Black is pretty hot. That’s the short. The long has a bit more to it than that. Ever since reading Edgar Allen Poe’s work for the first time sometime before I was 10, I felt an affinity to that nebulous and yet unmistakable subculture.
What drew me in? At the time, the imagery. Poe’s writing evoked despair and desperation in equal measure, yet he painted such vivid mindscapes the dreadful state of affairs for (most of) his protagonists was alluring. One of my favorite pieces of poetry overall and by far my favorite by him, Annabel Lee, is a shining example of this. Do I long to be like the speaker, who has been so consumed by their love for the titular character that they waste away at the shore next to her grave? Absolutely not. But it’s beautiful, in an overwhelmingly emotional sort of way.
I’d like to say that the next element of goth that drew me in was the embracing of that which was dark yet not evil, best exemplified (in my humble opinion) by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and all the derivatives since that kept that core tenet. However in full honesty, it was the look. Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, Raven in Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans, and one too many pictures of smoldering men and women draped in the colors of the abyss quickly made sure that black makeup and fishnets were like ‘as the crow flies’ route to my heart.
All fashion-driven forks of goth are included, too: scene style with decidedly ludicrous amounts of eyeshadow and hairspray, the neons and vibrant pinks of raver goths clashing in an affront to all color theory with traditional blacks…honestly, even black lipstick alone was and still very much is compelling. In fact, the almost primal appeal of goth style is probably why so many purists bemoan the subculture being crowded by so-called posers and tourists.
Eventually, I did manage to gain a more thoughtful appreciation of goths. In music, I started with later examples: the uniquely love-and-thorns driven band HIM, followed later by previous acts such as Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy. It was always accidental: HIM came to my attention thanks to Bam Margera’s fondness for them in the early days of Jackass, their album Dark Light my favorite of their entire body of work. Bauhaus—through their lead singer’s solo era—I first heard on the radio, and Sisters of Mercy was unknown to me until, of all things, The World’s End.
It wasn’t until I actually stumbled across Siouxsie and the Banshees thanks to a silly Garry’s Mod video—of all things on this earth—that I started to appreciate just how much the essence of the subculture embodies expression and personal uniqueness. Siouxsie Soux never really set out to be goth; she set out to be Siouxsie. One song, such as the ethereally minimalist Rawhead and Bloody Bones evokes spiraling unease and melancholy beautifully, while the next might be the downright upbeat O Baby, or even a cover of Iggy Pop’s The Passenger. The band, and her especially, never tried to be a genre band. They sung happiness, sadness and all between—and that highlights what draws me in most about goth at the core. And there’s so many more examples than just these!
It’s self-expression in defiance of the norm that you don’t wish to be a part of, is what I concluded after trying to find my own answer to what goth is. The black—a color traditionally reserved for mourning, not fashion—is a consequence of that; the melancholy is because we don’t like to celebrate ‘bad feelings.’ You can be goth and dress like an Amish librarian, just like nowadays, you can wear white facepaint, black leather with fishnets and beautiful ebony lipstick and not be goth at all. In high school, I wore black button-downs, brown cargo shorts, sandals, and a black bowler hat while growing my (very much curly and frizzed up) hair out until I looked like fat Einstein. Was I trying to be goth? No. But looking back, I was definitely following my own sense of what I liked.
I still do; it’s a constant uphill battle. I still like cargo shorts and sandals (and have grown bold enough recently to embrace my inner shoobie and wear socks as well), and I love seeing the spring fields bloom with wildflowers. I bawl my eyes out when Aragorn says ‘My friends…You bow to no one.’ It just so happens that in addition to all of that, if it’s macabre and spiritually offbeat, I’m probably down with it too. I won’t deny that there’s trouble with keeping the essence of goth alive in the face of such a wide perspective; it’s the fate of all subcultures I feel. Imagine the difficulty of being bona fide punk when your subculture has been so popular for so long you have senior politicians who like it too—some of whom actually might not be hypocritical about it!
Ultimately, you like what you like. Weird or not, sane or not, normal or not. You can change it if you want to, but if it’s not hurting anyone, why? I like goth.
