The Nature of Dark Subculture

The nature of Dark subculture (an essay)

Like Duchamp’s ‘ready mades’ – manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items – a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon – could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion…Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks’ ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic ‘utility’ context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip…fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops.” (p.106-12)

• Dick Hebidge (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge, March 10, 1981; softcover ISBN 0415039495).

I think on a very basic and genetic level we are very social creatures, are we not? Yet why do individuals all over the planet feel the dull, crushing ache of loneliness? I’ll tell you why—because the modern world is shut off from itself. WE are all Neo, sitting alone at our computer, communicating yes…but not realLy touching. NEO is not even an individual! He is in Fact a composite of the collective of modern mankind! He is an archetype: The lonely individual! And the lonely individual looks for others that are like himself.

It is important to find your brethren in this world because they aren’t going to find you—especially if you live your life amongst the shadows. My tribe is a bunch of broken down soldiers from the apocalypse that is to come. They are thrown away children of the twilight. They have formed tight bonds that even include me. And since I am the baby and female and have magically wormed my way into the inner circle, I simply follow them because I love them. They are my heroes…they are so like me!!

Fact: objectivity, or to look at something from an objective point of view, is impossible. We all observe and feel things subjectively, because…it is the only way that we know how. We can’t help it. We only know what we know, which is not to say that we cannot empathize with other humans. We most definitely can do this. However, this is a rare skill. All of our opinions and thoughts are based on our own personal life experiences. Therefore, I must tell you that you are reading the ramblings of one individual who has been in the scene for 16 years, specifically in LA/San Francisco locations. It would not surprise me to read a description of the NYC, New Orleans, Tokyo, LOndon or Vancouver Scene and find it to be entirely different.

Being an academic, I love to define and categorize things. So I wanted to clarify that I am not generalizing about the scene, I am relaying my specific experiences. For example, what is the first word that usually comes to mind when one hears the word “goth”? The answer is: vampire. Yes, there are people who pay thousands of dollars to get their teeth filed down to sharp points, and like to drink blood, and/or participate in blood rituals…but I don’t know any of these people. I have seen them around over the years, but have never made contact. To be perfectly honest, “my” kind of goth don’t really like vampires because (in our opinions) they make Us all look goofy. Sorry, all you Lestats out there…that’s just how I feel.

My desire is to Define and catalog our particular flavor of “Dark” (for pitiful lack of a better word) Subculture in the vast library of subcultures that humans have created, so they can think they are unique. To really believe they are an individual. It’s the mass cult of the individual. That’s it. That is the very definition of subculture. There are so many layers to this onion of tribal community Culture.

(insert tree of culture with its many many branches)

However, we all use one same ingredient. As you can see from the tree, All Subcultures base their world around art. Their Culture is based on a particular artistic merit, statement, philosophy, whatever.

One of my favorite subcultures from the past is

The Pre-raphaelites. They joined together to subvert the dominant paradigm. Their particular artistic medium was painting. The pre-raphs had their fin de siecle movement as a protest of the times, but also as a means of personal expression (personal being the operative word here). They didn’t want to paint like everybody else. They wanted to be recognized as an entirely different style from the “popular” fashion.

 

to want to be different is a desire indicative to western culture only. We do not have that “cog in the wheel” mentality that modern eastern culture has. We like to express ourselves individually.

THe creative expression in gothic subculture is mainly through media (film, fashion, music) but more deeply as a kind of tribe. DIY ethics, fire, motorcycles, and guns are a few words to describe my particular branch of the dark culture tree, and already it is a sub-sub culture of the dark persuasion. You get it? Not all Goths are like us, to put it in dummy talk.

Oh and it goes even deeper than all these things.

For the purpose of this manifesto, I have defined our Creative expression as the cultivation of the Mad Max Mythos complete with Jungian archetypes.

The Wasteland is the primary archetype in this scenario. It is its own character (like Serenity, the spaceship). Also, of course, there is the anti-hero, the penultimate lonely individual. Max is, in a way, everyman. We weren’t really meant to connect with Max as a person but only as this abstract idea called the Road Warrior. The Road Warrior is universal. I could also say that there is a little of the Road Warrior in all of us.