THE EVOLUTION OF GOTH CULTURE EMERALD STUDIES IN ALTERNATIVITY AND MARGINALIZATION Series Editors: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK and Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, UK There is growing interest in work on transgression, liminality and sub-cultural capital within cultural studies, sociology and the social sciences more broadly. However, there is a lack of understanding of the problem of alternativity: what it means to be alternative in culture and society in modernity. What ‘alternative’ looks like is often left unexplored. The alternative is either assumed un-problem- atically, or stands in for some other form of social and cultural exclusion. Alternativity delineates those spaces, scenes, sub-cultures, objects and practices in modern society that are actively designed to be counter or resistive to mainstream popular culture. Alternativity is associated with marginalisation, both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and sub-cultures. Alternativ- ity was originally represented and constructed through acts of transgression and through shared sub-cultural capital. In contemporary society, alternative music scenes such as heavy metal, goth and punk have spread around the world; and alternative fashions and embodiment practices are now adopted by footballers and fashion models. The nature of alternativity as a communicative lifeworld is now questioned in an age of globalisation and hyper-commodification. This book series provides a stimulus to new research and new theorising on alter- nativity and marginalisation. It provides a focus for scholars interested in socio- logical and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of spaces, scenes, sub-cultures, objects and practices defined as alterna- tive, liminal or transgressive. In turn, the book series enables scholars to theorise about the status of the alternative in contemporary culture and society. Titles in this series Amanda DiGioia, Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts: The Marginalized and the Monstrous Samantha Holland and Karl Spracklen (Eds.), Subcultures, Bodies and Spaces: Essays on Alternativity and Marginalization Stephen Brown and Marie-Cécile Cervellon, Revolutionary Nostalgia: Neo-Bur- lesque, Retromania and Social Change THE EVOLUTION OF GOTH CULTURE: THE ORIGINS AND DEEDS OF THE NEW GOTHS KARL SPRACKLEN Leeds Beckett University, UK and BEVERLEY SPRACKLEN Independent Scholar, UK United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2018 Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78714-677-8 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78714-676-1 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78743-930-6 (Epub) Contents Chapter 1 An Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Academics and Popular Writers on Goths 9 Chapter 3 Constructing a New Theory of Alternativity 27 Chapter 4 The Origin of the Goths 37 Chapter 5 The Early Deeds of the Goths 55 Chapter 6 The Sisters of Mercy: A Case Study 71 Chapter 7 The Goths and the Globalisation of Popular Culture 89 Chapter 8 Goths as Harbingers of Doom, and Moral Panics about Them 107 Chapter 9 Goth as Virtual Identity and Virtual Culture Online 123 Chapter 10 Whitby Goth Weekend: A Case Study 137 Chapter 11 Goth as Fashion Choice 155 Chapter 12 The End of Goth? 173 Chapter 13 Conclusion 185 References 191 Index 201 This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 An Introduction Definitions and Frames What is goth? This book is an attempt to answer that question by exploring the history of the evolution of goth culture, that is, the origins and deeds of the goths. Goth, like culture or sub-culture or alternativity, is a problematic concept, having multiple meanings and uses. We want to avoid any attempt to provide a definitive story to what goth is, or where it started, because these are stories that are strongly contested by people who identity as goths. People who write popular narratives about the origins and deeds of the goths, what goth culture is or goth style is, may have some insider understanding, or they may be outsiders repro- ducing stereotypes about what the Internet thinks goths do and what they look like. We want to explore the construction of the collective memory of goth. That is, we want to explore what goths think are the important moments in their evo- lution and important aspects of their culture, and how that is reflected in wider accounts of that history and culture. Having said all that, for those unfamiliar with the history and culture of goth, a short explanation follows. First, gothic or goth emerged as a sub-genre label for a number of bands in the post-punk movement in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 1980s. Since, it has sur- vived and become globalised as a cultural practice associated with being alterna- tive and transgressive. How that happened, what the evolution entailed and how goths and non-goths make sense of the history and culture will be made clear in the rest of the book. So, read on. This book builds on work the authors have already published on goths and other alternative sub-cultures, some it by the two of us, some of it just by Karl alone or with others (Spracklen, 2014; Spracklen, Henderson, & Procter, 2016; Spracklen, Richter, & Spracklen, 2013; Spracklen & Spracklen, 2012, 2014). All our research is ethnographic and qualitative; we use our own ethnographic expe- rience of being alternative combined with interviews of key respondents and con- tent analysis. We follow a discourse-tracing approach (LeGreco & Tracy, 2009), which combines grounded theory with ideas from semiotics to try to make sense of how goths and others make sense of their histories, communities and cultures. In Spracklen and Spracklen (2012), we explore the paganism and Satanism on the fringes of one part of the goth scene and make the claim that such ‘dark leisure’ represents some authentic, communicative rationality in defence of the lifeworld (Habermas, 1984, 1987; Spracklen, 2009). In Spracklen and Spracklen (2014), we examine how the Whitby Goth Weekend has changed the perception of Whitby and the goth scene, and how the ‘gothicness’ of people attending the festival has been questioned by other goths (a theme we return to through this book). Spracklen, Richter, and Spracklen (2013) discuss the impact of gentrification and 2 Karl Spracklen and Beverley Spracklen privatisation, what we defined as eventisation, on the spaces of alternative scenes in one city, and suggests that alternative scenes were shrinking. Karl Spracklen (2014) argues that the communicative rationality of goth and black metal has van- ished in online spaces, and has written extensively on extreme metal’s precarious status as a communicative leisure space (Spracklen, 2009, 2014, 2015a). Finally, Karl Spracklen, Henderson, and Procter (2016) explore how people remember being members of the F-Club, a crucial formative space for post-punk and goth in Leeds (again, which we will return to later in this book). Goths have been the subject of a small body of work amongst sociologists (Hodkinson, 2002), cultural studies/gender theorists (Brill, 2008; Siegel, 2005) and popular music studies/musicology (van Elferen & Weinstock, 2016). Hodkin- son’s book on goths takes an ethnographic, sociological approach to understand social identity and belongingness in the scene as it was in the late 1990s, when his book’s research was undertaken. It is an important starting point for research on goth; but it is dated, and limited in its lack of sustained critique of the commodi- fication at work in goth. Siegel’s bookGoth’s Dark Empire is highly problematic because of its false assumptions about what is part of goth, and what is punk or metal or something entirely unrelated. Brill’s (2008) book Goth Culture is much better than Siegel, as it explores what goth actually is, though the emphasis on gender means only one part of goth’s meaning is discussed. Finally, van Elferen and Weinstock’s (2016) recent book Goth Music: From Sound to Subculture is only a brief (if useful) snapshot of goth’s continued salience as a global, sub-cultural form. So, a book is needed that captures the history, sociology and philosophy of goth, and its meaning and history as understood by goths themselves – which is what you are reading right now. This is a book about the nature of alternativity in goth sub-culture: where did the idea that goth is alternative and transgressive come from? And, is it still alter- native and sub-cultural – or as one of us (Spracklen, 2014) has hinted in research in online spaces (as discussed above), has its transgressive nature suffered the ‘heat death’ of commodification? There is a growing body of work on transgres- sion and liminality in cultural studies, which in turn is based on the theories of Bataille (1985, 1988), Turner (1969), Foucault (1986, 1991, 2002) and Lefebvre (1991, 1996, 2014), among others. This theory work is typified by the discus- sion in Partridge (2014) of the sacred and the profane in popular music, which he sees as a site of contestations over the meaning of good and evil between hegemons and musicians/listeners.