this is but an excerpt since we love to tease. You can order the issue for a
buck by writing to us and requesting a copy. Plain and simple. Scroll down to where you
see, in the left hand margin, a phrase that says "contact us." You click. You get mail window
and voila.
For the Halloween issue of Hullaballoo, we found ourselves unable NOT to address a
particular topic. Halloween. Ghouls. Ghosties. Witches. Apple Head Pies. It had
to come up.
What we're talking about here (in case you didn't read the title of this article) is Goth.
Not the Visigoth and Ostrogoth marauders of years gone by, but the Goths of modern
America, those people who dress in black, listen to weird and morbid music, and are often
accused of witchcraft and devil worship. Where did they come from? Who are they? Where
are they going? These are the questions we hope to answer in this little exposé,
hopefully without embarrassing ourselves too badly. Because in trying to cram
the entire history and lineage of the modern Goth movement into five pages, omissions
must be made. We've tried to condense the whole business while still conveying the
spirit of Goth. We figure if we piss anybody off, then maybe they'll
write to us about
it. At least that would be constructive.
Anyway, for the purposes of this article, all you need to know about the origins of
the word "Goth" is that there were once people called Goths, tribes from Scandinavia
and Eastern Europe, who in the fifth century basically brought an end to the Roman
Empire and started the Middle Ages (this is gross oversimplification, but you get the
idea). So fierce and destructive were these people that the word Goth quickly became
associated with all that was dark and gloomy, notably medieval architecture (those
old stone cathedrals, f'rinstance). The Dark Ages finally ended, but the word Goth
hung around, being applied to any literature or art that was sufficiently dark and
dreary. Think Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, or Edgar Allen Poe.
Now let's jump ahead a bit to America in the early 1980's. What happened in the early
1980's? Generation X began hitting puberty. The 1980's can be looked at as the decade
Generation X went to high school. And among the Generation of misfits, there were the
misfits who didn't fit in with the misfits. They had a common interest in the macabre, in
the dark and gloomy, in their own mortality. They were more inclined to enjoy rain storms
than sunny days. They wore black clothes when they could find them, often to the concern
or infuriation of their parents. They listened to a new breed of music that punk rock, with
its outrage and outrageousness, had paved the way for. This new music exchanged outrage
for melancholy and outrageousness for melodrama. Bands like Bauhaus, Joy Division, The
Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees. For the most part, the misfits listening to this music
weren't clinically depressed; they were sad, each for his or her own reason. Cold war
fear, insensitive Yuppie parents, the bleakness of their futures, all the ingredients of
Generation X. Instead of outrage or denial or apathy, these misfits turned to the one
surety in their lives: Death. Or the concept of it anyway. Thus did Goth arise, a
celebration of mortality and its trappings, a dark and romantic ideal in response to a
world that seemed as far from perfection as it ever had.
TURN THE PAGE
|