It goes utterly against my instincts as a journalist and actual thinking person, but I’m encouraging you not to read Dazed’s latest article, “Goths are so back” by Hatti Rex. I have seen many goths on social media sharing the article with incredulity and disgust, but all a media business like Dazed wants is visits, regardless of whether or not you’re outraged. I am advising you not to pay the rage tax, and instead console yourself with my dissection as follows.
Firstly, of course we’re not back, we never went away. What the article actually means is goth is beginning to orbit closer to the mainstream again, in a way that can make rich people even richer. By just the second paragraph, we learn there’s a new cosmetics line out that seems to be borrowing from the black metal scene for its corpsepaint style. Never mind that we’re two very distinct alternative subcultures of course, a simplistic conflating is enough to shore up a cynical marketing campaign.
This is a bit more active than previous lazy journalism where jaded fashion columnists crow the ‘return’ of goth everytime a B-list celebrity steps out in a black outfit. I’ve talked many, many, many times about the ‘dark wash cycle’ and how usually – towards the end of the year, when high fashion houses start dabbling in the dark – goth as a superficial style guide is co-opted for the catwalk. At least for this article there’s something of a point to it.
Of course, the writers then have to cast about for something other than one photoshoot and a product launch to justify the piece. Dazed talks about upcoming reboots for The Crow, Beetlejuice and Nosferatu. This is perceptive, as The Crow is undeniably a lynchpin of the goth scene, a Nineties high-water mark of alternative pop culture and therefore a touchy subject when talks of a revamp surface!
This is a great springboard for writer Hatti Rex to put the screws to goth in a totally understandable way. We’ve always struggled with gatekeeping, and over the last few months there has been a flux of angry posts online swirling around the strictly-moderated r/goth subreddit. Goth drama has always been a grimly familiar aspect of the subculture, and the article painfully and accurately addresses this fact.
“Of course, with each new generation of goth-affiliated icons comes the tragic wails of snobbery from an army of sad-sack gatekeepers hell-bent on dictating the rules of how to be a goth. A hill I would personally be hung, drawn and quartered on is that goth culture is just pop culture in a different and slightly more morose form.”
I contest however that goth culture is ‘pop’ – it hasn’t been dominant (snerk) in society for decades now, and only gets on society’s radar at large when something tragic happens such as Columbine or Sophie Lancaster, or when it’s repackaged as marketing material. Sound familiar?
Then the author falls at the very first hurdle. They claim your only differences are choices like whether to “purchase tickets for Download Festival and Bloodstock rather than Glastonbury and Coachella”; I’d argue none of the events listed here are goth! Sure, some goths will attend some or all of them, but that doesn’t make any of them actually goth! And Finnish metallers Lordi? Well, the clue is in the title – metal and goth occupy different genres, just like they do different recycling bins!
“It’s all capitalism” sighs Hatti, occupying a temporary blindspot whilst writing an article ripping off a subculture for some perceived rebellious cachet in support of a marketing campaign. Sure, goth also struggles with the concept of legitimacy and purchasing your way onto the scene via brands, but there is at least an ideological push towards trawling second-hand outlets or thrifting as our American friends would put it. I write this as a long-term goth also working an office job, with no victim complex – just a weary past of writing corrective articles every time another inaccurate puff-piece article floats to the top of the net.
Interestingly, the article talks about backlash from goths ‘gatekeeping’, but then links to a thread on the Wednesday subreddit about someone bemoaning the hit show being a new avenue of attack for having a spooky style. That is not a victim ‘complex’, that’s actually being victimised – and I’d wager anything OP was already embedded in their own style long before The Addams Family was revamped for a new show.
One of the few things I’ve seen the unruly and bickering goth scene unite on has been contempt for Soundcloud rappers trying to force the ‘goth rap’ genre, and the aesthetic choices that go with it. I’d love to see Hatti’s evidence for most alternative men looking that way, and can hear the derisive chortles from LA to Leipzig reading that particular claim. It is entirely legitimate to criticise goth for being slow to change, introspective and obsessed with its halcyon Eighties era, but – and I am skirting close to the major sin of gatekeeping here – this reads like someone trying to get out infront of an impending backlash.
Goth can and will adopt a new direction, but it – hopefully – won’t include two-dimensional fashion hackery PR for a cosmetics range. Hatti’s wry observation that we’ll all crawl back onto the internet to debate ‘who is a poser’ neatly overlooks the fact that we’ve all been having that same tired argument non-stop since the internet first launched. But if that was the case, and goth had never gone away, then there would be no Dazed article in the first place. What really needs to come back is more research…