Gothic Charm School (2 page)

A very brief recitation of the history of the Goth subculture

So where does this Goth (or Gothic) thing come from? While it would be tedious to detail the Complete History of Goth, context is always useful.

The Goth subculture as it is known today began as an offshoot of punk rock that mixed a flair for the theatrical and a fondness of campy horror movies. While every cultural movement or phase has cast its own dark shadows (vampy flappers and sinister rakes, noir femmes fatales, black-clad occult types reading tarot cards by candlelight), those shadows never really seemed to flow together into a glorious tapestry of velvet-edged darkness in the U.K. and U.S. until the late '70s and early '80s.

Goth draws from such varied sources as architecture (yes, those
lovely cathedrals and castles in glorious ruin), with the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries prompting the well-to-do to renovate their homes to imitate medieval castles or abbeys. Gothic novels lurched out of the darkness with
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole,
The Monk
by Matthew Gregory Lewis, the works of Ann Radcliffe (one of the bestselling authors of the late eighteenth century), and Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
. The restless spirits they summoned have cast shadows over fiction ever since.
Wuthering Heights
,
Dracula
, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and swarms of romance novels all feature Gothic themes, even if some readers don't immediately recognize them as Gothic. The feelings of gloom, suspense, and dread—the long and skittering fingers of Gothic fiction—allow people to vicariously experience the thrills and chills of the otherworldly and supernatural without fearing for their safety or sanity. Victorian spiritualism and occultism, gathering around a candlelit table and trying to contact dead loved ones, was all the rage at the best parties of the era, adding another layer to the history of Goth, while the Victorians' elaborate mourning clothing and customs have provided Goths with not only clothing styles to mimic, but also a host of charmingly eccentric behaviors and mannerisms to adopt. (What, you mean not everyone has a collection of handkerchiefs edged in black lace?)

What's that, you say? You didn't realize that Goth had such a long history? Oh yes, Goth is not just some flash-in-the-pan teen fad. Why, this current incarnation of the Goth subculture has been gliding around elegantly for almost thirty years now. And that's just musically speaking. Television series such as
The Addams Family
,
The Munsters
, and
Dark Shadows
all provided a flickering family tree in black and white images and a strong pop culture foundation for the spookily inclined. Even key modern Goth touchstones such
as
Beetlejuice
and
The Nightmare Before Christmas
are over fifteen years old. In fact, in the case of
The Nightmare Before Christmas
, more tie-in merchandise has been manufactured in the past few years than was available when the movie was released in 1993. (The Lady of the Manners, while a bit cynically amused at the proliferation of Jack Skellington's face, is quite pleased with her
Nightmare Before Christmas–
decorated bathroom, thankyouverymuch.)

Facts such as these make Goths of the Lady of the Manners's generation feel just a touch culture-lagged and often leave us muttering phrases like, “Back in my day, we had to mail order music from obscure little catalogs! We had to make our own fishnet shirts out of old tights! We had to dye our hair with Kool-Aid! We had to burn sticks to make our own eyeliner! Now anyone can go to the mall and buy a complete off-the-rack Goth outfit! You kids get offa my lawn…”

Oh, fine. We didn't really have to burn sticks to make our own eyeliner. But yes, we did make our own fishnet shirts out of old tights, and if you saw another person clad in all black with elaborate hair and makeup, you both did the mutual freak nod of recognition. You might not have known this person, but you could assume he or she was probably a spooky type interested in some of the same things that you were.

The current dark flowering of Goth is generally considered to have started when Bauhaus released “Bela Lugosi's Dead” in 1979. Yes, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees had already released albums, and there were all sorts of pale creatures in black lurking around the punk scene, but Peter Murphy crooning about red velvet lining a black box and virginal brides filing past his tomb gave those same creatures something to
really
focus their attention on. In 1982, the Batcave opened in London, giving the self-styled creatures of the night a place to be and be seen. The Batcave at
tracted a fair amount of attention from the media, spreading the seeds of the Goth subculture across the U.K. At the same time in the U.S., the deathrock scene was clawing its way out of the graveyard with its own horror-laced take on punk.

All of these elements grew and mutated, appropriating symbols from Gothic literature, horror movies, Victorian fashions, and anything from any historical era that had earned the label “decadent.” Nowadays there are so many different splinter factions crowded under the Goth label (as if it were a giant parasol, shielding everyone from the harsh and frightening sun) that not only are there inter-subculture squabbles about what is and isn't
really
part of Goth, but there are huge lists and Internet quizzes to help people try to figure out what type of Goth they might be. Romantigoths, punkgoths, mopeygoths, perkygoths—all of these and more are labels the Lady of the Manners has seen tossed around, along with less-flattering terms such as mallgoth or spookykid, usually aimed at the youngsters who inadvertently help encourage that “Goth is just a teen phase” misconception.

Some signs and symptoms of having a gothy mindset

When someone says “Goth,” certain images or interests come to mind. A not-in-any-way-complete list of them, in no particular order:

•    Black clothing, of course; perhaps with a vaguely Victorian or otherwise antique air to it
  
•    A somewhat dramatic use of cosmetics, with dark eyeliner and lipstick and sometimes a preference for enhancing any sort of pallor one may have
  
•    Hair an unnatural shade of black, white, pre-Raphaelite red, or a color not found in the “natural” range of hair colors
  
•    Skulls, bats, spider webs, gargoyles, and coffins appearing as a recurring motif in clothing, jewelry, home decor items, or just about anything, really
  
•    Absinthe, because of its associations with artistic inspiration and decadence
  
•    An interest in all or many things morbid and darkly fantastic
  
•    An overwhelming fondness for all things relating to Halloween, perhaps including a firm belief that jack-o'-lanterns are a perfectly valid decoration year-round
  
•    A fondness for reading, especially works concerned with vampires, witches, monsters, folklore, the occult, or just the horror genre overall
  
•    Striped stockings and tights
  
•    Top hats and long black veils
  
•    Black trench coats, opera coats, and velvet cloaks
  
•    Music in a minor key, music that conjures strong emotions, and music that evokes longing and loss
  
•    Ghost stories and haunted houses
  
•    The films of Tim Burton