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and i'm back.. i need some opinions on an article. kaffy's making me post this. lol, kidding.
GOTHIC BLOOD BATH?
Goths, the pale-faced, black-clad figures that populate so many high school and college campuses, are beginning to get a bad rep. The recent school shooting at the Red Lake Band of Chippewa reservation in Minnesota was committed by a teenager associated with the Goth crowd; as well as the two boys responsible for the 1999 killing spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. So, we asked, is there something in the Goth culture that makes its teenage adherents prone to violence?
No way, say the defenders; Goths are usually gentle people with artistic and literary tastes and no aggressive tendencies. But many mainstream Americans find the Goths’ vampiric looks too threatening not to suspect sinister motives behind the eerie façade.
The Goth movement arose from the punk subculture in the late ‘70s, with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and The Damned as its musical, and the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Anne Rice, and Edgar Allen Poe as its literary icons. The Gothic lifestyle usually involves black outfits, ghostly make-up, tattoos and body piercings, as well as a fascination with the bizarre and the morbid, death and darkness.
But “the true Gothic essence is internal,” says Omega, owner of the website Cathedral of Darkness. “It’s never been about clothes or music. It’s about expression of our feelings and our self-stories. It’s almost like art. It’s in our poetry, journals, words, thoughts, expressions, feelings, body language, and most importantly, our souls.”
Suspiciously eyed by strangers and ridiculed by their peers, Goths cherish the shock value of their strange looks; their movement is a refusal to fit into what they see as an oppressive, brainwashed, and materialistic society. But does that predispose them to homicidal behavior?
“It’s true that many Goths are not what you’d call a ‘people person’”, says Nevermore, a poster on the Dark Rooms message board, “but that’s pretty much an accepted part of it.” In his opinion, “this shooting, like just about every school shooting, boils down simply to the individuals being screwed up.”
He might be right; in the Columbine event, it is not at all clear that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two killers, were really Goths; fact is that they were members of a clique calling themselves the “Trenchcoat Mafia” whose trademark were long, black dusters like those of the villains of the Old West.
However, there seem to be other, perhaps more crucial factors that could provide an explanation for the tragedies:
Bullying. Reportedly, two-thirds of school shooters have been the victim of severe bullying at school. We know that Harris and Klebold, had been continuously harassed by other students who threw rocks and cigarettes at them and called them ‘faggots’. A 1998 survey of 15-year-old high school students showed that more than 20% had been bullied during the current term; another survey found that 66% of bullying victims suffer in silence, too afraid and ashamed to tell on their torturers.
Nazi ideology. Jeff Weise, the Red Lake shooter, was actively communicating with online Neo-Nazi groups, while the Columbine shooting was timed to take place on Hitler’s birthday. Harris and Klebold had previously enjoyed reenacting WWII battles and sometimes wore Nazi crosses.
Medication. Eric Harris had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and prescribed Luvox, a potent SSRI that causes mania-a serious form of psychosis-in one out of 25 children. Jeff Weise had told a friend that he was taking 40 mg of Prozac per day; family members said after the shooting that his dosage had recently been increased to 60 mg. Due to severe side effects like suicidal tendencies and violent behavior, most antidepressants-except for Prozac-have been banned for the use in children and teenagers by the FDA and in Europe.
We’ll never know what the real causes were. But as Nancy Smith, owner of a Los Angeles Goth store, told the LA Times after the Columbine shootings: “Parents should be concerned when their kids are on the Internet learning how to make bombs, not because they’re painting their fingernails black and wearing makeup.”
SOURCE: http://www.howestreet.com/story.php?ArticleId=1092
GOTHIC BLOOD BATH?
Goths, the pale-faced, black-clad figures that populate so many high school and college campuses, are beginning to get a bad rep. The recent school shooting at the Red Lake Band of Chippewa reservation in Minnesota was committed by a teenager associated with the Goth crowd; as well as the two boys responsible for the 1999 killing spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. So, we asked, is there something in the Goth culture that makes its teenage adherents prone to violence?
No way, say the defenders; Goths are usually gentle people with artistic and literary tastes and no aggressive tendencies. But many mainstream Americans find the Goths’ vampiric looks too threatening not to suspect sinister motives behind the eerie façade.
The Goth movement arose from the punk subculture in the late ‘70s, with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and The Damned as its musical, and the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Anne Rice, and Edgar Allen Poe as its literary icons. The Gothic lifestyle usually involves black outfits, ghostly make-up, tattoos and body piercings, as well as a fascination with the bizarre and the morbid, death and darkness.
But “the true Gothic essence is internal,” says Omega, owner of the website Cathedral of Darkness. “It’s never been about clothes or music. It’s about expression of our feelings and our self-stories. It’s almost like art. It’s in our poetry, journals, words, thoughts, expressions, feelings, body language, and most importantly, our souls.”
Suspiciously eyed by strangers and ridiculed by their peers, Goths cherish the shock value of their strange looks; their movement is a refusal to fit into what they see as an oppressive, brainwashed, and materialistic society. But does that predispose them to homicidal behavior?
“It’s true that many Goths are not what you’d call a ‘people person’”, says Nevermore, a poster on the Dark Rooms message board, “but that’s pretty much an accepted part of it.” In his opinion, “this shooting, like just about every school shooting, boils down simply to the individuals being screwed up.”
He might be right; in the Columbine event, it is not at all clear that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two killers, were really Goths; fact is that they were members of a clique calling themselves the “Trenchcoat Mafia” whose trademark were long, black dusters like those of the villains of the Old West.
However, there seem to be other, perhaps more crucial factors that could provide an explanation for the tragedies:
Bullying. Reportedly, two-thirds of school shooters have been the victim of severe bullying at school. We know that Harris and Klebold, had been continuously harassed by other students who threw rocks and cigarettes at them and called them ‘faggots’. A 1998 survey of 15-year-old high school students showed that more than 20% had been bullied during the current term; another survey found that 66% of bullying victims suffer in silence, too afraid and ashamed to tell on their torturers.
Nazi ideology. Jeff Weise, the Red Lake shooter, was actively communicating with online Neo-Nazi groups, while the Columbine shooting was timed to take place on Hitler’s birthday. Harris and Klebold had previously enjoyed reenacting WWII battles and sometimes wore Nazi crosses.
Medication. Eric Harris had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and prescribed Luvox, a potent SSRI that causes mania-a serious form of psychosis-in one out of 25 children. Jeff Weise had told a friend that he was taking 40 mg of Prozac per day; family members said after the shooting that his dosage had recently been increased to 60 mg. Due to severe side effects like suicidal tendencies and violent behavior, most antidepressants-except for Prozac-have been banned for the use in children and teenagers by the FDA and in Europe.
We’ll never know what the real causes were. But as Nancy Smith, owner of a Los Angeles Goth store, told the LA Times after the Columbine shootings: “Parents should be concerned when their kids are on the Internet learning how to make bombs, not because they’re painting their fingernails black and wearing makeup.”
SOURCE: http://www.howestreet.com/story.php?ArticleId=1092