Deutschland über alles!
Feb. 17th, 2008 09:25 amOy, seven straight hours of Web standards and CMS yesterday, I am wiped out. Did make some new contacts, though, and a lot of the stuff we covered I didn't know, so definitely worth it, as was the De/Vision show at El Corazón. I'm not always the hugest fan of synthpop, but as we all know, being German makes anything one does that's even vaguely goth-related just a little bit better. ;) Plus, ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jilocasin put on his fishnet shirt and got his industrial groove on, and it was so hot. I am blessed with a boyfriend who occasionally indulges my obsessions. :)
I was thinking about the nature of goth and its adherents last night while we were waiting for the show to start, and I reflected then as I do now that while I absolutely love many of the cultural signifiers of goth-- black everything, silver everything else, most of the music, a lot of the literature, absinthe, and vampire mythology, just to name a few-- I'll never really be a goth in the sense of actually participating in the subculture. This is mostly true for the simple fact that really committing to goth/industrial/cyber/etc. requires sartorial flourishes that make one (and would certainly make me) look like a complete tool. I can get away with putting natural-looking red highlights in my hair, since it's got a lot of red in it already, but that's about it, and the whole deal with the mousse and the mohawk and the spiky and blah, it's just too much damn trouble for me. I can only ever really be at home in simple, functional clothing, and grandiosely baroque elaboration is, generally, the hallmark of goth fashion.
Also, too, we have the nature of subcultures, which, in my experience, has as its most prominent feature the fact that the denizens of any given subculture have been (sometimes literally) forced out of the mainstream by the ways in which they interact with others. Part of that, of course, is pastimes and interests and dress, but there also seems to be in most cases, though certainly not in all cases, a fundamental lack of social graces on the part of subculture denizens. I noticed this in gay culture slightly less, though there it's more a question of the anti-social behavior being inspired by drug binges than anything else-- it certainly wasn't absent entirely, I'm sad to say. I notice this most in the two other subcultures in which I sometimes travel: goths and gamers. These subsets can have a great deal of intersection in certain cases (see pretty much the entire White Wolf oeuvre), and they both, to me, are characterized in the psychological makeups of their memberships by a raging insecurity and over-eagerness, a tendency to talk over one another and to make inappropriate comments for their own sake. This makes none of them bad people, per se, but it does make spending time with them a bit wearing for a stuffy neo-Victorian like me.
In short, while I may very much enjoy the artifacts of a subculture, I'm too picky to ever let said artifacts be the only point of commonality between me and those in my social circle; that, too me, seems far too limiting. However, that doesn't mean that the club experience is any less sublime-- after all, what can one do in that situation except shut up and dance? :)
jilocasin put on his fishnet shirt and got his industrial groove on, and it was so hot. I am blessed with a boyfriend who occasionally indulges my obsessions. :)I was thinking about the nature of goth and its adherents last night while we were waiting for the show to start, and I reflected then as I do now that while I absolutely love many of the cultural signifiers of goth-- black everything, silver everything else, most of the music, a lot of the literature, absinthe, and vampire mythology, just to name a few-- I'll never really be a goth in the sense of actually participating in the subculture. This is mostly true for the simple fact that really committing to goth/industrial/cyber/etc. requires sartorial flourishes that make one (and would certainly make me) look like a complete tool. I can get away with putting natural-looking red highlights in my hair, since it's got a lot of red in it already, but that's about it, and the whole deal with the mousse and the mohawk and the spiky and blah, it's just too much damn trouble for me. I can only ever really be at home in simple, functional clothing, and grandiosely baroque elaboration is, generally, the hallmark of goth fashion.
Also, too, we have the nature of subcultures, which, in my experience, has as its most prominent feature the fact that the denizens of any given subculture have been (sometimes literally) forced out of the mainstream by the ways in which they interact with others. Part of that, of course, is pastimes and interests and dress, but there also seems to be in most cases, though certainly not in all cases, a fundamental lack of social graces on the part of subculture denizens. I noticed this in gay culture slightly less, though there it's more a question of the anti-social behavior being inspired by drug binges than anything else-- it certainly wasn't absent entirely, I'm sad to say. I notice this most in the two other subcultures in which I sometimes travel: goths and gamers. These subsets can have a great deal of intersection in certain cases (see pretty much the entire White Wolf oeuvre), and they both, to me, are characterized in the psychological makeups of their memberships by a raging insecurity and over-eagerness, a tendency to talk over one another and to make inappropriate comments for their own sake. This makes none of them bad people, per se, but it does make spending time with them a bit wearing for a stuffy neo-Victorian like me.
In short, while I may very much enjoy the artifacts of a subculture, I'm too picky to ever let said artifacts be the only point of commonality between me and those in my social circle; that, too me, seems far too limiting. However, that doesn't mean that the club experience is any less sublime-- after all, what can one do in that situation except shut up and dance? :)
