What IS Goth?

I think one of the most common questions I get are those of "What is this whole "Goth" thing" as it seems that people  tend to either know of shock stories in tabloids and gossip magazines or just see these strange-looking people in a lot of black and metal walking around and are understandably curious.  There are already numerous attempts to answer that question that present it as a fashion,  a music scene, an artistic movement, a lifestyle, a subculture. I believe it is all of those things, or rather that it is a subculture that encompasses being all of the other things, and am going to make my attempt at explaining this. Goth is probably far too shifting and broad to ever define properly, and so this is quite brief and while I've tried to be as inclusive as possible, I'm probably missing bits.

Goth is one of my favourite aesthetics, or rather it is one of my favourite way of blending all my other favourite aesthetics. I can combine Baroque, Art Nouveau, Deco, Neo-Gothic, Victorian, etc. and then I can throw in some futuristic things I saw in Ultra Violet or The Matrix or off the cover of a science fiction paperback... Goth is this wonderfully huge umbrella that covers everything from the cutesiest halloween kitsch to the most elegant funereal anachronism because rather than a specific stylistic guide, it is an approach, its basic premise is to look at the dark side of life - the deathly, the dystopian, the twisted, and bring it into the light whether by turning it into macabre high art or looking at it with humour or turning it into something adorable. In that way, it is an art movement defined by approach that spans music, literature, visual arts, fashion and decor.


Goth is also a fashion. You can wear goth clothes without reading Poe, Neil Gaiman and Anne Rice; watching Interview With A Vampire, Sweeney Todd and The Crow; and listening to Bauhaus, Emilie Autumn and Sisters of Mercy, although I think that being fully immersed in the subculture leads to being more individual and better dressed because you can then be inspired by what you've read about, or by the stage costumes and clothes of musicians, costumes from films, etc. It is perfectly possible to go into certain shops or look on the internet and assemble a beautiful outfit or several and only be in it for the clothes without any real interest in the rest of Goth. Many teenagers do this badly as a rebellious phase, quite a few Goths who weren't around in the '80s probably started out this way, and there are probably quite a few people who simply like the clothes. Of course, mainstream fashion and the hipster subculture routinely mine the fashion side for inspiration too.

Goth is definitely a music scene. While there have been darkly inclined people for centuries doing the this sort of thing (Paganini, Liszt, Theda Bara, to name a few) the Post-Punk and Deathrock scenes  in the latter 1970s and 1980s gave it point about which to crystalise and grow.  The music itself has changed a lot since the days of Siouxsie Sioux and Bauhaus, and is now as broad as the space between Emilie Autumn and Centhron (not that either artist is Goth, just that they have a significant number of Goths in their fan-base), not to mention people like Marilyn Manson (he is clearly a Goth, but his music's between shock-rock and metal) and the influence of the Visual Kei scene. The other aspects of Goth have broadened with the music as various musical genres have merged and diverged and brought with them different band aesthetics and different inspirations. The music is important, but cannot be divorced from its musical antecedents and non-musical inspiration.


The visual aesthetic and lyric content and dark but danceable sound links back to the concept of Goth as an art-movement, but  at the same time, it is a form of "pop culture" although it wasn't all that popular, even in the 1980s. Goth, as well as being in fine hand-made Victorian  gowns, art photography of graveyards and bones and macabre sculpture is also in mass-produced consumables available in Hot Topic. This is probably why the word "scene" developed its modern meaning, to describe what happens around a pop-culture focus. Yes, someone somewhere drew the kitsch zombies on Iron Fist shoes  and people made their own collars before you could buy them for a fiver, and somebody had to design  Draculaura and her classmates, but that initial effort has been turned into things produced in their thousands. Monster High isn't even actually aimed at goths, but Draculaura combines Gothic Lolita fashion with pink New Rock boots (not branded, of course) and bringing a parasol to school.


Goth is also a lifestyle. The longer you spend in the subculture, the more likely you are to decorate your house to your own take on that aesthetic, probably because it takes time to be able to afford one's own place and the materials to decorate it! But it's more than the aesthetic creeping in to all aspects of your life until you have black crockery and spiderweb toilet paper. It is appreciating the old architecture you see, it is taking photographs of dead flowers, it is visiting graveyards that aren't the final resting place of any of your relatives, it is in visiting parks to appreciate their beauty rather than just to have a space to drink or play sport in, it is writing letters by hand in purple ink instead of sending e-mails, it crafting your own dark aesthetic. It's more than going to concerts and Goth clubs and gatherings.

Look what I found in Tesco at Halloween...

The important thing is to do things because you enjoy them, not because they are on the fictitious Goth Lifestyle Tick-Box List, but some activities (like reading too much, lighting the house with candles even when the electricity is working and having picnics in the graveyard) have become stereotypically Goth for a reason - people who like the fashion and the music tend to like doing those things too. That's not to say that anyone in all black and spikes collects weaponry or skulls or both, eats lunch in the Graveyard and has more black candles than black socks, but you will find goths that do.

For a less text-intensive version of answering that recurring "What is Goth?" question check out this video by Jillian Venters aka The Lady of the Manners from Gothic Charm School (there's always a link to her site in my Blog Roll) ::here::

Wind, Even Faster Wind and Sleet

The weather here has been very exciting. Well, at least most of the time. It did very nearly end in terrible catastrophe, but my partner avoided that.  Sadly not everyone else living here has avoided weather-induced misfortune.

I live in the Scottish Highlands, as I may have mentioned before.  In the Cairngorms (mountains not many miles south of us) the weather station reported winds of 165 mph. That's the same wind-speeds as you get in a CATEGORY 5 HURRICANE, just not quite as consistent (although the wind was pretty speedy between gusts, too).  That weather station is, I think, between our apartment and the where my partner works. It was wonderfully (well, "wonderfully" from the perspective of this weather-geek) windy here. We started off with six inches of snow this morning, but high winds and sleet took care of that. I got blown about a bit because I decided to go sort out my tax and go to the council offices on the bus. Yes, the busses are still running, this is winter, not the Apocalypse. I'm quite glad I wasn't doing conservation work today, it might have been a bit wet at the nature reserve... Well, it's always wet at the nature reserve but it might have been rather more wet. I will have to investigate any flooding and take pictures.

It may have been on the news where you are. It's been nicknamed (and I am not too keen on the profanity) "Hurricane Bawbag" and is trending like crazy on Twitter. Here is an ::article:: to photographs on the BBC and I really recommend looking at this ::satellite image::. It shows how we were really at the centre of it all and just how vast this system is! Here's a Guardian=::article:: on it. Ardrossan Windfarm has suffered severe damage - one of the turbines appears to have been destroyed and caught fire! Thankfully we haven't had a proper power-cut here, but we have had several brownouts during the day - the lights have flickered ominously.

The weather did do one not-so-good thing as far as our household is concerned today. The other half was driving home and suddenly a truck got blown into his path. My other half's dad was a fighter pilot and I think the other half inherited the reflexes, because he thankfully dodged that catastrophe. Whoever was driving that lorry was lucky not to have been tipped right over. High-sided vehicles are not suitable for high-winds - they have too high a surface area, and when they have motion and lack grip anyway, because the road is wet, then it is a recipe for disaster. That driver could have been killed. I'm quite glad nobody got hurt (especially my partner), and hope that people drive safely and have safe journeys. I saw pictures of overturned lorries on the A83 on the BBC website, and I do hope the drivers of those lorries survived with as few injuries as can be possible from such an incident. I also hope my partner has a safe commute tomorrow.

My partner and I decided to stay indoors this evening and watch Twister. I'm considering getting one of those home weather stations, and hooking that up to the laptop. The weather here is considerably more interesting than it was where I used to live. It rains in varying degrees of closeness to horizontal, for a start. I would love to have some wind-speeds from out apartment, and to see the changing pressure readings. I also wish I had found my camera before it was dark - it would have been nice to photograph and video all this.

The winds are slowing, but there's a blizzard apparently scheduled. I hope the weather remains interesting, and that people remain safe, and that things get better for anyone adversely affected. Apparently the tail of Hurricane Katia will hit us as a winter storm on Monday, which should also be interesting, and hopefully less destructive. The sheer power of nature awes me, we live on a fascinating, exciting, ever-changing planet where some of the best bits happen between its surface and space. We are only tiny, tiny beings in the face of things like the weather.

Useful Posts on Other Blogs!

This was supposed to be Sunday's post, and I did write most of it on Sunday! Sunday is Wash Day. Washing day began at just gone midnight because we use the timer on the washing machine, and washing will continue all day in various forms. There's clothes to be washed, floors to be washed, dishes to be washed... Basically I'm actually being a domesticated Goth. Don't worry, the Other Half does chores too. My Other Half is particularly good at doing chores on account of two things: the first is that he runs the chalets at the local ski & holiday resort and is therefore in charge of a whole lot of house keeping and is rather hands-on and perfectionist about it all and the second is that he used to work in a hospital which gave him a vey good education in cleanliness.

As it is Wash Day my first link is washing-related: ::How To Wash Your Wool Jumpers:: at the lovely Juliet's Lace blog. I only discovered this blog today via ::Sophistique Noir::. Anyway, Amy of  Juliet's Lace explains in nice simple steps how to properly wash a wooly jumper without it shrinking or stretching. I don't own that many wooly jumpers, but I've been guilty of not caring for those that I do.

The next link is a crafty link and back at Sophistique Noir, this time with Victorian Kitty's tutorial on how to make a veil. This is really a simple tutorial! I'm going to have to make one of these when I find some more craft supplies. I can't even find a John Lewis department store here :(  I had just enough tulle for this back in Oxfordshire, but it is sadly one of the things that got left with my Dad when I moved North. ::Link:: When I do get materials, I will be posting my progress through this tutorial. I do come up with my own craft projects, but I like to try other people's projects too. My take on this will probably involve a few ribbons and bows, because I just love ribbon.

I know I haven't really written anything of my own up today, but I'll remedy that. Anyway, all my previous posts have been rather text intensive and I don't want to bombard everyone with massive walls of text all the time so I guess this makes up for that. Also, my next post will have photographs, and while not quite a tutorial, will show some funky make-up based on a video I saw on YouTube. 

Sophie Lancaster: Remembering on her Birthday

On August 24th, 2007, Sophie Lancaster was kicked to death for being a goth by a gang of feral youths.  In her name a charity, the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, was set up. Today she would have been 25. Many people have lit a candle in remembrance. I can't as it would set the apartment building fire-alarms off and the landlady doesn't want candles and other flames. I'd light one outside, but this is Scotland in November and it is raining sideways. As I cannot light a candle for her,  I'd like to do something else.

Sophie Lancaster Foundation

Remember her. Remember the life of a beautiful, creative, wonderful young woman whose life was tragically cut short by people addled by alcohol and without remorse, compassion or any of the other traits of human goodness that Sophie had. Remember all the other people, like Sophie's boyfriend Robert Maltby, and more recently Melody McDermott, who have been beaten to hospitalisation by violent thugs acting on nothing more than than what these people were wearing. Remember everyone else who has been bullied, harassed and intimidated for doing nothing more than expressing themselves creatively. Remember, and do what you can to stop these things happening again. If you can, do something to support those doing good work in Sophie's memory. 

Cliques, Judging and Subcultures

Most goths, at some point, will have been judged for how they look. At the darkest end there are things like when people get beaten up and even killed for how they look, and at the other there's assumptions made such as "goths are rude and pretentious" etc. We don't like being judged for being goths. We shouldn't do it to other groups. Just because someone wears fashionable clothes, that doesn't make them snobby and elitist about those who don't. Just because someone wears over-sized plastic-rim glasses and plimsols does not make them vacant and pretentious. Just because someone is wearing tracksuit bottoms and hooded jumper, that does not make them rude and violent (maybe they're going to the gym!). Just because someone wears skinny jeans and has dyed black hair does not mean they are histrionic attention-seekers. Goths aren't inherently nicer than everyone, that's why I have to make this post. 

Really, there is no reason for me to elaborate this into a vast wall of text. Yes, there are a disproportionate amount of certain types of bad behaviour in certain groups which is why some of these stereotypes exist in the first place, but even if there are more thugs that wear tracksuit bottoms and hooded jumpers than wear designer jeans, that doesn't mean that wearing a tracksuit makes someone a thug. That same logic goes for the other things. I may not LIKE any of those other styles, and think that a lot of them look terribly hideous, but I deal with that by NOT WEARING THEM and wearing things I don't think look hideous. I do not hate other styles, although I do think they are sometimes rather amusing (like when people wear logo or slogan t-shirts and have no idea what they represent, or when they walk around with their trousers halfway down their rears) but I also realise I'm probably amusing trying to run for the bus in platform boots. Other people are entitled to the same freedom of expression as we are. 

For a less text-intensive experience, watch ::this:: video by BatcaveDilemma 

Emotional Art, Glamourised Victimhood and Tragedy

A while back I drew a picture called "Paranoia" intended as a parody of a certain form of genre art that gets on my nerves. I'm slowly becoming aware that this drawing, while something drawn in a moment of silliness, actually works as a drawing, even if the emotion portrayed is melodrama and the intention a self-parody, a satire of all the melodramatic false tragedy in art and poetry produced en masse by teenage members of the darker subcultures who haven't yet learnt that the rest of the world finds deliberate angst annoying rather than edgy. Madness, fear and despair have gone from taboo subjects to subjects which have developed cliche representation. While I appreciate genuine artistic expression of these things, and people who really have gone through traggedy expressing this in art, I get a little exasperated when it turns into repetitive genre art. 

http://carolin54323.deviantart.com/art/Paranoia-197405934

There has been a flurry of drawings and photographs of (usually) young women and teenage girls either screaming, looking dead or staring madly, while pale as sheets and in high contrast, wearing far too much eye-makeup and their lips and noses blending away into insignificance, usual backgrounds including stairwells, baths and bathrooms made to look like they slit their wrists, plain white or some claustrophobic photo-manipulated background. Sometimes they have their mouths taped shut or are drawn with their mouths sewn shut, sometimes they are done to look like they are crying blood. It is not only the undertones of enacting a fantasy victimhood that worries me, but the fact that fresher portrayals of fear, madness, lunacy, depression, suicide and despair have not been imagined, and instead it has become a genre where these things are bordering on being glamourised in false sensationalism rather than actually considered. 

As somebody who has really been the darkness, as someone who knows exactly how dark it is in the place where one really does want to die, it bugs me that people want to turn it into melodrama, sensationalism, a desire to shock, or perhaps live in a fantasy of tragedy. The darkness does deserve examination, exploration and depiction in art, but it deserves honesty and thought and genuine attempts at examination, exploration and understanding, not ciche "more-tortured-than-thou" self portraits and glamourised victimhood.As a member of the Gothic subculture, I often have allegations of falsifying my tragedies for attention levelled at me because people really believe in the stereotype of the gloomy goth that is trying to be all depressed and pained for sympathy and attention and to hold a "darker than thou" attitude, and unfortunately that stereotype is perpetuated by people who live up to that, at one end is those of a histrionic disposition who do self harm for attention or as a sympathy plea (unlike most self-harmers who do it primarily as a way to vent emotion, self-punish or who have become addicted to it and are usually rather secretive about their activities) and at the other those who churn out endless similar dark poems about woe, longing, despair, suicide and self harm, or images as described above, and do so not from the perspective of someone actually going through all that, but as someone trying to be purposefully dark either to garner the sympathy of others or to conform to the standards of like-minded young people who somehow glamourise tragedy.

I am not going to say this is primarily a problem among teenagers of the Goth and Emo subculture, because it is wider than that, but we elders of the dark community who've been at this dark and spooky lark for two-digit years need to show a good example to the younger members of the subculture and point out false tragedy and shallow pretence wherever it appears, otherwise these people are going to think that melodramatic attention pleas work, or are somehow genuinely artistic. It is also time that those who are both artistically and darkly inclined started either producing more original material on there themes rather than repetitive cliches, or, if already being fresh and looking at things from different angles, being a bit more vocal about their work. People need to see that the stereotype is not edgy or gritty, but tired and cliche. When that artistic approach was popular enough for bands like Evanescence to become mainstream popularities, it was clear that the topic was getting worn out and seeing that Evanesence has been around since 1995, it really is time for something different. Tragedy, madness and despair have been themes of artistic and literary endeavour since at least when the Greeks wrote Elektra, Oedipus Rex and Medea and in that time, forms of genre art have appeared where various forms have got stale, and then been changed, and gone in a new form again, there's no reason it cannot happen now, I just wish that the majority of people making this stuff had even heard of Sophocles and Euripedes and Aeschylus or read through Hamlet, Macbeth, or seen a version of Romeo & Juliet on a stage or listened to and understood tragic French Opera... Darkness and despair can be done with great beauty and skill, but only when it is heartfelt, understood and not a third, fourth, hundredth-hand idea. 

Part of the problem is that the internet allows for information bombardment, and it is easier to find something similar to what you've already seen than it is to find something utterly new on account of the nature of the keyword system of internet searching and linkage. It is easy to find lots of the pale-faced, wide-eyed screaming victim-maidens wearing far too much badly applied eye-makeup, it is harder to find different portrayals of despair, pain, fear, etc. and if one does not put in the art history/contemporary art research time, they may be entirely missed, and therefore new ideas of the inspiring kind aren't always spotted and found in order to trigger something new again, and the idea that this genre art is how such themes are to be represented is reinforced. 

I could try and give a 'pop psychology' analysis of these images, but I'm not enough of a psychiatrist to do much good, and it still seems strange to me as to why anyone would want to present themselves as a victim to be pitied and comforted rather than try and seek genuine affection via better means, it is surely more effort to be deliberately gloomy. Doing things for shock value is crass and histrionic. Take the higher ground.