“.. being Goth, for me, is seeing beauty, and its coming destruction,at the same time. For me.. it’s the last dance as the walls are crumbling around you.. “ —Beatgrrl
You are trapped and you know it. Your life has degenerated into meaningless repetition. All the things that are supposed to make you happy —your job, your material comfort—leave you empty, and because society tells you that happiness depends on those very things, you are powerless to give them up in search for something more real. You’re partially right. Life is essentially meaningless, and suffering is the natural condition of living things. There is no hope. But there is a great new program that can help you make sense of the wasteland of your empty, pathetic life.
Goth, as a modern movement, started as one component of the punk rock scene. As the latter faded, Goth survived by creating its own subculture. The first use of the term Goth in its present meaning is believed to have been on a British Broadcasting Commission (BBC) TV program. Anthony H. Wilson, manager of Joy Division described the band as “Gothic” compared with the pop mainstream. The name stuck. Their use of black clothing was originally “something of a backlash to the colorful disco music of the seventies”. It also stuck.
Stereotypes of Goths include:
• depressed
• suicidal
• unusually bigoted
• involved in illegal drugs
• violent
• wearers of black
Some of the above apply to Goths but definitely not all. The goth scene is just as widely varied as society in general. There are many different professions represented in the scene, from highly skilled professionals like doctors and lawyers, to tradesman, to technically minded people to clerical workers. Many different musical tastes exist (and not all of them goth, there is a huge 80’s following in the goth scene for some reason). The fashion varies vastly from goth to goth from the traditional flowing Victorian style garments to the buckled and studded style regalia (also called industrial style, which is often closely related with goths, and have come to an understanding of co-existence, if uneasily at times). Most goths become goths because they have been “spurned” by the normal society because of the way they want to live which does not belong in the “normal” standards. This kind of free thinking and rejection of dogma earns only rejection in today’s society. However because of this rejection from ‘normal’ society, goths have banded together to associate with other free thinkers. This has a beneficial effect on both the individual and society as a whole. For individuals they have a sense of belonging, and friends they can associate with. For society, it removes one more misfit filled with rage from the streets. This of course is not the case for all goths. Many goths today are goths for a variety of other reasons. They like the music, or the clubs are better; they have goth friends and joined in with them, or they just like staying up late nights and goths are the only ones awake to talk to.
Although society assume that goth people are drug addicts, good for nothing, weirdo people, truth is, not all of them are. They are normal people like us who prefer not to conform to what society thinks as right or moral or decadent.
For comments, email me at orange_nym@yahoo.com