Gothic Charm School (15 page)

What if you want to read books that are a little more modern?

•   The Sandman series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. The Sandman series has been described as “the comic book for intellectuals” and has won all sorts of awards. But, more important, the series is a fantastic, multi-layered, and com
  pelling story that blends classic and contemporary mythology, humor, fantasy, and horror. Morpheus, the King of Dreams, is the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. His “siblings” are Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and one other whose identity is a mystery for a large part of the series. Death, with her tousled black hair, punky black clothes, elaborate black eyeliner, and silver ankh pendant, has become as much of an archetype of Goth girl appearance as Siouxsie Sioux.
  
•   Anything by H.P. Lovecraft. Regarded by many as the father of modern horror fiction, the tentacles of his shadowy versions of cosmic horror and dread nameless gods are still coiled around parts of the Goth subculture.
  
•   Any of the illustrated works of Edward Gorey. Why yes, the man who brought us
  The Gashlycrumb Tinies
  (a series of charmingly morbid rhymes about children who come to untimely ends) is a huge influence on the modern Goth, and rightly so.
  
•  
  Something Wicked This Way Comes
  by Ray Bradbury. Innocence, innocence lost, and
  the
  quintessential spooky traveling carnival are all important parts of this book. The Lady of the Manners rereads
  Something Wicked This Way Comes
  every October.
  
•  
  Lost Souls
  by Poppy Z. Brite. Vampires, but not of the broodingly romantic type, and one of the first books to correctly capture and portray some aspects of Goth club culture.
  

If you feel like taking a break from reading, perhaps you'd like to watch a few movies.

•  
  The Addams Family
  and
  Addams Family Values
  . They're creepy, they're spooky, they're definitely ooky, and they're possibly one of the most charming and happy families you will ever see. Almost every Goth cherishes a flicker of hope that one day he or she will end up in a relationship as passionate and loving as Morticia and Gomez's. And yes, most Goths would like to live in a gloomy mansion and have a severed hand as a pet.
  
•  
  Dracula
  . Both the Tod Browning and the Francis Ford Coppola versions, if you please. Neither of them is faithful to the novel (the Lady of the Manners dreams of someone deciding to make a big-budget mini-series out of the novel), but both contain iconic images that are repeated and re-interpreted throughout Gothdom.
  
•  
  Nosferatu
  , the original 1922 version directed by F.W. Murnau. Loosely based on the novel of
  Dracula
  ,
  Nosferatu
  gives us the long-lingering image of Max Schreck in all of his bat-eared, long-fingered spooky glory as Count Orlok. (Fun bonus fact: “schreck” is the German word for fright or terror.)
  
•  
  Metropolis
  , directed by Fritz Lang. A science fiction tale filmed in 1927 and set in 2026, it features a story of class struggle and rebellion, mistaken identity, and robot doppelgangers, all set against a striking Art Deco backdrop.
  
•  
  The Nightmare Before Christmas
  . The citizens of Halloween-town are responsible for the yearly spooky celebration of Halloween. But Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, is dissatisfied and wants something more. He goes wandering and discovers another place, where the inhabitants merrily work toward bringing forth Christmas every year. From that point, things go a bit awry, but with the best of intentions. Created in stop-motion animation,
  The Nightmare Before Christmas
  helped secure creator Tim Burton's role as a gothy visionary. Not to mention that the soundtrack, besides giving Goths their own version of Christmas carols to sing, was created by Danny Elfman, who before he turned to movie scores was in Oingo Boingo, a band much beloved by Goths.
  
•  
  Beetlejuice
  . Lydia Deetz, the black-clad teen heroine of the movie, proclaims that her “life is a darkroom—one big…dark…room.” Add in some ghosts trying to get Lydia's family out of the house and one chaotic “Bio-Exorcist,” and you have a movie that has been a Goth classic for over two decades.