OK so I might not know what Goth is exactly since I wasn't around in the 80's (oh how I wish I was that's when Goth was truly alive) but I'll try my best at explaining what it is.
History: The Goths were an East Germanic Tribe in Europe in about... Wait wrong Goth, sorry. OK here we go, The Goths were a group of people who followed some Post-Punk bands ( really Gothic Rock bands) in the 80's. There were also some new wave bands caught up in this scene as well as a new genre of music, death rock. This movement began in the UK and moved all around the world. some of the bands that started this were: Joy Division (the first band to ever be called gothic), Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Christian Death, and The Cure along with many others. There are many different subcultures within goth such as cybergoth, fetish goth, Victorian goth, and many many more. The goth culture has become more mainstream which, isn't good (of course) but at least now you can get clothes easier (I prefer to buy online to really preserve the non-mainsteamness without DIY clothing).
Gothic mindset: The Gothic mindset is usually seeing things that "normal" people think are creepy and scary as cool and beautiful. As seen below (How can't you find these pictures beautiful?). Also, Goths are mostly not superficial morons. Most of them are very open minded and there is not a lot of prejudice. Most Goths are actually not depressed but very happy people, why are they happy you might ask. Well one of the reasons that they are happy is because they are dressed the way they want to be dressed. I guess it is also very common for Goths to not know that they are goth (like me). Many Goths also love the night and graveyards, this is why you'll see many Goths work the night shifts at stores, because everyone is afraid of the dark! Lol not really I just love to say that because it always seems like nobody is around at night and I have no idea why. Also some Goths love vampires (like me) I can't speak for everyone but I find vampires very sexy, and romantic, not that BS Twilight vampires though (ugh, we can thank that and hot topic for all the lame mall-goths around town).
Music: Well I don't really think there are any new Gothic rock bands that have managed to capture the essence that was Gothic rock but here are a few bands that are well known in the Gothic subculture: The Sisters of Mercy (one of the best bands ever!), Bauhaus, The Cure, Christian death, Killing Joke, Fields of Nephilim . There is also Rosetta Stone but nobody really seems to include them for some reason :( NOT METAL MUSIC! Sorry but lots of people think that metal music is goth for some reason (yeah I know I don't get it either). However you can always be a Goth who likes this kind of music, just because you're a Goth doesn't mean you can't like something non-goth! The newer goth music would be more in the darkwave, synthpop, and industrial territory with bands like Ego Likeness, Athamay, Creature Feature, Alien Vampires, Wolfsheim, Santa Hates You, Eisenfunk, Wumpscut, and many more. A great way to find some of this music is to listen to Dark Asylum Radio!
Books and Movies (there'll be more movies because I hardly read): Many Goths love Edgar Allan Poe, the book Jane Eyre, Dracula, Frankenstein, I assume the book Lolita too along with many other books, For movies lots like old black and white films (Nosferatu comes to mind), The Crow, Queen of the Damned, Sleepy Hallow, The Nightmare Before Christmas, May (creepy freakin movie), Hellraiser, Donnie Darko, Interview with a Vampire, Underworld, and many others.
Clothing: Black. Not all Goths wear black but this is one of the main colors in a goth wardrobe. Some of them also wear lots of white instead, and of course many cybergoths do wear lots of bright colors. One of the biggest things in the Goth subculture is DIY clothing. This is because Goth is an offshoot of the punk subculture which had DIY clothing too (it's also because it's going against conformity). Of course in the 80's and some of the 90's you didn't have goth stores so it was necessary to make your own clothes. Now you do which can take some of the fun out of being Goth but it doesn't have to (you can still buy some clothes from "Gothic" clothing stores and add onto it or if you end up disliking what you bought you could always cut it up and use that to add onto some other clothing). Pale skin and black hair. Anyway there are a ton of different fashions of the Goth culture and I will hopefully go over them in upcoming blogs. If you can't wait for that here's a link to a very good gothic blog http://ultimategothguide.blogspot.com (yep it's a girl so it's a different perspective, which is good).
Religion: ANY! The stereotype for goth is that they are all devil worshipers but in reality they are any religion, sure many of them are Atheist but there are a ton of Christian Goths http://www.christiangoth.com/
Do Goths hate society? NO! But some of us do not like how everyone follows the latest trends and such like sheep instead of thinking for themselves. Anyway this is mostly talking about the stereotype of Goths hurting people right? Well for a matter of fact more violence is against Goths than caused by Goths! So no, Goths do not hate others most of the time, it's the other way around :'( This is probably because people seem to hate (or be afraid) of things that they do not understand and instead of doing the rational thing and learning about what Goth really is they lash out.
About me: Well if you go by the people that say being Gothic is about liking dark things and liking Gothic music than I've pretty much always been goth. I've loved most Gothic things such as pictures, graveyards/architecture, books (I actually had an Edgar Allan Poe collection book when I was in grade school lol), music (my dad loves music a lot so I've heard many bands including The Cure ). However if you say that being goth is about the clothing than I've only recently became goth. Honestly I think of it as more of a mindset than anything else because you could easily say you're goth because you look it but you might not really be into goth things. Honestly I do not like DIY that much, it's mostly because I really suck at ideas (I do have an idea for a cybergoth coat that seems like it'll be cool but I can't find the right coat at my local thrift stores :( I also have an idea for gloves [just cutting up my old tripp pants and getting a chain out and putting it on the bottom of my gloves, seems like it might be cool but a little unoriginal lol] ). So far the furthest I've gone with DIY is to add a few buttons to my jacket and that's about it. Maybe I'll add an Angelspit patch to my pants. I'll probably go into more detail in a later blog.
So that's about it for today since it's so late, I might come back to this later and fix it up or just make another blog about it.
Reminder for blog #8: If you are Goth you can still like non-goth things such as music or daylight (lol).
No comments:
Post a Comment