The Definition of Gothic

Site Map: Gothic Architecture - Gothic Cemeteries - Gothic Clothes - Gothic Clothing - Gothic Culture - Gothic Entertainment
Gothic Girl - Gothic Girls - Gothic Magazines - Gothic Music - Gothic People - Spirituality - Tattoos and Piercings - The Definition of Goth - American Gothic - Gothic Art

Defining goth is like defining God—we make efforts that always fall short of the reality. To call goth merely a subculture does not do it justice. And while goths are for the most part darkly artistic by nature, pigeonholing goth as an artistic movement only skims the surface.
Nobody knows the totality of what modern goth is about, but the simplest truth about goth is this: goth is a state of mind. And while most people who identify themselves as goth or gothic dress the part, a lot of people who do not wear fishnet and velvet are goth inside. Goth is a way of being that embraces what the normal world shuns, a lean toward and an obsession with all subjects dark and grim, a view of life that incorporates the world of night as well as the world of day. The gothically inclined make room for the noir in a global culture that favors white and prefers its darkness sanitized.
But saying goths are lonely and morbid is misleading. The mainstream views goth through a distorted mirror that sees only dreary music coupled with Morticia Addams fashions. Most goths and kindred souls dispute that shallow reflection. Romance is at the heart of what it means to be goth, and consequently tragedy is always a sigh away. In the modern gothic world, as in few other realms, the outward trappings of similarity belie fierce individ uality. Every goth is an individual first and foremost, adamantly defending that position. Yet lurking within such independence is the intense need for community, which is glaringly obvious to anyone who cares to look.
Being goth is going on what cultural mythologist Joseph Campbell called the Hero's journey, exploring what psychologist Carl Jung dubbed the shadowy side of life. It is a path Robert Frost wrote about in his poem "The Road Not Taken," but in this case, goths promenade down that dark, unknown road that most of the population veers away from. Emily Dickinson wrote about what gives life its juice, "a moment of noon," when something happens. This is what goth is about.
Despite the dark current that carries goths along, and maybe because of it, goth is also about fun. About extremes. About edginess. About flapping your latex bat wings in the face of convention and secretly giggling at the notion that your very existence upsets the mainstream. If goth is anything definable, it is a living, throbbing entity composed of rabid individualists, a veiled underground realm where encompassing what the light of day fears or rejects is considered fascinating, compelling, and, at times, awfully amusing.
".. .a peacefully dark work in which one
can escape the masses and
uniformity. The deep bliss this world
brings gives the power and strength
needed to experience life and love in an
extreme way, intensely."
Himue "It is liking what other
people find hideous, or disgusting. It
is loving things that other people could't
love, goths have ancient souls, ones that
never really died."

One of the most common misconceptions about goth is that it is some sort of devil-worshiping cult. A number of The f Section are Wiccan (see Chapter 13), and variations thereof. But only two identified their religion as "Satanist." Sire Cedric says, "I do not worship any sort of horned god. It's just that in the Bible and in Romantic literature, I identify with the Satan character. Also, God is the ultimate representation of misogynistic stupid males. I stand for the Goddess of Night, and the pleasures of the flesh."
Still, the mainstream will glare at goths and in their collective eyes you can read the letters C-U-L-T. Maybe it's the cadaverous makeup, or the ready-for-mourning-at-any-time-of-the-day attire, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Cults need leaders. Goth has always been and always will be leaderless. Goth, since it slouched out of the amorphic ooze of Punk in the 1970s, has never had a leader. The closest would be the bands, and none have assumed that role. Nor would goths permit it for a second — what a great way to ensure that goths no longer buy your CDs!
KrockmitAine "[It is] the research
of estheticism, art, romantism in a
modern society devoid of magic,
hope, and humanity."
"I like the dark music and gothic
thinking, but I don't want to chang the
world. I just want to keep my world
full of real feelings."

THE GOTH Bl BLE

It's difficult for the average mortal pounding concrete to realize the worldwide scope of goth, and to believe that nobody started this. In that way, goth is much like the Internet—it emerged seemingly out of nowhere, and flourishes, yet nobody can figure out Who Is in Charge Here!!! At least when goths crash, they only effect themselves.
Andrew Eldritch, the currently blond genius behind legendary band Sisters of Mercy, is one of goth's best-known singers. His hauntingly spiritual lyrics combined with wicked instrumentals have rippled through darklings around the world for well over two decades. Eldritch has always divorced himself from goth, although goths are his biggest fans. Sisters were invited to do an autographing in 2002 at the Sonic Seducer music magazine booth at Germany's huge annual M'Era Luna Festival (see Chapter 5). The band's manager warned, "If the booth looks like a goth shop, they might just walk away." Maybe it did; Sisters canceled the signing. And while they continue to adore his music, goths have never been anywhere close to letting Andrew Eldritch take charge, even if he had wanted to be Leader of the goth Movement.
Goths resist being controlled—it's at the core of why most goths are goth. Goth is one of the premier artistic movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and true artists are, by nature, unique, and unpredictable.
When goth, with eroticized grace, first lifted its pale flesh out of a murky pool composed of a complex blend of music, literature, and philosophy combined with outre fashion sense, it did so on its own. Despite a world hell-bent on finding "the person to blame," or in this case, The One Who Started It All, in gothland, there is no such dark animal.
Amazing, then, that goth exists all over the world. This nonmovement movement can be found not just in the United States, Canada, and in most European countries, but also the Ukraine, the Far East, South America ... Somehow—and the Internet is a major contributor to goth communication—people of like mind have built velvet bridges using music, fashion, art, literature, and philosophy to find soulkin. It's a given that goths can spot one another in a crowd.
One reason that goth has remained whole, as it were, unto itself, protected, still relatively pure, is that while through fashion and music it has been visible, individual goths are still elusive creatures. What goth really encompasses is the silver they keep hidden. And goths do not necessarily
"It's a slightly less optimistic outlook on
life than other people's, and a lifestyle
that becomes second nature and is
absolutely impossible to shake off. It's
got nothing to do with
looks or culture."
"It is dark, quiet, and magick. It is shadow and the night and all dwellers within; cemetery peace and the safety of solitude. An owl's cry at midnight, the soft whoosh of a bat's wing, the tolling of chapel bells. It is candle and whisper, incantation and prayer."
Icsut 6c Hioncourt "One thing I am sure goth is not-and this I can say because most goths I know are not-and
that's judgmental. They can accept
anyone for who they are, regardless of
how deviant or egotistical."

DEATH in DOC rtiARTEns

want to be high-profile. Goth is an underground movement—that's the beauty of it—and it has existed largely apart from the mainstream. This is what has kept it alive, despite bits and pieces of debris hurled into the darkness.
Saturday Night Live started one of the most widespread goth usurpations with a spoof in the late nineties called Goth Talk. The occasional skits were introduced with Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead," one song that can be clearly identified by all goths as goth music. "Goth" hosts Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade managed to savage every aspect of goth one can see by observing high school goths—who are the most self-conscious and least able to defend themselves.
It's a mixed bag of good and ill when goths poke their ringed noses into the mainstream, or the mainstream grabs an image to exploit. There have been academic papers written on goth—more and more of them, it seems. TV newscasts and articles in popular magazines and daily newspapers have profiled goths, not always in a favorable light. In the mid-1990s, Cher put out several issues of the catalog Sanctuary, packed with delicious goth decor. Goth artists have been featured in interviews, and there have been fashion models, like Donna Ricci, Lenora Claire, and Sky Claudette (of The j- Section}, and plenty of famous runway clotheshorses doing the "goth look." Haute couture designers have brought goth aesthetics to the forefront, for example, designers Rick Owens of Los Angeles ("Not one for color."—Vogue, Feb. 13, 2002), and Olivier Theyskens, who incorporates goth decadence into his fashions. All of the major design houses have ventured into goth style at one time or another in the last couple of decades. Calvin Klein's print ads, and Levi's commercials have used goth clones, and Italy's Fiorucci filled the catwalk with faux-goth clothes. Cosmetic and hair-color companies got goth a few years ago, for example, MAC, and L'Oreal, which has a line of dark makeup. World famous Bloomingdale's in New York featured goth garb in at least one of their catalogs. TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Dark Angel, among many others, use goth actors, and films, including 8MM and Underworld, hire goth extras when they require a gang of perverse and seedy clubbers. Whoopi Goldberg hosted the Oscars in 2001 and dressed goth, and many Hollywood movie stars do goth from time to time.
50 Jt Quecnie "It's a way of
making the fact that you will never
fit in work for you."
Vile "I believe that goth is having learned very tough things at a young age, and being able to see the world for what it really is, to see past lies, and falsehoods. We don't want to damage the already damaged world anymore.
We live in sorrow, no, depression."

THE GOTH BIBLE

nailed copies of her official proclamation onto posts at four entrance points to the city, declaring her town to be a "Satan-free zone." Risher claims she was targeting DUI drivers, child molesters, and "kids dressing goth."
Also in the fall of 2000, the U.S. Congress gave the town of Blue Springs, Missouri (population under 50,000), $273,000 for a Youth Orchestra Outreach Unit to "combat goth culture." Would that be the town's four peaceful and law-abiding high school goths, who hang out in the mall's parking lot?
But at least one event propelled goth into the headlines worldwide, unfairly, and with troubling ramifications. That horrifying incident happened at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two deeply troubled students, opened fire at the school, killing thirteen and wounding twenty-three. Harris and Klebold wore black trench coats, claiming they were members of a small group of alienated students who had formed the Trenchcoat Mafia at Columbine. After the shooting, one traumatized student incorrectly identified the two murderers as "goths."
As has been the case throughout history, and now more so with the media that Marshall McLuhan assured us create a "global village," first impressions may be wrong, but they stick. The U.K. newspaper the Guardian's article "Black Tuesday" is similar to other news reports around the world: Both boys—one the son of a military man—had a strong interest in Nazism. It claimed they described themselves as Nazis, white supremacists, fans of heavy metal, and interested in the occult. The Guardian stressed the point that Nazi dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler had been born on the same day 110 years earlier, and obviously that date had significance for the two. The Guardian also specifically identified the Columbine killers as goths, although neither Harris nor Klebold defined themselves that way. The paper stressed that the boys listened to the transplanted-from-Germany-to-Seattle industrial rock band KMFDM— the band's logo was on the baseball cap of one of the killers; the two quoted the lyrics of U.S. shock rock group Marilyn Manson; they listened to the German industrial band Rammstein. The paper also quoted several "authorities" on goths, including Sergeant Cynthia Burgin, a Texas police detective who lectures nationally in the U.S. on cults, and who talked about splinter groups that embrace both goth culture and neo-Nazism.
THE f SECTION ON COLUMBINE
Vctu Qtu "Alienated, miserable,
vengeful teenagers have existed as long
as there have been high schools, but it
was harder to slay more than one or
two of your enemies before you
could get Uzis."
Hcpcrmorc "They were two confused children. They claimed to be Nazis, yet
one was Jewish, so what could be
thought of any claims they might make
on being goth?"
Billy CDo£> "They may or may not have been involved in certain aspects of the goth scene, but this factor is irrelevant, only coincidental at best, and definitely not a cause-effect relationship."
"So they listened to Metallica, big deal!
It's the media that wants you to believe
they were something they were not."
"Honestly, if those kids had been older and truly part of the goth scene, they might not have snapped."

THE GOTH BIBLE

"They are using mystical violence and mystical illusion as a way of intimidating other members in their groups."
The paper also mentioned that Harris was addicted to the computer game Doom, and "The U.S. Marines used Doom II to train on." Oddly enough, the article did not blame the makers of Doom II, the U.S. Marines, the makers of baseball caps with band logos, or Army surplus stores for contributing to the killings! But the Guardian did blame goth. And theirs was far from the only media report that did.
The killers were not goth. But in the midst of the initial shock and fear generated by such a violent event, and the desire to understand the reasons behind it and find someone or something to blame, the world labeled the boys as goth. With time, and new information, that assessment altered considerably. But chasing down reality has never been a strong point when newspapers are going for circulation and television stations are fighting for ratings. Retractions and corrections do not make good news.
Many goths, particularly on the Internet, have taken a stand on Columbine, and tried to do damage control. One goth band, SEVEN 13 of Massachusetts, wrote the song "Outcasts" specifically about Columbine. Most goths would agree with Emily Bronte: "There's nothing poetic or beautiful about murder." And empathize with Calhoun: "I am goth, and the thought of harming anyone in that manner sickens me."
Unfortunately, it is not just in the United States where goths are unfairly blamed for crimes they did not commit, and Germany, for example, has had several killings where, because the murderers wore black, they were considered "goth" by the media.
All anyone can say, really, is what Samael repeats for all of us: "They were not goth!"
gotbs were children, too ...
To be goth, or gothic, or gothically inclined has always meant this in terms of the larger World: You are outside the norm. Misunderstood. Sometimes abused. Goths are keenly aware of this.
Most goths are goth because of a refined sensitivity to life, and an ability to view and tolerate the shadowy elements that much of society is busy ignoring, like death. "Goth," says White Raven, "is in the shadows of the real world." Goths know that death is a sad business. As A^eUe put it,
rituc&in "So what if they were
[goth]? I'm sure lots of murderers are
Christians."
"There were so many horror stories about the evils of gothdom, accounts of schools sending kids who wore too much black off to counseling or suspending them, opportunistic politicians making inane statements like 'We need goth control not gun control,' and despite all the years I'd spent insisting I wasn't 'one of those,' I knew on an instinctive level that people like me were being targeted. I found myself getting so angry at the reactionary responses I was seeing that it kind of overcame the resistance I'd had to being labeled in that way."
50 ft. Qucenie "goth provides the
mainstream with a handy scapegoat and
whipping boy whenever something like
Columbine happens."
VampirOikc recalls another recent
murder in Germany, wherein a couple
who dressed in black and identified
themselves as Satanists stabbed their
friend to death with sixty-five knife
wounds in order to use the blood in a
vampire-like ritual. "TV here in Germany
made it a big story. They claimed we

DEATH in DOC rtiARTEns

"Goth to me is an attitude that seeks to make death and pain aesthetic. In so doing, perhaps one can accept these unacceptable things."
When anyone takes on the grim business of shouldering the shadow for those who refuse to bear their own portion of the darker part of life, it's no wonder the pain of such an endeavor can feel unbearable at times. Personifying the elements that much of the mainstream is trying to avoid means rejection.
But are all goths selfless? Is every goth conscious of this monumental task of carrying the burden of despair on his or her velvet-draped shoulders like Atlas holding up the world? Are all goths paragons of virtue? Of course not. As cypher says, "There are idiots everywhere!"
But overall, goth is part of the struggle for true independence within the homogenized collective psyche, and individuals are always at odds with the conventional.

Jnsnul by tuturc?
Life viewed in these terms is distressing. And while almost all The f Section would agree with the sentiments, most of them do not consider themselves dismal. Goths, in fact, are some of the most vibrantly alive beings walking the planet, largely because they are not afraid to face personal and collective demons.
Apart from growing up in circumstances that often encourage depression, sensitive young people universally have a hard time coping with their teenage years, with the intense emotions that can nearly overwhelm them, and with the depression that often surfaces due to the feeling of being misunderstood on a deep level. Goths for the most part direct their anger and turmoil inward, and it's not surprising that half of The f Section reported self-destructive behavior, usually in their teens, frequently involving cutting or other self-attacking actions.
About 90 percent of The f Section have seriously contemplated suicide. But contemplation is not action, and Lestat de Lioncourt speaks for many of them: "Although I love the allure of death, I love life more. I am too much in love with life, and would give anything for immortality."
Close to 25 percent indicated they have tried to end their own life on one or more occasions. For the overwhelming majority of those, their attempts were in the distant past and had to do with specific situations, or with ongoing bouts of depression that have dissipated with time. Almost
have thirty-thousand Satanists in the
country! People began to think that
goths are Satanists because they don't
know the difference between a goth and
a Satanist When I would drive into town
in my goth attire, people began giving
me the finger and crying, 'There! There's
a Satanist!' It's so silly."
'Uust because you wear black trench-coats and listen to Marilyn Manson does
not make you goth. Those kids were
ignorant crybabies who blamed society
for their own problems, and were too
stupid to seek help. Each one of us has
been bullied at some point in our lives-if
anyone thinks they were justified, then
millions of people would be justified in
doing the same."
"It strikes me as a curious twist of logic that, when trying to explain these
murders, some people overlook free access to firearms in favor of those boys' (supposed) taste in clothes and music."
CrisUn "...years of interactions with their parents and education systems had a lot more impact on them than what, in
all probability, was an attempt to get
someone to notice how deeply troubled
they were. I don't see that as goth, I just
see it as incredibly sad."

Home