In this book, Spracklen and Spracklen use the idea of collective memory to explore the controversies and boundary-making surrounding the genesis and progression of the modern gothic alternative ...culture. They suggest that the only way for goth culture to survive is if it becomes transgressive and radical again.
Goth music's cultural terrain has been extensively mapped in the first decade of this century. Through a dark leisure framework, the present article examines the way in which parts of the Goth scene ...embraced paganism and, latterly, Satanism, as actual practices and ontologies of belief. Ethnographic research and case studies on paganism and Satanism in Goth subcultures are used. This paper argues that being a pagan or Satanist in the fringes of the Goth scene is a way of using dark leisure to resist, usefully and meaningfully, the fashionable but instrumental globalised choice of mainstream popular culture.
The communicative potential of city spaces as leisure spaces is a central assumption of political activism and the creation of alternative, counter-cultural and subcultural scenes. However, such ...potential for city spaces is limited by the gentrification, privatization and eventization of city centres in the wake of wider societal and cultural struggles over leisure, work and identity formation. In this paper, we present research on alternative scenes in the city of Leeds to argue that the eventization of the city centre has led to a marginalization and of alternative scenes on the fringes of the city. Such marginalization has not caused the death of alternative Leeds or political activism associated with those scenes-but it has changed the leisure spaces (physical, political and social) in which alternative scenes contest the mainstream.
From counterculture to subculture to the ubiquity of every black-clad wannabe vampire hanging around the centre of Western cities, Goth has transcended a musical style to become a part of everyday ...leisure and popular culture. The music’s cultural terrain has been extensively mapped in the first decade of this century. In this article, we examine the phenomenon of the Whitby Goth Weekend, a modern Goth music festival, which has contributed to (and has been altered by) the heritage-tourism marketing of Whitby as the holiday resort of Dracula (the place where Bram Stoker imagined the Vampire Count arriving one dark and stormy night). We examine marketing literature and websites that sell Whitby as a spooky town, and suggest that this strategy has driven the success of the Goth festival. We explore the development of the festival and the politics of its ownership, and its increasing visibility as a mainstream tourist destination for those who want to dress up for the weekend. By interviewing Goths from the north of England, we suggest that the mainstreaming of the festival has led to it becoming less attractive to those more established, older Goths who see the subculture’s authenticity as being rooted in the post-punk era, and who believe that Goth subculture should be something one lives full-time.
Academics and Popular Writers on Goths Spracklen, Karl; Spracklen, Beverley
The Evolution of Goth Culture: The Origins and Deeds of the New Goths,
08/2018
Book Chapter
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