Goth: Undead Subculture (Paperback)

~ Lauren M. E. Goodlad (Editor), Michael Bibby (Editor)
Key Phrases: goth damage, factory sample, fatal woman, Joy Division, Fight Club, Nine Inch Nails (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Goth: Undead Subculture is a very engaging read--a nice melange of ethnographic anecdote, cultural criticism, and historical analysis--in which a multidisciplinary crew of contributors analyzes an important and complex subculture through its fashions, music, dancing, literature, sexual practices, aesthetic ideals, theatrical displays, historical precedents, and ideologies." Robert Walser, author of Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music "Goth creates its distinctive way of life by appropriating materials from a vast array of cultural phenomena--post-punk music, gothic literary tradition, pre-Christian mythology, sexual nonconformity, aesthetic avant-gardes--all of which it adopts primarily as style. Goth style is thus both dizzyingly heterogeneous and instantly recognizable. It is hard to imagine a single book that could do this subculture justice; yet by assembling contributors from a range of disciplines and judiciously including many voices of subcultural participants themselves, Goth: Undead Subculture manages to depict, while also reflecting critically on, this subculture's enduring appeal. This collection will be the definitive work on its topic." Tim Dean, author of Beyond Sexuality "... [an] intelligent collection of writings ..."--Times Literary Supplement, 13 April 2007 "Highbrow analysis of the genre that credibility forgot."--QP Magazine, May 2007

Product Description

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 in light of post-subculture studies and other critical approaches. 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. Together these essays demonstrate that while its participants are often middle-class suburbanites, goth blurs normalizing boundaries even as it appears as an everlasting shadow of late capitalism.

Contributors: Heather Arnet, Michael Bibby, Jessica Burstein, Angel M. Butts, Michael du Plessis, Jason Friedman, Nancy Gagnier, Ken Gelder, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Joshua Gunn, Trevor Holmes, Paul Hodkinson, David Lenson, Robert Markley, Mark Nowak, Anna Powell, Kristen Schilt, Rebecca Schraffenberger, David Shumway, Carol Siegel, Catherine Spooner, Lauren Stasiak, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press (March 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822339218
• ISBN-13: 978-0822339212
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,973 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gothic Scholarship Discovers Goth, July 5, 2007

By	James Rattue (Surrey, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The best way of tackling a subject that sprawls across disparate academic disciplines is to engage the services of a collection of experts in the fields involved. Previous studies of Gothic have been either scattergun takes on the whole genre by generalists, or focused investigations of this or that topic, usually literature. Goth: Undead Subculture is the first to break the trend and, even more admirably, actually tries to do so from the viewpoint of the Goth-on-the-dancefloor.

Of course, what you end up with is academics - mostly, there is the occasional exception - discussing their favoured topics, but a good few of them could be characterised, as Trevor Holmes so wonderfully puts it, as `a goth-identified subject [with] an interest in things horrific and gloomy, in a postromantic decadent aesthetic overdetermined by punk, in embodiment through gender transitivity'. There's a certain amount of that breathy Stateside academic-speak, but in actual fact most of the essays in this collection sparkle a good deal. In fact, Trevor Holmes's is a good instance of the collision between the personal and the subcultural with his account of life as, er, a professional dancer cavorting gothically in an LA gay club, morphing into a debate on the slipperiness of gothic gender generally. Kristen Shilt writes a lovely account of the Austin Faerielanders in their `liminal enclave', and Rebecca Schraffenberger owns up to her own Goth development.

Throughout the book there seem to be two twin and allied efforts which set it apart from anything attempted before. Firstly, there's a serious intention to think, and discover where possible, exactly how `gothic' cultural products function in the Goth community, how they are used and processed in sifting and developing a sense of identity. Secondly, there's an openness to considering in that task all sorts of cultural products. We expect such interdisciplinary boldness of Catherine Spooner, also represented in the book (albeit by an old essay), but everyone has a go. Michael Bibby, for example, is a professor of English, but has a go at analysing the role of the post-punk band Joy Division in formulating early Goth, looking at their work (lyrics, production, music), stage performances, and visual image promoted through album artwork. This is more than he has any right to know about.

This is marvellous, if you can do the work of ploughing through the four hundred intimidating pages. There is nothing that can really do justice to the fissiparous and contradictory beauty of modern Goth, but this book does better than anything to date. My only wonder is whether Goths themselves will welcome such microscopic analysis; at least it comes not-entirely from the outside.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Through The Glass Darkly, August 5, 2007

By	Caffeine Queen "#2109" (USA) - See all my reviews

A reviewer above wondered how self proclaimed Goths might take this book and some of the views on Goths it expounds. As an old schooler, I completely welcome it. I think resistance to a anyone taking a dead on 20/20 look at any subculture or scene (which as the book points out are not the same) is usually brought about by some older members out of a certain sense of defensiveness. Similar to the reaction parents might have of someone critical of their baby. There is now and always has been a certain elitist (Gother than thou) mindset to some members of the community, and as they tend to be quite vocal, I think those outside the community perceive us all as being that way. Which is a shame as one of the earliest, cardinal trademarks of a Goth was someone who could laugh at themselves.

I loved the book. I loved that fact that it hoisted some dearly held beliefs on their own petards. The look at commercialism and Goth so cracked me up. It's true, we are all of us, in love with our baubles. While many may decry this fact it is the truth. The look at how the gender blurring of men comes at the expense of women I found a bit of a reach but to each their own. I particularly loved the take on gothic literature allowing young women to explore the alternative worlds of sexuality (fetishism, B+D, bisexuality) as it really rang true to me as someone who was there.

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad at all, December 24, 2007

By	Corvis Nocturnum "author" (Indiana) - See all my reviews

I must say, I wish this work would have been out a very long time ago when I first started 'in the Goth subculture'! It has a wealth of information and a hefty amount of pages, but well worth checking into.

Recommended.

Corvis Nocturnum ~ author of Embracing the Darkness; Understanding Dark Subcultures