Goth : undead subculture / edited by Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Michael Bibby.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goodlad, Lauren M. E.

Bibby, Michael, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Goth culture (Subculture).

Physical Description:

x, 442 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Since it first emerged from Britain's punk rock scene in the late 1970s, goth subculture has haunted postmodern culture and society, reinventing itself inside and against the mainstream. Goth: Undead Subculture is the first collection of scholarly essays devoted to this enduring yet little examined cultural phenomenon. Twenty-three essays from various disciplines explore the music, cinema, television, fashion, literature, aesthetics, and fandoms associated with the subculture. They examine goth's many dimensions- including its melancholy, androgyny, spirituality, and perversity-and take readers inside locations in Los Angeles, Austin, Leeds, London, Buffalo, New York City, and Sydney. A number of the contributors are or have been participants in the subculture, and several draw on their own experiences.

The volume's editors provide a rich history of goth, describing its play of resistance and consumerism; its impact on class, race, and gender; and its distinctive features as an "undead" subculture. The essays include an interview with the distinguished fashion historian Valerie Steele; analyses of novels by Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Nick Cave; discussions of goths on the Internet; and readings of iconic goth texts from Bram Stoker's Dracula to James O'Barr's graphic novel The Crow. Other essays focus on gothic music, including seminal precursors such as Joy Division and David Bowie, and goth-influenced performers such as the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson. Gothic sexuality is explored in multiple ways, the subjects ranging from the San Francisco queercore scene of the 1980s to the increasing influence of fetishism and fetish play.

Contents:

I Genders

Dark Admissions: Gothic Subculture and the Ambivalence of Misogyny and Resistance / Joshua Gunn 41

Queens of the Damned: Women and Girls' Participafion in Two Gothic Subcultures / Kristen Schilt 65

Peri Gothous: On the Art of Gothicizing Gender / Trevor M. Holmes 79

Men in Black: Androgyny and Ethics in The Grow and Fight Club / Lauren M. E. Goodlad 89

II Performances

This Modern Goth (Explains Herself) / Rebecca Schraffenberger 121

Playing Dress Up: David Bowie and the Roots of Goth / David Shumway, Heather Arnet 129

Undead Fashion: Nineties Style and the Perennial Return of Goth / Catherine Spooner 143

"Goth Damage" and Melancholia: Reflections on Posthuman Gothic Identities / Michael du Plessis 155

III Localities

"To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant": Music and Death in Zero City, 1982-1984 / Mark Nowak 171

"Ah am witness to its authenticity": Gothic Style in Postmodern Southern Writing / Jason K. Friedman 190

The (Un)Australian Goth: Notes toward a Dislocated National Subject / Ken Gelder 217

IV Artifacts

Atrocity Exhibitions: Joy Division, Factory Records, and Goth / Michael Bibby 233

Material Distinctions: A Conversation with Valerie Steele / Jessica Burstein 257

Geek/Goth: Remediation and Nostalgia in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands / Robert Markley 277

The Authentic Dracula: Bram Stoker's Hold on Vampiric Genres / Nancy Gagnier 293

V Communities

"When you kiss me, I want to die": Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gothic Family Values / Lauren Stasiak 307

The Cure, the Community, the Contempt! / Angel M. Butts 316

"We are all individuals, but we've all got the same boots on!": Traces of Individualism within a Subcultural Community / Paul Hodkinson 322

VI Practices

That Obscure Object of Desire Revisited: Poppy Z. Brite and the Goth Hero as Masochist / Carol Siegel 335

God's Own Medicine: Religion and Parareligion in U.K. Goth Culture / Anna Powell 357

Gothic Fetishism / Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 375

The Aesthetic Apostasy / David Lenson 398.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [405]-423) and index.

ISBN:

9780822339083

0822339080

9780822339212

0822339218

OCLC:

71790121