Introduction pale were the lips I saw
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| CONCLUSION
The goths are a subculture that grew from the foundations laid by the gothic novelists of 18th century. Their vivid imagination struck a chord with anxieties and fears of their contemporaries and this connection never really faded. It is in fact so strong that at the end of 20th century it attracted a group of people who willingly chose to live out those fantasies. These people appeared in considerable numbers their influence could be felt especially in countries where gothic novel and its progeny reigned uninterrupted. In the age of globalization and internet goths still prevail mainly in these countries, most prominently among them in the US, their influence being almost imperceptible in others. Having stated this, we have to ask ourselves what is the reason that a mere literary genre had such a power as to change lives of people and make them become goths. There must be something more in those societies ridden by gothic imagination than a cultural trend behind all this. There must be a dynamic complex of influences and pressures that keeps the gothic imagination and thus gothic subculture alive. By analyzing texts written by goths, we have discovered some of those influences, although we can only claim that it is a glimpse of the whole complexity of the problem. First of all, in all of the texts there is a tendency to stress the artistic and creative interests of the members of the subculture. This fact is even one of the things that is supposed to make them stand out from the crowd. Therefore they must feel that the rest of the society is not artistic or intellectual enough, otherwise there would be no reason for them to even mention this as a special feature of their subculture. Hand in hand with this notion comes another one – that of universal tolerance to different ideas that seems to rule among American goths. This is also something that they must lack elsewhere because they are forced to look for it in this “grotesque” subculture. The same applies to emotions which are apparently supplied to them by the sense of community and support in the subculture: “Goths are a sensual people. They hug and touch a lot.”62 Another common element in all the texts is the notion of challenging the established rules, the dogmatic prescriptions. They stress the idea of free thinking, of being allowed to ask why about everything. When we look at these main themes that we extracted from the texts by going down to the very basics, we have to state that these notions that the authors of the texts emphasize as important elements of the gothic subculture have nothing to do with horrific images and chilling dramas of gothic novels. Yet they are embedded in a subculture that is apparently obsessed with horror. It is something quite unexpected and surprising because these values that the gothic subculture, suspected by the American parents of being Satan-worshipping and suicide promoting, cherishes are in fact values of an ideal society (creativity, tolerance, love, free thought). That means that the subculture is probably able to provide a semblance of such a society to its members. One of the possible explanations of this conspicuous discrepancy is that the goths chose to deal with gothic horror fantasies and separate themselves from the society by their fashion style and behavior, “reinventing themselves as ‘monsters’,”63 in order to seek others that shared the above mentioned values. All these extreme measures are taken by goths because the real gothic horror lies for them, rather than in their heads, closets and on their bookshelves, in the inability of American society to supply these people with such values. Still, they want to live with according to them, so they find shelter in the gothic subculture. At the same time, goths deliberately face and challenge monstrosity, death and the grotesque with their art, literature, music and even life, to be able to face the horror of real life that is empty of such ideals for them. Therefore the extreme emotions that they force upon themselves are like an immunization therapy for the oversensitive individuals that goths seem to be. Their systems get used to them and they do not have to be afraid of not being to control them and their lives anymore. The pretentiousness or Hannaham’s doubtful “sincerity” of goths does not really fit into this picture. Although, as we observed above, some goths and gothic artists evoke certain moods and emotions in themselves at will, the same can be said about any sort of performing artist that has to exercise some emotions at a given time. Besides, goths have quite genuine reasons for doing so because they, no doubt, sincerely feel that they need to experience heightened emotions. Emotional games aside, we can also see American goths from a broader perspective. The time when goths first emerged as a full-fledged subculture is also the time of postmodernist thinking that first allowed people to choose their own identity. Therefore the gothic subculture may be also an expression of postmodernism in its most extreme form. People have been since then not only able to choose the clothes they will be wearing, the country they will reside in, the heritage they identify with, but goths by identifying with Romantics and gothic novelists did in fact choose the historical and cultural period they want to live in, even including its problems. The fact that goths thrive so well in America can be explained by American individualism that enabled them to take their freedom to choose identity to such extremes. Whether we decide to see goths as products of pressures and faults of society or rather as products of a search for the most extreme identity driven by individualism, we should be always reminded of one thing that applied to the first goths – the gothic novelists – as well: “In a dehumanized society, goths are the canary in the coal mine.”64 To try to understand goths is than trying to understand ourselves because we share the same cultural space with them.
Allen, R.E. ed., The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984 Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen, Metalheads: Heavy Metal music and Adolescent Alienation. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996
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Grunenberg, Christoph ed., Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century. Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art, 1997 Hartwell, David G. ed., The Dark Descent. New York: Tor, 1987 Heather, Peter, Gótové.Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2002 Hodkinson, Paul, Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture. Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd., 2002 Horak, Kathy. "Novel Effort to Wipe Out Gang Scrawls Shows First Signs of Success," The Associated Press, February 7, 1983 International Movie Database. 19 Mar.2006. Klimeš, Lumír ed., Slovník cizích slov. Praha: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1994 Kočí, Antonín a kol. ed., Nové Universum. Praha: Knižní klub, 2003
Melton, J. Gordon ed., The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994 Mercer, Mick, Hex Files: The Goth Bible. New York: Overlook Press, 1997 Olivierusová, Eva, Josef Grmela, Martin Hilský, Jiří Marek, Dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1988 Pappas, Theodore ed., Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2002 Pendergast, Tom and Sara, ed., St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Farmigton Hills: St. James Press, 2000 Petráčková, Věra a kol. ed., Akademický slovník cizích slov I. A-K. Praha: Academia, 1995 Pijoan, José, Dějiny umění IV. Praha: Odeon, 1979 Porter Smith, Alicia, “A Study of the Gothic Subculture: An Inside Look for Outsiders.” 25 Apr. 2006 Ryan, Alan ed., The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. London: Penguin Group, 1988 Voller, Jack G. "Charles Brockden Brown." The Literary Gothic. 10 Mar. 2003. 20 Apr. 2004. Webster‘s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Languge. New Jersey: Random House, 1996 Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia. 1 Paul Hodkinson is a sociologist, currently teaching at the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK. 2 http://www.gothicsubculture.com/ 3 Grunenberg, Christoph, “Unsolved Mysteries: Gothic Tales from Frankenstein to the Hair Eating Doll” in Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century 4 96, Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century 5 96, Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century 7 26, Metalheads: Heavy Metal music and Adolescent Alienation 8 355-361, Gótové 9 311, Nové Universum 10 25, Dějiny umění IV. 11 The Society for Creative Anachronism Inc., http://www.sca.org/ 12 368-369, Encyclopedia of Romanticism 13 122, Dějiny anglické literatury 14 http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/cbbrown.html 15 Ryan, Alan ed., The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories 16 Hartwell, David G. ed., The Dark Descent 17 766, Encyclopedia Britannica 18 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000091/ 19 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/ 20 http://www.vamp.org/Gothic/clublist.html 21 277, St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture Vol. II 22 The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, published in 1984 23 Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, published in 1970 25 Just as I try to do in this text. 26 265, The Vampire Book 27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre 28 All of them with respective websites: http://www.sonic-seducer.de/, http://www.zillo.de/, http://www.orkus-online.de/, http://www.side-line.com/, http://www.d-side.org/ 29 http://www.viva-zwei.de/ 30 To see evidence of this, it is enough to look into the German version of Bravo magazine from the past 10-15 years. 31 http://www.deadmouse.net/ 32 Hannaham, James, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead and I don’t Feel So Good Either” in Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century. 33 The texts are to be found in full in the Appendices. 34 Text 1 and Picture 1 in the Appendices. 35 http://www.sfgoth.com/ 36 The changeability of web pages was the main reason to preserve the texts in full in the Appendices. 37 Text 1 “Subculture” 38 This expression is used on the internet and among goths for local gothic communities like in “New York City gothic scene” or for the community of goths in general that occasionally meets at clubs and events or otherwise actively participates in the life of the subculture. 39 Christian and other religious symbols will be discussed further in the text. 40 Text 2 and Picture 2 in the Appendices 41 http://www.goth.net/ 42 Text 2, written roughly between 2000 and 2001 43 “How do I get into goth?” in Text 2 44 As shown on the Pictures in the Appendices. 45 Text 3 and Picture 3 in the Appendices. 46 http://www.waningmoon.com/realm/who.html 47 I will be using “he” for brevity, although we do not know the gender of the author/authors. 48 Horak, Kathy. "Novel Effort to Wipe Out Gang Scrawls Shows First Signs of Success," The Associated Press, February 7, 1983 49 http://www.waningmoon.com/gothica/articles/6660027.shtml 50 The only code that has been mentioned in the text was black clothing, but it is not always the case either. Other dark colors and white are also accepted as you can see on the gothic band photos in the appendices. 51 96, Hannaham, James, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead and I don’t Feel So Good Either” in Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century. 52 http://www.whitefantom.com/aboutme/aboutme.html 53 Text 4, written roughly between the years 2001 and 2002, and Picture 4 54 This has been also discussed in previous chapter, when we were talking about the exact origin of the pages. 55 Goth, Text 4 56 There really exists a community of Christian goths: http://www.christiangoth.com/ 57 http://www.marilynmanson.com/ 58 http://blood-dance.net/goth/grant.html 59 http://cecp.air.org/guide/files/3.asp 60 As quoted by Pitcock 61 For examples of gothic fashion, please see Picture 5, American and Canadian gothic bands. 62 Text 1 63 96, Hannaham, James, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead and I don’t Feel So Good Either” in Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late Twentieth Century. 64 Text 1 Directory: 13291 13291 -> For Special Needs Families Sponsored by People First of Henry County & Henry County Therapeutic Department Saturday, September 28 from 2-4: 30 pm nash Farm Battlefield Download 173.61 Kb. 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