Dark Culture or Dark Cultures?
My recent explorations of cultural white noise (and I'm starting to think about this enough to realise that I'll need to put together a reading list soon, but that's an aside) has got me thinking about the polarities of Dark and Light culture.
Dark Culture is just as striated as light culture, we've know that for years, but not really talked much about it. Over the last forty years or so various rebel splinter factions have pulled away from the main stream and become counter cultures with a dark/heavy aesthetic.
There were the punks and the metalists. To make matters worse there were 3 or 4 different movements all happening at the same time under the name Punk, there was no instant information interchange and there was a lot of poverty (Authors note, this is gleamed from other sources I WAS NOT around at this time, I came on to the scene many years later). So what people were doing in the UK would happen in the UK for a while and be divergent from New York, Toronto or California, but this name "Punk" was everywhere.
Metal's history is a lot stranger, and as they were often in the mainstream eye, I will not give them as much attention, but I will make the (obvious) observation that the original intention of the metalists had not been to fit and make "mainstream" music.
So here we have two very different, very dark cultues. Equally Hip Hop (or at least parts of it), Electronica (again a portion of that spectrum) and other forms of music/art/fim/theatre/writing have leaned, veered, or driven head on into the darkness of the human psyche.
The Greeks and Romans wrote tragedies and comedies. In fact historically artists have not felt compelled to stay happy or sad but have felt the freedom to roam through the full spectrum of human emotion (I know that I enjoy creating varied moments of humanity, and I'm fairly militant in my arts agenda).
So Dark Culture has been part of human culture since (literally) time immeroable.
Recently there's been a lot of talk of a Goth Revival. I believe in this goal very strongly, passionately, and I consider msyelf to be Goth, and agree that Goth is part of the dark culture that is not represented quite as well as it could be. That being said, I would like to suggest that a Goth Revival does not have anything to do with Punk, Metal, Hip Hop or Eletronica, this is not a cyber revival, a graver revivial, an oonzt revival, a rawk revival. There IS A LOT to be said about all of these things, but they all have their own presence. Each of this other cultures is doing moderatly well or thriving here in Toronto, and many around the world are observing the same thing. Dark Raves, Metal concerts, electronica/oontz festivals are blossoming and doing well. We, the Goths, are falling by the wayside.
So I see two things that we need to do for the sake of Goth:
1) We must take deliberate action to revive Goth.
2) but at the same time, we must help promote the idea of a wide spectrum of Dark Cultures and reinforce the idea that each "dark individual" should find their own place within, and not simply grab a convenient label.
But as has been pointed out before, we need to (and I include myself in this) remember that Goth is about striving and not settling, quality and not quantity, wine not whining and Cathedrals built of music rather than covers and remixes and 20min production jobs. Ours is a Dark culture based on the quality of a thing, and on the scent of a rose, not the weight of a thing and screams of crowd.
Namaste.
Dark Culture is just as striated as light culture, we've know that for years, but not really talked much about it. Over the last forty years or so various rebel splinter factions have pulled away from the main stream and become counter cultures with a dark/heavy aesthetic.
There were the punks and the metalists. To make matters worse there were 3 or 4 different movements all happening at the same time under the name Punk, there was no instant information interchange and there was a lot of poverty (Authors note, this is gleamed from other sources I WAS NOT around at this time, I came on to the scene many years later). So what people were doing in the UK would happen in the UK for a while and be divergent from New York, Toronto or California, but this name "Punk" was everywhere.
Metal's history is a lot stranger, and as they were often in the mainstream eye, I will not give them as much attention, but I will make the (obvious) observation that the original intention of the metalists had not been to fit and make "mainstream" music.
So here we have two very different, very dark cultues. Equally Hip Hop (or at least parts of it), Electronica (again a portion of that spectrum) and other forms of music/art/fim/theatre/writing have leaned, veered, or driven head on into the darkness of the human psyche.
The Greeks and Romans wrote tragedies and comedies. In fact historically artists have not felt compelled to stay happy or sad but have felt the freedom to roam through the full spectrum of human emotion (I know that I enjoy creating varied moments of humanity, and I'm fairly militant in my arts agenda).
So Dark Culture has been part of human culture since (literally) time immeroable.
Recently there's been a lot of talk of a Goth Revival. I believe in this goal very strongly, passionately, and I consider msyelf to be Goth, and agree that Goth is part of the dark culture that is not represented quite as well as it could be. That being said, I would like to suggest that a Goth Revival does not have anything to do with Punk, Metal, Hip Hop or Eletronica, this is not a cyber revival, a graver revivial, an oonzt revival, a rawk revival. There IS A LOT to be said about all of these things, but they all have their own presence. Each of this other cultures is doing moderatly well or thriving here in Toronto, and many around the world are observing the same thing. Dark Raves, Metal concerts, electronica/oontz festivals are blossoming and doing well. We, the Goths, are falling by the wayside.
So I see two things that we need to do for the sake of Goth:
1) We must take deliberate action to revive Goth.
2) but at the same time, we must help promote the idea of a wide spectrum of Dark Cultures and reinforce the idea that each "dark individual" should find their own place within, and not simply grab a convenient label.
But as has been pointed out before, we need to (and I include myself in this) remember that Goth is about striving and not settling, quality and not quantity, wine not whining and Cathedrals built of music rather than covers and remixes and 20min production jobs. Ours is a Dark culture based on the quality of a thing, and on the scent of a rose, not the weight of a thing and screams of crowd.
Namaste.