Members of subcultures can suffer for their allegiance, few more so than goths. The 2007 murder of Sophie Lancaster, targeted by teenagers because of her clothes and hairstyle, was an appalling example. Thankfully, the response is more often one of simple bemusement – perhaps an understandable reaction to adults dressed in trailing black gowns, top hats and complicated whorls of dark eye makeup. (The critic Sylvia Patterson, once a goth, describes them as “plume-haired fiends, inky apparitions in bullet belts, buckles and black lipstick”.)
At its core, goth is an alternative lifestyle that finds beauty in the dark and melancholy aspects of life, using music, literature and cinema as guideposts. It can be a mere fashion preference, but for the fully committed, it’s a design for life. Lol Tolhurst, a longtime adherent, believes it is “a way to understand the world” – and as relevant a form of cultural rebellion now as it was in the 1980s. Goth: A History eloquently presents his case, up to his concluding assertion that goth’s “beautiful, bleak wave of art” is an ideal form of resistance against “the terrible slide our world is taking toward oppressive authoritarianism”. At the very least, he argues, “something good” will come of it, though he doesn’t say what.
