Goth is actually much more than the sum of its parts, and, depending on who you ask, you can get a bewildering array of contradictory answers, many of which are valid parts of a much larger subculture. It is more than a label or description. Goth is at once a lifestyle and a philosophy that has its roots firmly embedded both in the historical past and the present. The central Ideal that characterizes Goth is an almost compulsive drive towards creativity and self-expression that seeks to reach out and ensnare its audience using our current society's covert but deeply rooted fascination with all things dark and frightening. This act can be either subtle and seducing or nightmarishly terrifying, but it must play on what society secretly knows but can not acknowledge to itself about its duality. The mediums of self-expression and creation can be anything from a mode of dress to novels or music. Imagination and originality have always been key elements in Goth. As a lifestyle, Goth is as diversified as its adherents. There really is no true unifying stereotype or dress code as it were. Not all Goths are depressed, nor do they all wear black, listen to the same music, or employ the same modes of self-expression. This tends to make Goth-spotting a little tricky and creates part of the tangled confusion over what it is to begin with, but this diversity also is one of the defining factors. So how does one identify a real Goth if they are all so different? Now we reach part of the heart of the counterculture! You see, as mentioned earlier, one of Goth's defining characteristics is the need to take the underlying darkness that is in all of us and bring it into the light in such a way as we can recognize it as what it is-an integral part of all of us, for better or for worse. To better understand what Goth really is, it is essential to know where it came from. It has been with us for much longer than the label we have given it. This is a subculture that has appeared, flourished, then died, only to rise again in many eras and in many societies. Its adherents have always been the young intellegensia, frustrated and bored by the parent culture. The parent cultures were usually restrictive, highly stratified into rigid caste structures, and intolerant of diversity in schools of art and thought. Because of this, nearly every manifestation of this particular type of counter-culture was greeted with suspicion, hostility, and sometimes active aggression on the part of its parent culture. Only rarely was this brand of subculture welcomed and allowed to flourish, as it was during the Italian Renaissance. Goth, as we currently know it, has its roots in Western Europe and North America during the late seventies and early eighties. The counterculture was, and still is, dominated by dissatisfied youth hailing from the middle classes, which were at that time just entering a new period of prosperous stability. The children of these newly wealthy were left, unlike their parents, with a strong feeling of instability and lack of identity. They were unable to reconcile the new values their society was trying to impress upon them with their newly fragile sense of self. The tightening lines of social restructure were separating them from their accustomed peers in both the upper and lower classes. Responding to the confusion and theft of identity, a few of the brightest and most creative children of these newly prosperous families began to create their own social structure. It was a counter culture based on a synthesis of historical elements, leaning heavily on dramatic traditions, philosophies, and schools of thought such as were popular in Byronic England, World War Two Germany, and American Beat. They first dubbed themselves the New Romantics, then swiftly settled on Gothic as the counter culture grew and became more stable. Always more than a little bipolar in nature, Goth split into two distinct factions, one Appolonian and the other Dionysan in its approach, by 1981 when it had reached its peak. Each faction was a personification of the mixed fear and fascination the Goths felt for the darker side of their parents' legacy of materialism, elitism, and false sense of moral superiority. The difference lay in their ways of expressing their sense of alienation and abandonment. The more Appolonian faction were mainly concerned with the artistic and philosophical facets of Goth. They were, for the most part, fairly non confrontational in their means of self-expression. They were in most cases all but obsessed with the act of creation and the appreciation of literature, art and music. A number of them attempted to legitimize their subculture in the eyes of the parent culture with very little success. Because they were regarded as harmless, if morbid dreamers, they were tolerated. The more Dionysan faction of Goth passionately embraced the more hedonistic and sometimes self-destructive facets of the movement. Their contributions to Goth were more ephemeral and less easy to define in traditional terms as creativity, but still were vibrant with the haunted, dark spirit of the counter culture. Some of the more prominent Goth musicians and thinkers belonged to this faction. Being more confrontational in their self-expression, they were regarded by the parent culture as dangerous and undesirable. The modern stereotype of Goth is a twisted caricature of the more Dionysan faction that captures its decadence and tendency towards self-destruction while entirely missing its subtle artistry and depth, not to mention the entire point of Goth as a whole. By 1987, both factions of Goth had almost completely vanished, absorbed back into the parent culture as their members were forced to accept conformity to ensure individual survival as adults. A marginal percentage of the original Goth community were able to adapt to adult life remaining essentially and visibly true to themselves, while still managing to keep the income necessary to maintain the rising price of living in the style to which they had become accustomed. By this time, the new generation of disaffected youth had already begun to imitate what they perceived of the Dionysan Goths. They had embraced the dark and dangerous style of dress and felt that the lonely, arrogant music was written just for them. The stereotypical lifestyle was adventurous and daring enough to spark their already bored and world-weary imaginations. The "kindergothen" were met by rejection and almost knee-jerk disapproval by their parent culture and the remainders of the Goth community alike with almost no exceptions. Those few original Goths who tried to embrace the new groups were usually met with cold hostility and anger by those who had already either been rejected by others or had heard of the rejection. The schism between the Olde School and the new was widened even more by the labels of "Poseur" and "Faux Goth" that were bandied between the sides. By the nineties, the artistry and philosophy that drove the Goth culture had been by and large replaced with attitude, posturing and dress code. The few remaining Olde School Goths and their protégés had gone underground and were not a part of the new rise of Goth, refusing to have much to do with what they considered shallow, inarticulate upstarts that paid to much attention to what the media thought was Goth. They saw the new Goth as little more than a group of image driven drug addicts that had nothing better to offer than a dress code and a bad attitude. The New School's opinions of the originals wasn't much better. In the last few years, both Olde School and New have embraced the Internet. It has become both a medium for self-expression and a battleground between them. Oddly enough, the advent of easy access to the W3 has revealed in the New School an increased drivetowards the creativity and self-expression that the Olde School Goths hold in such high esteem. The New School Goths, or Goffs as many of them have begun to call themselves, have become more like the originals than either side of the schism seems to wish to admit. Hopefully this trend will continue to thrive on the Web, bringing fresh blood and a new outlook to Goth's grasp on the dark undercurrents of our society's imagination. After all, the sweetest of flowers always did have a tendency to rise from the darkest and least savory of soils. -Azhrarn, 1997-1998 © Feel free to distribute, mirror, or otherwise reproduce this either in part or in its entirety. I ask nothing but credit for its making. That I will insist on. Strenuously. Last Updated: 04 July 1998
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