Goths In The Media

1. By: Tab “Lucinda-Luna” Leslie Goths In The Media

2. Gothic Origin • Gothic subculture originally began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980’s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. • After the waning in popularity of post-punk, the subculture diversified both musically and visually. • By the 1990s, the term "goth" and the boundaries of the associated subculture had become more contentious. New subcultures emerged, or became more popular, some of them being conflated with the goth subculture by the general public and the popular media. This conflation was primarily owing to similarities of appearance, social customs, and the fashions of the subcultures, rather than the musical genres of the bands associated with them. As time went on, the term was extended further in popular usage, sometimes to define groups that had neither musical nor fashion similarities to the original gothic subculture.

3. What Is Goth? Goth is a style of music. A Goth as in a person is a person who frequently listens to such music. • There are many "myths" surrounding the Gothic subculture. Some of these myths include the following. • Goths are always depressed. • Goths are homicidal. • Goths only dress in black. • Goths are always angry and violent. • Goths think they are all vampires. • Goths practice witchcraft. • All Goths are not always depressed. Many of them act depressed to fit you people's stereotypes or to get attention. Saying so, even the happiest people on the planet get depressed every now and then. Goths are not depressed 24/7, even if they're just acting it. No one can be that sad all the time. • What is the Goth culture? • It is basically indefinable, because "Goth" means different things to each follower. Many adopt unusual fashions in order to separate themselves from other youth. Gordon A. Crews, associate dean of the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University in Bristol, CT is an investigator of what he calls the "occult" which-- in his opinion -- includes the Goth culture. He said: "It is up to the individual to define what Goth is for themselves ... The mentality is, 'I want to be left alone but I want to be seen. I want to see the shock on other peoples' faces." • Some factors that are commonly observed are: • Its unique music, art and literature. • The use of extreme black clothing, light colored makeup, unusual hair styles, body piercing, bondage items, etc. • A fascination with medieval, Victorian and Edwardian history. • Wearing of symbols such as a Christian cross; an Egyptian ankh or "Eye of Ra," or "Eye of Horus;" and a Wiccan pentacle • Goths tend to be non-violent, pacifistic, passive, and tolerant. Many in the media have mistakenly associated Goth with extreme violence and hatred of minorities, white supremacy, etc. • Many Goths write about being depressed. Followers seem sullen and withdrawn, when in public.

4. What Is Goth? (Cont.) • Researcher Maxim W. Furek has called Goth “a celebration of music, dress and attitude all wrapped around Thanatos, the Greek concept of death." The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion, whether or not all individuals who share those tastes are in fact members of the goth subculture. Gothic music encompasses a number of different styles. Common to all is a tendency towards a lugubrious, mystical sound and outlook. Styles of dress within the subculture range from death rock, punk, androgynous, Victorian, some Renaissance and medieval style clothes, or combinations of the above, most often with black attire, makeup and hair.

5. Gothic Stereotypes • In most medias, gothics or goths for short are portrayed as depressed, homicidal or suicidal, only wears in black, practices witchcraft and even recite death pomes. Some media say the goths are never happy about anything and think life is nothing but misery and that makes some people think they’re all really angst. • In the newspapers, and on television, there have been reports focusing on the small section of goths in modern society. Depending on which newscast you watched, or what article you read, these social outcasts are involved in such unspeakable atrocities as devil worship, ritual suicide, and thinking Marilyn Manson is 'cool.' It has also been suggested that they travel in gangs, walk the graves, and go for the bones of beloved ancestors and blessed saints. • And a lot of symphonic metal/rock bands have been labeled as “gothic metal” because of the sounds and images of the band members.

6. What the Media Doesn’t Share About Goths • According to this article What the Media Isn’t Telling You about Goth, they list a few people who are gothic that aren’t a lot of what the stereotypes are. • "Vlad" (Not his real name) is a typical goth, not very different from goths you might see on TV. Vlad does a lot of the same things the TV goths do, such as wear lots of black and be seen at clubs, but Vlad has a secret he's keeping from is friends: He has a job; Vlad works for a bank, in the lending division. Since he fears other goths finding him in a position of employment, and the ostracizing that would inevitably follow, he must painstakingly disguise himself every morning before "work," as a yuppie. "It's not as bad as it seems at first," confides Vlad, "it's rather nice being able to afford food of my own, instead of having to resort to drinking blood." After a painstaking amount of research, I was able to find several other goths secretly holding down stable, and even lucrative jobs, everything from waitress to rocket scientist, almost always in disguise as a "normal" person. Perhaps someday the notion of goths being "employed" will be more widely accepted, but it seems obvious a more tolerant scene will have to emerge first. • http://www.closedcaskets.com/article.htm

7. Music: • Music is what started the gothic subculture and it’s music still continues today. Gothic rock music is a genre of rock music with droning instruments and mystical lyrics and whose performers dress in black with heavy jewelry; also called goth, goth punk.

8. Symphonic Rock • Despite all the negative goth stereotypes, some gothic metal music is very positive! • Some music such as symphonic, fantasy metal, alternative, power metal, death metal and more all get labeled as gothic metal. • For example, popular “gothic metal” band from the Netherlands, Within Temptation were originally labeled as symphonic but after they made their 2004 album, “The Silent Force” they were labeled gothic metal. But none of their songs have anything to do with the gothic stereotypes. Most of their songs are about love, fantasy and religion. • But their image is almost stereotypical goth: While the band members all wear all black and some facial jewelry, the lead singer Sharon den Adel wears many colorful dresses including white, blue, purple, red and black. • Fact: In their song “Frozen” , both the song and music video themselves are about abuse. The video deals with child abuse, and sales of the single was to raise money for a children's charity, Child Helpline International. On their Web site, the band explained they wanted to raise awareness about "a subject that we feel is not discussed in public enough.“ So as you can tell, the band members are very considerate people.

9. Alternative • Another band is Evanescence; although they are an alternative rock band, they are sometimes called goth. • Evanescence is a little bit of the stereotypical gothic because most of their songs have something to do with death, grieving and bleeding. Lead vocalist Amy Lee once said in an interview that she has always been fascinated with death and the afterlife. • Fact: There’s a theme within their song & video for their hit single song “Everybody’s Fool”. The song is, according to Amy Lee, is about fake celebrities who strip and sell their bodies for publicity, though it could also be interpreted that the song is about celebrities who have completely false images. The unifying theme of the video is that they are merely peddling lies. The band might be trying to say that the media is a liar and you don’t need to sell yourself to get somewhere. • Style: • Critics compare Evanescence to a variety of bands from differing genres, such as nu metal ensembles like P.O.D. and Linkin Park,gothic metal groups like Lacuna Coil and Within Temptation, and symphonic metal acts like Nightwish. Critic Cammila Albertson of Allmusic counts Evanescence as one step further from gothic metal, presenting the description of the band's music as "a pop version of an already diluted brand of metal." Other publications such as Metal Hammer, Rolling Stone and Blender have similarly identified Evanescence as a gothic metal act. Critic Bill Lamb of About.com tags the group succinctly as "pop-goth", while David Browne of Blender offers a more elaborate description of the band's music as "goth Christian nü-metal with a twist of melancholic Enya." Johnny Loftus of Allmusic associates Evanescence with the alternative metal genre.

10. Other metal bands • Other symphonic metal bands such as Xandria, Nightwish, Epica, Magica, Kamelot, Sirenia, Lacuna Coil and more have been labeled gothic metal. • Some bands like Epica and Nightwish have powerful, intense music and themes to their songs as well. • Others like Kamelot, Visions of Atlantis and Magica have more fantasy themes towards their songs. • The band Xandria are a bit gothic in a way because some of their songs such as “Raven Heart”, “In Love With The Darkness” and “Vampire” and more are very dark. • So you see some symphonic bands will be called “Gothic Metal” weather they have any stereotypical themes or not.

11. Other Gothic Medias • On both the hit animated series “Danny Phantom” and “Teen Titans”, they both have gothic characters: • Danny Phantom: Sam Manson: Sam is a bit of a stereotypical goth. She wears black, loves darkness and could care less of what • others think of her. The non-stereotypical things about • her is that she cares about the Environment, loves • animals and is always willing to help Danny out. • Teen Titans: Raven: With her shadowy past, eerie • Telekinetic powers and bad reputation. Raven tries to be good, but she’s afraid that deep down she is pure darkness. On top of lacking full control of her abilities, Raven is also plagued with tumultuous visions of future events, she never really smiles.

12. Why do some hate goths? • Goth people are the most loving people ever and have the most fun. If people ever thought that goths were all about hating life and writing down suicide notes as their poems are ignorant and there is a name for those people and they are called Emo.you may also ask yourself why do goth people wear black all the time. Because we just love it. and I ask you Why do you wear different colors all the time?many people also believe that goth kids are evil? if goth kids are evil then they are not gothic most likely and who is to say that not other types of people are evil?Many also think that the Columbine kids were gothic and listen to Marilyn Manson. First of all they were not gothic and most definitely did not listen to Marilyn Manson. But where do people get the idea that they were gothic? is it because goth kids are the most misunderstood people, and other people are so ignorant than to explore the outside of their bubble of delusions. The Columbine were everyday kids just like anyone else but to label them as goths was ridiculous, especially when kids got kicked out of school for being gothic. On the contrary, Trench Coats are not label as a sense of fashion anymore! To the common ignorant man, trench coats means you want to go and shoot up the school. Goth kids don't have to shoot up schools because people are already afraid of us. Another misconception I would like to state here is that people said that cho (who shot up VT), hated Jesus. Nowhere in his videos did he say he hated Jesus. He just said he was like Jesus for the weak people. But the media just spats out whatever bull they can find. • http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081123205649AAihQZI

13. Cites and Sources • http://www.closedcaskets.com/article.htm • www.dictionary.com • http://hisomuhikari.tripod.com/id9.html • http://www.religioustolerance.org/goth.htm • www.tv.com and cartoonnetwork.com • http://www.religioustolerance.org/goth.htm