Goth is a subculture that bloomed from the initial association of ‘gothic’ with darkness, death and horror within gothic literature of the early 19th Century. It became a subculture in the 1980s with the emergence of British bands that labeled themselves gothic, as well as the opening of the Batcave nightclub in London.
The Batcave
Siouxsie and The Banshees
Sisters of Mercy
Bauhaus
According to Roman Barthes, linguistics form the raw material for myth where “words can be emptied out of their dictionary meaning and the signifier can then be filled with mythical meaning.” (PHILLIPS, JOHN W P) ‘Goth’ similarly describes a subculture providing a label, but its internal signifiers are not entirely definite – goths can fill in their own symbols as long as they adhere to the outline of what is goth.
Nancy Kilpatrick describes goth as ‘a state of mind’ in her book The Goth Bible, ‘a way of being that embraces what the normal world shuns, a lean toward and on onsession with all things dark and grim, a view of life that incorporates the world of night and the light of day’, while in What is Goth, Volitaire simply says ‘a goth is a fan of gothic music’, so even the definition of goth differs amongst various purveyors of goth itself!
The subculture opens up a space wherein anxieties can be worked out as a community. It functions as a platform from which individuals may use personal symbols in various forms, to parade the ideals of a counterculture. Essentially, the framework of Goth weaves in the ideas of valuing the unique individual, creativity and a standing-apart from the ‘blending’ effects of the mass culture born of consumerism and commercialization.
Posted at 02:16 am by Vexed
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