Extract from Goth.
Identity, Style and Subculture, by Paul Hodkinson.
Citation
information as follows:
Hodkinson,
P. (2002), Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture,
©
Paul
Hodkinson 2002.
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From Chapter 3, ‘Goth as a
Subcultural Style’…
An
acceptance of this notion of the breakdown of clear distinct styles pervades
the reasoning of some of those who seek to replace the notion of subculture
with terms such as neo-tribe, scene and lifestyle. While
acknowledging some kind of stylistic organization to the range of floating
artefacts, such descriptors seek to move away from the fixed, consistent and
clearly bounded sets of looks and sounds implied by traditional subcultural
theory. Bennett, for example, argues that music tastes tend to have as much to
do with individualized processes of selection and meaning as with collective
normative systems:
Sifting through various types of
music, artists and sounds, consumers characteristically choose songs and
instrumental pieces which appeal to them with the effect that the
stylistic boundaries existing between the latter become rather less important
than the meaning which the chosen body of music as a whole assumes for the
listener. (Bennett 1999: 610)
Muggleton
has also argued that style and taste are essentially individualized, playing
down the importance of distinct collective styles on the basis of the
testimonies of participants themselves. Even in those cases where his interview
respondents cautiously accepted an involvement with a particular genre or
grouping, he reports a strong perception that their tastes and those of fellow
participants were individual and distinctive to themselves rather than
determined by group norms (Muggleton 2000: 55-80). This is consistent with the
observation of Sarah Thornton (1995: 99) that participants of early 1990s
British club culture tended to play up the heterogeneity of the ‘crowd’ with
which they associated themselves. On the basis of such apparent evidence of
internal diversity, Muggleton concludes that contemporary subcultures are
essentially liminal and, as such, ‘characterised as much by ambiguity and
diversity as by coherence and definition’ (Muggleton 2000: 75).
Many
of my own open-ended interview respondents were also keen to emphasize their
individuality rather than talking about their conformity to a clear and
consistent set of group-specific symbols, as in the case of the following
respondent from
G1 (male): You can do what you want and you can get away with it, and
not actually give a shit what anyone thinks of you.
This finding
was replicated in some responses to the questionnaire I conducted at the Whitby
Gothic Weekend.
WQ5b: In your own words, please
explain what the goth scene is all about.
43 (male): Having the absolute
freedom to dress as you want and to express yourself as you want.
As
alluded to in the introduction to this book, though, an over-reliance upon the
ways in which subcultural participants choose to respond to direct questioning
can sometimes result in questionable conclusions. Although individuality did
manifest itself to some degree, as we shall see, a careful comparative analysis
of the behaviour, appearance and testimonies of goths over a substantial period
of time and in various places indicated that many interviewees exaggerated the
extent of their stylistic difference from other goths and underplayed the
internal consistency of the style. In Chapter 4, this tendency to exaggerate
one’s individuality will be explained with reference to social pressures
induced by subcultural received wisdom, or ideology.
…
…
rather than conceiving of the goth scene’s values as forming a wholly exclusive
singular subcultural way of being, it would be preferable to regard
participants as engaging in a limited sort of pick ‘n’ mix, in which the vast
majority of selections have to be drawn from a relatively clear subcultural
range of acceptable possibilities. Therefore, although we have cautioned
against overestimation of the role of individuality, it did manifest
itself to a limited degree. Goths wishing to gain the respect of their peers
usually sought to select their own individual concoction from the range of
acceptable artefacts and themes and also to make subtle additions and
adaptations from beyond the established stylistic boundaries. There was a need
for a mixture of conformity and innovation, as explained by the following
interviewee:
B6 (male): I think you have to
conform to a certain extent and then just take bits from everywhere until you
see things that you like and eventually you have your own look because of it.
Meanwhile,
although it clearly placed one within the boundaries of the subculture,
adopting ‘standard’ goth artefacts and modes of behaviour over-predictably
sometimes resulted in accusations of pretentiousness or ‘trying too hard’. An
element of individuality, then, guaranteed a degree of overall diversity and
helped ensure the dynamism of the style as a whole.
Nevertheless,
both individual variations and general changes tended to occur in the context
of an overall consistency with the strict general stylistic regulations of the
group. Significant transgressions also
tended to be the privilege of initially established and respected participants,
due to the safety net of their existing reputation and their possession of an
in-depth understanding of what kinds of stylistic encroachments might be
suitable. It tended to be more difficult for newcomers to the goth scene
successfully to deviate:
S3 (female): You don’t really know
much about gothic clothing at the beginning so you don’t know much about the
scene to have developed your own style of gothdom (laughs).
Important
though it was, then, the tendency for certain types of transgression to take
place was less notable than the overall levels of commitment to the
subculture’s distinctive range of aesthetic features. We shall see throughout
the book that the range from which individuals would select was relatively
consistent from time to time and place to place and, usually, distinctive to
the subculture, even in non-extreme cases. While there were overlaps with
various elements of external culture, then, goths were usually able to identify
one another in the street on the basis of appearance, regardless of where they
were, as alluded to by the following interviewee from
J12 (male): Like I go down to
PH: Does it feel like that then?
J12 (male): Yeah, it feels like
that in
Indeed,
goths I spent time with often made use of their ability to recognize fellow
participants. For example, if unable to find their way to an event, it was an
established strategy to identify other goths and follow them, with considerable
confidence, from their appearance, as to where they were going.
…
From Chapter 4, ‘Insiders and
Outsiders’…
A
well-articulated self-critique from one of my interviewees illustrates that
proclamations of ‘individuality’ on the part of goths were a very well established
yet highly questionable ‘common sense’ response to questions relating to style
and identity:
PH: So what you’re kind of saying
is that it is important to be different?
T3 (female): Yeah, although you
always say that like, you’re all individuals, but everyone’s got the same boots
on! Do you know what I mean – ‘oh aren’t we individual with all our ripped
fishnets and our New Rocks [make of boot]’.
Indeed,
while outright or hostile rejections of subcultural identity were actually
quite rare in the interviews I conducted, this desire to emphasize
individuality was sometimes linked with a degree of hesitancy about directly
describing oneself as 'a goth'. Nevertheless, it is clear from the
aforementioned self-conscious slogans on T-shirts and badges that some
individuals were keen to associate
themselves directly and openly with goth as a label, something in no way
diluted by the self-conscious humour which often characterized such attire.
Consistent with this, although some were more cautious than others, all those
who took part in my open-ended, unstructured interviews eventually indicated a
strong sense of group affiliation. Indeed, in some cases, participants were
positively enthusiastic to identify themselves as members of the goth scene:
J6 (female): If someone goes
‘goth!’, I go, ‘yes, I’ve been recognized!’
Meanwhile,
others disclosed a conscious identification with a perceived goth scene in the
course of placing themselves in relation to a number of perceived different
‘types’ of goths and some even described their own internal movement over time,
from one to another:
C2 (male): I started off as a sort
of tail-coaty goth and went more and more vampiry, and then I switched colours
to beige – and I was sort of Nephilimy beige goth for a while – I had a beige
tail-coat, beige leather trousers and beige boots.
For
the most part, even those who were initially resistant tended to become more
relaxed about disclosing their sense of affiliation as discussions progressed.
At the very least, most became happy to talk about being involved in the goth
scene or goth stuff, or to associate themselves explicitly with music, clothes,
events and fanzines they chose to describe as goth. Most importantly,
regardless of whether they initially described themselves as a goth, with or
without prefix, virtually every respondent,
at some point in his or her interview, emphasized feelings of identification,
similarity and community, with others perceived to share their tastes in
fashion and music. Here is one example of many such comments:
M2 (male): Goth is a tribe… it’s
just a group of people that get together and say… ‘we have something in common - we have how we
dress, how we look, how we feel and the kind of people we’re interested in or
music we’re interested in, in common.’
…
The
danger of theoretical overemphasis on multiplicity and ephemerality is
illustrated even more clearly, perhaps, by the connection between goths’
translocal affiliation with one another and an equally strong sense of
collective distinction from those whose appearance or lifestyles were deemed
antithetical to those of the subculture. This usually involved a generalized
conception of ‘normal’ culture, ‘the mainstream’ or ‘trendies’. The importance
of this sense of distinctiveness was demonstrated by the tendency for many
goths to resort to such denigration of ‘trendies’ in response to questioning
concerning the characteristics of the goth scene itself, as with the following
comment in response to the Whitby Festival Questionnaire:
WQ5b: In your own words, please
explain what is the goth scene is all about.
109 (female): Being different to
all the mindless, brain-dead clones that walk around small town
The
practice of distinguishing one’s own tastes from those of a perceived ‘other’
in order to legitimize them is referred to by Pierre Bourdieu as part of his
study of classification and cultural tastes:
Tastes (i.e. manifested
preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is
no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely
negatively, by the refusal of others’ tastes… all tastes are perhaps first and
foremost, distastes. (Bourdieu 1984: 56)
The
specific importance of a single point of collective subcultural identity and distinction
among goths, though, is particularly consistent with Sarah Thornton’s account
(1995: 99), inspired by Bourdieu, of the negative construction by British
clubbers of a similar ‘mainstream’, against which they defined and strengthened
their own sense of identity. David Locher makes a similar point in the context
of a study of a subculture based around ‘industrial’ music, arguing that in
order to be an insider:
it is not enough to like that
which the other members like, one must also dislike what the other members do
not like… it is the exclusionary nature of such groups that reinforces cohesion
among the members (Locher 1998: 101).
This
emphasis is broadly consistent, of course, with Howard Becker’s discussion,
some decades ago, of the significance of a derision of ‘squares’ for the strength of distinctive
identity and indeed superiority or ‘hipness’ held by jazz musicians (Becker
1963). The relationship between identity and difference in contemporary elective
affiliations is also discussed in detail by theorists of more fluid unstable
forms of collective identity, notably Chaney (1996) and Hetherington (1998a).
As well as a general sense of the importance of distinction, though, what
Thornton’s and Locher’s perspectives point to is the primacy to some
individuals of relatively one-dimensional ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinctions
revolving around a single affiliation. This can be contrasted with the emphasis
on numerous cross-cutting and ever changing systems of tastes and distastes,
identifications and disidentifications focused on by more postmodern-oriented approaches.
Among
goths, the strength of the distinction from perceived outsiders was
particularly intensive as a result of the prejudice and occasional violence
goths were prone to receive in light of their unconventional appearance. Many
interviewees keenly recounted experiences of such abuse or assault, as in this
example from a Leeds-based interviewee:
N1 (female): Me and [friend] were
walking past
The
perception among goths that such incidents reflected the narrow-minded
characteristics of a societal majority is illustrated by the way the same
interviewee used such experiences to
justify her own dislike of ‘trendies’:
N1 (female): When you get treated
like that why should you have respect for someone else from their type of
group?
Similarly,
a Birmingham respondent regarded ‘trendies’ with considerable caution as a
result of past experience of abuse, in spite of placing some of his friends
within this category:
J12 (male): I had a discussion
with a trendy mate… and I said ‘well how many times have you been at a bus stop
and had a goth shouting abuse at you and starting a fight on you? … it’s
happened to me with your lot – we’re the ones that get trouble off you’.
The
way the receipt of such hostility strengthened goths’ reciprocal dislike of a
perceived homogenous group of ‘trendies’ has a clear resemblance to Albert
Cohen’s circle of increasing subcultural delinquency (A. Cohen 1955). For
Cohen, as subcultural members earn contempt or aggression from society outside,
they collectively come to devalue ‘the good will and respect of those whose
good will and respect are forfeit anyway’ and the subculture ‘comes to include
hostile and contemptuous images of those groups whose enmity they have earned’
(ibid.: 68). The final part of the circular process is that the shared identity
of subcultural insiders is thoroughly intensified by the process: ‘The
hostility of the “out-group”, thus engendered or aggravated may serve to
protect the “in-group” from mixed feelings about its way of life’ (ibid.: 69).
Although Cohen’s account, like those of Jock Young (1971) and Stan Cohen
(1972), may overestimate and oversimplify the importance of outside hostility
to the construction of subcultural identities, a circular process along the
lines of that described certainly appears to have fed and intensified goths’
sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’, as here:
J12 (male): The way I see it… all us goths
should be mates because we’ve all got the one common factor and that’s the
trendies taking the piss out of us all.
However,
it was clear that goths’ dislike of the mainstream also tended to reflect a
positive and necessary enjoyment on their part of feeling collectively
different and, more specifically, superior to ‘outsiders’. Not surprisingly,
perhaps, when it was put to interviewees that the sense of subcultural identity
they so cherished was often reliant upon a rather elitist differentiation of
themselves from outsiders, the instant reaction was often to disagree. The
following response was typical:
T3 (female): I think it’s not what
you are not into, it’s what you are into. It’s what goth is.
The
questionable accuracy of the first part of this sentiment, though, was
indicated when respondents were asked how they would feel if goth music and
style were prominent in the mass media and highly popular throughout society.
In response, the same interviewee articulated the link between shared identity
and collective distinction extremely honestly and clearly:
T3 (female): If every single
person in the
S7 (female): I wouldn’t like it
PH: Why?
T3: It’s not like you’re a goth
because you want to stand out, but you do like sort of being different from
everyone else, although when you’re with a load of goths you blend in, but
you’re all different, if you know what I mean, from everyone else.
As
well as re-emphasizing the somewhat one-dimensional sense of identity and
distinction held by many, the way in which goths so frequently positioned
themselves against those they perceived as ‘trendies’ is significant in that it
implies they also shared a set of moral assumptions about their lifestyle which
allowed many of them to understand it as culturally superior. These I shall
refer to as the ideals of the subculture.
©
Paul
Hodkinson 2002.
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