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well i guess one question that's raised here is, is goth really a movement? many subcultures are movements, the most obvious being "sixties counterculture" which had to do with the creation of a subculture that people willingly joined in order to "do" something -- namely, replace a culture at war with a culture of psychedelics and free-love. it was something people were willingly a part of, and was vast enough to support microcultures within it. it was clearly a movement. even punk rock in the late seventies was broadly a movement, a reaction mostly against the corporatization of music and culture; it often had a political agenda or at least a cultural agenda, which if simple was clearly stateable -- "Destroy".
goth seems to me to be a bit more of an aesthetic matrix. there seems to be a disjunct in a lot of the suggestsions above between understanding "people who identify as goth" -- such as mercer's books, and maybe the dennis cooper book ang gloomcookie -- and "things that appeal to goths" such as sandman, etc. it is particularly interesting this idea about people denying that they are goth; you don't see guys with big red mohawks and crass patches claming to not be punk rockers, so i wonder why you get this in goth culture? perhaps it is because it is truly not a movement and therefore it makes individuals uncomfortable to be assigned a role in movement that they know doesn't exist?
all these suggestions so far are great, thanks a lot, by the way. to answer some questions, i believe it's going to be set in nyc; but as i said, the clubs i'm checking out are in LA. and i am FASCINATED by the people i see here -- very, very young guys and girls performing fairly advanced bdsm on one another for the idle entertainment of other folks in black pvc. scarrification, sowing, complicated rope work, things bordering on live sex acts... and i'm thinking, who are these people? what is this stuff about? have they all moved out of their homes in omaha to hollywood and found that this libertine expression is meaningful? are they "always on" or is this just a weekend diversion? i suppose i should talk to them more to find out... except they've always got a bright orange gagball disrupting verbal communication...
i am, obviously, focussing on the club aspect of it, that's my setting. i wonder if this is a fair representation of who these people are? it certainly seem to be an immense focus of energy and identity creation, at any rate.
perhaps sometihng else that keeps it from being an actual movement it that fact that it is ultimately a fetish -- cuold it be that an interest in supernatural horror, vampires, and paganism that exists soley for the sake of sexual fantasy and play might not have enough fertile cultural ground to grow in? |
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