Luna and others drawing tens of thousands of fans from all over the world. However, North America still sees large scale events, most recently, Chamber’s Dark Art & Music Festival.

    

Historical and cultural influences

Origins of the term

The original Goths were an Eastern Germanic tribe who played an important role in the fall of the western Roman Empire. In some circles, the name “goth” later became pejorative: synonymous with “barbarian” and the uncultured due to the then-contemporary view of the fall of Rome and depictions of the pagan Gothic tribes during and after the process of Christianization of Europe. During the Renaissance period in Europe, medieval architecture was retroactively labeled gothic architecture, and was considered unfashionable in contrast to the then-modern lines of classical architecture.

In the United Kingdom, by the late 1700s, however, nostalgia for the medieval period led people to become fascinated with medieval gothic ruins. This fascination was often combined with an interest in medieval romances, Roman Catholic religion and the supernatural.

The gothic novel of the late eighteenth century, a genre founded by Horace Walpole with the 1764 publication of The Castle of Otranto, was accountable for the more modern connotations of the term gothic. He originally claimed that the book was a real medieval romance he had discovered and republished. Thus was born the gothic novel’s association with fake documentation to increase its effect. Henceforth, the term was associated with a mood of horror, morbidity, darkness and the supernatural as well as camp and self-parody. The gothic novel established much of the iconography of later horror literature and cinema, such as graveyards, ruined castles or churches, ghosts, vampires, nightmares, cursed families, being buried alive and melodramatic plots. An additional notable element was the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero. The most famous gothic villain is the vampire, a folklore legend of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, best known from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and the horror movies it influenced. Certain elements in the dark, atmospheric music and dress of the post punk scene were clearly gothic in this sense. The use of gothic as an adjective in describing this music and its followers led to the term goth.

19th century

The Revolutionary War-era “American Gothic” story of the Headless Horseman, immortalized in Washington Irving’s story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (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. It was readapted in 1980 and again in Tim Burton’s 1999 Sleepy Hollow. Burton, already famous through his films Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and Batman, 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. Keats, Poe, Lovecraft, Baudelaire 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 (Flowers of Evil) penned lines that as much as anything can serve as a sort of goth malediction.

    

20th century influences

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 movies began in German expressionist cinema after the first world war and then passed onto the Universal Studios films of the twenties and thirties, and then to the horror films of the English Hammer Studio. By the 1960s, TV series, such as The Addams Family and The Munsters, used these stereotypes for camp comedy. The Byronic hero, in particular, was a key precursor to the male goth image, while Dracula’s iconic portrayal by Bela Lugosi appealed powerfully to early goths. They were attracted by Lugosi’s aura of camp menace, elegance and mystique. Some people even credit the band Bauhaus’ first single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, released August 1979, with the start of the goth subculture, though many prior art house movements also influenced gothic fashion and style, the illustrations and paintings of Swiss artist, H. R. Giger being one of the earliest. Notable other early examples include Siouxsie Sioux of the musical group Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Dave Vanian of the band The Damned. Some members of Bauhaus were, themselves, fine art students or active artists.

Some of the early gothic rock and death rock artists adopted traditional horror movie images, and also drew on horror movie soundtracks for inspiration. Their audiences responded in kind by further adopting appropriate dress and props. Use of standard horror film props like swirling smoke, rubber bats, and cobwebs were used as gothic club décor from the beginning in The Batcave. Such references in their music and image were originally tongue-in-cheek, but as time went on, bands and members of the subculture took the connection more seriously. As a result, morbid, supernatural, and occult themes became a more noticeably serious element 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, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon. The movie featured gothic rock group Bauhaus performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in a nightclub. In 1993, Whitby became the location for what became the UK’s biggest goth festival as a direct result of being featured in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A literary influence on the gothic scene was Anne Rice’s re-imagining of the idea of the vampire. Rice’s characters were depicted as struggling with eternity and loneliness, this with their ambivalent or tragic sexuality had deep attractions for many goth readers, making her works very popular in the eighties through the nineties.

    

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 Crow drew directly on goth music and style. Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed graphic novel series The Sandman influenced Goths with characters like the dark, brooding Dream and his sister Death.

Visual art influences

The Goth subculture has influenced different artists – not only musicians – but also painters and photographers. In particular their work is based on mystic, morbid and romantic motifs. In photography and painting the spectrum varies from erotic artwork to romantic images of vampires or ghosts. To be present is a marked preference for dark colours and sentiments, similar to Gothic fiction, Pre-Raphaelites or Art Nouveau. In the Fine Art field, Anne Sudworth 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, Nene Thomas, Luis Royo, Dave McKean, Jhonen Vasquez, Trevor Brown, Victoria Francés as well as the American comic artist James O’Barr. H. R. Giger 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 romanticism 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 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 rather tolerant. Many in the media have incorrectly associated the Goth subculture with violence, hatred of minorities, and other acts of hate. However, 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 a very risky business in the nineteenth 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 or punk 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, a strong emphasis on creativity, tendency toward intellectualism, and a mild tendency towards cynicism, but even these ideas are not universal to all goths. Goth ideology is based far more on aesthetics and simplified ethics than politics.

Goths may, indeed, have political leanings ranging from left-wing to right-wing, but they do not express them specifically as part of a cultural identity. Instead, political affiliation, like religion, is seen as a matter of personal conscience. 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 often appear in goth culture. Reasons for donning such imagery range from expression of religious affiliation to satire or simply decorative effect.

While involvement with the subculture can be fulfilling, it also can be risky, 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 evidenced by its continuing existence after other subcultures of the eighties (such as the New Romantics) have died out.

    

Fashion

Goth fashion is stereotyped as a dark, sometimes morbid, eroticized fashion and style of dress. 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 or medieval period and often express Catholic or other religious imagery such as crucifixes or ankhs. 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 and John Galliano, have also been described as practicing “Haute Goth”. Goth fashion is often confused with heavy metal fashion: outsiders often mistake fans of heavy metal for goth, particularly those who wear black trench coats or wear “corpse paint” (a term associated with the black metal music scene).

Controvercy

The gothic fascination with the macabre has raised public concerns regarding the well-being of goths. The mass media 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. Some individuals who have either identified themselves or been identified by others as goth, whether correctly or incorrectly, have committed high profile violent crimes, 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.

Public concern with the goth subculture reached a high point in the fallout of the Columbine High School massacre 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 there was no involvement between the goth subculture and the killers, who held goth music in contempt.

The Dawson College shooting, in Canada, also raised public concern with the goth scene. Kimveer Gill, 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 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold 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, author, noted music journalist, and world’s leading historian of Goth music stated, of Kimveer Gill, that he 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.”, “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 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. Jeff Weise 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. 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 killing, and the Richardson family murders, although neither of these cases raised the same amount of media attention as the school shootings.

In part because of public misunderstanding and ignorance surrounding gothic aesthetics, goths sometimes suffer prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. As is the case with members of various other controversial subcultures and alternative lifestyles, outsiders sometimes marginalize goths, either by intention or by accident. Goths, like any other alternative sub-culture sometimes suffer intimidation, humiliation, and, in extreme cases, physical violence for their involvement with the subculture.

In 2006 four goths were attacked in San Diego California by a Navy man and his brother resulting in one goth, Jim Howard, having 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. 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 do not recognize this attack as such at this time.

On August 11, 2007, two goths, walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, England were attacked by a group of teenagers because they were goths. Sophie Lancaster subsequently died from her injuries. On April 29, 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 did not pass.

In 2008, Paul Gibbs, a Briton from Leeds, 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 Gibbs was knocked down from the bike, rendered unconscious by a helmet and had his ear sliced off. Afterwards, the attackers returned to the camp. Colley and Woodhead were sentenced to at leat 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 stomach with the hope that some of the tissue will re-grow. The ear could be reconstructed by using cartilage removed form Gibbs’ ribs.

A study published on the British Medical Journal concluded that “identification as belonging to the Goth subculture [at some point on their lives] was the best predictor of self harm 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 said 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 different types of goth.

Source: Wikipedia

Cultura goth este o subcultură contemporană răspândită în mai multe ţări. A început în Marea Britanie în anii 1980, în cadrul scenei gothic rock, aceasta fiind o ramură a      genului post punk. Subcultura goth a rezistat mult mai mult decât alte culturi din aceeaşi generaţie şi a continuat să se diversifice. Imaginea şi principiile culturale indică influenţe ale Goth Subculture literaturii goth din sec al 19-lea, a filmelor horror şi câteva influenţe din cultura BDSM. Subcultura goth a asociat gusturile muzicale estetice şi moda cu indivizii care au aceleaşi preferinţe fie că sunt sau nu membri ai comunităţii. Muzica goth cuprinde diferite stiluri.Un punct comun reprezintă tendinţa spre lugubru, muzica şi aspectul mistic. Stilurile vestimentare ale subculturii variază de la death rock, punk, androgynous,Victorian, câteva stiluri renascentiste şi medievale sau combinaţii între cele de mai sus, de cele mai multe ori cu accesorii de păr şi machiaj negru.

The Goth subculture has influenced different artists – not only musicians – but also painters and photographers. In particular their work is based on mystic, morbid and romantic motifs. In photography and painting the spectrum varies from erotic artwork to romantic images of vampires or ghosts. To be present is a marked preference for dark colours and sentiments, similar to Gothic fiction, Pre-Raphaelites or Art Nouveau. In the Fine Art field, Anne Sudworth 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, Nene Thomas, Luis Royo, Dave McKean, Jhonen Vasquez, Trevor Brown, Victoria Francés as well as the American


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