What It Means Being Goth - A PHD On Dark Matter and Even Darker Energy

Goth
Dress, Body, Culture

Series Editor Joanne B. Eicher, Regents’ Professor, University of Minnesota
Books in this provocative series seek to articulate the connections between culture and
dress which is defined here in its broadest possible sense as any modification or
supplement to the body. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series highlights the dialogue
between identity and dress, cosmetics, coiffure, and body alterations as manifested in
practices as varied as plastic surgery, tattooing, and ritual scarification. The series aims,
in particular, to analyze the meaning of dress in relation to popular culture and gender
issues and will include works grounded in anthropology, sociology, history, art history,
literature, and folklore.
ISSN: 1360-466X
Previously published titles in the Series
Helen Bradley Foster, “New Raiments of Self”: African American Clothing in the
Antebellum South
Claudine Griggs, S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes
Michaele Thurgood Haynes, Dressing Up Debutantes: Pageantry and Glitz in Texas
Anne Brydon and Sandra Niesson, Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational
Body
Dani Cavallaro and Alexandra Warwick, Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and
the Body
Judith Perani and Norma H. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa
Linda B. Arthur, Religion, Dress and the Body
Paul Jobling, Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography
Fadwa El-Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance
Thomas S. Abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress: European Empires and
Exotic Uniforms
Linda Welters, Folk Dress in Europe and Anatolia: Beliefs about Protection and
Fertility
Kim K.P. Johnson and Sharron J. Lennon, Appearance and Power
Barbara Burman, The Culture of Sewing
Annette Lynch, Dress, Gender and Cultural Change
Antonia Young, Women Who Become Men
David Muggleton, Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style
Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the
Italian Fashion Industry
Brian J. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology: The Uniformity of Self-Presentation in Japan
Shaun Cole, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth
Century
Kate Ince, Orlan: Millennial Female
Nicola White and Ian Griffiths, The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image
Ali Guy, Eileen Green and Maura Banim, Through the Wardrobe: Women’s
Relationships with their Clothes
Linda B. Arthur, Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-
Cultural Perspective
William J.F. Keenan, Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part
Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, Body Dressing
Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset
DRESS, BODY, CULTURE
Goth
Identity, Style and Subculture
Paul Hodkinson
Oxford • New York

First published in 2002 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA
© Paul Hodkinson 2002
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hodkinson, Paul.
Goth : identity, style, and subculture / Paul Hodkinson.
p. cm. – (Dress, body, culture, ISSN 1360-466X)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-85973-600-9 (Cloth) – ISBN 1-85973-605-X (Paper)
1. Goth culture (Subculture) 2. Goth culture (Subculture) – Great
Britain. I. Title. II. Series.
HQ796 .H62 2002
306'.1–dc21
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1 85973 600 9 (Cloth)

1 85973 605 X (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants.

Printed in the United Kingdom by MPG Books, Cornwall.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 From Participant to Researcher 1
2 Reworking Subculture 9
3 Goth as a Subcultural Style 35
4 Insiders and Outsiders 65
5 Events, Friendships and Commitment 85
6 Selling Goth? The Producers of Subcultures 109
7 Buying Goth: Subcultural Shopping 131
8 Communicating Goth: ‘Traditional’ Media 153
9 Communicating Goth: On-line Media 175
10 Concluding Thoughts 195
Appendix: Quantitative Questionnaire Results 199
Bibliography 203
Index 215
List of Illustrations
3.1 (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright) 42
5.1 Getting gothed-up with friends.
(Photograph: P. Hodkinson) 93
5.2 Synthetic, playing live in Birmingham 1999.
(Photograph: S. L. Wainwright) 102
5.3 Goths gather outside the Elsinore during the Whitby
Gothic Weekend. (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright) 104
7.1 Inside Morgana’s specialist clothes store in Wakefield.
(Photograph P. Hodkinson) 144
7.2 Faithful Dawn/Dark Beat Records stall at the Whitby
Gothic Weekend Bizarre Bazaar.
8.1 Selected goth fanzines: Kaleidoscope issue 9, BRV Magazine
issue 22, Tomb Raver issue 25, Meltdown issue 7, Gothic
Times issues 2,4,5, Dawn Rising issues 11,12,13.
Publications reproduced with the kind permission of
Faithful Dawn and the editors of Kaleidoscope, BRV
Magazine, Tomb Raver, Gothic Times and Meltdown
[www.meltdownmagazine.com, PO Box 543,
Beaconsfield, HP9 1WL] (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright) 162
vii
List of Illustrations
8.2 Meltdown, peddled at the Whitby Gothic Weekend.

(Photograph: S. L. Wainwright)
Publication reproduced with the kind permission of the
editor of Meltdown. 164
8.3 Selected goth flyers. With thanks to their producers.
viii
Acknowledgements
I am indebted in various ways to all manner of individuals both within and
outside the two worlds crucial to the production of this book: academia and
the goth scene.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my PhD supervisor Peter Symon
for his knowledge, reliability, hard work and continual encouragement. Thanks
are also due to Ann Gray and Angela McRobbie for their in-depth and insight-
ful comments on my work and to the anonymous reader who reviewed my
original thesis for Berg, for producing an invaluable set of ideas and suggest-
ions on translating it to a book. For their interest and/or for providing valuable
debate and discussion of the issues at the centre of this book, I also wish to
mention by name Kathryn Earle, Andy Bennett, Mark Cieslik, Keith Harris,
Chris Mann, Steve Miles, David Muggleton and Hillary Pilkington. More
generally, I would like to thank, for support and advice, all the staff and post-
graduates with whom I have spent time in the Department of Cultural Studies
and Sociology, and the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the University
of Birmingham. I am also grateful for the interest in my research shown by
both staff and students in the School of Social Studies at University College
Northampton.
Most of all, I wish to thank all those who took part in the research which
led to this book, whether as interviewees, questionnaire respondents, photo-
graph subjects, or merely providers of conversation, discussion or advice.
In particular I am indebted to Jo Hampshire for her advice and help with
the Whitby Festival Questionnaire, and to Greg Crighton, David McCullie,
Nikki Brown and Leslie Morris for invaluable help, advice, company and
free accommodation during my fieldwork. I would also like to give special
mention to the subscribers of the Tainted mailing list, who have been an
immediate source of advice, information and ideas on numerous occasions.
I am indebted also to the continual support and advice of my parents, Phil
and Heather Hodkinson, and finally to Sarah Wainwright, not only for proof-
reading and full-time support, but for producing most of the photographic
illustrations throughout the book.
ix
From Participant to Researcher
1
From Participant
to Researcher
A Weekend by the Sea
A car pulls up outside my home in the English city of Birmingham on a

rainy Friday morning at the end of October 1998. The long black hair of its
occupants informs me that this is my lift. I run outside toward the car, using
my rucksack to shield my recently dyed and crimped purple and pink streaked
hair from the rain. The tall, slim, male driver, wearing eye-liner and dressed
up in tight black jeans and a purple velvet shirt, gets out and helps make
space for my luggage in the back of the car, among numerous other bags and
various pairs of large black boots. We get into the car, and I am greeted by
the three female passengers, and immediately recognize the familiar sound
of one of my favourite bands, The Mission, on the stereo. We are five goths
on our way to spend a weekend with over a thousand other goths in a small
North Yorkshire seaside town.
We have all received our tickets for the Whitby Gothic Weekend some months
earlier, having sent a cheque to the organizer – a goth enthusiast turned entre-
preneur – at the address specified in goth fanzines and web sites. We have
been enthusing about the event ever since, both among friends at smaller goth
events and, in my case, with a greater number of people on a national internet
discussion group. The prospect of seeing old friends, meeting new ones and
being in the presence of so many other goths from across the country creates
an intense sense of excitement in the car. While listening to a variety of goth
music, we eagerly discuss what to wear, how to do our hair, which of the
live bands at the event are worth seeing, who else is going, and whether it
will rain all weekend. We also engage in ‘goth-spotting’, a game which entails
looking out for cars full of fellow enthusiasts heading for the same destination.
We overtake and wave knowingly at two such groups during the journey, and
spot several others at a motorway service station. Although a certain shyness
seems to prohibit approaching and speaking to them, we communicate, with
the exchange of glances, a clear sense of our shared identity, an amusement
1
Goth
about the reactions of other travellers to our collective presence and a

knowingness about our common destination. Although the style is diverse
and somewhat malleable, goths rarely find it difficult to identify one another
through appearance, and the destination of goths at a northbound motorway
service station on this particular day is obvious.
A few hours later, as we drive into Whitby to find its streets full of goths,
there is a desire immediately to abandon the car and join in this temporary
occupation of a seaside town. Having checked into our bed and breakfast,
we walk to The Elsinore, a pub which, like an increasing number of other
businesses in the town, has recognized that their biannual goth visitors offer
a potentially substantial increase in takings. On walking round the corner
toward it, we are faced with a multitude of goths, lining the pavements and
most of the road outside the pub, which displays an enormous ‘Goths
Welcome’ banner on its wall. Although there are a variety of hairstyles, jewel-
lery, types of make-up, clothing and boots among the crowds they are all
relatively consistent with a distinctive range of tastes. Most obviously, the
blues, pinks, purples, reds and greens among the crowd are offset by an excess
of black. In addition, many males, as well as females, are wearing make-up
and ear, nose, lip or eyebrow piercings. As we join them in what has become
a ritual get-together, each of us gradually spots the familiar faces of other
goths from Birmingham, and of friends from other parts of Britain, whom we
had met at goth events in the past. As we mingle, throughout the weekend,
we will all share these friends with one another, and will each broaden our
base of goth contacts across the country. We shall also meet individuals who
have travelled from abroad to attend the festival.
Toward the evening, we return to our bed and breakfast in order to get
‘gothed up’, which entails making our appearance as impressive as possible
in relation to particular group tastes. Although ultimately geared toward
attending the main event of the evening, this process is itself an important
social event, involving the collective resolving of clothing dilemmas, mutual
practical help with the back-combing, crimping or plaiting of hair and zipping
up of the most awkward rubber or PVC tops or dresses, all accompanied by
goth music. Going out, observing others, engaging with specialist media,
visiting subcultural clothes retailers, and examining compact disc inlays for
several years, have provided each of us with an in-depth knowledge about
what clothes, hair and makeup are most likely to achieve the admiration of
other goths. As we finally enter the event there is a keenness both to admire
the appearances of friends and strangers from across the country, and to
demonstrate our ability to hold our own among such a large crowd. At the
same time as being a celebration of shared identity, this is something of a
competition with a distinct, if complex set of rules.
2
As well as mingling with other goths, the evening event involves the live
performance by bands from Britain, Scandinavia and the United States, which,
though virtually unheard of outside the goth scene, are well known in
countries across the world within it. In the absence of significant external
interest, a global network of specialist record labels and retailers, with the
help of mail-order, media and previous tours, have ensured that most of the
audience is familiar with these, at best, semi-professional bands. Meanwhile,
those not previously familiar, but impressed with the performances, are able
to purchase CDs, T-shirts and posters and often even to meet members of
the bands at the stalls run by each during the event.
As well as comprising the ultimate experience in taking part in the goth
scene, then, this festival enables us to enhance our specialist knowledge and
collections of artefacts for the future. Throughout the weekend, individuals
give out flyers advertising goth events across the country and forthcoming
CD releases. Others peddle goth fanzines containing national and inter-
national listings of events, interviews with goth bands, letters and specialist
advertising. Those who do so know they will nowhere find a larger captive
audience for their highly specialist products. The same is true for the specialist
retailers, from across Britain, who have booked stalls at the Bizarre Bazaar,
held during the second day of the event. While providing these retailers, who
are often motivated as much by enthusiasm as by money, with an important
boost in the quest to make ends meet, the Bazaar also provides festival-goers
with the ultimate chance to enhance our goth clothes, makeup and music
collections. Most of those I know at the festival have bought at least one
item of clothing by the end of the day, and are preparing to wear it in the
evening.
Two days on, my companions and I leave Whitby for another six months.
In spite of the air of disappointment that this particular event is over, there
is much to look forward to. Most of us have new fanzines to read, new CDs
to listen to and clothes to show off to friends who didn’t make the trip this
time. We also have numerous experiences to recount of the performances of
bands and of people’s appearances and behaviour. As well as being recounted
in local face-to-face situations, such personal ‘reviews’ of the weekend will
flood into goth internet discussion groups, alongside invitations to look at
photographs on freshly updated web sites. Finally, we have all enhanced the
extent of our friendships with goths across the country, which involve mutual
invitations to attend events in each other’s localities. As well as providing
the ultimate weekend of immediate fulfilment, then, the festival has provided
us with renewed enthusiasm for the goth scene and enhanced our means to
participate in the future.
3
Goth
Becoming a Critical Insider
‘Gothic’ has been used to describe various phenomena, from a historical tribe,
to architecture and fashions of the past, to forms of contemporary literature
and film. The Whitby Gothic Weekend, though, had its roots in a more
particular subcultural grouping, which emerged in Britain in the early 1980s.
Elements of punk, glam rock and new romantic, among other things, were
gradually fused into a distinctive style of music and fashion. The music associ-
ated with what became known as the goth scene was most often described
as ‘dark’, ‘macabre’ and ‘sinister’, and its associated styles of fashion most
obviously, though not exclusively, consisted of black hair and clothes and
distinctive styles of make-up for both genders. From the mid-1980s, the style
and its associated practices and identities enjoyed international popularity
for a few years, before surviving on a much smaller but equally widespread
scale from the mid-1990s onward. I had been an enthusiastic participant in
the goth scene since the beginning of that decade, but in 1996 my personal
involvement became just one part of an extensive research project.
My aim was to conduct in-depth and thorough qualitative research on the
goth scene in Britain for a number of years, in order to examine and account
for the cultural form taken by the group. In particular, the focus was on the
norms, meanings, motivations and social patterns of those involved, as well
as the voluntary and commercial events, media and consumables which
appeared to enable the goth scene to exist and survive on such a small scale.
In order to achieve maximum depth and quality of information and under-
standing, I adopted a multi-method ethnographic approach, which included
participant observation, in-depth interviews, media analysis and even a quest-
ionnaire. As Sara Cohen has pointed out, in the past rather too many studies
on popular-music-related groupings have based their conclusions only on
the textual analysis of styles or isolated interviews (Cohen 1993).
As important as the methodology I chose to adopt, in enhancing the process
of doing research and the quality of my findings, was my relatively unambig-
uous position as a long-term genuine participant of the goth scene. Of course,
it could be argued that the complexity and instability of contemporary
identities and groupings makes the idea that a researcher can occupy the
position of ‘insider’ a little hazardous (Song and Parker 1995: 243). Certainly,
the goth scene is liable to have been experienced in different ways by different
people and, by extension, such experiences and identities are liable to have
been in continual movement according to time and context, making my own
level of proximity or understanding unclear (Gillespie 1995: 67–73). It must
also be recognized, of course, that an important additional point of difference
was created, as soon as I adopted the role of social researcher.
4
It would be mistaken, though, to assume as a result of such complexities

that all researchers would somehow have been equally well positioned to study
goths. In spite of internal diversity, it will become clear throughout this book
that distinctive shared norms, activities and identities tended to dominate
the lifestyles of those involved, and the ways in which they viewed other
people. In particular, the visual distinctiveness of the grouping meant that
those who did not fit in were liable to be categorized as outsiders, regardless
of the actual complexities of their identity. In contrast, my appearance, social
patterns, consumer habits, subcultural knowledge and personal feelings of
identity positioned me fairly clearly within the goth scene.
Indeed, in some respects my insider status was actually enhanced, as the
project was built around an intensified attendance of clubs, gigs and festivals
across Britain, including a concentrated focus on the cities of Birmingham,
Plymouth and Leeds. Participation on internet discussion groups and other
goth internet facilities widened the scope of my research within Britain, and
was the main source of my more limited information and contacts outside
the country. Whether off- or on-line, the authenticity of my participation
greatly enhanced the process of acquiring contacts, interviewees and inform-
ation. As well as having a suitable appearance, the manner in which I behaved
in clubs – dancing, requesting songs from DJs and socializing – made meeting
people, arranging interviews, taking photographs and gaining advice far easier
than they might otherwise have been. After a while, I also learned to convey
this insider status to the distinctive environment of goth on-line discussion
groups (see Mann and Stewart 2000: 88–90; Hine 2000: 48). While appear-
ance was initially out of the equation in this context, my affiliation was
gradually revealed, through expressing informed opinions, advertising goth
nights at which I DJed, publishing photographs of myself on the web and,
eventually, meeting other members face to face.
As well as having practical value for gaining access to respondents, part-
icipation in the goth scene was key to understanding the experiences and
meanings of those involved (see Shutz 1964, 1970; Blumer 1969), and formed
the basis of a more distanced, critical form of observation and analysis. Both
of these were crucial to gaining a thorough picture, rather than being overly
reliant upon the accounts of interviewees (Foster 1996: 59). Subcultural
groupings such as the goth scene tend to be characterized by their own dom-
inant discourses, values and assumptions, whose accuracy should not be taken
for granted (Thornton 1995: 98). An argument by David Muggleton for a
relatively uncritical foregrounding of the words of subcultural participants,
then, may overrate the accuracy of their accounts (Muggleton 2000: 68). In
contrast, ethnography offers the opportunity for first-hand verification
(Gillespie 1995: 66).
5
Goth
Achieving maximum understanding of a grouping such as the goth scene,

then, requires direct experience (Denzin 1989: 25; Cohen 1993: 124). In this
respect, existing involvement made my participation, experiences and motiv-
ations more comparable to those of other goths than would have been the
case had I been an outsider seeking temporarily to immerse myself for research
purposes. Subjective experience and meanings, though, required critical
interpretation in terms of research aims and theory, and were complemented
by more distanced forms of observation and analysis. This required that I
become a critical insider, continually taking mental steps back so as to observe,
compare, contrast and question as well as to experience.
Direct experiences and observations functioned to complement and verify,
but certainly not to eclipse the perceptions and meanings expressed to me by
a total of seventy-two individuals in fifty-six separate open-ended interviews.
As well as general participants, they included numerous DJs, event promoters,
fanzine editors, bands, record label proprietors and specialist retailers. With
the exceptions of four which were administered by post and five by e-mail,
the interviews were conducted face to face. Being perceived as an insider
was advantageous here too. As well as putting interviewees at ease to express
themselves openly, my ability to recount genuine experiences and enthusiasms
acted as an additional stimulus which was sometimes more effective than
direct questioning (see Denzin 1989: 43). However, the open, flowing convers-
ation which usually characterized face-to-face interviews was harder to
achieve over e-mail, valuable though the medium was in enhancing the
geographical breadth of my sample. In addition to the problems with convey-
ing and gaining advantage from insider status, ‘breaking the ice’ was rather
difficult on e-mail – arguably you might as well try to create rapport in the
introduction to a postal questionnaire! Also, the length of time between each
contribution and the difficulty of conveying meaningful tones or gestures
meant that exchanges were often disjointed.
The final key method I employed, to which my insider status was rather
less important, was a one-off self-completion questionnaire administered at
the Whitby Gothic Weekend in October 1997. While for the most part my
emphasis has been on in-depth, quality information, it was important to
obtain some idea of typicality by gaining multi-choice answers and short
additional comments from a wider range of goths. Importantly, the question-
naire sample of 112 was not large enough to allow generalizing confidently,
and was not necessarily representative of the goth scene as a whole. Question-
naire data is, for the most part, treated as secondary relative to the other
methods in the study. Nevertheless, it provided a number of useful quantitative
estimates and some extremely valuable open-ended comments from goths,
both of which are referred to from time to time throughout the book.
6
Outlining the Elements of a Subculture
The brief synopsis of a trip to the Whitby Gothic Weekend in the first section
of this introductory chapter touches upon all the main elements of the British
goth scene of the late 1990s. It gives a flavour of the strong sense of shared
identity held between goths from across and beyond Britain, their relatively
consistent adherence to an identifiable range of shared tastes, and their level
of practical involvement in the goth scene through friendships, event attendance,
consumption practices and even internet use. It also indicates the importance
of specialist internal events, media and commercial operations to facilitating
the goth scene from within – emphasizing the relative autonomy of the
grouping. Such features are taken, by this book, to imply a level of cultural
substance, which might distinguish the goth scene, as a subculture, from more
fleeting, ephemeral amalgams of young people, music and style. The chapters
that follow seek to conceptualize, explore and account for the level of sub-
stance of the goth scene in Britain, during the mid- to late 1990s.
Chapter 2 seeks to establish a revised conception of subculture in relation
to a variety of popular cultural theories, including traditional subcultural
theory, mass cultural theory, postmodern theories, notions of fluid collect-
ivities and ethnographies of localized popular culture. In particular the chapter
seeks to establish, contrary to the implications of many of these approaches,
that media and commerce are wholly compatible with distinct, substantive
groupings, as is the geographical dispersal of participants. Chapter 3 begins
the analysis of extensive research data by exploring the relatively consistent
stylistic values and tastes of the goth scene, and the ways in which they made
its participants distinctive. Moving from external observation to subjective
meanings, Chapter 4 links the distinct values of the goth scene to the sense
of shared identity shared by subcultural members, and an equally strong
feeling of collective distinction from perceived outsiders. Chapter 5 goes into
greater detail on the themes of both its predecessors at the same time as
beginning to analyse the infrastructure of the goth scene. Commitment and
friendships are particularly focused upon, in the context of goth events, which
are deemed the primary arena for everyday subcultural participation and as
a crucial means of encouraging and facilitating future involvement.
In Chapters 6 and 7, the focus on infrastructure is developed in relation to
the role of commerce in the goth scene. Chapter 6 focuses on the cultural
producers responsible for the existence and availability of the consumables,
media and events so crucial to the substantive form taken by the goth scene.
In particular it distinguishes between the external commercially motivated
producers and an internal DIY network of often culturally motivated part-
icipants. Meanwhile, Chapter 7 explores the selection and use of consumables
7
Goth
for the participation of goths in their subculture and for the development of
their version of its distinctive style. In the ensuing two chapters, I focus on
the critical role of media in the facilitation and construction of the goth scene.
Chapter 8 deals with the significance of ‘traditional media’, from tabloid
moral panics to fanzines and flyers, as crucial forms of influence, knowledge
and information to goths. This theme is developed further in Chapter 9, in
relation to the increasingly important means of subcultural communication
provided by the internet. Over these two chapters, it is emphasized that,
during the late 1990s, small-scale specialist media – whether off-line or on-
line – had become particularly significant in the translocal construction and
facilitation of the goth scene. Finally, Chapter 10 provides a conclusion which,
among other things, summarizes the main findings relating to the goth scene
and re-emphasizes their wider theoretical significance.
8
Reworking Subculture
2
As indicated toward the end of the last chapter, this book seeks to concept-
ualize the goth scene using a reworked and updated notion of subculture.
While avoiding some of the term’s previous implications, it will be used,
essentially, to capture the relatively substantive, clearly bounded form taken
by certain elective cultural groupings. This will be contrasted with an
increasing tendency of late for theorists to emphasize that the saturation of
society by media and commerce has led to the breakdown of collective
boundaries. The following pages seek to justify and, eventually, to detail the
proposed redefinition of subculture, in relation to the famous schools of theory
with which the term is often associated and a variety of other key perspectives
on popular culture and society. In different ways these contemporary theories
all risk misrepresenting or excluding the substantive cultural features of group-
ings such as the goth scene. In particular, the chapter will identify and seek
to counter a tendency, across the theoretical spectrum, to assume that such
substance can only exist in the absence of media and commerce.
Traditional Subcultural Theory
The beginnings of subcultural theory involved various theorists associated

with what became known as the Chicago School (see Whyte 1943; Gordon
1947; A. Cohen 1955; Becker 1963; Irwin 1970). Though the emphasis of
the theorists varies, the school is most famous for a conception of subcultures
as deviant groups, whose emergence had to do with ‘the interaction of people’s
perceptions of themselves with others’ view of them’ (Gelder and Thornton
1997: 11). This is, perhaps, best summarized in Albert Cohen’s theoretical
introduction to a study of ‘Delinquent Boys’ (1955). For Cohen, subcultures
consisted of individuals collectively resolving societal status problems by
developing new values which rendered status-worthy the characteristics they
shared:
One solution [to status problems] is for individuals who share such problems to
gravitate towards one another and jointly to establish new norms, new criteria of
9
Goth
status which define as meritorious the characteristics they do possess, the kinds of
conduct of which they are capable. (1955: 65–6)
Acquisition of status within the subculture entailed being labelled and, hence,
excluded from the rest of society, something the group would respond to
through its own hostility to outsiders, to the extent that non-conformity with
dominant norms often became virtuous. As the subculture became more sub-
stantive, distinctive and independent, members would become increasingly
dependent on each other for social contact and validation of their beliefs
and way of life.
The themes of labelling and subcultural dislike of ‘normal’ society are also
emphasized in Howard Becker’s work which, among other things, is notable
for its emphasis on the boundaries drawn by jazz musicians between them-
selves and their values as ‘hip’ and their audience as ‘squares’ (Becker 1963:
79–100). The notion of increasing polarization between subculture and the
rest of society, as a result of outside labelling, is developed further in relation
to drug-takers in Britain by Jock Young (1971) and in relation to media
moral panics surrounding mods and rockers by Stan Cohen. For Cohen, the
generalized negative images of subcultures in the mass media both reinforced
dominant values and constructed the future form of such groupings (S. Cohen
1972: 166).
The work associated with Birmingham University’s Centre for Contemp-
orary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was most responsible for the association of
subculture with groupings based around spectacular styles (teds, mods, punks,
skins, motorbike boys and so on). Rather than individual problems of status,
The Birmingham School, from a neo-Marxist perspective, regarded sub-
cultures as a reflection of the position of mainly working-class young people
in relation to the particular societal conditions of 1960s and 1970s Britain
(P. Cohen 1972; J. Clarke et al. 1977; Hebdige 1977, 1979; Willis 1978).
Spectacular youth subcultures, it is argued, functioned to resolve the contra-
dictory societal position of working-class young people between the traditional
values of a working-class ‘parent culture’ and a modern hegemonic culture
of mass consumption dominated by media and commerce (J. Clarke et al.
1977: 16; P. Cohen 1972: 23).
Essentially, by forming subcultures characterized by argot and ritual, young
people retained aspects of working-class culture, while their embrace of
hedonistic consumption and emphasis on taste and style reflected their
position within dominant capitalist society. Crucially though, their consump-
tion, unlike that of the general public, was deemed to be characterized by
active selection and appropriation – assigning to everyday objects new sub-
versive meanings in their subcultural context (Hebdige 1979). Semiological
10
interpretation of the overall styles and the subcultural norms with which
they were deemed to be homologically aligned (see Willis 1978), suggested
that, as a whole, they functioned ‘magically’ to resolve contradictions and
symbolically to subvert the dominant meanings of consumer culture (P. Cohen
1972; Hebdige 1979). Hebdige sums up this perspective in relation to mods:
Thus the scooter, a formerly ultra-respectable means of transport was appropriated

and converted into a weapon and a symbol of solidarity. Thus pills, medically
diagnosed for the treatment of neurosis, were appropriated and used as an end-in-
themselves . . . The style they created, therefore, constituted a parody of the con-
sumer society in which they were situated. The mod dealt his blows by inverting
and distorting the images (of neatness, short hair) so cherished by his employers
and parents . . . The mod triumphed with symbolic victories . . . (Hebdige 1977:
93)
Consistent with materialist perceptions of the futility of resistance on a

cultural level, however, the dominant forces of mass media and commerce,
in Hebdige’s account, eventually would incorporate subcultural styles, strip
them of any subversive meanings and sell them back to the general public
(1979: 96).
There are numerous well-recounted criticisms of the Chicago School and,
particularly, the Birmingham School approaches, of which I shall recount
those that are most significant to this book. First, through their theoretical
emphasis on the solving of status problems in one case, and on symbolic
structural resistance in the other, both traditions present an overly simplistic
opposition between subculture and dominant culture. There is a relative
neglect of features such as internal diversity, external overlaps, individual
movement between subcultures, the instability of the groups themselves and
the large numbers of relatively uncommitted ‘hangers-on’ (G. Clarke 1981:
82–3). While Albert Cohen assumes that subcultures solved the same status
problems for all members, Birmingham theorists presuppose the existence of
singular, subversive meanings of subcultural styles which, ultimately, reflected
the shared class position of participants.
Furthermore, there is a tendency to imply, without detail or evidence, that
subcultures somehow originated through large numbers of disparate indiv-
iduals all simultaneously and spontaneously reacting in the same way to
ascribed social conditions. Albert Cohen (1955) indicates vaguely that a
process of ‘mutual gravitation’ of disaffected individuals (ibid.: 70) and their
‘effective interaction with one another’ led to the creation of subcultures
(ibid.: 59). Meanwhile, the Birmingham School’s neo-Marxist view of sub-
cultures as spontaneous responses to structural contradictions (e.g. P. Cohen
1972; J. Clarke et al. 1977) precludes any kind of agency, choice or diversity
11
Goth
on the part of subculturalists and, more importantly, underestimates the

positive role of factors such as media and commerce in the construction of
such groupings (Thornton 1995: 119). The structuralist assumption of
subcultural authenticity reflects not just Marxist theoretical preoccupations,
as David Muggleton (2000: 14) would have it, but also an uncritical accept-
ance of the more exaggerated claims to authenticity of subcultural participants
themselves (Thornton 1995: 119). Meanwhile, even Stan Cohen (1972), who
usefully details the role of negative mass-media coverage in the shaping of
already existing formations, provides rather less in the way of documentation
of their initial emergence.
The tendency to locate both media and commerce in an oppositional
relationship to subcultures is a particularly problematic element of most sub-
cultural theory (Thornton 1995: 116; McRobbie 1989: 36, 1994: 161). Their
role is restricted, in Jock Young and Stan Cohen’s accounts, to the inadvertent
labelling and strengthening of existing subcultures. Meanwhile, for Hebdige,
everyday consumables merely provide raw materials for creative subcultural
subversion. The notion of incorporation suggests that media and commerce
only become self-consciously involved in the marketing of subcultural styles
after they have been established for a time, and Hebdige emphasizes that
this involvement effectively spells the demise of subcultures (Hebdige 1979:
96). In contrast, Thornton suggests that subcultures are liable to involve a
variety of both positive and negative forms of direct media involvement right
from their beginnings:
subcultures do not germinate from a seed and grow by force of their own energy
into mysterious movements, only to be belatedly digested by the media. Rather,
media, and other cultural industries are there and effective right from the start.
(Thornton 1995: 117)
Similarly Angela McRobbie indicates a neglect of the role of small-scale

moneymaking – sometimes by subcultural participants themselves – in the
development and survival of subcultures:
The point at which subcultures offered a career through the magical change of the
commodity have warranted as little attention as the network of small-scale entre-
preneurial activities which financed the counter culture. (McRobbie 1989: 36)
While many of these criticisms of subcultural theory reflect genuine flaws,

there is also a sense, in contemporary writing on the subject, that significant
changes in popular culture since the 1960s and 1970s have rendered the theory
increasingly irrelevant. Most notably, theoretical accounts of the increased
saturation of all corners of society by media and commerce usually imply
12
that subculture, with its implications of substance, authenticity, distinctiveness

and meaning, has become out-of-date. Thus, Dick Hebdige himself has sug-
gested that:
Theoretical models are as tied to their own times as the human bodies that produce
them. The idea of subculture-as-negation grew up alongside punk, remained
inextricably linked to it, and died when it died. (Hebdige 1988: 8)
We shall now look in turn at the two theoretical approaches which most
emphasize the media- and commerce-induced erosion of cultural boundaries
and, hence, most reject the notion of subculture and, indeed, substantive
communities in general. With more in common with one another than may
first appear, these take the form of mass cultural and postmodern approaches
to popular culture.
Mass Culture and Pseudo-individuation
Theories of mass culture, whose most famous proponents, perhaps, are the
Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School (e.g. Adorno 1941; Adorno and Horkheimer
1944; Marcuse 1964), suggest that large-scale concentrated culture industries
marketing standardized popular cultural products have created a passive,
uncreative and essentially homogenous ‘mass culture’. Thus, in the first half
of the twentieth century, popular films, novels or pieces of music were deemed
by Theador Adorno to be replacing thought-provoking, meaningful, critical
and complex forms of art with standardized commercial formulas designed
to maximize sales by appealing to individuals’ baser senses (Adorno 1941).
The predictability and rigidity of such forms, it was argued, encouraged
passive consumption, homogeneity and escapism rather than intellectual
fulfilment or diversity. There is little room in such notions of mass culture,
whether from the Frankfurt School or from theorists from different traditions
(e.g. MacDonald 1957), for the kind of substantive or meaningful deviations
or appropriations implied by subcultural theory. Such apparent instances of
creativity or originality would surely have been regarded by Adorno not as
symbolic resistance, but as a form of pseudo- or sensuous individuation – an
ideological mask for the, in fact, superficial and standardized form of every
facet of popular culture:
The sensuous individuation of the work, to which mass culture must continue to
lay claim precisely if it is to be able to perform its complementary function profitably
in a standardized society, contradicts the abstractness and self-sameness to which
the world has shrunk (Adorno 1944: 57).
13
Goth
In the late twentieth century, notions of mass culture resurfaced in the

form of theories of homogenization on a global scale. The focus is on hyper-
concentrated culture industries, in the form of a handful of transnational
corporations, expanding massively into new markets across the globe. This
situation, it is suggested, has resulted in an intensification and expansion to
global proportions of the cultural standardization described by Adorno,
Marcuse and others (Peet 1982, 1989; Schiller 1985, 1991, 1992). It is argued
that the one-way flow of Western commercialized cultural products through-
out the world, most obviously in the form of pop stars, TV shows, films and
fast-food outlets, has had a direct cultural effect on their audiences (Dorfman
and Mattelart 1991). As a consequence, distinctive, independent peripheral
cultures are being swamped and destroyed by a passive, escapist, shallow
and ideological mass-consumer culture, characterized by:
standardised, programmed ways of thinking with little room for regional variation.
Global capitalism evolves as a single way of life gradually incorporating into its
social relations, ways of producing and styles of consumption, the majority of the
world’s population (Peet 1989: 193).
Wallis and Malm (1984: 299–303, 1992: 214) have produced a somewhat
more sophisticated theorization of this situation. They outline a complex set
of interactions between global and local popular-music technologies and styles
in the ongoing production of an international ‘transculture’, composed of
the most universally accessible elements appropriated from music styles
throughout the world. In a circular process, the ever-developing transculture
interacts again and again with local cultures, creating a new set of hybrids
each time which, in turn, feed back into it. While the process is more complex,
the eventual result is surely the same as for Peet and Schiller: the transculture
gradually becomes more universal, shallow and meaningless than the original
local cultures, which gradually lose more and more of their distinctiveness.
Consistent with this notion of multi-directional cultural flows leading to
homogenization, Dirlik argues that the ‘guerrilla marketing tactics’ of world
capitalism, in the form of media and commercial forces, function to appro-
priate, standardize and mass-market elements of locally specific cultures
(Dirlik 1996: 32). Miyoshi describes such behaviour by transnationals as
colonialism, asserting that the return to authentic, distinctive cultures ‘is a
closed route’ (Miyoshi 1996: 95).
Although, in the case of the theories immediately above, the emphasis is
on place rather than on rootless groupings based around style, their view of
media and commerce, like that of the Frankfurt School, is clearly at odds with
notions of deviant, subversive or merely substantive consumer subcultures.
14
The implication from Adorno is that there can be no meaningful or substant-

ive styles of music or art except those entirely detached from the workings
of the culture industries. Meanwhile, for Dirlik and others, any semblance
of difference or substantive community that surfaces is liable immediately to
lose its depth, authenticity and meaning as part of a process of appropriation,
standardization and mass-marketing. Interestingly, while Dick Hebdige is
optimistic about the substance and subversiveness of subcultures during their
initial moments of spontaneity, his description of the appropriation of such
styles at a later point shares Dirlik’s view that media and marketing function
essentially to water down and render insignificant (Hebdige 1979: 96).
The notion that the concentration and expansion of the culture industries
entails an all-inclusive process of massification can be criticized from various
angles. First, it tends to assume an inevitable influence on culture, largely on
the basis of an assessment of commercial motives and a critique of the content
of particular cultural forms (Tomlinson 1991: 38). Even Hebdige falls into
this trap, contrasting the active creativity and imagination of a small number
of innovative subculturalists with an apparently passive, manipulated societal
majority or ‘mainstream’, including those who adopted subcultural styles
after the moment of incorporation. One consequence of this is a wholesale
neglect of the significance of the cultural practices of young women, many
of whom, according to McRobbie, were confined to indoor activities and,
hence, reliant upon the fashionable products of ‘teenybopper’ culture
(McRobbie and Garber 1977; McRobbie 1980: 29). The ‘on the streets’ focus
of subcultural theory meant that such girls were effectively dismissed as part
of the generalized cultural mainstream. Seeking to move beyond such unsub-
stantiated assumptions about the passivity of the majority, McRobbie and
others have taken notions of active consumption beyond spectacular sub-
cultures, illustrating the self-empowerment of various individuals and groups,
through distinct creative use of mass media and commercial products (e.g.
McRobbie and Garber 1977; McRobbie 1989, 1994; Willis 1990). In a similar
vein, but this time in direct response to notions of global homogenization,
audience research relating to some of the most criticized media products (e.g.
Ang 1985; Liebes and Katz 1993) has revealed complex, active processes of
negotiation rather than an inevitable replacement of authentic local culture
with global mass culture. Therefore, while CCCS claims of subcultural resist-
ance may have been exaggerated, the implication of total passivity implied
in notions of mass culture seems equally problematic.
Mass-culture theorists also share with the Birmingham School an assumption
that commerce and media inevitably lead to the production of standardized,
superficial cultural products (Strinati 1995: 40). The almost total dismissal
of differences between products and consumers, using notions such as
15
Goth
pseudo-individuation, appropriation and incorporation, underestimates the

cultural significance of the commercial targeting of specialist markets (Curtin
1996). It will become clear in this book that, as well as broadly defined
audience groupings based around age, class, marital status or general social
outlook (Chaney, 1996: 25–42; Curtin, 1996), such marketing can include
small-scale, highly specialist and substantive segments. Furthermore, the
reduction of media and commerce to mass media and commerce, as a result
of the greater market share of the latter, neglects the independence and
creativity involved in smaller-scale, more specialized entrepreneurial and
communicative practices (see Atton 2002). One particularly unfortunate effect
of this, on which I shall elaborate later, is that notions of local, spontaneous,
face-to-face culture become regarded as the only alternative to a mediated,
homogenous, commercial mass (Strinati 1995: 43). The reality and potential
for relatively distinct, or independent translocal cultural groupings, to whom
small-scale specialist media and commerce are integral, seem seldom con-
sidered. The importance of such small-scale ‘DIY’ commerce, particularly in
relation to youth cultures, has been usefully emphasized by McRobbie (1989:
25, 1999: 10), and will be an important theme later in the book in relation
to the goth scene.
From Sameness to ‘Similarity of Difference’
Interestingly, the exaggerated implication, in theories of mass homogenization,

that media and commerce function to erode the kind of substantive sub-
cultural groupings in which we are interested is also the conclusion of an at-
first-glance contrasting set of theories, associated with the notion of post-
modernism. Like theorists of mass culture, postmodernists have tended to
emphasize that, as part of a change of emphasis in the economy from manu-
factured goods to commercial services, more and more aspects of culture are
becoming inseparable from communications technologies and commercial
processes of production and consumption (Harvey 1989; Lash and Urry
1987). However, rather than focusing on organized mass-marketing of stand-
ardized products by transnationals, they outline an increasingly rapid and
disorganized proliferation of products and images around the globe as a result
of a ceaseless search by competing flexible businesses for something different
to sell, in a saturated market (Harvey 1989: 287–9; Lash and Urry 1987).
As part of a process labelled ‘the end of organized capitalism’, this expansion
and speed-up of production and consumption processes has, it is argued, led
to continually accelerating cycles of consumer fashion (Lash and Urry 1987).
Rather than standardization, Jameson suggests, commerce is embracing
16
innovation and experimentation in an intense drive to produce ‘ever more

novel-seeming goods . . . at ever greater rates of turnover’ (Jameson 1991:
4). The speed and intensity of the production and distribution of ‘images’ in
the form of objects and media content, according to Jean Baudrillard (1983,
1988), is such that none of them is any longer attached to any real or concrete
meaning. Rather, the depthless, infinitely adaptable commodities begin to
interact, mix with and refer to one another: ‘It is no longer a question of
imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of
substituting signs of the real for the real itself’ (Baudrillard 1988: 167).
Aspects of what Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreality’ have been illustrated by a
number of theorists with relation to examples of commercial popular culture
(Jameson 1982, 1991; Chambers 1985, 1988; Hebdige 1988). For example,
Chambers (1985, 1988) draws attention to the tendency of emerging genres
of popular music to mix together existing styles and, in the process, to strip
them of any previous cultural contexts so that they represent only ‘their own
transitory practice’ (Chambers 1985: 199). Meanwhile, Hebdige (1988: 212),
moving away from his earlier subcultural interpretations, describes the
‘raiding and pasting together of rhythms, images and sounds from multiple
sources’. Importantly, he also indicates a consequent mixing together of the
consumers of such sounds:
It no longer appears adequate to confine the appeal of these forms . . . to the ghetto
of discrete, numerically small subcultures. For they permeate and help to organise
a much broader, less bounded territory whose cultures, subjectivities, identities
impinge upon each other. (ibid.)
The cultural implications of saturation by simulacra, then, are that consumers

become free from coherent, distinctive or meaningful cultural ties. They
choose from and mix diverse and fleeting points of identification from the
immense range of images on offer. The coherent individual subject, as a result,
is deemed to have fragmented into multiple, disparate points of identity
(Jameson 1991: 15). Traditional points of collective identification, such as
class, gender, race and indeed place, are gradually replaced by elective, build-
your-own, consumer identities (Muggleton 1997: 189). The popular cultural
sphere cannot be conceived in terms of subcultures opposed to the mainstream
or, indeed, to one another. There is no place for ‘us and them’, minority versus
majority or even minority versus minority in a mixed up, all-encompassing
culture of the postmodern:
modernity was an era of clearly differentiated, yet internally homogenous,

collectivities. Postmodernity, however, appears to entail the inverse of this process:
17
Goth
internal fragmentation has reached such proportions that the boundaries between
established cultural collectivities appear to be breaking down . . . (Muggleton 1997:
191).
Some theorists have taken up such notions of multiple identities, the break-
down of distinct social categories and confusion between reality and simulation,
in relation to the specific context of the internet (Turkle 1995; Poster 1995).
The blurring of distinctions of real/virtual, human/machine and self/other,
as well as the ability to occupy endless different ephemeral positions of identity
simultaneously and to access any site at the touch of a button in a potentially
anonymous world are often emphasized. Explored a little further in Chapter
9, this notion of the replacement of collective identities, meanings and
distinctions by an ever-changing plurality of virtual selves is consistent with
that in postmodern approaches to popular culture in general – summed up
enthusiastically by Polhemous: ‘While fashion celebrated change and sub-
cultural style celebrated group identity, the inhabitants of Styleworld celebrate
the truth of falsehood, the authenticity of simulation, the meaningfulness of
gibberish’ (Polhemus 1997: 149–50).
There is surely some value in postmodern theory’s recognition of the
disorganized character of the proliferation of products and images in late
capitalism, and in its emphasis on the increasing ties between social identities
and an ever-changing array of diverse and hybrid consumables. It follows
from this that some identities are liable to become fragmented and malle-
able, and that certain cultural boundaries, including those related to style,
may become less clear and permanent. However, it would be mistaken to
generalize such useful observations into a universal theory by suggesting that
all cultural boundaries are, or will soon be, entirely eroded, or that group
belonging, collective identity and cultural meaning are becoming irrelevant.
As Hetherington has argued, we should avoid ‘trying to get social theory
to work holistically and represent the world as a single, simple picture’
(Hetherington 1998a: 9).
It should be remembered, then, that the more exaggerated descriptions of
proliferation of difference tend, too often, to be backed up by references to
the textual content of those popular cultural forms or hypothetical situations
which best fit the theoretical picture (Goodwin 1991: 181; Featherstone 1991:
5). The problem is not only one of generalization, but also a lack of empirical
data about the everyday meanings, identifications and collectivities which
revolve around the use of such products (S. Cohen 1993: 127). This applies
as much to postmodern interpretations of the internet as it does to those
who focus on off-line examples. Turkle’s fascinating account, for example,
is much more interested in the play of identities involved in the on-line transfer
18
of texts in multi-user domains than in the many aspects of cyberspace more

consistent with existing identities, or, indeed, the location of most net-use
within the context of predominantly off-line lives (Kendall 1999).
Like theories of mass culture, then, postmodern approaches tend to rely
heavily on theoretical presuppositions and selected textual analysis. And this
is not the only similarity between the two. Although the one laments the
manipulative power of big business and the other seems more prone to
celebrate the endless choice of fluid postmodern consumers, they both describe
a de-differentiation of society as a result of saturation by media and com-
merce. While Peet and Schiller theorize the homogenization of culture through
the mass-marketing of standardized products, Baudrillard and Jameson
predict the blurring of boundaries as a result of the disconnection of an
increasing range of cultural forms from substantive meanings. The post-
modern ‘similarity of difference’ referred to by Muggleton (1997: 192) and
the homogenous mass-consumer culture described by theorists of cultural
imperialism are not so far opposed as it may first appear. Most importantly
from the point of view of this book, both theories regard media and com-
mercial saturation as incompatible with substantive or distinctive cultural
groupings and, hence, are liable either to exclude or to misrepresent the
relative stability and boundedness of groupings such as the goth scene.
Fluid Collectivities
A number of recent contributions to the study of lifestyles have sought to

blend elements of postmodern theory with a focus on identifiable affinity
groups of one kind or another. While rather more realistic and, in some cases,
more empirically grounded than some of the more generalized postmodern
proclamations, acknowledgements of distinctiveness and shared identity tend,
in most examples of such work, still to be somewhat overshadowed by an
emphasis upon fluidity and ephemerality. More specifically, the desire to put
some distance between themselves and traditional subcultural theory has been
partially responsible for the coining of a rather confusing plethora of new
terms to replace subculture, some of which we shall examine here.
The most popular ‘replacement’ for subculture appears currently to be the
notion of neo-tribe, as theorized by Maffesoli (1996) and Bauman (1992a,
1992b). Maffesoli emphasizes that consumer neo-tribes comprise the expres-
sion of group identity through rituals and, sometimes, a sense of distinction
from other groups. While rejecting their conceptualization as directly
oppositional, he outlines the energy and commitment of members, and the
neo-tribes’ importance as a source of emotional attachment and identity
19
Goth
within a wider sociality (Maffesoli 1996: 96). Furthermore, neo-tribal member-

ship, for Maffesoli, constitutes the retention by individuals of a degree of control
and independence from forces of normalization such as the mass media, the
fashion industry and fast-food outlets (ibid. 1996: 41). This ‘reappropriation
of one’s existence’ or ‘explosion of life’ (ibid.: 51) is deemed part of a general
trend toward the replacement of individualism with a re-emergence of sociality
and, specifically, puissance – an underground people power based on a sensual
‘will to live’ (ibid.: 31–55). At the same time, however, Maffesoli is at pains
to emphasize the crucial relationship of neo-tribes with elective consumption
practices. As a result of their consequent lack of structural anchorage, bound-
aries are deemed fluid and the consequent ease with which one can opt in
or out makes attachment to the groupings highly ephemeral and partial: ‘It
is less a question of belonging to a gang, a family or a community, than of
switching from one group to another’ (ibid.: 76).
The ultimate fluidity and, indeed, superficiality of neo-tribes is emphasized
even more strongly in Zygmunt Bauman’s account, which replaces Maffesoli’s
emphasis on sociality with an individualistic interpretation. Instead of com-
prising a revival of the communal or the social, neo-tribes reflect a desperate
and ill-fated search for lost community, which results only in greater fragment-
ation (Bauman 1992a, 1992b). The ease of joining and leaving neo-tribes
encourages consumers continually to find new solutions to their personal
‘problems of survival’ by negotiating ongoing privatized routes through a
postmodern world of choices:
The tribe-forming and dismantling sociality is not a symptom of declining

individuality but a most powerful factor in its perpetuation. Neo-tribes are fickle,
ephemeral and elusive products of life under conditions of privatised survival
(Bauman 1992b: 25).
Writing more recently, Bennett (1999, 2000) specifically advocates the

replacement of the term subculture with that of neo-tribe in order to reflect
the dynamic pluralistic relationship between contemporary young consumers
and popular culture. Drawing on fieldwork carried out on dance cultures,
he argues that music consumption has more to do with continually developing
and changing individual repertoires of taste than with conformity to rigid
subcultural genres (1999: 610). As well as failing to capture the complexity
of such individual patterns of taste and identity, subculture was deemed in
the late 1990s, to have become a vague and hence unhelpful ‘catch-all’
descriptor (Bennett 1999: 603).
A somewhat similar set of themes predominates in the work of those who
prefer to use the general term lifestyle rather than to focus on particular
20
subcultural groupings (e.g. Jenkins 1983; Chaney 1996). Richard Jenkins

(1983) used this term as a descriptor for the activities and affiliations of
early 1980s working-class youth in Belfast. Explicitly rejecting the term
‘subculture’ because of its implications of a simplistic opposition to a
dominant culture and its inability to account for overlaps between groupings
of young people, he proposed that ‘lifestyle’ allows for both differences and
commonalities and recognition of change as well as stability (ibid.: 41–2).
More recently, David Chaney has compiled a comprehensive rationale behind
the use of lifestyles to describe the variety of ‘patterns of action that differ-
entiate people’ (Chaney 1996: 5). In an approach perhaps reminiscent of
Maffesoli’s, for Chaney lifestyles involve the relation between consumption
and ‘communities within which a competent use of commodities is taken to
be a display of membership’ (ibid.: 45). Chaney focuses particularly on the
importance of shared sensibilities, which imply ‘a distinctive form of cultural
affiliation’ and provide profane elements to individual lives (ibid.: 129). At
the same time, however, he seeks to embrace postmodern interpretations of
commercial saturation, emphasizing the ultimate instabilities and overlaps
which characterize all such groupings:
The social groups identified or collected by their lifestyles are not distinct and
stable entities. It is rather than the need for a vocabulary of lifestyles indicates a
process of change towards the prevalence of more fluid and ambiguous structures
of social identification. (ibid.: 94)
Rob Shields (1992a, 1992b) entertains the notion of lifestyles and, indeed,
that of neo-tribes, in relation to the commercial colonization of culture. He
emphasizes that such groupings retain certain characteristics associated with
subculture, notably shared symbols, value systems, tastes and subjectivities.
However, the sheer range of objects, images and identities presented by the
media and the shopping mall are deemed to result in the development, by
individuals, of a plurality of self-presentations or masks (Shields 1992a: 14–
17, 1992b: 107). Rather than placing all their eggs in one basket and adopting
a consistent affiliation with a particular subculture, then, consumers negotiate
their way between a series of sometimes contradictory performances.
Kevin Hetherington (1992, 1998a, 1998b) adopts what seems a slightly
more substantive notion of social groupings which, while similar to elements
of Maffesoli’s theorizing, prompts the use of yet another different term. Bunde
is an intermediate category between forms of community based on tradition
(Gemeinschaft) and those based on instrumental rational action (Gesellschaft)
(Tonnies 1955). It refers to elective and often short-lived forms of collective
identity motivated by a desire for an affective sense of belonging. Hetherington
21
Goth
applies the term to various contemporary groupings, including new age

travellers and various ‘new social movements’, involvement in which is often
deemed to reflect individual desire for emotional security as much as external
political motives (Hetherington 1998a: 99, 146). While this account appears
to allow greater scope for group substance than some of the other explan-
ations described here, Hetherington is at pains to emphasize that the basis
of bunde in the affective and expressive makes them ‘heterogenous, multiple
and diverse assemblages of practice’ characterized by inconsistencies,
instabilities and mutations (ibid.: 158–9).
Another important contribution to cultural theory which adopts a position
somewhere between Baudrillard’s visions of meaningless consumer chaos and
traditional subcultural theory, is Willis’s account of ‘common culture’ (Willis
1990). Replacing his earlier emphasis on particular fixed subcultural
groupings of youth (1978) with a focus on ‘everyday cultures’, he too acknow-
ledges the centrality of consumption to the practices and identities of young
people. As a result, ‘organic communications’, based on physical proximity,
are breaking down, replaced by superficial community walls which ‘zigzag
wildly around the urban mass’ (Willis 1990: 141). At the same time, Willis
rejects theories of postmodernism and of mass manipulation, insisting that
young people produce their own collective meanings through selective,
creative use of the range of cultural goods on offer. ‘Organic communities’
then, are replaced by proto-communities, which involve shared consumer
interests or tastes, but are deemed more akin to an unstable and disorganized
‘spaced out queue of people’ than an intense ‘talking circle’ (ibid.).
In the sphere of popular-music studies, developing academic conceptions
of the term scene – a word commonly used by music fans themselves – have
been developed in order to describe loosely knit categories based around
particular music genres. Harris, who focuses upon the plethora of semi-
autonomous local and translocal scenes surrounding the umbrella genre of
extreme metal, defends the word ‘scene’ by emphasizing that, beyond an
implication that music is inseparable from social processes, it is infinitely
malleable and universal: ‘The implication is that scenes include everything,
from tight-knit local music communities to isolated musicians and occasional
fans, since all contribute to and feed off a larger space(s) of musical practice’
(Harris 2000: 25). It is also emphasized that scenes are fluid and hence shift
toward and away from one another, and that individuals continually negotiate
pathways within and between them (ibid.). Harris’s writing draws upon an
earlier discussion by Straw (1991) who also emphasized the term’s potential
flexibility, arguing that it usefully described the diverse yet partially unified
amalgam of genres, styles and practices (including goth, it should be noted)
which coexisted for a number of years in the late 1980s under the umbrella
term ‘alternative rock’.
22
David Muggleton, cited earlier in full support of postmodern theory, has

subsequently produced a more in-depth and cautious approach to the subject,
based on interview research (Muggleton 2000). Rather than suggesting, as
he had done previously, that subcultures were a phenomenon of the past, he
proposes that they still exist, but in somewhat postmodern form. Although
the terminology is different, the implied notion of postmodern subculture
appears to involve a mixture of substance and fluidity similar to those of
many other theorists covered in this section. Thus the commitment of sub-
cultural participants and the strength of their sense of distinction from
outsiders are cited as characteristics which quell ‘excessive postmodernist
claims’. Nevertheless, Muggleton concludes with a ‘qualified acknowledge-
ment of a postmodern sensibility’ as a result of what he deems the hybridity,
diversity and fluidity of subcultures. As he puts it:
Subculturalists are postmodern in that they demonstrate a fragmented, heterogenous

and individualistic stylistic identification. This is a liminal sensibility that manifests
itself as an expression of freedom from structure, control and restraint, ensuring
that stasis is rejected in favour of movement and fluidity. (Muggleton 2000: 158)
It is not readily apparent what to make of this remarkable plethora of

concepts and explanations. Most of the accounts described come across as
more realistic and useful than either over-generalized postmodernist proclam-
ations of loss of meaning or neo-Frankfurt-School notions of massification.
They offer more productive alternatives to traditional subcultural theory and,
as will become clear, present various observations applicable to the case of
the goth scene. For a number of reasons, however, I have opted not to utilize
any of the suggested replacements for subculture. Most obviously, the exces-
sive number of different proposals as to how we conceptualize elective
groupings creates a problem in itself. This is especially the case since, apart
from a common avoidance of traditional subcultural theory, few of the theorists
clearly explain how their preferred term differs from the other proposals in
the offing. For example, the apparent compatibility of Hetherington’s
compelling account of affective affinity groupings with much of Maffesoli’s
account of the sociality of neo-tribes makes it a little unclear why he was
not content to adapt the same term. Meanwhile Shields refers to lifestyles,
tribes, bunde and even subcultures fairly interchangeably and without any
clear differentiation or explanation over the course of his own otherwise
thought-provoking and useful contributions to Lifestyle Shopping (Shields,
1992a, 1992b). The imprecise way in which subculture has sometimes been
used is certainly a cause for concern, but the current enthusiasm for coining
more and more alternatives seems liable only to further complicate things.
23
Goth
More importantly, perhaps, a number of the individual explanations,

because of the range of substantive and fluid groupings they seek to include
under a single term, are themselves unclear. The term ‘scene’ is openly lauded
by Harris (2000: 25) for its catch-all qualities, but the attempt to allow for
the fixities and fluidities of virtually any music-related practices or affiliations,
surely risks limiting the term’s theoretical value. Similarly, Chaney, while
insisting, on the one hand, that shared sensibilities ‘will be why lifestyles
matter’ and that they imply ‘a distinctive form of cultural affiliation’ (1996:
129), at the same time wants to reject the notion of groupings as ‘distinct
and stable entities’ (ibid.: 94). The recognition, here, of elements of both
stability and instability in popular culture as a whole is a valuable one, and I
would have little hesitation in advocating the use of lifestyle as an umbrella
term, applicable to patterns of popular cultural practices and identities in
general. However, there is also a need for terminology of greater precision in
order to reflect the contrasting levels of substance or fluidity which charac-
terize different lifestyles and lifestyle groupings.
At the same time as attempting to provide the breadth of definition to
encompass elements of substance, commitment and meaning, however, most
of the explanations described leave us in little doubt that the most important
feature of the affiliations and groupings described is their partiality and instab-
ility. While such ultimate emphasis on fluidity may be justified in some cases,
overgeneralization will result in exclusion or misrepresentation of those
individuals or groupings which do not fit the picture. To his credit, Hetherington
specifically avoids the pitfall of overgeneralizing his explanation, emphasizing
that: ‘It is important that we do not try and find one term or one concept to
understand this set of phenomena, but retain some sense of multiplicity of
terms and concepts’ (Hetherington 1998: 3). Although excessive multiplicity
of terms creates confusion, especially where they are not clearly differentiated,
it would seem to make sense to replace attempts to apply single concepts
across the board with the use of a limited number of clearly defined terms
which are narrower in scope. In particular, this would enable us to different-
iate those groupings which are predominantly ephemeral from those which
entail far greater levels of commitment, continuity, distinctiveness or, to put
it in general terms, substance. It will become clear throughout this book that
the goth scene belonged fairly clearly in the latter category.
Local or Translocal?
In contrast to much of the theory described in the previous two sections,

cultural substance of the kind in which we are interested has been emphasized
24
fairly consistently by ethnographies of popular cultural practices and identities

focused on particular towns or cities. An empirical focus on the relationship
between local physical proximity and relatively stable, committed and auton-
omous lifestyles has provided a challenge to some of the more exaggerated
claims of theories of global mass culture and postmodern fluidity. Indeed,
even for Andy Bennett, the otherwise fluid cultural expressions of young
music fans are given certain roots by their local setting:
If, however, such neo-tribal forms of musicalised expression represent highly fluid
and transient modes of collective identity, at the same time they are not so fluid
and transient as to cancel out any form of meaningful interaction with the local
environments from which they emerge. (Bennett 2000: 84)
Consistent with Bennett’s emphasis on locality are a series of ethnographic

studies of local music-related practices and identities which emerged in the
late twentieth century, most notably perhaps those by Ruth Finnegan (1989)
and Sara Cohen (1991, 1993, 1994) on the English cities Milton Keynes and
Liverpool, and Barry Shank (1994) on Austin, Texas. While different in their
precise emphasis, all draw attention to the geographical and economic history
of the cities concerned – implying a relationship between that history and
the substantive nature of local musical culture (Finnegan 1989: 22–7; Cohen
1991: 9–19; Shank 1994: 7–8). Furthermore, Cohen and Shank specifically
establish a continuity between the internal musical history of their respective
cities and local styles and practices of the present. Cohen (1991, 1994), for
example, suggests that aspects of Liverpool’s musical past, such as The Beatles
and The Cavern Club, were key to a strong sense of local identity held by
musicians and fans, many of whom perceived and sought to reproduce a
distinctive ‘Liverpool Sound’ (Cohen 1994). For his part, Shank (1994)
suggests that some of the styles and attitudes associated with traditional local
sounds such as Rhythm and Blues and Honky Tonk were traceable as clear
local inflections upon certain contemporary national genres. In addition to
this historical focus, local cultural substance is implied in the general
impression, throughout all three texts in question, of a somewhat self-
generated, coherent and substantive music culture of the present, comprised
of infrastructural elements rooted within the locality. In other words, the
emphasis is very much upon local bands performing to local fans in local
pubs, and upon their practising, recording and associating with other local
bands in local studios, and advertising their gigs or tapes in local record and
music shops or local newspapers.
At times, such small-scale, relatively autonomous, rooted and committed
forms of music culture are explicitly contrasted with exaggerated notions of
25
Goth
saturation by placeless, timeless and meaningless commercial images.

Finnegan attacks Adornian versions of commercial mass music culture,
contrasting them with the ‘local, grassroots bands’ and ‘face to face’ audiences
she describes (Finnegan 1989: 121–2). Meanwhile, Cohen contrasts what
she argues are strong attachments of Liverpool’s musicians and fans to
distinctive forms of local culture with theories claiming to document the
irrelevance of place to a postmodern world (Cohen 1994: 133). Through
their in-depth, localized and ethnographically informed approaches, then,
such studies provide clear evidence of popular-music-related lifestyles which
contrast markedly with theoretical visions of superficiality, fluidity and mean-
inglessness. However, the emphasis on regional history, localized infrastructure
and face-to-face interactions as primary facilitators for such substance may
underemphasize those aspects of the popular-music industry which do not
revolve around anywhere in particular.
In particular, there is rather a shortage of attention to non-place-specific
influences on the local cultures described, notably in the form of media and
commerce. Indeed, Sarah Thornton has likened Finnegan and Cohen’s neglect
of the media to that of Birmingham School subcultural theory: ‘They depict
internally generated culture, disclose local creativity and give positive
valuation to the culture of the people, but only at the cost of removing the
media from their pictures of the cultural process’ (Thornton 1995: 120). While
the media are not, in fact, entirely ‘removed’, there does seem insufficient
room in the detailed accounts of local pubs, recording studios and even
independent music stores for an in-depth focus on the impact of national or
international radio, press or television on local music practices and identities.
Similarly, the interaction of musicians and audiences with mass-produced
recorded music from around the world seems, particularly for Finnegan and
Cohen, a peripheral concern. More specifically, in relation to this book’s
concerns, the extent of the focus on localized culture results in an under-
emphasis on small, substantive music-related groupings, such as this book’s
case study, the goth scene, which – partly by virtue of their links with media
and commerce – operate translocally (Kruse 1993: 38).
At the same time as offering an effective rebuke to mass cultural and post-
modern theories, then, this localized approach largely shares the dichotomy
they both present between global media and commerce – deemed to degrade
substantive cultural groupings – and localized face-to-face interactions –
which are implied to be their only truly effective means of fruition. What is
often unrecognized across most perspectives in the great local/global debate
is that, as Hannerz (1996: 98) has put it: ‘What is personal, primary, and small-
scale, is not necessarily narrowly confined in space, and what spans continents
need not be large scale in any other way’ (Hannerz 1996: 98). We should
26
also add, here, that ‘what is personal, primary and small-scale’ is also not
necessarily unmediated or independent of the process of buying and selling.
In fairness, just as media and commerce come into the equation at times,
there is the occasional hint, among the generally localized emphasis of Cohen,
Shank and Finnegan, about translocal genres or groupings. Notably, Shank
(1994: 91–117) draws attention to the national and global connections
relating to punk, and Finnegan (1989: 61, 93) focuses now and again on the
national networks of Milton Keynes’s country and western and folk music
worlds. While such references are useful, a greater emphasis on the translocal
has been recognized elsewhere. Jon Stratton’s categorization of subcultures
such as surfies and bikers as ‘commercial subcultures’ emphasizes that an
implication with consumer culture and corporate marketing strategies can
make distinctive coherent sets of cultural values highly transferable between
capitalist countries (Stratton 1985: 184). More recently, Keith Harris’s work
on extreme metal has involved a fascinating focus on the global distribution
of such specialist music and fashion and the transnational institutions and
forms of identity which accompany them (Harris 2000). Similarly, Marion
Leonard (1998) has described the transnational, but highly participatory
micro-media network of physical and electronic fanzines which make up the
Riot Grrrl movement, emphasizing that ‘whilst the zines may reach people
in other countries, their content and scale of production give the impression
of conversing with a small group of friends’ (Leonard 1998: 108).
While Leonard opts to conceptualize Riot Grrrl as a somewhat disorganized
and rhizomic network, a slightly more coherent and substantive form of
translocal identity appears to be implied by Mark Slobin, who coins the term
‘affinity interculture’ to describe the tendency for certain forms of music to
“call out” to geographically dispersed audiences (Slobin 1993: 68). Slobin
goes into disappointingly little detail as to the characteristics or makeup of
such groupings, but the kind of translocal shared identity he alludes to is
illustrated by an observation from Simon Reynolds: ‘A noise band in
Manchester can have more in common with a peer group in Austin, Texas
than one of its “neighbours” two blocks away’ (Reynolds 1990, cited in
Kruse 1993: 34). This comment is used by Holly Kruse to illustrate the way
in which ‘alternative’ music scenes across the United States and Britain are
connected with one another through shared tastes and through networks of
communication and commerce (Kruse 1993: 34). Her recognition that – even
in the relatively loose genre of ‘alternative’ music – local identities and
traditions interact with relatively coherent translocal frames of reference
resonates somewhat with the way in which I seek to characterize the even
greater levels of translocal consistency, distinctiveness and shared identity
which were evident in the case of the goth scene.
27
Goth
A later-1990s body of work on ‘computer-mediated community’ has also

provided useful material on translocal forms of affiliation. In contrast to the
more postmodernist approaches described earlier, emphasis is placed on the
role of the internet in facilitating substantive communities based around
discussion groups. Such studies have frequently noted that, in spite of being
geographically dispersed and reliant upon electronic media, participants tend
to share common interests, hold feelings of commitment and identity towards
one another and collectively defend their electronic boundaries (Baym 1995,
1997; Watson 1997; McLaughlin et al. 1997; Fernback 1999). Wellman and
Gulia sum up the potential of the technology for the creation of the most
widespread yet small-scale of communities by pointing out, in relation to
Marshall McLuhan’s famous slogan, that although the world is not a global
village, ‘one’s “village” could span the globe’ (Wellman and Gulia 1999: 169).
While it will be shown that, for the goth scene, internet discussion groups
were only one part of a predominantly off-line ‘community’, this body of
work is useful in its recognition of the potential role of the internet as medium
for the facilitation of non-locally-specific forms of collective identity.
Consistent with elements of the material covered in recent pages, this book
is at pains to emphasize the translocal form taken by the goth scene and, by
inference, comparable groupings. Geographically separated goths shared both
a translocal sense of identity and a relatively consistent and distinctive set of
tastes and values. It will also become clear, consistent with Kruse, that both
of these ‘abstract’ characteristics were enabled by concrete translocal con-
nections in the form of media, commerce, and travel (Kruse 1993). Crucially,
then, the argument is not merely that certain elements of styles such as goth
find their way to a variety of geographically disparate countries, towns and
cities – though this may well be the case. Rather, the suggestion is of the
translocal and, potentially, transnational existence of such lifestyles as
relatively interconnected wholes. While greater depth of research would be
required in order to ascertain levels of similarity and connection from country
to country, it is clear that the British goth scene took the form of a unified
translocal amalgam of distinctive style, identity, values and practices, complete
with an associated infrastructure. Contrary to postmodernist emphasis on
the fluidity of consumer culture, then, the intention here is to theorize and
illustrate a notion of translocal cultural groupings of substance.
Four Indicators of (Sub)Cultural Substance
Importantly, conceptualizing such cultural substance does not entail a return

to the traditional forms of subcultural theory on which the chapter started.
28
Contrary to the implications of Chicago and Birmingham versions of

subculture, participation in the goth scene did not appear to entail the same
‘problem-solving’ function for all members and neither did it signify any
specific or all-important subversion of consumer culture. The style encap-
sulated significant elements of diversity and dynamism, its boundaries were
not absolute, and levels of commitment varied from one individual to another.
Furthermore, rather than owing itself entirely to the automatic gravitation
or spontaneous creative practices of participants, the goth scene’s initial
construction and subsequent survival rested upon external and internal
networks of information and organization, often in the form of media and
commerce. But in spite of overlaps and complexities, the initial temptation
to describe goths using a term such as neo-tribe or lifestyle was gradually
tempered by the realization that such a move would have over-inflated the
diversity and instability of their grouping. Crucially, fluidity and substance
are not matters of binary opposition, but of degree. In this particular case,
the observation that the goth scene involved elements of movement, overlap
and change does not somehow obfuscate the remarkable levels of commit-
ment, identity, distinctiveness and autonomy which were evident.
Rather than attempting to capture such elements of cultural substance by
means of yet another new term, I have opted to do so via the development
of what I regard as a more relevant, workable and up-to-date conception of
subculture. The term is a familiar one and the revision seeks, largely, to remove
overly problematic elements of the theories with which it has been associated
and clarify a number of further connotations, rather than to redefine fund-
amentally. Essentially, the task is to combine useful general aspects of the
Birmingham and Chicago School approaches, with a more flexible approach
to contemporary identities and recognition of the roles of media and commerce
in the construction of popular cultural groupings. The scope of the term is
broadened through severing its automatic link with resistance, problem-
solving, class conflict or spontaneity. At the same time, however, the reworking
proposes limits to its use by replacing these specific criteria with the general
defining theme of cultural substance.
This theme has been broken down into the four indicative criteria of
identity, commitment, consistent distinctiveness and autonomy. Rather than
these four comprising a definitive blueprint, each of them should be regarded
as a contributory feature which, taken cumulatively with the others, increases
the appropriateness of the term subculture, in the relative degree to which
each is applicable. The combination of this degree of malleability with a set
of specific criteria should maximize the potential for meaningful use of the
concept at the same time as recognizing the greater relevance of alternative
terminology – in the form of Maffesoli’s notion of neo-tribe perhaps – to
29
Goth
describe more fleeting or superficial forms of affiliation. What follows is an

introduction to each indicator, briefly illustrated by references to the detailed
exploration of the goth scene which is to come.
Consistent Distinctiveness
In spite of their potential problems, it would be an over-generalization to

seek the absolute removal of notions of symbolic resistance, homology and
the collective resolving of structural contradictions from the analysis of
popular culture. However, none of these features should be regarded as an
essential defining characteristic of the term subculture. For the most part,
the functions, meanings and symbols of subcultural involvement are liable
to vary between participants and to reflect complex processes of cultural
choice and coincidence rather than an automatic shared reaction to circum-
stances. However, this does not mean that there is no distinctiveness or
consistency to the styles and values of contemporary groupings, or that, where
present, such features are not socially significant. While accepting the inevit-
ability of a degree of internal difference and change over time, then, the first
indicator of subcultural substance comprises the existence of a set of shared
tastes and values which is distinctive from those of other groups and reason-
ably consistent, from one participant to the next, one place to the next and
one year to the next.
In spite of internal diversity, then, it will become clear in the following
chapter that the goth scene was characterized by a relatively clear set of
ideals and tastes. Even in its least spectacular manifestations, the visual style
of goths tended to enable them to identify one another with ease and to
result in reactions ranging from captivation to ridicule and even alarm from
outsiders. It will also be shown that the relative consistency of the goth style
was enforced by means of equally consistent systems of subcultural rewards
and penalties. Namely, gaining acceptance, popularity and status was often
dependent upon making oneself sufficiently compatible with the distinctive
tastes of the subculture. It is important that such clear evidence of relative
consistency and distinctiveness is not obscured by an overemphasis on
diversity and dynamism.
Identity
Widdicombe and Wooffitt (1995: 22–8) and Muggleton (2000: 11) have rightly
emphasized that Birmingham School subcultural theory tended to take insuf-
ficient account of the views of young people themselves. The second indicator
of subcultural substance seeks to redress this problem by focusing on the extent
to which participants hold a perception that they are involved in a distinct
30
cultural grouping and share feelings of identity with one another. Leaving
aside the importance of evaluating consistent distinctiveness from a distance,
a clear and sustained subjective sense of group identity, in itself, begins to
establish a grouping as substantive rather than ephemeral. In the case of the
goth scene, while the precise importance of subcultural identity relative to
other aspects of life differed between them, we shall see that a sense of like-
mindedness with other goths – regardless of their geographical location – was
often regarded by participants as the single most important part of their identity.
As important as a sense of affiliation with perceived insiders, here, are
feelings of distinction from those regarded as outsiders, an emphasis clearly
present in some of the subcultural theory from Birmingham and, particularly,
Chicago, as well as the more recent work of Thornton (1995). While the
notion of subjective identity and distinction is also present in the explanations
of many who seek to move beyond the term subculture (e.g. Chaney 1996;
Hetherington 1998a; Maffesoli 1996) the partial, ephemeral character of
the affinities they seek to infer contrasts somewhat with the rather more
one-dimensional sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in which we are interested.
Commitment
It is also proposed that subcultures are liable to influence extensively the

everyday lives of participants in practice, and that, more often than not, this
concentrated involvement will last years rather than months. Depending upon
the nature of the group in question, subcultures are liable to account for a
considerable proportion of free time, friendship patterns, shopping routes,
collections of commodities, going-out habits and even internet use. Turning
again to our case study, it will become clear that, even for those goths who
were reluctant to explicitly locate themselves as members, the subculture
often dominated their lifestyle in practice. Consistent with the operation of
social pressures relating to tastes and norms, such intense levels of partic-
ipation among goths can also be explained, in part, by the potential benefits
of displays of commitment to one’s personal standing. In contrast, those who
flirted around the goth scene’s boundaries tended to receive fewer social
rewards. A tendency for concentrated and continuous practical involvement
among participants, then, may also distinguish subcultures from more fleeting,
partial forms of affiliation, in which the energies of participants are shared
more equally across a variety of groups.
Autonomy
We have already emphasized the perspective of McRobbie, Thornton and

others that notions of subculture as spontaneous and authentic unjustifiably
31
Goth
exclude media and commerce from their analysis (McRobbie 1989, 1999;
Thornton 1995). Throughout the chapter I have consistently raised questions
over a number of perspectives which assume that media and commerce act
as catalysts for the breakdown of substantive groupings. In contrast, my
reworked notion of subculture regards both these crucial elements of contem-
porary Western societies as critical to the construction and facilitation of
subcultures. Thus, behind the identities, practices and values of the goth scene
lay a complex infrastructure of events, consumer goods and communications,
all of which were thoroughly implicated in media and commerce.
In spite of the consequent implication that we should avoid notions of
escaping or subverting ‘the system’, though, it would be mistaken to assume
all groupings are equally lacking in autonomy. Rather, there is a need to
distinguish between different scales and types of media and commerce and,
hence, different kinds of grouping. Independent, enthusiasm-driven specialist
record labels are entirely different from transnational conglomerates, and
widely read niche-style magazines ought not to be pigeonholed alongside
home-made fanzines with a three-figure readership. In the same way, small-
scale specialist events promoted and DJed by subcultural enthusiasts should
not be bracketed with those which are professionally promoted for a more
socially diverse clientele. It should also be recognized that the implication of
a grouping with certain profit-making activities does not somehow remove
the significance of any voluntary activities which also contribute to its survival
and development.
The final indicator of subculture, then, is that the grouping concerned,
while inevitably connected to the society and politico-economic system of
which it is a part, retains a relatively high level of autonomy. Most notably,
a good proportion of the productive or organizational activities which
underpin it are liable to be undertaken by and for enthusiasts. Furthermore,
in some cases, profit-making operations will run alongside extensive semi-
commercial and voluntary activities, indicating particularly high levels of
grass-roots insider participation in cultural production. Therefore, while the
exchange of money for goods and services and the use of media technologies
had always been integral to participation in the goth scene, we shall see that
in Britain in the late 1990s, the record labels, bands, DJs, promoters and
producers of fanzines and websites involved were often subcultural partici-
pants providing exclusive services for their fellow enthusiasts and, frequently,
making little or no money from doing so.
Clearly, an assessment of the extent to which groupings operate auton-
omously requires a means to distinguish between the scales and levels of
independence of different productive activities. Useful as a starting point here
is Sarah Thornton’s identification of the role of three different types of medium
32
– micro, niche and mass – in the construction of late-1980s club cultures in

Britain. Thornton’s focus, though, is more on the general size and scale of
media rather than on their level of independence or specialism, and in any
case there is a sense in which her distinctions get a little overshadowed by
her central assertion that, in one form or another, media construct subcultures.
In contrast, our specific interest here is in distinguishing between internal or
subcultural forms of media and commerce – which operate mostly within
the networks of a particular grouping – and external or non-subcultural
products and services, produced by larger-scale commercial interests for a
broader consumer base. Such categories are inevitably imperfect: there will
always be a considerable grey area between the two and a diversity within
each. However, the distinction enables an assessment of extent to which
groupings operate autonomously, and the degree to which they are facilitated
and constructed from within. Most elements of the British goth scene during
my research period did fall reasonably clearly into one category or the other.
While non-subcultural products and producers were heavily implicated,
specialist subcultural events, consumables and media were playing an
unusually significant role in the generation of the grouping.
Conclusion
Subcultures, then, can be seen as distinguishable from more fluid elective

collectivities by their level of substance, something indicated by the relative
satisfaction by a given grouping of the criteria outlined. It remains important
to recognize that even the most substantive of subcultures will retain elements
of diversity, that some individuals will adopt elements of their values without
any particular commitment, and that even the most committed participants
are not somehow isolated from other interests or priorities. At the same time
as emphasizing these elements of fluidity, though, this book seeks – by focusing
in relative terms on levels of identity, commitment, coherence and autonomy
– to infer that subcultures are more notable for their substance than for their
ephemerality. The chapters which follow illustrate the ways in which the
late-1990s British goth scene fitted the criteria outlined and seek to provide
explanations for its levels of translocal substance.
33
Goth as a Subcultural Style
3
The reworking outlined in the previous chapter suggests that, in most cases,
groupings for which the term subculture is appropriate should involve a set
of tastes and norms which has a significant degree of distinctiveness and
internal consistency. In contrast, a more diverse, fluctuating array of values
or behaviours might indicate a more fluid, transitory amalgamation, for
whom neo-tribe or one of the other ‘alternative’ terms outlined might prove
more suitable. In the case of the goth scene, shared tastes and norms man-
ifested themselves primarily in the arena of style. In Chapter 4 it will be
suggested that, in spite of its importance, the identification of an ‘objectively’
distinctive and consistent style does not necessarily carry as much overall
weight as an indicator of subcultural substance as do the subjective per-
ceptions of identity or practical commitment of participants. However, in
order to give the non-familiar reader a clear sense of the characteristics of
the goth scene, it makes sense to deal with issues of style at the outset. While
the main focus of this book is the British goth scene during the late 1990s,
we will begin with a brief descriptive history of the subculture, focused
particularly upon the looks and sounds of the bands who did so much to set
the tone for the distinctive subcultural tastes adopted and developed by fans
in the years which followed.
The Emergence of a Style
Prior to and during the first half of the 1980s, certain mostly British-based
sounds and images of the immediate post-punk climate became crystallized
into an identifiable movement. While various factors were involved, some
of which will be discussed at greater length elsewhere, there is little doubt
that music and its performers were most directly responsible for the emergence
of the stylistic characteristics of goth. The androgynous glamour and deep-
voiced vocals of 1970s David Bowie provided an important precursor to
goth, as did the sombre, depressing angst of Joy Division toward the 1980s.1
More directly, though, the ‘darker’ direction in which Siouxsie and the
Banshees began to take some of the themes of punk around the turn of the
35
Goth
decade provided both a general mood and particular sounds and images from
which others would draw for the following two decades and beyond. Most
notable, perhaps, were the sinister jangling guitars and wailing sombre lyrics
which characterized albums such as Ju Ju (1981), and even more so, vocalist
Siouxsie Sioux’s appearance, which had shifted from its early focus on
reappropriation of Nazi imagery and the like to a somewhat less politically
provocative ‘darker’ theme, characterized most obviously by black back-
combed hair and distinctively styled heavy dark make-up accentuating the
eyes, cheekbones and lips. This look would be imitated, in part or in full, by
female and sometimes male goths for the following two decades. The most
important starting point of goth, however, was probably provided by the
images and sounds of Bauhaus – notably the single, ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’,
released in 1979 (Thompson and Greene, Alternative Press 1994). The
performance of this song, and indeed much of the band’s set, contained most
of the distinctive themes which still pervade the goth scene, from macabre
funereal musical tone and tempo, to lyrical references to the undead, to deep-
voiced eerie vocals, to a dark twisted form of androgyny in the appearance
of the band and most of its following.
In the period following these early signs, a cluster of emerging bands, many
of whom played gigs alongside one another from time to time, found
themselves placed by the music press into a scene temporarily labelled post-
or sometimes positive-punk and, eventually, goth (Scathe 2000). In addition
to the continual relatively high-profile presence of Siouxsie and the Banshees
and their acquaintances The Cure, the most important acts included Bauhaus,
Southern Death Cult (later known as Death Cult and finally as The Cult),
Play Dead, The Birthday Party, Alien Sex Fiend, U.K. Decay, Sex Gang
Children, Virgin Prunes and Specimen. From 1982, the last of these were
heavily involved in a London-based nightclub known as The Batcave, which
ended up acting as an initial melting pot for many of the bands and fans
associated with the fledgling style. Most notable, perhaps, was the further
development and establishment among performers and their following of
variants of the dark femininity pioneered by Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the
Banshees. A particularly important and lasting addition to the style was
Specimen’s use of ripped fishnet and other see-through fabrics, in the form
of tops as well as tights. The club also acted as a magnet for the music press,
keen in the wake of punk to find, report and, ultimately, construct any possible
successors. It would appear that the term ‘goth’ was mentioned in passing
by a number of those involved, including Tony Wilson, producer of Joy
Division and members of both Southern Death Cult and U.K. Decay
(Thompson and Greene, Alternative Press 1994; Scathe 2000). However, there
is little doubt that it was publicized and made to stick as a label for the new
36
scene by music journalists, perhaps most notably David Dorrell of the New
Musical Express (Scathe 2000).
As the music and style spread across and beyond Britain via the music
press, radio and occasional television performances, record distribution and
live tours, more and more nightclubs accommodated the numerous teenagers
adopting the sounds and styles of what was soon to become widely known
as the goth scene. Toward the mid-1980s a Leeds band called The Sisters of
Mercy, who had come together in 1981, began to emerge as the most high-
profile and, indeed, influential band associated with goth. Consistently catchy
jangly guitar riffs, powerful base lines and deep-voiced vocals, together with
the crispness of beat provided by an electronic drum machine, contributed
to a sound consistent with but somewhat more accessible than that of many
of the earlier positive-punk bands. While their visual image was stylistically
less extreme and innovative than that of the likes of Specimen or Alien Sex
Fiend, it had the effect of solidifying many of the themes of goth in its heyday
– notably the dark hair, pointed boots, tight black jeans and shades often
worn by members of the band. The clarity and effectiveness of image and
sound, together with the enthusiasm of the music press for a band which
seemed so perfectly placed to pick up the goth mantle, led quickly to indie
chart success and a contract with WEA in 1984. From the mid-1980s to the
early 1990s, this more accessible yet highly distinctive form of goth, termed
‘gothic rock’ in two influential books by journalist Mick Mercer (1988, 1991),
acted as a clear central focus for the greater and greater numbers of teenagers
adopting the style, buying the now widely available music, attending relevant
nightclubs and sharing an associated sense of distinctiveness and identity.
Radio, press and television coverage graced not only the Sisters of Mercy,
but the band’s acrimonious offshoot The Mission, as well as Fields of the
Nephilim, All About Eve and The Cult. An equally high profile was afforded
to continual new material from the veritable veterans, Siouxsie and the
Banshees and The Cure.
By the mid-1990s, however, the goth style had seemingly used up its time
in the media and commercial spotlight and all but disappeared from public
view. The intense attachment of many participants to the style of the goth
scene, though, ensured its small-scale survival. From across and beyond Britain
there emerged a new generation of bands who were reliant upon small-scale
specialist labels, media and clubs, and who were motivated more by their
own enthusiasm than by any realistic hope of breaking into public view or
making significant money. A combination of these ever-emerging new bands
and the enduring appeal of the music and images of 1980s goth ensured that
while its details would diversify and change, the central themes survived
relatively intact. It is with the consistency and distinctiveness of the goth
37
Goth
scene during my research in the late 1990s, that the remainder of this chapter
will concern itself.
Individuality or Conformity?
In Chapter 2, we explored the argument proposed by numerous theorists

that distinctive, identifiable cultural groupings have fallen by the wayside as
part of the increasing tendency for boundaries to crumble in the midst of a
postmodern proliferation of diversity. The pastiche and cross-fertilization of
previously distinct styles is a central feature of such theory. The implication
is that, rather than being clearly organized into a limited number of mutually
distinct predictable patterns, different types of clothing, make-up, sounds
and accessories float freely, available for appropriation into any number of
different individualized concoctions (Polhemous 1997, Muggleton 1997). As
a result, individuals are no longer constrained – in their appearance, their
music or any other tastes – by any particular cultural affiliation. Instead, it
is argued that we each continually develop our own unique pick ’n’ mix of
artefacts from a veritable supermarket of style, where everything is available
to anyone in combination with anything else. Acceptance of the validity of
this theoretical position clearly suggests abandonment of the notion of
distinctiveness which this chapter seeks to develop, and invites a denial of
any predictable connection between the different elements of an individual’s
appearance or music tastes. As Muggleton has put it, ‘“appearance perception”
becomes a hazardous undertaking, an ever-increasing number of interpret-
ations being possible’ (1997: 192).
An acceptance of this notion of the breakdown of clear distinct styles
pervades the reasoning of some of those who seek to replace the notion of
subculture with terms such as neo-tribe, scene and lifestyle. While acknow-
ledging some kind of stylistic organization to the range of floating artefacts,
such descriptors seek to move away from the fixed, consistent and clearly
bounded sets of looks and sounds implied by traditional subcultural theory.
Bennett, for example, argues that music tastes tend to have as much to do
with individualized processes of selection and meaning as with the collective
normative systems:
Sifting through various types of music, artists and sounds, consumers character-
istically choose songs and instrumental pieces which appeal to them with the effect
that the stylistic boundaries existing between the latter become rather less important
than the meaning which the chosen body of music as a whole assumes for the
listener. (Bennett 1999: 610)
38
Muggleton has also argued that style and taste are essentially individualized,
playing down the importance of distinct collective styles on the basis of the
testimonies of participants themselves. Even in those cases where his interview
respondents cautiously accepted an involvement with a particular genre or
grouping, he reports a strong perception that their tastes and those of fellow
participants were individual and distinctive to themselves rather than deter-
mined by group norms (Muggleton 2000: 55–80). This is consistent with
the observation of Sarah Thornton (1995: 99) that participants of early 1990s
British club culture tended to play up the heterogeneity of the ‘crowd’ with
which they associated themselves. On the basis of such apparent evidence of
internal diversity, Muggleton concludes that contemporary subcultures are
essentially liminal and, as such, ‘characterised as much by ambiguity and
diversity as by coherence and definition’ (Muggleton 2000: 75).
Many of my own open-ended interview respondents were also keen to
emphasize their individuality rather than talking about their conformity to a
clear and consistent set of group-specific symbols, as in the case of the
following respondent from Plymouth:
G1 (male): You can do what you want and you can get away with it, and not
actually give a shit what anyone thinks of you.2
This finding was replicated in some responses to the questionnaire I conducted

at the Whitby Gothic Weekend.
WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what the goth scene is all about.
43 (male): Having the absolute freedom to dress as you want and to express
yourself as you want.3
As alluded to in the introduction to this book, though, an over-reliance upon

the ways in which subcultural participants choose to respond to direct quest-
ioning can sometimes result in debatable conclusions. Although individuality
did manifest itself to some degree, as we shall see, a careful comparative
analysis of the behaviour, appearance and testimonies of goths over a sub-
stantial period of time and in various places indicated that many interviewees
exaggerated the extent of their stylistic difference from other goths and under-
played the internal consistency of the style. In Chapter 4, this tendency to
exaggerate one’s individuality will be explained with reference to social
pressures induced by subcultural received wisdom, or ideology. For now,
though, we are concerned with the actual levels of consistency of the stylistic
practices of goths.
As alluded to above, it should be emphasized that, to a degree, the style
was flexible, changeable and diverse, and that it overlapped in places with
39
Goth
the styles of certain other groupings. While the following pages will in relative
terms illustrate an overall consistency and distinctiveness, we are not talking
here about the exhaustive, absolute level of distinctiveness or internal same-
ness spoken of, for example, by purist theorists of community (e.g. Tonnies
1955; Redfield 1955). Indeed, rather than conceiving of the goth scene’s values
as forming a wholly exclusive singular subcultural way of being, it would be
preferable to regard participants as engaging in a limited sort of pick ’n’
mix, in which the vast majority of selections have to be drawn from a relat-
ively clear subcultural range of acceptable possibilities. Therefore, although
we have cautioned against overestimation of the role of individuality, it did
manifest itself to a limited degree. Goths wishing to gain the respect of their
peers usually sought to select their own individual concoction from the range
of acceptable artefacts and themes and also to make subtle additions and
adaptations from beyond the established stylistic boundaries. There was a
need for a mixture of conformity and innovation, as explained by the follow-
ing interviewee:
B6 (male): I think you have to conform to a certain extent and then just take bits
from everywhere until you see things that you like and eventually you
have your own look because of it.
Meanwhile, although it clearly placed one within the boundaries of the

subculture, adopting ‘standard’ goth artefacts and modes of behaviour over-
predictably sometimes resulted in accusations of pretentiousness or ‘trying
too hard’. An element of individuality, then, guaranteed a degree of overall
diversity and helped ensure the dynamism of the style as a whole.
Nevertheless, both individual variations and general changes tended to
occur in the context of an overall consistency with the strict general stylistic
regulations of the group. Significant transgressions also tended to be the
privilege of initially established and respected participants, due to the safety
net of their existing reputation and their possession of an in-depth under-
standing of what kinds of stylistic encroachments might be suitable. It tended
to be more difficult for newcomers to the goth scene successfully to deviate:
S3 (female): You don’t really know much about gothic clothing at the beginning
so you don’t know much about the scene to have developed your
own style of gothdom (laughs).
Important though it was, then, the tendency for certain types of trans-
gression to take place was less notable than the overall levels of commitment
to the subculture’s distinctive range of aesthetic features. We shall see through-
out the book that the range from which individuals would select was relatively
40
consistent from time to time and place to place and, usually, distinctive to
the subculture, even in non-extreme cases. While there were overlaps with
various elements of external culture, then, goths were usually able to identify
one another in the street on the basis of appearance, regardless of where
they were, as alluded to by the following interviewee from Birmingham:
J12 (male): Like I go down to Cambridge to stay with friends of mine and I saw –
like everywhere I’ve gone – I wouldn’t have noticed them before but
I‘ve noticed them now – the goths, in all the different areas. I point
them out. Its like ‘one of our boys!’
PH: Does it feel like that then?
J12 (male): Yeah, it feels like that in Birmingham too. If I’m walking . . . and I’ll
see someone from the Toreador [Birmingham goth pub] or some
general goth, I’ll walk past and think, ‘that’s one of our lot that is’
and I’ll give them a nod or something like that.
Indeed, goths I spent time with often made use of their ability to recognize
fellow participants. For example, if unable to find their way to an event, it
was an established strategy to identify other goths and follow them, with
considerable confidence, from their appearance, as to where they were going.
There is insufficient space, here, to cover every single artefact valued within
the goth scene, or to detail all the complex ways in which individual goths
selected from, combined and subtly transgressed them. I merely attempt to
outline the most important stylistic features of the subculture, in relation to
particularly prominent and consistent general themes. Entitled ‘the sombre
and the macabre’, ‘femininity and ambiguity’ and ‘fragments of related styles’,
these are clearly artificial umbrella categories and, as such, inevitably charac-
terized by diversity and overlap. It should also be emphasized, again, that
individuals assembled their own style by selecting from the elements I describe
and that as a consequence few, if any, adopted all of them. The value of the
categories is that they allow a demonstration of the general stylistic consist-
encies of the goth scene, without glossing over elements of diversity and
dynamism.
The Sombre and the Macabre
Most obviously perhaps, the goth style revolved around a general emphasis
on artefacts, appearances and music deemed suitably dark, sombre and, some-
times, macabre. The following questionnaire respondent indicated some of
the ways in which such themes manifested themselves:
41
Goth
Figure 3.1 (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright)
WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what is the goth scene all about?
107 (female): The music (dark, depressing), the look – lots of black, white faces,
black eyeliner, crucifixes, churches, graveyards.
Most obvious and important, was an overwhelming and consistent emphasis

on the colour black, whether in terms of clothing, hair, lipstick, household
decoration or even pet cats! In terms of personal appearance, the theme was
also implicit in a tendency for many goths to wear white foundation on their
faces to offset thick, usually extended black eyeliner, cheekbone accentuating
blusher and dark lipstick (see Figure 3.1), all of which can be traced right
42
Figure 3.2 (See p. 44. Photograph: S. L. Wainwright)
back to a number of the early 1980s bands. Rather ironically, given the amount
of time most of them spent on their appearance, goths also tended to expect
their pubs or clubs to be particularly darkened, often with stage smoke for
added atmosphere.
While significant numbers of early elements, such as those mentioned
above, were evidently alive and well, the general theme of the sombre and
the macabre had also developed in various ways. Fashions emerged, within
the scene, for items which were relatively marginal to the style of the original
generation but nevertheless consistent with the general themes their images
43
Goth
and sounds were associated with. For example, once the general goth theme
had been established for a time, many elaborated on its logical association
with horror by drawing upon various images originating in macabre fiction
such as crucifixes, bats and vampires (see Figure 3.2), sometimes in a tongue-
in-cheek self-conscious manner, sometimes not. At times, such progressions
were linked to the clear and direct influence of media products. The profile
44
of vampire and horror fiction, for example, was raised particularly high in
the early 1990s by Hollywood films such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (American
Zoetrobe/Columbia Pictures/Osiris Films 1992) and Interview with the
Vampire (Geffen Pictures/Warner Brothers 1994). The appearance of the
vampire protagonists in such films reinforced the existing enthusiasm among
goth males for whitened faces, long dark hair and shades (see Figure 3.3).
45
Goth
Meanwhile, for females, the general representations of elements of

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fashion in such fiction further encouraged
the adoption of certain styles of clothing associated with the gothic revival
of those times and with the Victorian period which followed it. While already
established as acceptable due to the original influence of elements of punk
fashion, and further encouraged by late 1980s artists such as Patricia
Morrison and Julianne Regan, the wearing of dark-coloured corsets, bodices
and lacy or velvet tops and dresses was undoubtedly encouraged though the
development of a more direct link between goth participants and vampire
fiction (see Figure 3.4).
Among a somewhat smaller minority, particularly taken by the vampire
theme, status-bestowing personal decorations also came to include fake fangs,
coloured contact lenses and elaborate ‘horror’-style make-up. Indeed, there
was something of a loosely bounded subgroup, in which a direct emphasis
on vampire fiction – via appearance, conversation, collections of literature
and even role-playing games – was particularly noticeable. As part of the
British goth scene as a whole, however, those deemed over-obsessed with or
over-serious about such themes were sometimes looked down upon. The
majority, whose interest was essentially in a melancholic sombre set of music-
and fashion-related themes in more general terms, valued a more subtle, or
at least humorous, appropriation of horror imagery, and tended to regard
extreme embrace of vampirism as a crude confirmation of popular stereo-
types. The following view, although unusual in its directness, reflected the
sentiments of many:
D3 (male): The vampires – you know, the ones that play masquerade [vampire
role-playing game] and so on and they dress up as goths and they
have really bad horrendous make-up and so on and it invariably
involves fake blood running down their faces and things like that –
they turn up at goth clubs, and they fail to fit in completely, because
they’ve completely missed the point.
As well as manifesting itself in a greater variety of ways compared with

practice in the early 1980s, there were also, by the late 1990s, more obvious
transgressions of the emphasis on dark imagery than there had been in the
1980s. Most notably, although black remained predominant, brighter colours
had clearly become more acceptable in terms of hair, clothing and make-up.
What began as a somewhat humorous and deliberate transgression by certain
individuals had resulted in the growing translocal acceptance of the previously
detested colour pink, as a complement to black, among goths in Britain. This
was followed by a similar relaxing of rules relating to other bright colours.
46
Crucially, though, they were usually juxtaposed with hair, make-up or other
clothes more consistent with the sinister theme we are describing. Black, then,
remained the most prominent colour for the vast majority of goths and, sim-
ilarly, most retained a variety of other specific features relating to the theme,
which could be traced back to the bands of the 1980s. For example, even
the small minority for whom dark colours seemed of marginal significance
tended to wear their make-up in a tell-tale goth style, notably with excessive
extended eye-liner, accentuated cheekbones and pale foundation.
In general terms, the music associated with the goth scene during the late
1990s was more diverse than the fashion. Nevertheless, from the early 1980s
up to and including the time of my research, a significant proportion of the
play-lists at most goth-oriented clubs could be reasonably accurately described
using one or more of the adjectives ‘dark’, ‘sinister’, ‘deep’ and ‘sombre’.
Such related themes, though, applied to a considerable variety of music, with
deep-voiced male vocalists, high-pitched female vocalists, both slow and fast
tempos, various styles of guitar from tuneful and jangly to aggressive and
thrash-style, real and electronically simulated drums and, increasingly, in the
1990s, both atmospheric keyboard chords and more upbeat electronic
sequences. In particular, there is little doubt that newer bands associated
with the goth scene were producing a considerable diversity of styles, ranging
from those focused on early and particularly late 1980s guitar-based goth
sounds to those who sought to merge such sounds with electronic chords,
sequences and dance beats, to others who largely resisted such technology in
favour of what they regarded as an up-to-date tuneful, catchy ‘indie’ style of
goth.5 In spite of their variety, however, there were few bands associated
with the goth scene which had no connection whatever with the themes of
gloom and darkness we have been describing. Even the most thoroughly
dance-oriented bands which attracted a consistent goth following, such as
Apoptygma Berzerk, Covenant and VNV Nation, retained deep, harsh vocals,
sombre metaphorical lyrics and powerful atmospheric chords.
While their consistent manifestation in fashion and music were clear, the
importance of the sombre and the macabre in terms of behaviour, attitude
and outlook was more ambiguous. Excessive grumpiness and depression did
appear to be exhibited by certain individuals, but the majority had become
resistant to such traits, regarding them, as with excessive displays of interest
in vampirism, as a misplaced negative stereotype of goths held by outsiders.
Therefore, while some goths did claim that membership of their subculture
entailed holding particular ‘attitudes’, most played down the importance of
negative or miserable outlooks on life, preferring to emphasize a positive
enthusiasm towards goth styles of music and fashion. This came across partic-
ularly clearly in the Whitby Festival Questionnaire.
47
Goth
WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what is the goth scene all about.
32 (male): Rejoicing in a high-spirited view of the darker side of life, pushing
the frontiers of style and sound.
40 (female): To me it is about being able to dress how I feel – it is NOT about
being miserable and dull.
Femininity and Ambiguity
Social constructionist approaches to gender suggest that due to the constructed

and, hence, malleable nature of sexual categories, they might – in the right
discursive and cultural circumstance – become disconnected from the series
of repeated stylistic and behavioural performances which actually produce
and reproduce gendered identities. Judith Butler, among other ‘queer
theorists’, seeks the undermining of and deidentification from essentialized
gender categories, via a number of possible strategies including the prolifer-
ation of drag and camp. The parodic transgression of gender roles is deemed
to have the potential to expose the constructed and performative nature of
the dominant notions of male and female which form their target (e.g. Butler
1990, 1991, 1993; Meyer, 1994). Albeit without the parody or the overt
political ends, the goth scene’s distinctive normative environment consistently
loosened the links between stylistic facets of gender and the fixed sex
categories of male and female. More specifically, without actually rendering
such categories insignificant, goth had from its very beginnings been
characterized by the predominance, for both males and females, of particular
kinds of style which would normally be associated with femininity. One of
my e-mail interviewees provides a useful introduction to these:
J1 (female): I think that the nature of ‘goth culture’ in itself is conducive to

‘femininity’ . . . in that sexual ambiguity is expressed within the
clothes, make-up and music of the scene.
Most importantly, particular styles of make-up, which had been common-

place ever since the days of Bauhaus and The Batcave, remained popular for
both males and females during the late 1990s (see Figure 3.5). Equally, goths
of both genders had always worn considerable amounts of silver jewellery,
notably earrings, nose rings, bracelets and necklaces. The main change which
had occurred by the 1990s was that piercings, for both genders, had also
spread to lips, eyebrows, tongues and belly buttons and that jewellery was
more likely to be coloured. In addition to jewellery and make-up, numerous
examples of relatively feminine styles of clothes – many of which also con-
sistent with the emphasis on sombreness – had been important for both sexes
48
from the scene’s conception. Relatively long-established examples included

the Victorian items described in the last section for women, alongside frilly
shirts and velvet jackets for both sexes (see Figure 3.6).
However, by the late 1990s, the long-term emphasis on femininity had
intensified in both popularity and extremity compared with its importance a
decade earlier. While the wearing, by males and females, of fishnet tights
and mesh tops had been a part of the goth style since the days of Specimen,
49
Goth
it had become much more commonplace by the mid- to late 1990s (see Figure
3.7). Even more notably, via a gradual process of individual transgressions,
the wearing of long and short skirts, by male as well as female goths, had
become unexceptional (see Figure 3.8).
There were also further diversifications of the way in which femininity
manifested itself. Many of the 1980s styles of clothes described, now
associated with ‘trad goths’, were often either combined with or rejected in
favour of newer influences. In a move which in some ways harked back to
50
some of the original influences of punk, aspects of the 1990s fetish scene
and, indeed, the sex industry generally became popular. Goths of both sexes
were increasingly likely to be seen in black and sometimes coloured PVC
and rubber trousers, skirts, leggings, corsets, tops and dog collars (see Figure
3.9).
Importantly, in the context of the goth scene, all but the most extreme
examples of such attire were often valued more in terms of their subcultural
aesthetic qualities than for their sexual connotations. The differential symbolic
51
Goth
value of fetish clothing in subcultural and non-subcultural environments was

demonstrated by the fact that, while entirely comfortable wearing such clothes
at goth clubs, many female goths were nervous about the possible reaction
to them in environments they regarded as more mainstream:
R1 (female): Say I went into a trendy club wearing what I wore to the last Dust to
Dust [goth band] gig – which comprised several layers of ripped
fishnets, platform boots, hot pants and quite a low-cut corset – I
would have had the hell hassled out of me and probably have ended
up being raped at the end of the night or something.
52
Returning to the theme more generally, femininity manifested itself not

just in controllable factors such as clothing, make-up and jewellery, but also
in the physical appearance of individuals’ faces and bodies. Hence, right from
the days of Bauhaus, the most venerated and fancied males in the goth scene,
in terms of appearance, tended to have slim bodies and faces, and minimum
body hair. The following respondent explained that, for him, a key appeal
of the goth scene was that, in this distinctive cultural climate, his somewhat
effeminate body became a positive, rather than a negative characteristic:
53
Goth
G4 (male): It’s basically that I can feel comfortable that I can be a skinny, weedy
bloke who, like, is a bit emotional sometimes. It’s almost a bonus in
fact.
Slimness of body and face, were, on the whole, also valued for females –
consistent with more dominant fashion – although the ability to show off an
ample chest with the help of a basque or other suitable low-cut top often
seemed to more than compensate for those with larger general proportions.
Respondent G4’s reference to being able to be ‘a bit emotional sometimes’,
in addition to his slimness, accurately indicates that the display by males of
certain behavioural characteristics and attitudes associated with femininity
was also more common in the goth scene than most elements of society
outside it. This was certainly reflected strongly in some examples of goth
music, where the stereotype of emotional, self-indulgent and angst-ridden
themes – all of which tend to be associated with femininity rather than
masculinity – was a generalization, but not an entirely inaccurate one.
Although certainly not a prominent theme among the positive-punk scene of
the early 1980s, or indeed some of the harder industrial music played at
some goth clubs toward the mid-1990s, some of the most popular goth music
frequently exhibited such characteristics. Notably, the atmospheric guitars,
keyboards, slow tempo, wailing vocals and angst-ridden lyrics which charac-
terized much of The Cure’s music serve as a consistent example, as do certain
ballads by The Mission, Fields of the Nephilim, All About Eve and others.6
Toward the mid- to late 1990s, although the influence of industrial music
had resulted in more incorporation of dance-oriented and sometimes heavy
guitar-based sounds into some goth music, lyrical themes and the use of
emotional, atmospheric tones meant that it often retained elements of
emotional self-indulgence.
The manifestation of this emphasis on being emotional in the behaviour
of male goths, from time to time, was connected by one female participant
to what she perceived as a greater tendency for them to engage in same-sex
tactility:
D6 (female): They [male goths] can actually get closer to another male. They
wouldn’t feel ashamed of hugging another man or crying on his
shoulder or something like that whereas if they were more macho
then perhaps ‘huh, you poof, you can’t hold my hand’, or you know.
The emphasis, for both males and females, on a feminine appearance was
also linked with a general acceptance and, sometimes, even veneration of
sexual ambiguity. While the majority of goths behaved in accordance with
54
heterosexual norms throughout wider society, there was little if any disap-
proval or surprise, in goth clubs, at the occasional sight of people of the
same sex holding hands, cuddling or kissing. In addition, many male and
female goths, in the course of informal conversations and occasional on-line
forum discussions throughout my research, keenly indicated that they were
attracted to goths of both sexes. There was at times a distinct impression
that non-hetero sexualities, while certainly not the norm, were a transgression
to be admired.
Such unusually high incidence and acceptance, outside of the gay or fetish
scenes, of same-sex behaviour may have involved a number of factors, notably
the way in which gender and sexual ambiguity tend to be conflated with one
another by the media, the direct influence of apparently bisexual musicians
related to the scene – most notably, perhaps, goth’s glam-rock ancestor David
Bowie (see Hebdige 1979: 60–2), the general experimentalism and trans-
gression, sexual and otherwise, associated with the much-renowned early
1980s Batcave club and the degree of overlap between goth and fetishism.
However, it seems highly likely that it also involved a slightly more gradual,
grass-roots-level response, on the part of some goths, to regularly being in a
cultural environment in which the division between males and females was
significantly blurred by subcultural style. As bisexual theorist Heather Came
has put it, ‘The difference between a heterosexual future and a bisexual or
lesbian one lies in the absence of rigid gender roles’ (Came 1996: 28). Thus,
one respondent could explain to me that she regarded gender and sexual
ambiguity in the goth scene as thoroughly intertwined:
A9 (female): . . . with the way we dress . . . there’s always been that element of
bisexuality – I mean you get very feminine-looking men don’t you?
She went on to elaborate on the point in relation to her own sexuality, explain-
ing that she was attracted to particular forms of femininity, which, in the
specific context of the goth scene, she might find in both males and females.
While virtually impossible to prove, it seems plausible that a female attracted
to a particularly feminine goth appearance in men may move toward finding
similar characteristics equally attractive when they are exhibited by a woman.
Similarly, from the point of view of a goth male, the gap between being
attracted to subcultural forms of femininity in goth women and being
attracted to similar features in goth men seems more bridgeable in such an
androgynous environment.
Having become established, open expressions of bisexuality in goth clubs
and pubs are likely to have reproduced themselves more directly, in the same
way that other behavioural or stylistic fashions do. This is not necessarily to
55
Goth
suggest that sexual desires can be consciously manipulated, but merely that,
as Came has put it, ‘visibility creates chances for others’ (Came 1996: 27).
Whether the subcultural environment effected a change in the sexuality of
previously straight participants, or merely enabled individuals already pre-
disposed to same-sex attraction to realize this in practice, seems a conundrum
which would require considerably more discussion than we have space for
here. Either interpretation, though, serves to emphasize the key general point
that in respect of gender and by extension sexuality the goth scene involved
a highly distinctive stylistic and normative environment.
Fragments of Related Styles
While, the goth scene’s range of styles had a considerable degree of consistency
and distinctiveness, as I have been arguing, a number of elements reflected
overlaps with other music or fashion scenes. Thus, in addition to selecting
more unique ‘goth’ items, participants engaging in their subcultural stylistic
pick ’n’ mix often tended to select one or two items of clothing or accessories
associated with related scenes or subcultures. We have already referred to
the importance of elements of punk and fetish as influences because of the
ways in which the items described fitted under the first two stylistic sections.
This final ‘theme’ consists of a number of more miscellaneous items shared
between goths and other groupings. Most notable here was the popularity
among goths of certain items associated with the somewhat diverse range of
genres collectively known as ‘alternative culture’. Will Straw explains that
in the 1980s, ‘alternative’ functioned as something of an umbrella term for a
mixture of styles deemed non-mainstream:
the capacity of this culture to cater to the most specific of taste formations is
accompanied by the sense that no particular stylistic exercise may be held up as
emblematic of a collective, forward movement on the part of this terrain as a
whole . . . (Straw 1991: 375)
Alongside punks, indie fans, crusties and others, during the 1980s and also
the early 1990s goths often regarded their grouping to be one of the specific
taste formations under this umbrella. While the use of this term and the
physical association of goths with punks, crusties and indie rock fans was
rather less common by the time of my research, selected music and artefacts
associated with the latter had been retained by the goth scene. Most notably
perhaps, some goths’ enthusiasm for fluorescent-coloured hair dyes, braided
hair, various kinds of body piercing and combat trousers were shared with
56
some other ‘alternative’ groupings. A liking for certain bands or songs

associated with indie, punk and crusty scenes was also fairly common among
goths. Importantly, in both appearance and music tastes, only certain
‘external’ elements were visible, and these tended to take their place alongside
more distinctive subcultural tastes.
There were also overlaps with rock culture more generally, in that many
goths wore T-shirts of their favourite bands which, while containing subcult-
urally distinctive bands and designs, resembled those worn by rock fans of
varying stylistic persuasions. In addition, increasing numbers of goths wore
tops which in their general shape and style resembled such rock band T-
shirts, but whose text consisted of a self-conscious, light-hearted reference
to the individual’s involvement in the goth scene per se. Examples of the
slogans on such T-shirts, which were usually produced and sold by enthusiasts
turned entrepreneurs, included ‘SAD OLD GOTH’, ‘GOTH TART’ and, even,
‘SPICE GOTH’ (see Figure 3.10). Whilst such overt statements of subcultural
self-consciousness were not a part of the early goth scene, their consistency
with it is clear, as is their distinctiveness. Quite simply, who but a goth would
wear such a T-shirt? The implications of such overt statements of identity
will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 4.
Due to certain stylistic crossovers toward the late 1990s, there was also
an increasing, though not unanimous, acceptance in the goth scene of limited
examples of music associated with extreme or death metal. While far more
aggressive, masculine and thrash guitar-based on the whole, these genres had
by then taken on some of the features of goth – particularly the prominence
of black hair and clothes, and the wearing of horror-style make-up. Because
of this and the resulting media descriptions of such music and style, elements
of such harder sounds and images had influenced the music and fashion tastes
of some goths. Importantly, however, others overtly excluded anything they
regarded as ‘metal’ from their music collections and appearances, and
explicitly objected to such influences in others. In addition to these ‘alternative’
and rock styles, the goth scene’s criteria of status favoured certain examples
of other styles of music and fashion. We have already mentioned the important
influence of certain clothes and accessories associated with the fetish scene.
In addition to this, the origins of the goth scene, and the location of the
early lives of many current participants in the 1980s, had induced a nostalgic
enjoyment of listening and dancing to some of the new romantic pop music
of that period – which also fitted with the femininity of goth style in general.
Nostalgia for new romantic also encouraged a tendency to wear frilly shirts,
military jackets of various kinds, morning coats and other items associated
with bands such as Adam and the Ants (see Figure 3.11). As one interviewee
put it:
57
Goth
K1 (male): As soon as you paint Adam Ant black he’s a goth isn’t he!
Finally, a gradual incorporation of particular aspects of dance-club fashions

into goth appearances was taking place during my research – notably in the
form of tops, skirts and trousers featuring reflective or ultraviolet sensitive
designs, braided hair and fluorescent make-up. Those who embraced such
influences particularly enthusiastically were sometimes known as ‘cyber goths’
(see Figure 3.12).
58
Symbolizing Identity
Crucially, the selected elements of what I have called ‘related’ styles, which
became acceptable for goths, did not necessarily reflect any inherent homo-
logical fit between them and the other themes of the subculture. Similarly,
while it may certainly be possible to outline certain overlaps and links, I am
not attempting here to underline a ‘natural’ or inherent homology within or
between the two core themes of sombreness and femininity. While I have
59
Goth
emphasized the linkage between current and past manifestations of the themes
in order to establish consistency over time, the overall range of styles should
be regarded as having come together through a mixture of coincidences, log-
ical associations, individual innovations and, most importantly, considerable
construction and consolidation through events, commerce and media (dealt
with in detail later in the book). It should again be emphasized, therefore,
that my reference to stylistic consistency pertains to the extent to which, in
spite of its consisting of numerous elements cobbled together from different
60
sources at different stages, there was a discernible distinctive goth style, which
manifested itself consistently from one individual to the next, one place to
the next and one year to the next.
Crucially, the notion of homology indicates the existence of an underlying
essential meaning directly symbolized by all the stylistic and behavioural
elements. This book will specifically resist such reductionism. In particular,
we should not treat the goth style, or any particular elements of it, as symbolic
of any particular structural, psychological or political circumstances or goals.
As has been pointed out by Gary Clarke, such analysis mistakenly treats
style as an ‘objective category to be measured’ and privileges the interpretation
of theoretically driven semiotician, with little regard for the experience of
participants themselves (G. Clarke 1981: 87; also see Muggleton 2000: 9–
14). Such attempts to ‘make sense’ of youth styles often consist of little more
than speculation and, at times, have imposed rather than extracted meanings.
In spite of the criticism afforded to the likes of Hebdige on this score, more
recent attempts to discern meaning from a textual analysis of style and behav-
iour have suffered similar problems. Albeit in the context of an otherwise
insightful discussion of dance culture and femininity, Angela McRobbie’s
interpretation of dummies, ice lollies and whistles as a symbolic means by
which young women insulated their bodies from sexual invasion has to be
seen as a case in point (McRobbie 1994: 169). Equally, Richard and Kruger’s
‘revelation’ of an important symbolic link between ravers dancing in ware-
houses and the industrial labour more traditionally associated with such
spaces comes across as more than a little forced (Richard and Kruger 1998:
163). There can be little doubt, surely, that had they been discussed with the
majority of participants of such groupings, these explanations would have
been met with bemusement. Without wanting to endorse an uncritical reliance
upon the accounts of insiders, we should surely be wary of interpretations
which seem to take little account of them at all.
Some readers, however, might regard the symbolic significance of the goth
scene as rather more obvious and apparent than the examples of academic
interpretation I have cited above. They may have expected a book on goth
to interpret and structurally or even psychoanalytically account for the
apparent fascination of goths with such themes as horror, death, misery and
gender ambiguity. Quite simply, though, the pursuit of such underlying links
and causalities, through an attempt to read meaning from style, would have
entailed a process far more characterized by construction than by revelation.
As well as glossing over the diversity and complexity of the process of discov-
ering, liking, becoming involved in and taking part in the goth scene, such
an approach would mistakenly assume that all the facts of the goth scene
and its participants’ lives were somehow reflected transparently in the clothes,
61
Goth
hairstyles and make-up they preferred. Years of ethnographic research as an

insider have confirmed for me that there was no underlying shared structural,
psychological or political meaning to be discerned from the style. Many
participants themselves were sceptical as to whether the aesthetic details of
the goth scene were intrinsically connected with particular attitudes or goals.
Indeed, there was a particular tendency for hostility toward the suggestion
that their dark hair or clothes said anything about their character, outlook
or behaviour. The most noticeable general point that came across, from both
interviews and general ethnographic experience, was that style was held to
be significant in and of itself as a set of enthusiastic preferences located within,
and not beyond, the sphere of the aesthetic.
It should not be inferred from this, however, that the goth style was mean-
ingless or that it was experienced as such by its subscribers. While its aesthetic
features were not homologically connected to any distinctive social problems
or political viewpoints, there is little doubt that they were enough, in
themselves, to represent the strong sense of affiliation that participants shared
with one another and their collective sense of distinction and superiority
over a perceived ‘mainstream’ society. Many participants felt there was some
sort of link between their style and certain general qualities they shared with
other goths, including individuality, creativity, open-mindedness and commit-
ment, which will be discussed in Chapter 4. Crucially, however, these traits
were not intrinsically linked to or discernible from the distinctive features of
their style, but rather to the fact that, as a whole, it served to make goths
feel collectively distinctive. What was of utmost importance, then, was the
belonging and status which were signified by the styles described – something
to which consistent distinctiveness was crucial.
Conclusion
In summary then, there was a diversity of style within the goth scene, but
any flexibility in terms of individual interpretations and subtle transgressions
took place in the context of overall commitment to a complex but generally
consistent and identifiable set of tastes. This relative consistent distinctiveness
constituted an externally observable difference between the goth scene and
society outside it – something which satisfies the first of our criteria for the
delineation of the group as a subculture. It also begins to give us an idea of
the level of practical subcultural commitment exhibited by subcultural
participants, discussed at greater length at various points later in the book.
Furthermore, the style both symbolized the strong subjective subcultural
identity held by most goths and acted as the practical basis for the distinctions
62
they drew between insiders and outsiders. It is to these subjective issues of

identity and difference that we shall now turn.
Notes
1. Please note that examples of music released by all the bands mentioned in the
main text or the endnotes throughout can be found in the discography on pp. 211–3
at the back of this book.
2. Interviewees are referred to throughout the book using a letter and a number,
followed by an indication of their gender in brackets. Where questions or comments
from the questioner are included in the extract, these are referred to using my own
initials, PH. While giving pseudonyms to respondents might have provided the most
reader-friendly means of referring to respondents, those whom I consulted on the
matter were not happy to be referred to under pseudonyms. In addition, it was decided
that such names would have affected the authenticity of the book, especially in the
case of high-profile individuals within the goth scene. Although some respondents
expressed a preference for being referred to by their real names, this option was not
acceptable, since it would have compromised the anonymity of any who preferred
to remain anonymous. This left the compromise option of using a code and indicating
gender as clearly the most ethical and effective way to proceed.
3. Respondents to the Whitby Festival Questionnaire are referred to by a single
number from 1 to 112 and their gender is indicated in brackets. Each extract of
questionnaire responses begins with the question which prompted it, preceded by
the initials WQ and the question number.
4. Captions are not used for the photographs in this chapter as it was decided
that there was sufficient introduction to them in the text and that descriptive captions
would merely be stating the obvious. Nevertheless, the reader should bear in mind
that, as one might expect, few of the photographs perfectly illustrate in full every
single element of the text with which they are associated.
5. The number of small-scale 1990s goth bands makes picking out individual
examples difficult. Inclusion here does not reflect any particular level of importance
to the goth scene as compared to the numerous other bands I could have picked –
it’s merely that in their style they happen to illustrate the point in question. Examples
of bands whose material was often relatively faithful to the dominant 1980s sounds
included Nosferatu, Merry Thoughts, Die Laughing, Funhouse. Examples of bands
merging more traditional goth sounds with electronic or dance sequences included
Nekromantik, Suspiria, Apoptygma Berzerk and VNV Nation. Examples of bands
producing what might be described as an indie version of the goth sound included
Manuskript and The Horatii.
6. Examples of releases characterized by an emotional feel which might generally
be regarded as ‘feminine’ rather than masculine, include The Mission’s single,
‘Butterfly on a Wheel’, All About Eve’s debut album ‘All About Eve’, The Cure’s
‘Disintegration’ album and Fields of the Nephilim’s ‘Elizium’ album. On the other
63
Goth
hand, examples of aggressive-sounding music, which fits rather less comfortably with
the general theme of femininity, included Nine Inch Nails’ tracks such as ‘Closer’
and Front Line Assembly’s ‘Plasticity’. The latter are often regarded as ‘industrial’
music, but were popular among goths.
64
Insiders and Outsiders
4
Toward the end of Chapter 3, we noted the tendency for some goths to wear
slogan T-shirts containing the word ‘goth’, which quite literally spelled out
their conscious subcultural affiliation to onlookers. At the time, we were
concerned with the role of such garments as part of the relatively consistent
and distinctive range of tastes held by goths. This chapter, though, will focus
in detail on the strong perception of subcultural identity and collective
distinction to which such overt examples of self-labelling draw our attention.
In other words, we are changing tack, from a relatively objectivist examin-
ation of exhibited tastes to an emphasis on the subjective understandings
and meanings of participants (Thornton 1995: 106). This is because, however
distinct they may look or sound, the visible styles of a given grouping do not
in themselves demonstrate cultural substance. According to the definition of
subculture we have outlined, in most cases the exhibition of such distinctive
tastes and norms will be linked to a strong perception of collective belonging
among those involved.
Anthony Cohen goes so far as to argue that such subjective feelings and
imaginings ought actually to take precedence over observable traits or behav-
iours in the delineation of a given grouping: ‘. . . culture – the community as
experienced by its members – does not consist in social structure or in “the
doing” of social behaviour. It inheres, rather, in “the thinking” about it . . .
Community exists in the minds of its members’ (A. Cohen 1985: 98). To a
degree, this book accepts Cohen’s stance on the importance of consciousness
and perception and, as a result, regards shared identity as probably the single
most important of the indicators of subculture outlined in Chapter Two.
‘The thinking’ about social behaviour, though, must not be emphasized to
the point of excluding ‘the doing’ of it. It is not just that the observable,
physical characteristics we have outlined provided in themselves a partial
indication of the substantive cultural form taken by the goth scene. Later in
the chapter we shall see that this observable consistent distinctiveness was
directly related to the sense of identity shared by goths. More specifically, it
formed the basis of the conscious distinctions and boundaries they drew
between insiders and outsiders. Distinctiveness and identity, then, were
inextricably linked with one another.
65
Goth
Perceptions of Affiliation
Prior to examining evidence of collective identity in the goth scene, I would

emphasize that some recent studies have questioned the importance of group-
belonging to those involved in contemporary music or style groupings. As
we have seen, for example, David Muggleton’s apparently punk-, goth- or
mod-oriented interviewees were keener to emphasize their individuality rather
than conformity to particular group norms. As well as regarding this as evid-
ence of stylistic fluidity and cross-fertilization, Muggleton specifically argues
that such accounts illustrate the receding importance to young people of
subjective group identifications or labels (Muggleton 2000: 55–80). The seem-
ingly subcultural interviewees in a study by Widdicombe and Wooffitt also
sought, through evasive conversational strategies, to resist what they regarded
as invitations to explain their appearance in terms of a subcultural affiliation.
On the basis of this apparent lack of collective identity, the authors criticize
the ‘over-committed’ picture of subcultural identity presented by subcultural
theory (Widdicombe and Wooffitt 1995: 94–115).
To a critical insider, this kind of outward resistance to labels, among appar-
ently affiliated young people, seems relatively unsurprising. More open to
question, however, is the rather uncritical approach to such data taken by
the authors. Neither Widdicombe and Wooffitt nor Muggleton raise sufficient
questions as to the accuracy of their interviewee’s statements as a reflection
of the way in which they really felt. The possibility, for example, that rejection
of group labels may have reflected a desire to defy outside expectations or,
indeed, to comply with received wisdom within a subcultural grouping, is
given insufficient consideration. In Muggleton’s case, a relativist position is
adopted whereby ‘truth’ is deemed synonymous with the subjective lived
experience of subculturalists and invulnerable to deconstruction from
‘outside’: ‘To claim from the outside as it were, that people’s indigenous
meanings are contradictory is to ignore how such apparent contradictions
can make perfect, logical sense to those involved, given their own definition
of the situation’ (Muggleton 2000: 59). The implication that the words of
subcultural participants are beyond ‘external’ critique rather trustingly
assumes that the way they choose to present themselves is an infallible
representation of their experiences or those of their compatriots. After all,
what if the ‘apparent contradictions’ in the accounts of individuals do not
reflect some impenetrable insider logic, but merely the fact that they have
not properly thought an issue through, or that they are overly keen to present
themselves in a particular way? As many insiders would (in the right social
circumstances) surely concede, goths, punks, mods and the like are every bit
as capable of inaccuracies and exaggerations as anyone else in society.
66
A well-articulated self-critique from one of my interviewees illustrates that

proclamations of ‘individuality’ on the part of goths were a very well estab-
lished yet highly questionable ‘common sense’ response to questions relating
to style and identity:
PH: So what you’re kind of saying is that it is important to be different?

T3 (female): Yeah, although you always say that like, you’re all individuals, but
everyone’s got the same boots on! Do you know what I mean – ‘oh
aren’t we individual with all our ripped fishnets and our New Rocks
[make of boot]’.
Indeed, while outright or hostile rejections of subcultural identity were

actually quite rare in the interviews I conducted, this desire to emphasize
individuality was sometimes linked with a degree of hesitancy about directly
describing oneself as ‘a goth’. Nevertheless, it is clear from the aforementioned
self-conscious slogans on T-shirts and badges that some individuals were keen
to associate themselves directly and openly with goth as a label, something
in no way diluted by the self-conscious humour which often characterized
such attire. Consistent with this, although some were more cautious than
others, all those who took part in my open-ended, unstructured interviews
eventually indicated a strong sense of group affiliation. Indeed, in some cases,
participants were positively enthusiastic to identify themselves as members
of the goth scene:
J6 (female): If someone goes ‘goth!’, I go, ‘yes, I’ve been recognized!’
Meanwhile, others disclosed a conscious identification with a perceived goth

scene in the course of placing themselves in relation to a number of perceived
different ‘types’ of goth, and some even described their own internal
movement over time, from one to another:
C2 (male): I started off as a sort of tail-coaty goth and went more and more
vampiry, and then I switched colours to beige – and I was sort of
Nephilimy beige goth for a while – I had a beige tail-coat, beige leather
trousers and beige boots.
For the most part, even those who were initially resistant tended to become
more relaxed about disclosing their sense of affiliation as discussions
progressed. At the very least, most became happy to talk about being involved
in the goth scene or goth stuff, or to associate themselves explicitly with
music, clothes, events and fanzines they chose to describe as goth. Most
67
Goth
importantly, regardless of whether they initially described themselves as a

goth, with or without prefix, virtually every respondent, at some point in his
or her interview, emphasized feelings of identification, similarity and
community, with others perceived to share their tastes in fashion and music.
Here is one example of many such comments:
M2 (male): Goth is a tribe . . . it’s just a group of people that get together and
say . . . ‘we have something in common – we have how we dress, how
we look, how we feel and the kind of people we’re interested in or
music we’re interested in, in common.’
In contrast to traditional conceptions of place-centred community and to

the recent academic emphasis on localized music scenes, as described in
Chapter 2, goths’ sense of identity extended every bit as far as their stylistic
preferences. Therefore, interviewees indicated strong identifications with
strangers perceived to share their subcultural affiliation in countries across
the globe. Many spoke of a particular enjoyment of the geographical breadth
of their identity, and emphasized the value of being able to take part in the
goth scene outside their locality or country. I asked the following respondent
whether it would matter to him if the goth scene was confined to his home
city of York:
C2 (male): It would be harder because if you went anywhere else people would
think ‘ohhhh, what’s that?’, whereas you know you’ve always got some
people who you’ve got something in common with – you’ve got a point
of contact, anywhere in the world more or less.
It should not be inferred, though, that place had no importance for any
participants of the goth scene. Although my research did not entirely uphold
their views, some believed the goth scene was different from locality to locality
within Britain. Occasionally, I even came across regional or local rivalries
within the bounds of the translocal goth scene, illustrated by the following
description of a letter in a goth fanzine:
L1 (female): This lad had wrote in and said – ‘we’ve got people from Leeds coming
to our nightclub’ . . . he was like [imitates] ‘we’re Bradford goths and
people from Leeds are coming to our nightclub!’
Such animosity also emerged, occasionally, between those regarding them-

selves as northerners and southerners in Britain. The annoyance of one
respondent from Leeds about the perceived ‘complacency’ and ‘apathy’ of
68
London goths prompted him to produce and distribute stickers in the capital’s
goth clubs which read as follows: ‘NEWSFLASH . . . travelling outside the
M25 does not make your hair extensions fall out or your piercings turn
septic . . . wake up to the bigger picture!’ (McCullie 1999). In addition to
these local or regional loyalties, some interviewees indicated a clear sense of
British national identity within the goth scene, as in the following espousal
of British-based goth music over its foreign equivalents.
M5 (male): I think all foreign goth is shit. It was invented in Northampton in

1979 by Bauhaus and no one else knows how to do it apart from us
lot.
While such regional or national identifications were not especially common,

they show that place had a degree of significance to some goths’ sense of
themselves.
Even in the strongest cases, though, whereabouts remained secondary to
goths’ sense of shared identification with one other. After all, the fact that
such national or local identifications always seemed to be expressed in the
form of comparisons with goths from elsewhere serves only further to demon-
strate the primary importance of subcultural identity. This was illustrated
particularly effectively when interviewees were given the hypothetical choice
of spending time with goths from a foreign country or non-goths from closer
to home. They unanimously selected the former, as in the following comments
by interviewees from Birmingham and Leeds:
T3 (female): I would feel more comfortable with goths. I would just think ‘cool,
goths’, I wouldn’t think of them as foreign, I’d just feel totally
comfortable straight away, rather than with the English people sitting
there and, I don’t know, just feeling totally uncomfortable.
L1 (female): I’d identify more with the goths definitely – because like they probably
know bands that you like, and you’d have more to discuss wouldn’t
you? Rather than like ‘oh, I come from Leeds’, ‘where abouts in
Leeds?’ blah blah – that’d probably be it – where if it were a bunch
of goths you’d say ‘oh, I like this and that’ and they’d tell you where
to go out on a night.
Therefore, in contrast to its importance to musicians and audiences in local

studies such as those of Finnegan (1989), Cohen (1991) and Shank (1994),
it was clear that, for my subculturally affiliated respondents, place-related
identities were at best a secondary consideration.
69
Goth
The Primacy of Subcultural Identity
Other traditional markers of social identity such as class, occupation, ethnicity

and gender also tended to take a secondary position of importance relative
to subcultural affiliation. Although not statistically representative, due to its
reliance upon a sample of 112 individuals who happened to have travelled
to attend a particular event, the Whitby Festival Questionnaire provided some
idea of the social make-up of the goth scene in regard of such criteria, which
I shall briefly summarize for the general information of the reader.1 In respect
of age, answers indicated that the largest number of goths were in the ‘21–
25’ category, with sizeable minorities in the categories ‘16–20’ and ‘26–30’.
In terms of lifestyle, a majority of approximately two to one indicated they
did not live with a partner or spouse, although almost one in ten said they
had children. While there was an equal gender split, a much greater discrep-
ancy was indicated in regard of class and ethnicity, with most respondents
either in middle-class occupations or in further or higher education, and an
overwhelming ninety-seven per cent identifying themselves as white (see
Appendix Table 1, p. 199).
As we have seen in the Chapter 3, the androgynous features of the goth
style meant that attachment to gender categories may have been loosened
somewhat, but it was certainly not undermined. As one would expect in the
overall context of a gendered society, being male or female remained
important in the overall sense of self of participants, both within context of
the goth scene and, of course, in the general context of family, education
and work. However, extensive ethnographic experience leaves little doubt
that had I reworked the aforementioned geographical hypothetical situation,
so as to compare interviewees’ feelings of sameness based on gender with
those based on subcultural identity, the responses would have been just as
clearly in favour of the latter. Notably, in the same way that comments about
place tended to involve the observation of differences within the goth scene,
gender tended to be discussed by goths in relation to the primary context of
the subculture.
In terms of class and ethnicity, the prominence of subcultural over structural
forms of consciousness was probably even greater. This can be partially
explained by the high proportion in the goth scene of young people in their
late teens to mid-twenties, many of whom were students. It has often been
argued that during such a period of ‘youth’, individuals occupy a liminal,
self-exploratory position, between the more fixed markers of structural
identity which characterize both childhood dependence and adulthood res-
ponsibility (Lury, 1996: 195–6; Thornton, 1995: 102–3). In addition, we have
seen that the subculture was dominated by white, middle-class individuals,
70
a socio-economic grouping well known for being rather less conscious of

their class or ethnic status than members of minority or subordinate social
groups (Dyer 1997). This too, may help to explain the relative significance
to goths of their elective subcultural identity.
For the minority of goths with backgrounds in subordinate social groups,
though, subcultural identity seemed every bit as prominent. I asked the
following respondent whether he felt he had more in common with goths, or
with other members of the localized, working-class community in which he
had lived most of his life. There was a clear sense that, while it remained
important, the class identity was something he identified with his past, while
his current sense of affiliation was based primarily on the sharing of stylistic
preferences.
J12 (male): Oh, the goths! . . . its not so much to do with where you’re from, its
to do with what you’re into. My taste in music is probably the same
as their [goths’] taste in music, my taste in clothes is probably the
same as theirs or whatever.
Later on in the interview, like most other respondents, he conveyed strongly,

the primacy of the goth scene to his sense of identity:
J12 (male): I’ve got a very camaraderie type attitude: ‘that’s one of our boys’ type
attitude even though I don’t know them. They’re still goth so they’re
alright by me.
Consistent with this, none of the minority of working-class or non-white

individuals who took part in the research provided any indication that the
importance of their subcultural identity was any less than in the case of their
white middle-class counterparts. While a subordinate class or ethnic identity
may have made the initial jump into subcultural involvement a more consid-
erable one, it appears that, once this step had been taken, the new elective
identity was liable to take precedence for a time.
Equally, while non-heterosexual practices or orientations tend rapidly in
much of society to take central place in the sense of self of individuals
(Plummer 1995: 85), this too was less certain in the goth scene. First, the
majority of non-heterosexual goths I came across either identified as bisexual
or rejected all sexual categories rather than taking on an exclusive gay identity.
Secondly, identification and association with others on the basis of shared
sexuality seemed often to be less important to individuals than taking part
in the goth scene. This can be regarded as logical since, as we have seen,
non-heterosexuals in the goth scene tended already to have a relatively safe
71
Goth
space as well as the respect of their peers. There was less need to legitimize
one’s same-sex orientation or practices through seeking exclusive gay space
or community, and probably less pressure than there would have been in the
context of the gay scene to reject any lingering opposite-sex desires (Came
1996: 27; Eadie 1996: 17). Finally, while many goth clubs tended to be
regarded as relatively safe spaces for discrete non-heterosexual activity, the
gay scene was not always regarded as equally tolerant of goths’ tastes in
music or fashion. As the following interviewee put it:
T4 (female): Anything alternative as far as music and dress goes is totally out [in
gay clubs] . . . you do get many dirty looks for it . . . they just look
you up and down as if, you know, ‘get out of our club, you’re just
one of those lipstick lesbians’.
As with the other social markers we have looked at, then, non-heterosexual
orientations often seemed to have a lower overall importance to identity than
subcultural attachment to the goth scene.
Finally, in relation to age, although many did gradually drop out of the
goth scene as they became older, increasing numbers appeared to remain
involved up to and beyond their thirties. Those I came across who had done
so appeared still to regard it as of considerable importance to their overall
sense of self, in spite of full-time careers, mortgages, long-term partners and
even, in some cases, children. The following respondent, in his late twenties,
insisted that although career commitments meant he couldn’t go out as much
as he used to, his sense of affiliation for the goth scene remained as strong as
ever:
B6 (male): If you’re a student . . . you’ve got less responsibilities . . . whereas I don’t

really have as much time . . . I mean I’m still into it as much as I ever
was, but maybe not so proactively involved in the whole thing of it,
but that’s only because of time and responsibility.
The intention, here, is not to argue that subcultural identity undermined

every other part of goth participants’ lives, twenty-four hours a day. However,
there is a clear contrast between the relatively central place of this single
affiliation in the identities of goths and the thoroughly ephemeral multi-
affiliated individuals referred to in postmodern theory and, to a lesser degree,
in the use of notions such as neo-tribalism (Maffesoli 1996; Bauman 1992a,
1992b; Bennett 1999; Shields 1992a), scene (Harris 2000) and postmodern
subculture (Muggleton 2000). As well as tending to take precedence over
place, gender, class and other structural foci for identity, the goth scene tended
72
to be its participants’ most important leisure or consumer-related affiliation.

Rather than having to share their identities equally with several other interests
or hobbies, the goth scene was one of those lifestyle groupings which demanded
a considerable proportion of one’s sense of self. The following statement as
to its centrality was not untypical:
W1 (male): It is the most important thing in my life, there’s no doubt about it, it
is the most important thing in my life – I couldn’t fathom existing
without it at all.
Without rendering observations of cultural superficiality and multiplicity

inaccurate in general terms, then, the case of the goth scene certainly raises
questions about attempts to apply such models across the board.
‘Trendies’
The danger of theoretical overemphasis on multiplicity and ephemerality is

illustrated even more clearly, perhaps, by the connection between goths’
translocal affiliation with one another and an equally strong sense of collective
distinction from those whose appearance or lifestyles were deemed antithetical
to those of the subculture. This usually involved a generalized conception of
‘normal’ culture, ‘the mainstream’ or ‘trendies’. The importance of this sense
of distinctiveness was demonstrated by the tendency for many goths to resort
to such denigration of ‘trendies’ in response to questioning concerning the
characteristics of the goth scene itself, as with the following comment in
response to the Whitby Festival Questionnaire:
WQ5b: In your own words, please explain what is the goth scene is all
about.
109 (female): Being different to all the mindless, brain-dead clones that walk
around small town England.
The practice of distinguishing one’s own tastes from those of a perceived

‘other’ in order to legitimize them is referred to by Pierre Bourdieu as part of
his study of classification and cultural tastes:
Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable

difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted
purely negatively, by the refusal of others’ tastes . . . all tastes are perhaps first and
foremost, distastes. (Bourdieu 1984: 56)
73
Goth
The specific importance of a single point of collective subcultural identity

and distinction among goths, though, is particularly consistent with Sarah
Thornton’s account (1995: 99), inspired by Bourdieu, of the negative con-
struction by British clubbers of a similar ‘mainstream’, against which they
defined and strengthened their own sense of identity. David Locher makes a
similar point in the context of a study of a subculture based around ‘industrial’
music, arguing that in order to be an insider:
it is not enough to like that which the other members like, one must also dislike
what the other members do not like . . . it is the exclusionary nature of such groups
that reinforces cohesion among the members (Locher 1998: 101).
This emphasis is broadly consistent, of course, with Howard Becker’s

discussion, some decades ago, of the significance of a derision of ‘squares’
for the strength of distinctive identity and indeed superiority or ‘hipness’
held by jazz musicians (Becker 1963). The relationship between identity and
difference in contemporary elective affiliations is also discussed in detail by
theorists of more fluid unstable forms of collective identity, notably Chaney
(1996) and Hetherington (1998a). As well as a general sense of the importance
of distinction, though, what Thornton’s and Locher’s perspectives point to is
the primacy to some individuals of relatively one-dimensional ‘us’ and ‘them’
distinctions revolving around a single affiliation. This can be contrasted with
the emphasis on numerous cross-cutting and ever changing systems of tastes
and distastes, identifications and disidentifications focused on by more
postmodern-oriented approaches.
Among goths, the strength of the distinction from perceived outsiders was
particularly intensive as a result of the prejudice and occasional violence goths
were prone to receive in light of their unconventional appearance. Many
interviewees keenly recounted experiences of such abuse or assault, as in
this example from a Leeds-based interviewee:
N1 (female): Me and [friend] were walking past Berlins and these couple of lasses
were like going ‘ere you tarts, vampire bitches’ . . . you go in city
pubs and all the lads are like ‘what have you got that in your lip
for, what else you got done?’
The perception among goths that such incidents reflected the narrow-minded
characteristics of a societal majority is illustrated by the way the same inter-
viewee used such experiences to justify her own dislike of ‘trendies’:
N1 (female): When you get treated like that why should you have respect for
someone else from their type of group?
74
Similarly, a Birmingham respondent regarded ‘trendies’ with considerable

caution as a result of past experience of abuse, in spite of placing some of
his friends within this category:
J12 (male): I had a discussion with a trendy mate . . . and I said ‘well how many
times have you been at a bus stop and had a goth shouting abuse at
you and starting a fight on you? . . . it’s happened to me with your lot
– we’re the ones that get trouble off you’.
The way the receipt of such hostility strengthened goths’ reciprocal dislike
of a perceived homogenous group of ‘trendies’ has a clear resemblance to
Albert Cohen’s circle of increasing subcultural delinquency (A. Cohen 1955).
For Cohen, as subcultural members earn contempt or aggression from society
outside, they collectively come to devalue ‘the good will and respect of those
whose good will and respect are forfeit anyway’ and the subculture ‘comes
to include hostile and contemptuous images of those groups whose enmity
they have earned’ (ibid.: 68). The final part of the circular process is that the
shared identity of subcultural insiders is thoroughly intensified by the process:
‘The hostility of the “out-group”, thus engendered or aggravated may serve
to protect the “in-group” from mixed feelings about its way of life’ (ibid.:
69). Although Cohen’s account, like those of Jock Young (1971) and Stan
Cohen (1972), may overestimate and oversimplify the importance of outside
hostility to the construction of subcultural identities, a circular process along
the lines of that described certainly appears to have fed and intensified goths’
sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’, as here:
J12 (male): The way I see it . . . all us goths should be mates because we’ve all got
the one common factor and that’s the trendies taking the piss out of
us all.
However, it was clear that goths’ dislike of the mainstream also tended to
reflect a positive and necessary enjoyment on their part of feeling collectively
different and, more specifically, superior to ‘outsiders’. Not surprisingly, per-
haps, when it was put to interviewees that the sense of subcultural identity
they so cherished was often reliant upon a rather elitist differentiation of
themselves from outsiders, the instant reaction was often to disagree. The
following response was typical:
T3 (female): I think it’s not what you are not into, it’s what you are into. It’s what
goth is.
75
Goth
The questionable accuracy of the first part of this sentiment, though, was
indicated when respondents were asked how they would feel if goth music
and style were prominent in the mass media and highly popular throughout
society. In response, the same interviewee articulated the link between shared
identity and collective distinction extremely honestly and clearly:
T3 (female): If every single person in the UK was a goth then a lot of goths wouldn’t
like it . . . I think I’d still be one, but I wouldn’t like everyone else
being one.
S7 (female): I wouldn’t like it.
PH: Why?
T3: It’s not like you’re a goth because you want to stand out, but you do
like sort of being different from everyone else, although when you’re
with a load of goths you blend in, but you’re all different, if you
know what I mean, from everyone else.
As well as re-emphasizing the somewhat one-dimensional sense of identity

and distinction held by many, the way in which goths so frequently positioned
themselves against those they perceived as ‘trendies’ is significant in that it
implies they also shared a set of moral assumptions about their lifestyle which
allowed many of them to understand it as culturally superior. These I shall
refer to as the ideals of the subculture.
Subcultural Ideals
Importantly, unlike so-called ‘new social movements’, the goth scene involved
no external political objectives. Rather, its ideals concerned the character
and survival of the group as such (Maffesoli 1996: 96), and the basis of its
cultural superiority over other sections of society. As has been indicated by
Sarah Thornton (1995), as well as sometimes being expressed openly, the
self-perceptions of subcultural participants can often be revealed by the ways
in which they negatively characterize outsiders. In the case of the goth scene,
a careful analysis of what goths said their group stood both for and against
revealed the central importance of two themes – individuality and commit-
ment.
The most common basis on which goths distinguished themselves from
‘trendies’ was a perception that the latter mindlessly followed mass-media
fashions in dress and music, rather than exercising individual discrimination
or taste:
76
K1 (male): They have no defined style, their style is to go with what is selling in
the shops rather than sifting through, people just go with what’s in
Top Man currently or stuff like that.
Due to their supposed indiscriminate adherence to passing commercial fads,

‘trendies’ were perceived as a homogenous group, something which goths
usually contrasted with the relative diversity of their own subculture:
C2 (male): If you look at a group of goths, there are similarities there but there’s
a lot more differences than if you had a group of normal people.
As we have already seen, goths, consistent with the subcultural interviewees

of Thornton (1995: 99) and Muggleton (2000: 55–79), tended to perceive
that their subculture encapsulated diversity, creativity and individuality. This
can be illustrated by another Whitby Festival Questionnaire response:
30 (male): Complete freedom of expression, diversity.
In particular, it was often stated by interviewees that the goth scene entailed
an open-minded environment which encouraged people to do their own thing,
free from the kinds of social pressures to conform which characterized main-
stream society. As one Plymouth-based interviewee succinctly put it:
J5 (female): There’s no peer pressure within goth.
In addition, the goth scene was often perceived as being characterized by

open-mindedness and tolerance in respect of social characteristics such as
gender, race and sexuality, in contrast to perceptions of trendies who, as
well as often being regarded as violent, tended to be associated with prejudice:
S3 (female): I’ve never met a goth that’s been sexist or homophobic or anything.
All the trendies I’ve met seem to have something like that – like they
don’t like black people or gay people or something . . . but every goth
is very open-minded because they’ve been taken the piss out of and
they know what it feels like.
As well as a disapproval of the ‘sheepishness’, narrow-mindedness and

intolerance to difference of those ‘taken in’ by dominant music and fashion
trends, there was among goths a specific dislike of the commercialism
associated with ‘trendy’ clothes and music. In a familiar viewpoint associated
with rock music generally (see Frith 1981; Cohen 1991), the involvement of
77
Goth
commercial motives was deemed to clash with the ideal of authentic individual
expression. Thus, many bands, promoters, record labels and other small
businesses connected with the goth scene were keen to emphasize their artistic
motivations and to make it clear that money was a marginal consideration.
The vocalist of American goth band Faith and the Muse perceived a direct
contradiction between the two:
M7 (female): I recently had a talk with another singer who just wants to ‘make it’
in the music business, which is not a smart thing to do, unless you
have no soul . . . there are numerous successful artists out there who
have made their name on ‘Bubble-gum . . . music’: that which has
no real substance or meaning!
In contrast to notions of the mainstream as dominated by commercial interests

and a mass narrow-minded culture, then, goths tended to regard their own
subculture as encapsulating authentic artistic expression by musicians, and
the exercise of equally instinctive discriminating tastes in music and clothing
by a diverse and open-minded set of individual fans.
The second subcultural ideal, fairly consistently alluded to by goths, was
commitment. Whether in terms of the intensity or longevity of individual
participation, depth of knowledge and understanding, or even involvement
in production and organizational activities, goths tended to regard themselves
as strongly committed to their preferred styles of music and fashion and to
the lifestyle with which it was connected. Conversely, as well as being deemed
to lack individuality, ‘trendies’ and the kinds of music and fashion with which
they were associated were often derided as fickle and superficial. Furthermore,
those who regarded themselves as goths but were deemed not to be taking
part in the subculture with sufficient conviction were in danger of being
labelled ‘part-timers’ (Muggleton 2000: 82–7). In the following example a
Birmingham interviewee describes his dislike, during the 1980s, of those
deemed only to take part in the goth scene for individual nights out and
hence to lack a permanent subcultural appearance:
C4 (male): There was the stiffs wasn’t there, that used to come down the clubs.
Stiffs . . . had daytime jobs and had say just short hair that they spiked
for the weekend who thought they were really cool they were being
really different, but to us . . . they were just . . . part-timers . . . because
we were doing it full-on.
Although not engaged in by all goths, such derision of part-timers seemed

just as prominent among contemporary participants as a whole. In the next
78
example, the age of participants and their lack of stylistic extremity or of in-
depth subcultural knowledge are taken as evidence of insufficient commitment.
Notably, the display of interest in a commercially successful and externally
well-known band and of what is deemed a temporary or superficial subcul-
tural appearance are taken to suggest that the individuals concerned have
only scratched the surface of the subculture:
S7 (female): Yeah, like the baby goths. I think that’s probably Marilyn Manson’s
fault.
T3 (female): It’s like when you go to Edwards [Birmingham goth club] and there’s
all these fifteen-year-olds jumping about with their Marilyn Manson
T-shirts.
S7: They’ve got short hair, and they’ve just got a little bit of eye-liner, a
little bit of lipstick and they think, ‘oh I’m a goth’.
As indicated already, the distinction drawn by goths between themselves

as committed and individual and the mainstream as commercial, shallow
and homogenous was shared with many other music-related amalgams,
notably those described by Thornton (1995) and Muggleton (2000). In
addition, many of the elements which make up the ideals can be traced to a
general emphasis on artistic authenticity that goes far beyond contemporary
popular music or fashion. Notably, it resides in the way proponents of ‘legit-
imate’ discerning bourgeois culture distinguish themselves from the ‘vulgar’
tastes of mass society, as described in Bourdieu’s famous work, Distinction
(1984). It is also directly promoted by some of the most well known of cultural
theories – most notably, perhaps, the contrast drawn by Adorno (1941)
between standardized ‘popular music’ and artistic ‘serious music’. A similar
emphasis on authenticity is present in the moral elevation, by CCCS
subcultural theorists, of innovative and spontaneous subcultural ‘resistance’
above a passive, media-manipulated general public. Indeed, Hebdige’s account
actually contains a theoretical reference to part-timers, in the form of a
distinction between self-conscious, innovative ‘originals’ and media-induced,
trend-following ‘hangers-on’ (Hebdige 1979: 122).
In the same way that Bourdieu subjects the discourse of dominant bourgeois
culture to rigorous deconstruction, the appeals to authenticity and individ-
uality of contemporary subcultural participants ought not to be accepted at
face value. For this reason, Sarah Thornton makes use of the term subcultural
ideology to refer to the production and circulation of shared ‘common-sense’
understandings and ideals within particular groupings (Thornton 1995: 98,
115). Without dismissing the value of what subcultural participants say, the
use of ‘ideology’ here establishes that their verbalized understandings, rather
79
Goth
than being taken as gospel, should be subject to the critical spotlight. It

acknowledges that goths, punks, clubbers and others have tended to share
certain well-established, value-laden assumptions which may not always be
entirely accurate or coherent when applied to the actual workings of their
group or, indeed, of those they contrast themselves with.
In the case of the goth scene, while the degree of consistency of the ideals
described from one goth to the next and one place to the next was significant
in itself as a subcultural trait, it does not take a great deal of analysis to discern
fairly clear flaws in some of their assumptions, particularly in respect of the
notion of individuality. Most importantly, it is clear that this ideal does not
sit comfortably with that of subcultural commitment. On the one hand, many
goths understood their subculture as superior to the mainstream on the basis
of its encouragement of diversity, creativity and self-expression, while on the
other they valued and demanded, as membership criteria, significant devotion
to something in particular. Of course, if commitment to the ideal of being
individual in its general sense would have sufficed, then there would be no
contradiction. However, having examined the denigrations of part-timers and
trendies by goths, I find it clear that, in practice, commitment was nearly
always judged against a rather more distinctive set of criteria, including spec-
ific hairstyles, clothing, make-up and exhibited music tastes.
As well as general factors such as frequency of participation and contrib-
ution to the well-being of the subculture, then, gaining inclusion and respect
required that individuals demonstrate commitment and in-depth under-
standing of the specific range of tastes and norms which made the subculture
distinctive. As we have seen in Chapter 3, it was important to demonstrate a
degree of individual innovation, but only in the context of a general display
of commitment to the range of tastes which symbolized the goth scene.
Without wanting to diminish the significance of individuals developing their
own version of the goth style, it is clear that what was substantively ‘indiv-
idual’ was less the behaviour and appearance of one goth compared to another
than the overall range of collective stylistic criteria which they shared. It
was these specific shared tastes which usually formed the basis of distinctions
and judgements drawn by goths between insiders, outsiders and part-timers.
‘Gother than Thou Syndrome’
The styles described in the Chapter 3, then, were not merely symbolic of
subcultural identity, important though this was. They also functioned as a
shared and translocally consistent system of classification whereby goths
collectively distinguished themselves from outsiders and, by extension, created
80
hierarchies of status among themselves. Sarah Thornton (1995) has theorized

such classifications and distinctions among subcultural participants through
further adaptation of the writings of Bourdieu. She adapts – for discussion
of the specific classificatory systems of subcultures – the term cultural capital,
which essentially refers to knowledges, cultural goods or modes of behaviour
which bestow status and social advantages on individuals in relation to
dominant systems of taste (Bourdieu 1984). Therefore subcultural capital
should be taken to involve the degree of status-inducing properties one holds
in relation to the particular tastes or values of a given subcultural grouping.
Thornton provides examples from club culture to illustrate the adaptation
of the term: ‘Just as books and paintings display cultural capital in the family
home, so subcultural capital is objectified in the form of fashionable haircuts
and well assembled record collections’ (Thornton 1995: 11).
The recognition that subcultural participants tend to classify and judge
others by means of a conscious and mutually agreed set of standards is what
makes this pluralization of cultural capital useful to our discussion of the
goth scene here. It fits with our emphasis on the way the classificatory prac-
tices of goths somewhat undermined the credibility of their verbal espousals
of individuality, open-mindedness and freedom of expression. Of course, the
notion of subcultural capital resurrects some valuable aspects of Chicago
School approaches to subculture, notably Albert Cohen’s emphasis on
alternative ‘group standards’ and subcultural ‘criteria of status’ (1955) and
Becker’s notion of ‘hipness’ (1963). The term subcultural capital is particularly
useful though, since as well as referring to levels of status at the level of
perception and consciousness, it allows us to capture the practical rewards
liable to be afforded to those who achieve it and the lack of social oppor-
tunities for those who do not. We shall begin to see in Chapter 5 that in the
case of the goth scene, such rewards most obviously took the form of
attention, friendships and romantic opportunities.
Subcultural capital is also useful since, as well as explaining the basis for
divisions between insiders and outsiders, it alludes to differential levels of
status and rewards within both outsider or insider groups. Therefore, although
they were all outsiders, goths objected less to punks, crusties and fetishists
than they did to trendies. Similarly, as in the denigration of perceived ‘part-
timers’, it is clear that, even having satisfied the basic criteria for subcultural
membership, individuals were not free from the classification or judgement
of their fellow insiders. While few were keen to acknowledge that they
engaged in it themselves, many respondents complained about the judge-
mental side of the goth scene and the resulting competitiveness among insiders,
which was commonly known as ‘gother than thou syndrome’. The following
exchange summed this up splendidly:
81
Goth
J8 (female): I think some goths get off on that. They have to be the weirdest, the
most mysterious, the most facial piercings.
L1 (female): Those are the pretentious people that stand there and say ‘I’m more
gothier than you are, my clothes are better than yours’.
J8: Those are the people that sleep in coffins on a night and not only do
they do it but they tell everyone that they do it (laughter).
Of course, what this exchange does not recognize is that, while it may have
varied in extent, such competitiveness, alongside the continual tendency to
classify and judge others, was actually engaged in by most if not all goths.
As the following respondent explains, newcomers to the goth scene tended
to be particularly aware of the hierarchies it created, and their own position
at the bottom thereof. Again, the importance of having the right appearance,
as primary exhibitor of subcultural capital, is clear:
B6 (male): You know what you’re like when you’re wearing your first pair of
black jeans and a black shirt and short hair, and . . . you’re just in awe
of everyone and you feel ever so humble buying your first pair of boots
and you feel like you shouldn’t because you’re not worthy sort of thing
(laughter) . . . there were all these glowering, towering pale forlorn-
looking gothic type people and you’re just like some seventeen-year-
old with your Sisters of Mercy T-shirt.
Gaining and maintaining subcultural capital, and the social rewards it

entailed, then, was a key concern and motivation for most goths. When it
offered the prospect of such rewards, the system of classification we have
been describing induced considerable encouragement for individuals to collect,
learn about and exhibit examples of established subcultural style and
behaviour. While effective innovations sometimes resulted in particularly high
social rewards and over-predictable imitations were often frowned upon, the
bread and butter of subcultural capital usually revolved around one’s overall
commitment to existing shared systems of taste.
Conclusion
Understanding the importance to goths of an ability to distinguish between

insiders and outsiders, then, has enabled us to create a linkage between the
distinctive stylistic features of the goth scene, described in Chapter 3, and
the sense of identity which has concerned us in this chapter. As well as being
important in their own right, the range of styles functioned as key everyday
criteria in the delineation of subcultural capital and hence in the ability of
82
goths to discern differential status levels among themselves and to establish

boundaries between themselves and outsiders. Consistent distinctiveness,
therefore, played a crucial role in the subjective perceptions of identity on
which this chapter began. Subcultural capital, though, manifested itself not
only in the way individuals looked but also in other indications of practical
commitment, notably the depth of their subcultural knowledge, the size and
appropriateness of their collections of records, fanzines, posters and other
artefacts and the frequency and exclusivity of their practical participation.
The high rewards for commitment meant that the strong consciousness of
identity focused on in this chapter tended to run alongside the subculture’s
dominance of friendship patterns, going-out habits, shopping routes, cultural
possessions and even internet use. All of these will be addressed in the chapters
which follow.
Notes
1. Selected quantitative findings from the Whitby Festival Questionnaire are

referred to at various points in the remainder of the book. For more detail on the
quantitative results of the questionnaire, please see the tables in the Appendix,
pp. 199–202.
83
Events, Friendships and Commitment
5
Events, Friendships and
Commitment
There is little doubt that for goths the most important practical activities
were going out to events and socializing with other members of the subculture.
Some 66 per cent of respondents to the Whitby Festival Questionnaire selected
‘nightclubs and pubs’ among the three most important aspects of the goth
scene for them, and 43 per cent indicated that ‘socializing’ was the single
most important activity (see Appendix, Table 4, p. 201). The significance of
going out to goth events to properly participating in the goth scene was also
demonstrated qualitatively in the accounts of interviewees. For the following
respondent from a small isolated town, an ability to keep up with the goth
scene via specialist media failed to compensate for his inability regularly to
attend goth events.
D4 (male): Well, in small towns and villages there tends to be no goth scene to be
involved in . . . being able to hang out with your ‘crowd’, listening to
a goth band or at a goth disco without having to travel hundreds of
miles has to be better than knowing what’s going on but not being
able to participate.
Consistent with these sentiments, another respondent, who had plenty of

events to attend in his home city of Leeds, suggested that if the subculture
were to die, it would be going out to events that he would miss most of all:
M2 (male): I doubt if I’d actually change how I dress . . . I would get bothered if
there were no more gigs or clubs to go to.
In addition to emphasizing their importance from the subjective point of

view of participants, this chapter focuses on events as a key element, alongside
commodities and media, of the subcultural infrastructure that lay behind and
facilitated the identities, styles and commitments which characterized the
goth scene. At the end of Chapter 2, a subcultural/non-subcultural distinction
was outlined, in order for us to distinguish between those elements of this
85
Goth
infrastructure which could be regarded as largely internal and autonomous

and those which overlapped considerably with society outside. Consistent
with this general distinction, we will distinguish in this chapter between
specialist subcultural events, largely oriented toward the goth scene, and
external non-subcultural events, where goths formed a small part of a more
diverse clientele. As we shall see, the night-life of most goths tended to be
dominated by the former, something consistent with two key indicators of
subcultural substance: the practical commitment to the goth scene among
its participants and the relative autonomy of the grouping as a whole.
Mixed Events and Recruitment
Before we address the importance of specifically goth-oriented or subcultural

events, there is a need to examine the role played by more mixed events attended
by goths. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was not uncommon for
goths to form a reasonable proportion of the clientele for general ‘alternative’
events, which also accommodated punks, indie fans, crusties and others.
Toward the early 1990s, however, the stylistic emphasis of many such events
had moved away from goth, in favour of less extreme forms of British indie
guitar rock and grunge music from the United States. During my research, I
came across only one or two events which included goth music alongside
various other ‘alternative’ styles. One of these was the Saturday night event at
a venue known as The Phono in Leeds, described by the following respondent:
C1 (female): Saturday night you get the weirdest collection. You get like a hip-
hop spot, you get an indie spot, you get a goth slot, and then an
indie spot. They all somehow meld together and it works.
While the inclusion of goth in such alternative events was rare by the late
1990s, ‘goth-friendly’ non-subcultural events were also provided in the form
of the one-off gigs of such ‘cross-over’ bands as Garbage and Placebo which,
as a result of their incorporation of elements of femininity and sombreness,
appealed to goths as well as to certain indie music fans. Also, general rock
clubs had, for the most part, taken up the previous role of alternative nights,
in terms of providing a regular non-exclusive space for goths. Despite their
being in a minority, and lucky to hear two or three specialist goth songs
played all night, goths sometimes found that rock clubs offered a relatively
safe environment in relation to the their unconventional appearance and a
play-list which was preferable to chart- or dance-oriented clubs. Both factors
were accentuated as a result of the increasing use of goth imagery and sounds
86
in certain strains of death and black metal, notably Type O Negative and
Marilyn Manson, which had facilitated an interest in and sympathy for the
goth scene among some of their fans. Attendance by goths at such events was
often inversely proportionate to the local availability of more exclusive spaces.
In particular, those who lived in smallish towns and cities sometimes had to
settle for general rock nights because of the insufficient number of goths to
support anything more exclusive. In the city of Plymouth, where the only
predominantly goth night was held on Mondays, respondents begrudgingly
attended a general rock club at weekends. Even in Birmingham, where there
were a greater number of specialist goth events, the lack of one after pub-
closing time on Saturdays prompted many to attend a large general rock night.
The presence of small numbers of goths and the playing of occasional
examples of goth music at alternative and rock pubs, clubs or gigs created
important points of cultural contact between the music, fashion and individual
participants of this otherwise fairly insular subculture and those of other
music scenes. The mixture of styles and affiliations within such spaces created
the potential for individuals to move between different specialist groups (see
Malbon 1998: 280). Indeed, for some individuals, they probably resulted in
continual movement and fluctuation between different styles and affiliations
in the manner described by Bennett (1999) and others who have emphasized
the prevalence of ephemerality in contemporary youth culture. Attendance
at non-subcultural events may also have prompted certain long-term partic-
ipants of substantive subcultures like the goth scene to begin to diversify their
tastes or even to transfer their commitment to other groupings. I came across
a group of goths in Birmingham, for example, who, having attended some
hard-core dance-oriented events out of curiosity, appeared to become more
interested in the general culture of which they were a part, and to spend less
of their time at goth events. In spite of such possibilities, however, mixed
events were of greatest significance – for our purposes – as a cultural route
for individuals into a relatively long-term, committed involvement with the
goth scene’s exclusive subcultural networks of events, commerce and media.
Numerous goths explained to me that the inter-style contact in such spaces
was responsible for their initial discovery of goth music, fashion, clubs and
friends. Respondent T3, quoted here, became interested as a result of a goth-
oriented room which happened to form the upstairs section of an Birmingham
indie club she had attended for some time:
T3 (female): Basically one day we were downstairs in Edwards – I was about

seventeen – and she [indicates friend] said ‘oh come upstairs’ and I
said ‘what’s up there?’ and she said ‘all these vampire people’ and I
went up there and said ‘wow’ and I loved it.
87
Goth
Having been initially attracted to goth music, style or individuals as a result

of mixed pubs and clubs, would-be recruits often ended up deliberately seeking
out and attending exclusive goth events, and as a result gradually making
more and more subcultural friends, something which opened the doors to
subcultural networks of influence and information. The following respondent
explained that a liking for the appearance of a minority of goths at ‘alter-
native’ nights had prompted him to attend a new, more goth-specific night,
a move which opened the door to greater involvement in the subculture:
K1 (male): I went to a club called The Studio [alternative club] in Plymouth. The
only people who were dressing up were the goths – and that was when
Charlies [goth-oriented club] opened up as well and that was more of
a goth thing. It [becoming involved in the goth scene] was through
mixing with people.
Claiming Subcultural Space
Specialist goth pub and club nights had emerged in greater numbers from
the early to mid-1990s, partly as a result of the increasing exclusion of goth
music from ‘alternative’ events. In spite of the willingness of some to attend
mixed events rather than staying at home, goths wherever possible attended
nights oriented largely toward their own subculture. Respondent W1’s
practical commitment was typical in this respect:
W1 (male): When I go out, I like to go out to goth clubs, or to see a goth band. It
doesn’t mean that I won’t go anywhere else, but I really won’t go
anywhere else on a regular basis.
Such subcultural events, then, were targeted at – and hence attended by –

goths, and were relatively obscure outside the subculture’s networks of com-
munication. In addition to its diverse Saturday night event, described earlier,
The Phono, in Leeds, ran a Sunday night goth club, which was far more
popular among goths. One interviewee describes its level of exclusiveness:
C1 (female): One of the mainstays of the Phono was always the Sunday night
goth club . . . in some ways it was closed off from the rest of the
world.
Although the kind of direct selection and exclusion through door policies
characteristic of some clubs (Thornton 1995: 113) was relatively uncommon
88
in the goth scene, the relative exclusivity of its events was maintained through
their means of promotion, the decor of the venue and the type of enter-
tainment inside. Whether in the form of flyers, posters, websites or adverts
in fanzines or on-line discussion groups, information making clear the generic
orientation of the night would be placed in actual and virtual spaces
frequented by the intended subcultural audience. Meanwhile, at the events
themselves, music and venue decor were made consistent with the tastes of
the goth scene as perceived by promoters and DJs, most of whom were also
enthusiasts.
The Mercat, a Birmingham market pub with a Saturday goth night, was
characterized by features typical of many goth events. On entering, one
immediately noticed a dark smoky atmosphere, a large screen exhibiting goth
music videos, and posters on the walls for past and future goth events. Loud
music was played throughout the night, and a particularly darkened smoke-
filled corner was set aside for dancing. The music included a range of goth
tracks – from early 1980s Bauhaus to the more contemporary and dance-
oriented Apoptygma Berzerk – alongside occasional examples of related
genres deemed sufficiently consistent with the tastes of the subculture. This
specialist range of music, alongside the dark smoky atmosphere of the pub,
served to provide appeal to the goths themselves as well as a somewhat intim-
idating atmosphere for any outsiders not filtered out by the event’s means of
promotion.
Of even greater importance to the subcultural status of the event or venue,
though, was the appearance and behaviour of the goth-oriented clientele.
Though in general he presents clubs as more fluid than the goth spaces I
observed, Ben Malbon’s observation about the ways particular forms of
behaviour can serve to claim spaces for affinity groupings is relevant here:
Acting out certain roles, dressing in a similar manner, dancing in a certain way,
even drinking similar beers are all ways in which the affinity of the group can be
reinforced, the territory of the club experience claimed (Malbon 1998: 176).
Most importantly, no insider or outsider to the goth scene could have failed
to note the clear and relatively consistent exhibition of subcultural appear-
ances by the majority of those present at goth events. More than anything
else, such a demonstration of visual distinctiveness functioned to claim the
space inhabited by goths as their own.
While much of the behaviour at goth events overlapped with rock pub,
club and gig culture generally (see Finnegan 1989; Cohen 1991), certain rituals
were more specific. There were a particular range of ways in which goths
tended to dance, for example. While relatively diverse and neither exclusive
89
Goth
to the group nor particularly difficult to pick up, these loose dance-floor
conventions were revealed on occasion by the laughing, scoffing or disap-
proving stares which resulted from unwitting transgressions. On more than
one occasion, for example, I witnessed disapproval of heavy-metal-style head-
banging, for example. Various behavioural manifestations of the goth scene’s
general feminine stylistic theme also served to mark out its subcultural spaces.
Thus, the tendency at goth events for activities in gents’ toilets to be dominated
by the touching-up of make-up in front of the mirror surely had the potential
to disorientate those more used to experiencing such spaces as havens of
concentrated homophobia. They might also have found themselves somewhat
disturbed by the greater likelihood in goth clubs than in most other non-gay
spaces, of same-sex embracing, flirting and kissing by both males and females.
The subcultural nature of goth events was further strengthened by the
contrasting behaviour of the goth clientele toward those whom they classified
as insiders and toward those whom they considered outsiders. During one
goth night I attended in Leeds, I noticed that the entry of two short-haired
males dressed in blue jeans and brightly coloured shirts prompted resentful
stares and mutterings to the effect of ‘what are those trendies doing here?’
among a group of goths sitting nearby. While not everyone reacted so directly,
my long-term experience of the goth scene enables a confident assertion that
most would have noted the presence of these individuals, demarcated them
as outsiders, and set out to avoid contact with them, as indeed I did myself.
In rare instances where direct verbal or physical contact with strangers per-
ceived as outsiders did take place, most goths tended to disengage as quickly
as possible, while in contrast they were often quick to befriend unfamiliar
individuals with sufficient subcultural capital.
Nevertheless, the tendency of occasional punks, metallers and others to be
accepted, if not always warmly welcomed, in goth spaces, emphasized that
not all outsiders were equally excluded. Such differentiation between outsiders
was illustrated clearly on a goth e-mail list discussion, when one subscriber
expressed worries about the implications of a new membership policy in a
local goth club for individuals such as herself who weren’t obviously affiliated.
The reply, reproduced here, reassured her that only obvious or unfriendly
outsiders should be excluded, and specified the particular stylistic character-
istics of such individuals.
Subject: Re: Torrie info

hatty wrote:
>And does this mean that I won’t be able to get a card? . . .
No, but they can now keep the people who are obviously not goth (or goth-friendly)
out – the kind of people with designer shoes/jeans/shirts/hairstyles/all of the above.
90
As for not being a Goth – you’re obviously not a trendy, and you’ve been there
before, so they wouldn’t have a problem with letting you in.
(MurkyGoth 1999)1
Note also, in this example, that the individual was demarcated as acceptable
through being regarded as a regular. Frequent attendance or acquaintance
with insiders were sometimes key sources of subcultural capital for those
who did not obviously look the part.
In addition to their selective means of promotion, then, the decor, music
and particularly the appearance and behaviour of clientele at goth-specific
events served to police their relative exclusivity. Contrasting with descriptions
of some clubs as fluid spaces inhabited by fickle or multi-affiliated individuals
(e.g. Bennett 1999, 2000; Malbon 1998), the importance of such specialist
events to going-out patterns indicates the relatively high levels of commitment
and autonomy which characterized the goth scene. While outsiders tended to
stand out markedly, such spaces were key sources of safety, belonging and
friendships for goths themselves.
Accumulating Status and Friendships
44 (female): It’s about dressing up in your best stuff, socializing and making new
friends and listening to great music.
As well as having subcultural functions, goth events had certain commonalities

with other kinds of clubbing, and hence, theories of ‘club culture’ (Redhead
1997a, 1997b; Malbon 1998, 1999). For example, they included instantan-
eous physical and social fulfilment in the form of dancing, flirting, drinking
and, in a minority of cases, drug-taking. In addition, goth club experiences
involved something of a displacement of everyday inhibitions, a degree of
‘losing oneself’ while dancing, with or without drugs, and for some a degree
of escape from more stressful elements of life. However, the experiences and
functions of regular attendance at goth events tended to involve significantly
more than just immediate physical gratification or a one-off escape from
everyday life. Rather, subcultural events served to affirm and cement the
highly specific and distinctive identities of goths, and to encourage further
participation in a variety of ways.
In contrast to the consumption of subcultural music or media at home,
goth events facilitated public subcultural participation. While goths undoubt-
edly enjoyed being ‘seen’ when out shopping in groups, when participating
in the subculture’s on-line discussion forums, and indeed at non-subcultural
91
Goth
events, specialist goth events were the most important sites at which
subcultural capital was earned and claimed, and at which individuals most
fully experienced their sense of belonging:
C4 (male): It gives you a central focus, a meeting point, a kind of like you know,
where you can affirm your own identity. You go there, and its all shared.
Its like going to church really, you know it’s a shared belief that you’ve
got – a shared way of thinking.
Such was the importance of events that other elements of the goth scene
such as consumables and media tended to be geared toward going out. For
example, much of the information in fanzines and web sites was focused on
forthcoming or regular events, as was much of the conversation on internet
discussion groups. Subcultural shopping was also geared towards public
display at events, the excitement of purchasing clothes generated largely from
the prospect of being seen wearing them by other goths, whether at regular
local events or at large festivals. So crucial was looking the part in subcultural
spaces that goths often got together with friends to help one another ‘get
gothed-up’ (see Figure 5.1).
The following respondent explained that such pre-club get-togethers were
sometimes highly enjoyable in themselves.
G1 (male): Loads of people went over to [name]’s house and started getting ready
and the thing started at nine o’clock and we ended up getting there at
about eleven because we were having so much fun getting ready –
backcombing hair and getting ready and getting into . . . boots. It was
so much fun.
Nevertheless, such rituals were driven, ultimately, by the excitement and

anticipation of displaying the finished result to others in the public space of
a goth event. In order to realize the potential subcultural capital signified by
one’s appearance, a significant subcultural audience was required. Specialist
styles of consumables, then, may have been goths’ most obvious distinguishing
feature – but without a suitably specialist forum in which to parade them,
their consumption would have lost much of its appeal and significance.
Subcultural events provided a space for collective consumption and apprec-
iation of a shared range of tastes, through listening, dancing and a somewhat
competitive sharing of one another’s versions of subcultural style and behav-
iour. So important were the presence, appearance, behaviour and attentions
of others to the experience that, effectively, those present can be regarded as
consuming one another, a point made by Malbon in relation to clubbing in
general terms:
92
Figure 5.1 Getting gothed-up with friends. (Photograph: P. Hodkinson).
The clubbers consume each other – the clubbing crowd contains both the producers
and the consumers of the experience and the clubbers are consuming a crowd of
which they are a part (Malbon 1998: 277).
The difference between more mixed clubs and the goth scene was that in the
latter case, the clubbers collectively shared and reproduced a very particular
set of values and the clear sense of subcultural identity which they symbolized.
93
Goth
As well as reinforcing belonging and individual status within the group,

attendance at relatively exclusive goth events played a key role in terms of
the creation and maintenance of actual subcultural friendships. After a short
initial period of being ostracized, newcomers to the goth scene who adopted
some of its tastes and exercised a degree of persistence tended to be over-
whelmed by the speed at which they gained acceptance and companions.
Respondent K1, referred to earlier in relation to his recruitment to the goth
scene, emphasized the importance of people’s friendliness to his becoming
involved more intensely:
K1 (male): First of all you liked the music, and also you were embraced by a lot
of people. People came and talked to you and stuff . . . It was being
part of a community. Like I was saying earlier, these people were
friendly to you in a club . . . I knew ninety per cent of the people who
went to the Phono or Scrumpies. People just introduced you around.
From such a point of social inclusion, many goths gradually accumulated

more friendships the more they went out, relative of course to the development
of their subcultural capital. The following respondent suggested that the
friendships and general acceptance she had gained were the most important
aspect of being involved in the goth scene:
R1 (female): I just basically like the goth scene a lot because I’ve found a lot of
friends through it. A lot of people accepted me, which is something
I’ve never had before . . . it gave me a lot of confidence, which is
something I’ll probably never lose.
Importantly, once friendships were established, maintaining the relationship

with such individuals became, in itself, a key attraction of attending further
subcultural events. Also, the more subcultural friendships one made, the
greater the sense of belonging and status one was likely to experience in
subcultural spaces – something which, again, increased their future appeal.
The following respondent explained that he had initially been taken by friends
to the Phono goth club in Leeds but that, having met other people there, he
eventually began to go on his own:
J3 (male): There were a couple of friends in Leeds that were like saying ‘come
down the Phono sometime’, so they dragged me down there . . . and so
I got talking to a few people and those other people stopped coming
down but a couple of weeks later I thought ‘f*** it, I’ll go on my own’,
and I got talking to more people and talking and drinking and I just
got to know more and more people and I just go all the time now.
94
As subcultural events and friendships became more central to the everyday

lives of individuals, so did the general importance of their involvement in
the goth scene, and their psychological and practical commitment to the sub-
culture. Crucially, at the same time, involvement in social and friendship
groups outside of it tended to dwindle somewhat. As the following respondent
put it:
G4 (male): People . . . they would have a group of friends and – I know, I did it
and I feel really guilty about it – and then you’ll meet a load of goths,
and you hang around with them and your other friends are then
excluded, because they don’t fit in socially.
As a result of such a circle of increased involvement, the goth scene came

to dominate the friendship patterns of most of its participants. Almost all
respondents estimated that the majority of their friends were involved in the
subculture, as in this example:
M3 (male): You know, I think there definitely is an identity – I think I can hon-
estly say that ninety per cent of the people I know in Plymouth are
goths.
Romantic and sexual relationships with people outside the subculture were
even more unusual, once individuals had became involved. Successful adoption
of the norms of the goth scene and the consequent gains in subcultural capital
tended to make individuals more attractive to other subcultural participants
and, in most cases, less attractive to outsiders. In addition, the tendency for
goths to attend relatively exclusive subcultural events decreased the chances
of meeting, let alone getting together with, an outsider to the subculture.
Furthermore, the extent of most goths’ subcultural commitment was such
that any relationships with non-goths that did get underway were liable to
suffer from serious practical difficulties:
T3 (female): You usually see a goth with a goth.

S7 (female): because they’ve met them in a pub or a club.
T3: and basically if they didn’t like the music . . . if there was a goth and
a non-goth – because goths are so into their scene it would probably
cause problems I think. Imagine dragging a non-goth down to the
Mercat – it just wouldn’t work, and then they [goth partner] would
hate to go to one of their [non-goth partner’s] places. And also you’re
more likely to end up with a goth if you’re more attracted to goth-
looking people.
95
Goth
While attendance at subcultural events increased the likelihood of romantic

involvement with fellow subcultural participants, such relationships – or
indeed the prospect of them – provided incentives to further intensify one’s
practical involvement in the subculture.
The potential spiral we have been describing here, of increased event attend-
ance and ever more exclusive subcultural commitment, contrasts markedly
with descriptions of fickle, individualized postmodern consumers who con-
tinually move between partial and ephemeral attachments (Bauman 1992b;
Maffesoli 1996). While increasing numbers of individuals across society may
behave in such ways, the model is largely inappropriate to patterns of
involvement in the goth scene or in other subcultures with their own relatively
exclusive spaces and relationship circles. This does not mean goths never
associated with outsiders, that individuals never drifted away from the goth
scene or, indeed, that there were no ‘hangers-on’. However, the social rewards
which accompanied significant subcultural commitment – in terms of general
levels of status as well as of the prospect of romantic relationships and
friendships – meant that it often took on a central and relatively long-term
place in participants’ lives. Conversely, the relative lack of such social rewards
for those remaining on the edge of the subculture placed limits on the number
of individuals occupying such a position.
Influence and Information
As well as providing the main forum in which goths gained increasing

acceptance, veneration, friendships and romance, subcultural events provided
individuals with much of the cultural information necessary to attain such
goals. While information, knowledge and clues were consistently available
from subcultural media, shops and consumables, it was experiences and
observations at subcultural events which most informed participants of how
they might attain subcultural capital. As the following participant put it:
B6 (male): That is your influence really – your pubs and clubs that you go to –
especially if you are going for the first time and that’s the sort of music
you hear then it’s bound to influence the music that you listen to and
the way you dress.
Although direct copying was a serious faux pas, other people’s appearances
at goth events were, for many interviewees, the most important initial source
of ideas on what clothes or make-up to buy and how to wear them, as
explained by a newcomer to the goth scene from Wakefield:
96
R1 (female): I try as much as possible to observe other goth girlies while they’re
out and stuff and see what their ideas are, and the blokes as well
really, considering half of them wear dresses.
In a subculture largely obscure to radio play or music press coverage, sub-

cultural events were equally important as a source of knowledge about and
familiarity with goth music. Many respondents tended to discover new music
through hearing songs played at goth events, or seeing live bands and then
finding out about them:
A6 (male): Either I’ll see them live – like if they’re supporting another band and
you go ‘wow, they’re brilliant’ you know ‘I’m going to go and find
something by them’. Or sometimes somebody will bring a CD down
to the Phono and it’ll get played for the first time.
The degree of influence events had on the musical knowledge and preferences
of their clientele was confirmed by DJs themselves, and also specialist record
label proprietors who, because of the lack of radio play for goth music, were
particularly reliant upon distributing promotional CDs to clubs in the hope
they would be played:
G2 (male): DJs are an important part of it. If you’ve got a track that’s being played
at Slimelight [London goth club] every night its going to eventually
make a difference . . . there is no radio network for gothic music. You’ve
got to use, the next best thing is using the DJs and the DJ club nights.
In addition to the appearance and behaviour of strangers and the music

played at events, friends and acquaintances were a key source of influence
and information for both new recruits and established goths. The reactions
of friends to the appearance of others, for example, would provide clues as
to the limits of acceptability within the scene and, conversely, the ways in
which one might achieve veneration. In some cases, individuals gave direct
suggestions about the ways in which their friends might ‘better’ themselves.
Although, in most cases, the recipient is liable to have been rather more pro-
active, the following example illustrates the point, and indeed the potential
social rewards involved:
G4 (male): We actually did that with someone else – we literally badgered him
into it. We dyed his hair black. He didn’t want it black, but we dyed it
for him. We gave him a catalogue and basically told him what to buy.
You know, ‘you want to get some tight jeans, some decent boots, and
you want to get some shirts and stuff’ and he did, and within a week,
he had a girlfriend!
97
Goth
Goth events were also important sites for the receipt of practical inform-
ation crucial to everyday participation in the scene. Those promoting events,
retail operations, fanzines and even societies exploited the concentrated
subcultural crowds through a combination of printed flyers and verbal sales-
manship. One Birmingham DJ explained the importance of allowing other
subcultural producers to advertise at his event:
B6 (male): You have to be aware that other things are going on – you have to
support it and you have to make people in your area aware of all these
things – I mean you’ve probably seen we have all the posters up . . . I
think it’s important to do that.
If a participant failed to notice the relevant flyers or posters within the venue
of a goth event, he or she was unlikely to avoid learning about future sub-
cultural events, new releases, sources of commodities or fanzines through the
channels of word of mouth operating within and around such spaces. In spite
of the array of communications media available to them, most respondents
explained that ‘word of mouth’, or ‘the grapevine’ was their most valuable
source of knowledge and information. Two Birmingham respondents, for
example, explained that they enhanced their knowledge of goth music and
venues through talking to people at subcultural events:
S7 (female): There was just like friends you’d make and you’d ask them about a
certain song and they’d go ‘yeah, I’ve got that’.
T3 (female): and you’d ask where else there is to go . . . and it was ‘oh, the
Toreador, the Mercat’.
In another example the respondent, from Leeds, explained that friends he

met at goth events had shown him where to buy goth clothes and music:
M2 (male): I was influenced by other people around me. I made a lot of friends
and stuff and they’d like tell you where the shops are and go to the
shops with you. You just get into it that way.
Subcultural events and the word of mouth they often played host to, then,
were important components in the continual construction of the appearances,
knowledges and tastes of their clientele, and in the transfer of practical inform-
ation about the subculture. This is particularly significant as an example of
relatively independent internal cultural generation, something to be discussed
at greater length in the following chapters.
98
Going out Locally
In terms of facilitating and intensifying the commitment of individuals to

the goth scene, and of providing them with ideas and information, events
operated both locally and translocally. Usually, local venues accounted for
the majority of individuals’ social participation in the goth scene, and some
goths hardly ever travelled elsewhere for subcultural events, as with the
following respondent:
J3 (male): I’m stuck in Leeds. I’ve got a routine going. I just go to . . . the Phono
and I know loads of people there.
Such localized everyday participation meant that goth pubs and clubs were
often characterized by a high proportion of regulars. The following respond-
ent contrasts the exclusiveness of the goth night at the Phono with the other
events held at the venue:
C1 (female): Friday night [rock night] was sixty per cent regulars, Saturday night
[alternative night] maybe fifty per cent regulars, and Sunday night
[goth night] you could be guaranteed to know everybody in there.
Large numbers of relatively localized participants were particularly likely

within towns or small cities somewhat isolated from other centres of the
goth scene. Such areas were especially dependent on local subcultural events
in relation to subcultural capital, belonging, friendships, romantic relation-
ships and sources of influence. For example, the relative isolation of Plymouth,
in the South West of England, meant that travel to events elsewhere in the
country was unusual for the city’s goths, as was the appearance in the city of
visiting individuals or bands. As a result, the only local goth club assumed a
particular significance. As well as providing a safe space in which to claim
subcultural capital and affirm identity, this single club played a key role in
the facilitation and construction of the subculture in this area. The majority
of the city’s goths kept up with translocal subcultural trends and, hence,
maintained their general subcultural interest and attachment, through the
music played by the club’s DJ and the information and compilation tapes he
sometimes gave to those expressing an interest. The following respondent
believed the DJ’s efforts, in this respect, had fostered something of a revival
of the goth scene in Plymouth:
S3 (female): It’s a lot harder to get hold of a lot of music in Plymouth so people
don’t tend to . . . know of a lot of bands people come across in
99
Goth
London, but I think that’s changing because [DJ’s name] plays lots
of stuff and lends people CDs and that’s getting them into it.
Through bringing Plymouth’s goths together, the club also enabled them to
influence each other’s appearances, knowledges and CD collections. In part-
icular, it was clear that those who had travelled to events elsewhere or who
had engaged with translocal subcultural media were an important source of
influence on those who had not.
In larger, more centrally positioned cities there tended to be a greater variety
of goth pubs and clubs, either locally or in neighbouring cities. However,
certain local venues remained crucial. When Birmingham’s main goth pub,
The Barrel Organ, closed down in the early 1990s, for example, a number
of individuals stopped going out and drifted away from the scene as a result,
while others attended general alternative or rock clubs, bringing them into
more regular contact with non-goth styles and individuals and, hence, diluting
their subcultural commitment:
D6 (female): Everybody had heard of the Barrel Organ and a lot of people went
there before they went on to a club and there were always bands on
there . . . when that closed it was ‘oh God, what do we do now?’
kind of thing . . . everybody sort of split up. There was like groups
of people in one place and others went to another.
The reliance of many individuals on local goth events and DJs as sources
of musical influence is also significant in relation to the construction of subtle
local differences in taste. Although commonalities and familiarities generally
outweighed differences between the goth music played in different places,
individual DJs did plug particular favourite songs, bands or styles, something
which one Birmingham DJ believed was liable to influence local clientele:
B6 (male): That’s where the pubs and clubs play a bit of a role I think in the way
that people are, because if the DJ in one area is playing more of that
sort of music because personally he’s more into that . . . that must rub
off on the people that are in the pubs and clubs especially in a smaller
area.
In a similar way, it was perfectly possible for general participants to have an

effect on local tastes in clothing, jewellery or make-up as a result of their
individual innovations. As a result of varying levels of popularity and respect,
certain individuals are liable to have had more influence than others, but no
one was entirely excluded from such localized chains of influence.
100
Translocal Night-Tripping
In addition to attending regular weekly local events, most goths directly exper-
ienced the subculture’s manifestations outside their area through travelling,
at least occasionally and in some cases regularly, to goth club nights, gigs,
and festivals elsewhere. Although the sample may have been unrepresentative,
since it consisted of those who had already travelled to a goth event, the
Whitby Festival Questionnaire provides some evidence here. Only 9 per cent
of respondents said they had not travelled outside their locality to attend a
goth or goth-related event within the preceding year. Of the remainder, 36
per cent said they had travelled to such events more than ten times during
that period (see Appendix, Table 3, p. 201). For a minority, it seemed that
goth events in other towns and cities were more important than those within
their locality:
WQ3c: Please give details and comments about travelling to events.

108 (female): I will travel to anything all over England, mainly because of a lack
of such events in Ipswich. This year I have been to London, Bradford,
Hull, Leeds, Whitby, Bury and Cambridge, as well as Canada
(Toronto).
As indicated in her comments, the extent to which people travelled was some-
times inversely proportionate to the quantity or quality of goth events in
their own locality. More importantly, as we have seen from the example of
Plymouth, it tended to relate to their proximity to other cities hosting goth
events. Thus, in contrast to their counterparts in Plymouth, Birmingham goths
frequently made use of their proximity to several significant British cities by
travelling to events.
Regular local club nights, depending on the accessibility of the location
and the night of the week, tended to attract a minority of travelling goths,
but mostly from within their region. The clientele for Birmingham’s weekend
goth pub and club nights, for example, tended to be drawn from all around
the Midlands, as explained by its DJ:
B6 (male): I think . . . [a lot] of people who actually club in Birmingham don’t

actually come from Birmingham definitely. I think they draw in from . . .
surrounding counties.
Though such regular events were also prone to being attended by travellers
from further afield – if they were visiting goth friends, for example – the
numbers were smaller. The exception to this was Slimelight, a subculturally
101
Goth
famous all-night club in London, whose clientele every Saturday consisted

of a core of regular locals plus numerous goths from across and frequently
beyond Britain.
In general, though, more goths travelled greater distances for less-frequent
events, such as Afterlife in York and The Wendyhouse in Leeds. As a result
of intensive and co-ordinated translocal promotion, these large-scale disco-
style events tended to attract a significant minority of travelling participants,
largely from within the North and Midlands of England, but more sporad-
ically from further afield, including London at one extreme and Glasgow
and Edinburgh at the other. Meanwhile, live gigs, because of the uniqueness
of the occasion, motivated even greater numbers of travelling enthusiasts,
depending on location, time of the week and of course the subcultural profile
of the bands involved (see Figure 5.2).
The uniqueness, spontaneity and perceived authenticity of the live experience
(see Cohen 1991:100) as well as the promise of a big translocal attendance
sometimes even prompted those normally rooted within their locality to travel,
as with the following questionnaire respondent:

71 (female): I only travel for concerts of bands I really want to see.
Figure 5.2 Synthetic, playing live in Birmingham 1999. (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright).
102
Such ‘night-tripping’, as Hollows and Milestone have aptly called it (1995: 3),
sometimes involved public transport but, more frequently, carloads of goths
from a particular area would split petrol costs, something reflected in the
following comment:

5 (male): Clubs and gigs. If someone is going in a car and has space, then I’ll be
there.
In addition, certain individuals and groups organized minibus or coach trips

to particular events. For example, Birmingham University’s Goth Society
regularly organized a minibus to an annual goth event in Derby, and prom-
oters in Manchester and Nottingham had arranged one-off trips to live gigs
in Birmingham. Regardless of the mode of transport, though, it was clear
from my own participation in many such trips that the process of travelling
together was an integral part of the excitement of going out to goth clubs or
gigs elsewhere (Hollows and Milestone 1995: 3).
By far the most significant kinds of event in terms of translocal and indeed
transnational attendance, were annual or biannual festivals. As well as
offering a translocal coming-together of fellow enthusiasts, these events would
offer several of the most subculturally well-known bands and DJs over two
or more days. As with the Northern Soul events described by Hollows and
Milestone (ibid.: 2), they also tended to offer enthusiasts a range of the most
obscure subcultural commodities by providing space for subcultural entre-
preneurs from across the country to set up stalls and ply their trade. In part-
icular, The Whitby Gothic Weekend (see Figure 5.3), a biannual four-day
festival in North Yorkshire, always attracted over a thousand people from all
over Britain, as well as a significant number of particularly enthusiastic goths
from other countries, notably France, Germany and the United States. This
particular festival had been attended at least once by most goths I spoke to
across Britain, and many explained that it functioned as their annual or
biannual holiday – further evidence, if it were needed, of their subcultural
commitment. The attractions of travelling to goth events elsewhere, to be
described below, were undoubtedly most concentrated at festivals such as
this.
In the same way that attendance at goth clubs was involved in a circular
relationship with subcultural friendships, and general commitment, travelling
to events in other places was tied up with knowing people translocally. The
events acted as potential sites of contact with goths from elsewhere and,
after the friendships had been established, they provided a further motiv-
ation to travel again, not to mention a house in which to stay the night
103
Goth
Figure 5.3 Goths gather outside the Elsinore during the Whitby Gothic Weekend.
(Photograph: S. L. Wainwright).
(Slobin 1993: 68–9). The following respondent, from Leeds, explained that
the friendships he had developed across Britain through previous travel were
a key motivation for the distances he currently covered to attend events:
T1 (male): Personally I’d say that the world doesn’t begin and end in one
town . . . because you get a lot of people, myself included, who have
their friends scattered all up and down the country, and it’s just so
good to see them again, even if its just for a few hours at a gig or a
club or crashing over and having Sunday morning bleeueeeerrrrr.
Festivals such as Whitby were particularly enjoyable to goths due to the sheer
number of normally dispersed friends liable to be in one place for a few
days. In the Whitby Festival Questionnaire, 42 per cent of respondents selected
‘seeing old friends’ among their three most important attractions of the
festival. In addition, 32 per cent selected ‘making new friends’ in response to
the question, providing evidence of the importance of events to the estab-
lishment of new translocal friendships (see Appendix, Table 2, p. 200). Several
respondents specifically mentioned the extra friendly atmosphere at festivals.
The following responses to the open-ended follow-up to this question provide
104
further evidence of the circular relationship between travelling to events and

translocal subcultural friendships.
WQ2b: Please explain in your own words why you have come to Whitby.
81 (female): For fun, bands, men, friends . . . to meet new friends, and spend
money.
77 (female): Because it’s tradition – all my friends are here from all over the country.
In addition to the genuine enjoyment of live performances by favourite

bands, going to visit friends and making new ones, many travellers enjoyed
experiencing a change from their local goth club and its regular clientele.
This was the case for the following respondent, from Birmingham, who also
emphasized a curiosity about the goth scene in different places. She makes
the telling point that, due to the size of the goth scene, the only way of exper-
iencing a choice or variety of clubs or gigs was by travelling elsewhere.
PH: Why did you want to go to Slimelight [London goth club]?

T3 (female): Just like to see what’s happening there – how it’s different to
Birmingham – and it’s a change as well. It’s different because we
don’t get many places here. Trendy people have lots of clubs to
choose from here, but we have like two pubs and one club.
That goths were often more likely to travel hundreds of miles for ‘a change’
within the translocal boundaries of their subculture than they were to seek
variety through non-subcultural clubs in their own locality also demonstrates
the extent of their subcultural commitment.
A number of respondents implied that this desire for a ‘change’ within the
goth scene may have involved a hint of vanity as well as mere ‘curiosity’, as
in this example:
PH: What’s the motivation for going somewhere else when you’ve got loads
of things going on in Birmingham?
B6 (male): Curiosity half the time – a bit of vanity even.
While respondents were reluctant to expand on this, a critical appraisal of

my own experiences and observations provide an explanation. As a result of
the small number of goths in any particular area, the majority of local partic-
ipants got to know one another after a time. Once accepted or even venerated
as a member of a local scene, the excitement tied up with claiming subcultural
capital and gaining new friends was prone to recede slightly, at least until
new regulars appeared. At this point, the prospect of being accepted, held in
high esteem, or fancied by new people elsewhere would become particularly
105
Goth
attractive. Thus, many goths made extra effort with their appearance when
attending subcultural events outside their locality! In addition to the motiv-
ations of making new friends and spending time with old ones, then, people
travelled to goth events in order to enjoy feelings of belonging and status
among different crowds of people.
General feelings of subcultural identity and belonging were also strength-
ened by attending events elsewhere. In particular, the Whitby Gothic Weekend
was experienced as something of a pilgrimage of disparate friends and strangers
deemed to share common tastes, values, experiences and identity. Numerous
respondents enthused about the attractions of a small seaside town full of
goths from across the country:
K1 (male): Its just such a good laugh – everyone in this whole town – it’s just full
of weirdos . . . there’s like a mass gathering of people and also because
there’s going to be some bands there and you know it’s going to be a
damned good laugh.
Furthermore, many indicated that contact with such a large number of goths
from across the country had strengthened their enthusiasm for the subculture
and reinforced their sense of identity. This is illustrated particularly well by
the following questionnaire comment:
WQ2b: Please explain in your own words, why have you come to Whitby?
61 (male): seeing so many goths in one place reminds me of why we do this.
A circular process took place, then, of travelling to subcultural events

elsewhere, gaining friends, achieving status and becoming more and more
attached to the translocal goth scene. The increasing frequency of travel
created concrete links between the goth scene’s manifestations in different
localities, giving travellers and, of course, regulars at the events to which
they had been drawn direct contact with the subculture outside their own
locality. As a result of the establishment of translocal friendships through
such contact, the links often became long-term and led to more travelling,
more friendships, more translocal subcultural capital and at the same time
an ever-decreasing involvement with local non-subcultural activities. This
direct intercity contact also contributed to the overall translocal consistency
of the subculture’s values and tastes within Britain. In spite of the local
influences referred to, travelling participants were all liable to influence and
be influenced by their counterparts in other areas of the country. Similarly,
different local DJs, as well as all receiving the same promo CDs, were liable
to be influenced by one another through attending each other’s clubs from
106
time to time. The national and sometimes international tours of even small
goth bands provided further translocal influence. As will become clear in
forthcoming chapters, a subcultural network of media and commerce was
equally integral to the continual construction of a translocally consistent range
of tastes and values. Plymouth’s goth DJ pointed out that the increasing
contact between local manifestations of the goth scene was making the sub-
culture’s range of styles and tastes similar across Britain. He illustrated the
point by suggesting there was a similar range of goth ‘looks’ in each city:
G4 (male): Because people are travelling around a lot more than they used to.
People are going to different cities and it [local difference]’s getting
diluted again. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but going to a
place and spotting the likeness of your [local] friends in another city . . .
I think there must be some sort of equilibrium that occurs within cities.
This suggestion was largely borne out by my own observation of goth clubs
across the country. The level of consistency of the style from place to place
was far more marked than any subtle local differences which existed.
Conclusion
This chapter has sought to outline events as the most important practical
aspect of the goth scene for individual participants and, probably, for the
overall facilitation of their subculture. While the inter-scene contact in non-
subcultural events attended by goths was an important recruitment route
for the subculture, the going-out habits of most already ‘paid-up’ goths were
dominated by more exclusive pubs and clubs. As the primary site for collective
enjoyment of shared tastes, the claiming of status and the establishment of
goth friendships and relationships, they tended to be at the centre of a circular
process of increasing individual attachment and commitment to the sub-
culture. While often centred around particular local events, for many goths
the circular process took place on a translocal level. The fulfilment and
friendships gained from travelling to subcultural events outside one’s locality
would provide a further incentive to do so in the future. That goths were far
keener to make the effort to attend subcultural events elsewhere rather than
non-goth events locally is a telling indication of their level of practical com-
mitment to the goth scene. Furthermore, once achieved, such specifically
translocal capital, belonging and friendships increased the overall proportion
of one’s time, means of fulfilment and sense of identity accounted for by the
translocal subculture.
107
Goth
As well as providing the subcultural forum necessary for the claiming of

capital and gaining of friendships, goth events were crucial sources of
specialist knowledge, influence and information for individuals key to their
participation in the subculture. As such they were significant cogs in the
relatively independent facilitation and construction of the goth scene.
Although, in some cases, this meant the construction of subtle local differ-
ences, the concrete connections created by travelling participants, DJs, bands
and promoters contributed to the general translocal consistency of the scene.
Of equal or greater importance to the construction of such general translocal
consistency, however, were elements of the commerce and media surrounding
the goth scene. These crucial aspects of the infrastructure of the subculture
will be the subject of the following four chapters.
Note
1. Extracts from discussion group or mailing list posts are attributed to their author.
Permission to use the extracts was gained from authors cited in this way. On the
basis of the individuals’ own wishes, some are credited to real names and others to
e-mail pseudonyms.
108
Selling Goth? The Producers of Subculture
6
Selling Goth? The Producers
of Subculture
In Chapter 2, we established that across a range of theoretical perspectives,
there is a tendency for commerce and media to be associated with cultural
superficiality or fluidity rather than substantive subcultural groupings as
defined in this book. In contrast, the remaining chapters will detail the ways
in which commerce and media specifically constructed and facilitated the
goth scene – a subculture whose overall levels of distinctiveness, shared identity
and commitment are, I hope, beginning to become apparent. Furthermore,
we shall see that the involvement of media and commerce need not necessarily
imply that autonomy – our final indicator of subculture – is entirely forfeit.
Rather than requiring an escape from ‘the media or ‘the market’, as Gary
Clarke would have it (1981: 92), relative autonomy suggests that the forms
of consumption and communication which facilitate and construct the
grouping in question are, to a certain degree, distinct or separate from those
connected with outside cultural amalgamations. Therefore, we shall see that,
although patterns of buying, selling and media-use were crucial to the goth
scene, these were often focused around an internal network of relatively
specialist subcultural institutions.
While the following chapters will focus on the extent to which the practices
of subcultural participants were focused on commercial spaces, objects or
media texts oriented toward the goth scene, the immediate emphasis here is
on the organizations and individuals responsible for promoting, producing,
distributing and selling them. In order to begin to assess the extent to which
the goth scene was generated internally, by its own participants, the chapter
is divided into discussion of non-subcultural producers, located fairly clearly
outside the goth scene and motivated essentially by commercial consider-
ations, and of subcultural producers, motivated wholly or partially by their
own involvement in and enthusiasm for the subculture. What will become
clear is that the fairly extensive involvement in the goth scene of external
producers in the 1980s and early 1990s had declined by the late 1990s, and
that many of their roles had been replaced by an internal network of entre-
preneurs and volunteers.
109
Goth
Commercial Interest from Outside
As one might expect, non-subcultural producers varied considerably in wealth

and influence, ranging from transnational major record companies to local
independent shop owners. In the main, non-subcultural producers provided
media, consumables and events oriented to a mass or large niche market
(Thornton 1995: 122–60), but it is worth noting that they also played their
part in certain products which, due to their highly specialist audience
orientation or limited availability, could be described as subcultural. The
key concern in this chapter, though, is not with the product or its audience,
but the position and motivations of those who produced them vis-à-vis the
goth scene. It is this which enables an assessment of the level of participation
of goths in the generation of their subculture.
While precise origins are hard to trace, it is clear that non-subcultural
record labels, distributors and retailers played a significant role in the goth
scene right from its beginnings. In spite of the importance of independently
organized events such as The Bat Cave in London and the live tours of other
bands later to be termed ‘goth’, it was the simultaneous involvement of the
recording industry which enabled the formation of the goth scene on a
transnational scale. The commercial success of the likes of Bauhaus, Siouxsie
and the Banshees, The Cure and, later, The Sisters of Mercy and The Mission
owed itself, in no small part, to the production and distribution of their
records by non-subcultural record labels and to the consequent availability
of their music in commercial record stores.1 In a number of cases, the exposure
which resulted from initial independent deals soon attracted the interest of
larger players. For example, the Sisters of Mercy’s label Merciful Release
became attached to recording giant WEA from 1984, and The Mission, having
released two singles on the relatively unknown independent label Chapter
22, signed a deal with Mercury Records in 1986. Meanwhile, Siouxsie and
the Banshees had been signed to Polydor ever since 1978. Such examples of
larger-scale commercial interest in specialist sounds are consistent with Keith
Negus’s observation that, rather than always seeking to ‘massify’ or stand-
ardize, major record labels often seek to maximize niche appeal by cultivating
links with generic subcultures:
Record companies initially position acts sartorially in relation to other artists and
genres of music, and signify the adoption of an implicit lifestyle and set of values
denoted by these visual codes. (Negus 1992: 66)
The examples of The Mission and The Sisters of Mercy also resonate with
Negus’s illustration of the tendency for larger labels to exploit already
110
developed niche sounds pioneered by small-scale independents, who effect-

ively are left playing the role of talent spotters (1992: 40).
The global marketing and media coverage – of goth bands and the sub-
cultural lifestyle with which they were associated – by significant commercial
interests, resulted in reasonable shelf space for goth bands in independent
and chain record stores across and beyond Britain. High street record stores
were, like major labels, becoming more and more focused on supplementing
and, indeed, increasing the money made from Top 40 sales to the perceived
‘casual buyer’ by catering to a diversity of more specialist tastes (see Straw
1997). That having been said, the commercial limits to this inclusiveness
were emphasized when the interest, of both independent and major non-
subcultural record companies and retailers, in goth bands, declined signif-
icantly toward the mid-1990s. While they remained involved in the release
of new or repackaged material by initially established goth bands, and in the
occasional release of indie or metal music which took on limited elements of
goth style, the non-subcultural record industry soon lost interest in seeking
or supporting new goth bands.2 As a result, the availability of recorded music
from such bands became almost entirely reliant upon highly specialist record
labels and retailers run by enthusiasts for the subculture.
The close relationship between the recording industry and the music media
is well documented (see Frith 1983; Negus 1992). In the case of the goth
scene, the involvement of record companies intensified and was intensified
by the amount of non-subcultural media coverage received by goth bands
throughout the 1980s. The majority of 1980s goth bands were featured on
BBC Radio One’s John Peel’s Sessions, on niche music television shows such
as The Old Grey Whistle Test and The Tube, and in Britain’s music press.
While relatively specialist subcultural magazines such as Zig Zag played an
important part, the labelling practices of journalists working for more broadly
oriented publications such as New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds
were probably most instrumental in the crystallization of a disorganized hand-
ful of sporadic stylistic similarities into an identifiable, coherent cultural
movement. That the music press should have played such an important part
here re-emphasizes the tendency of such publications to generate interest
and sales by focusing not only on music itself but also on its social and cultural
significance (Frith 1983: 172). More specifically, it illustrates Sarah Thornton’s
point that the music press specifically seek to report on, and hence construct,
potential new genres or subcultures. As well as serving to add extra interest
to the reporting of music, such a move can help generate and maintain loyal
committed readerships (Thornton 1995: 153). Certainly, the inclusion of regular
coverage of post-punk and, later, goth bands and events during the 1980s had
successfully prompted many of the older goths I came across to read NME
or Melody Maker almost every week during the 1980s.
111
Goth
In the same way that major labels fed on the success stories pioneered by
independents, larger-scale ‘mass’ media followed the lead of the music press
and became increasingly involved in the dissemination of goth images and
music in the latter half of the 1980s. Most notably, in addition to their appear-
ances on late-night radio or television, the best-known goth bands enjoyed
occasional appearances on popular music television such as the BBC’s Top
of the Pops, and ITV’s The Chart Show. Toward the end of the 1980s, there
appeared two books by British music journalist Mick Mercer, entitled Gothic
Rock Black Book (Mercer 1988) and Gothic Rock (Mercer 1991). The sub-
cultural popularity of these texts undoubtedly owed itself in large part to an
author with considerable personal connections to the goth scene, but non-
subcultural publishers and high street retailers accounted for much of their
distribution to that audience.
As with the involvement of the recording industry, the goth scene, like
many other styles, was only suitably novel to be worthy of mass-media cover-
age for a short time. Meanwhile, the music press, who were losing readers
to new style bibles such as The Face, and glossy rock-music magazines aimed
at a more mature audience (Shuker 1994: 87), courted and hence constructed
various new movements, including an indie scene associated with Manchester
(Thornton 1995: 153). The focus of increasingly sparse articles on goth
became more and more tongue-in-cheek. One article appeased the majority
of its indie readership by stating that:
You don’t want to be one, you don’t want to listen to Nick Cave and the Neff and
Skeletal Family, you don’t want to wear patchouli oil, you don’t want to belong
to an adolescent tribe who do nothing but hang around . . . looking dour, waiting
for the end of the world . . . (Collins 1991: 22–3)
However, it is worth noting that the publication still played its role in the
continual construction of the goth scene by helpfully going on to outline
many of the subculture’s most important elements for those who might in
fact want to ‘be one’.
During the late 1990s both mass and niche media had become far less
significant as producers of the goth scene. Nevertheless, there were occasional
reviews or previews of particularly large or notable gigs or festivals.3 The
Whitby Gothic Weekend sometimes attracted journalists seeking to amuse
readers of Sunday newspapers and, on one occasion, a teenage girl’s magazine.4
The music press also occasionally reviewed new or repackaged old material
by 1980s goth bands and sometimes played up the stylistic references to goth
of certain newer indie and metal bands – notably Garbage, Placebo, Republica,
Marilyn Manson and Type O Negative.5 In addition, at a number of points
112
during my research period, non-subcultural media proclaimed the return of,

either the popularity of the goth scene itself or its influences on current
designer fashion.6
While we have detailed, in this section, a number of examples of positive
or neutral non-subcultural media coverage of the goth scene, the subculture
in Britain had largely escaped the kind of negative moral-panic-style mass-
media attention afforded to certain other subcultures (Cohen 1972; Thornton
1995). This was to change, though, in April 1999 when two teenagers opened
fire on fellow pupils at Columbine High School in Denver, USA. The British
press reciprocated their American colleagues’ emphasis on an apparent assoc-
iation of the killers with the goth scene. British tabloid The Mirror described
the killers’ ‘gang’, known as the ‘Trenchcoat Mafia’:
Gang members painted their nails with lurid varnish and wrote poems and stories
about death. Smoking pot, quoting songs by shock rocker Marilyn Manson,
Vampire games and the Internet also held the group of boys and girls together
(O’Sullivan 1999: 7).
The link was also emphasized in British broadsheets. The Guardian, for
example, asked, ‘Did goth culture turn two teenagers into killers?’ (Younge
and Ellison 1999: 2–3). Such coverage prompted the NME to react against
the moral panic – devoting its front page to a picture of Marilyn Manson,
with the words ‘NOT GUILTY. FIFTEEN DEAD IN DENVER. WHY ROCK
‘N’ ROLL IS NOT TO BLAME’ (New Musical Express, 1999: front cover).
Although a temporary issue in Britain, this was a prime example of the kind
of negative moral-panic mass-media coverage which Stan Cohen (1972) and,
some decades later, Sarah Thornton (1995) have argued can play a significant
role in the construction and popularity of subcultural groupings. While the
effects on the subculture will be explored in Chapter 8, my concern here is
merely to note the temporary intensive involvement of mass and niche media,
as clear commercially motivated external sources of influence and publicity.
We have already established that although they sometimes attended pubs
or clubs which involved a mixed clientele, goths tended wherever possible to
go to specialist events. Crucially, in either case, non-subcultural producers
were liable to be involved. Although they were sometimes sympathetic to it,
few of the venue managers, promoters and even DJs involved in ‘alternative’
events attended by goths during the 1980s or mixed rock events in the 1990s
were particular enthusiasts for the goth scene per se. Furthermore, even the
much more internally organized and run specialist events which dominated
the going-out habits of most goths during the late 1990s remained reliant
upon non-subcultural venue managers, P.A. specialists and others. In
113
Goth
particular, many events were facilitated by the commercially induced

willingness of venue proprietors to orient themselves toward the limited but
reliable clientele provided by specialist groups such as goths on otherwise
quiet weekdays (see Willis 1990: 67). Furthermore, these subcultural events
revolved around pubs, bars and clubs and were linked, therefore, to the large-
scale commercial brewing companies which owned most of the venues.
Importantly, this involvement of non-subcultural producers in events which
were otherwise subcultural, was replicated in other relatively exclusive
elements of the subculture. While many specialist goth clothes stores produced
at least some of their own stock, they tended to rely upon non-subcultural
producers and wholesalers as well. Similarly, goth record labels and retailers
often dealt with non-subcultural as well as fellow subcultural dealers and
distributors. Even those who produced fanzines and web sites were reliant
upon hardware and software provided by the largest-scale commercial
interests.
My insistence on pointing out the involvement of non-subcultural indiv-
iduals or institutions here, there and everywhere may seem to verge on the
pedantic. Such involvement is an important reminder, though, that the goth
scene and any similar groupings should only ever be described as autonomous
in relative terms. The role of non-subcultural individuals and organizations
during the early years of the subculture and, to a lesser degree, during the time
of my research in the late 1990s emphasizes that the goth scene was not and
could not be spontaneous, authentic or self-contained. Such non-subcultural
involvement also demonstrates, given the identity, commitment and dist-
inctiveness which characterized the goth scene, that medium- and large-scale
commercial interests are not necessarily conducive to the breakdown of
cultural substance. Nevertheless, it should also be deemed significant that
the relative decline in the involvement of non-subcultural producers in the
1990s prompted goths themselves to take an increasingly important part in
the construction and facilitation of their subculture.
Internal Infrastructure
In spite of reliance upon non-subcultural venue owners and managers, most

of the events attended by goths during the late 1990s, as well as being targeted
at goths, were initiated and organized by enthusiasts. Subcultural promoters,
possessing first-hand knowledge of their target clientele, either persuaded
venues to employ them to run and promote a night or paid to hire out a space
and its staff, and recouped the money for themselves with an admission fee.
DJs at goth events were also subcultural enthusiasts themselves, as were many
114
of the bands hired to play. Similarly, there was an ongoing growth in the
importance of small-scale producers, distributors and retailers of goods who
were personally affiliated to the goth scene. Thus, goths running genre-specific
record labels enabled goth bands, unknown outside the scene, to release and
sell CDs. Those running specialist retailers of records, often operating trans-
locally through mail order, increasingly aided the delivery of such releases to
their target audience. Meanwhile, other goths had ventured into the clothing
retail trade, producing and/or distributing a range of goods consistent with
their own subculture’s distinctive tastes. Finally, small-scale narrowly targeted
media, produced or organized by goths, had also taken on an important
role, whether in the form of fanzines, websites or on-line discussion groups.
Importantly, although they all had certain connections outside the subculture,
the producers responsible for these elements of the goth scene collectively
formed something of an interconnected subcultural infrastructure character-
ized by a spirit of mutual assistance. Most notably, perhaps, subcultural
media, from fanzines to on-line discussion groups, functioned to connect
together and promote events, retailers, record labels and bands. In turn, events
and retailers provided a space for the promotion of websites and discussion
groups, and for the sale of fanzines. For their part, record labels and bands
continually sent free promotional CDs to goth fanzines, e-zines, retailers and
DJs, in order to publicize their material toward a suitable audience. Mean-
while, in spite of sometimes being in competition with one another, different
goth-event promoters and retailers often distributed or displayed each other’s
flyers and posters in an effort to raise awareness of all their events and services
to their shared translocal market. The proprietor of London record shop
Resurrection Records explained that such arrangements could be mutually
beneficial:
A3 (male): If the promoters can use us to promote their gigs then obviously that
means that they can hopefully get more people there and then they’re
more likely to actually put things on . . . and it’s just like a sort of self-
generating thing, and we will then use his gigs to try and promote the
shop – putting flyers there, or flyering for new CD releases or whatever.
On other occasions, however, the cooperation had more to do with the well-
being of the goth scene as a whole than with the success of their individual
activities. Thus, Resurrection Records’ involvement in the promotion of Sacro-
sanct, a goth festival in London, had not stopped them from selling tickets
for the rival Whitby Gothic Weekend, without commission. In return, the
promoter of the latter event had included Sacrosanct flyers in her promotional
mail-out. Given that many individuals were liable to have chosen between
115
Goth
the two festivals, the mutual benefits here are more ambiguous. Another
example is provided by goth fanzine BRV Magazine’s regular inclusion of a
highly sympathetic review section for other goth fanzines – hardly an aggres-
sive marketing move.
In spite of the general prevalence of such a spirit of cooperation there
were also instances of considerable rivalry between promoters, retailers,
fanzines, bands and record labels. In the case of those with commercial
imperatives, it was necessary to compete with others seeking a share in the
same limited market. Such competition was often played out on a translocal
scale and, particularly in the case of goth record retailers, an international
scale. Competition sometimes took on fiercer, more unpleasant tones when
motivated by cultural rather than financial factors. Occasional disputes and
dislikes arose over a combination of principled differences – in relation to
the future direction of the goth scene, for example – and desires for one’s
own fanzine, event or band to be as successful as possible. In one example,
an event promoter and others fell out with a record label over a variety of
issues, and a public dispute was played out through goth fanzines and on-line
newsgroups for some months. In spite of a general spirit of intense cooperation
then, the goth scene’s subcultural infrastructure was not entirely united.
Crucially, however, such instances of competition and discord further
emphasize the common location of such individuals within the same semi-
autonomous translocal network.
Although certain individuals and organizations were of particular import-
ance, it was clear that a very large number of participants played their part
in this network. It was suggested by one fanzine editor that there were few
goths who had never participated in productive or organizational activities
of one kind or another:
G3 (male): Its probably one of the most active scenes. Everybody seems to be
doing something, either a fanzine, or making clothes . . . I think most
goths . . . are active people. They want to try and do something.
While many were or had been, at some point, heavily involved in major
activities such as making or retailing clothes, producing fanzines, organizing
events or playing music, a much larger number of others contributed via
more occasional or small-scale activities. My own experiences promoting a
one-off goth event in Birmingham in 1999 provide a useful example. While
the venue, the various established DJs involved and I were crucial to its success,
attendance was considerably boosted by my receipt of numerous offers of
help in printing and distributing flyers, posters and stickers. Small contrib-
utions such as giving out flyers, writing the occasional article for a fanzine
116
and taking money on the door at events reflected a general desire to be actively
involved in facilitating the development and survival of the goth scene. Such
high levels of participation draw attention to the level of ‘grass-roots’ involve-
ment in the generation of the subculture, as well as re-emphasizing the extent
of many goths’ commitment to it.
Participation in organizational and productive activities also appeared to
be characterized by a somewhat greater gender balance than in much of
popular music culture. The absence of females in key positions in much of
the music industry has been well documented, for example, in Keith Negus’s
account of the recording industry (Negus 1992) and Sara Cohen’s account
of their exclusion from many bands in the Liverpool rock scene (Cohen 1991:
201–23). Indeed, such studies indicate that things may not have improved a
great deal from the situation described by Frith and McRobbie in 1978:
The music business is male-run; popular musicians, writers, creators, technicians,

engineers and producers are mostly men. Female creative roles are limited and
mediated through male notions of female ability. Women musicians who make it
are almost always singers; the women in the business who make it are usually in
publicity . . . In general, popular music’s images, values, and sentiments are male
products. (Frith and McRobbie 1978: 373)
Those academic accounts of women making more active cultural contrib-

utions have often involved relatively gender-specific music scenes such as
Riot Grrrl (Leonard 1997, 1998; Triggs 2000), possibly because of the relative
scarcity of their involvement in significant productive or organizational
cultural activities in more ‘mixed’ music scenes. As Bayton has put it, ‘Looking
at popular music as a whole . . . the main role for women is that of fan’
(Bayton 1997: 37).
The situation in the goth scene only partially contradicted this picture.
First, it should be acknowledged that, overall, there appeared to be more
male than female subcultural producers in the goth scene. Though it clearly
was not a representative sample, the fact that just under two-thirds of the
subcultural producers I interviewed happened to be male gives a rough
illustration of this. There were also horizontal gender inequalities within the
goth scene’s subcultural infrastructure, based on familiar gender stereotypes.
For example, it may not be coincidence that almost half the female producers
I interviewed were involved in some way with making or retailing clothes.
Conversely, DJs were much more likely to be male than female, as were most
non-vocalist roles in goth bands. In addition, those females involved in
traditionally male-dominated productive activities were occasionally subjected
to stereotypical assumptions based on their gender. The only female member
117
Goth
of a team of three goth-event promoters described some isolated experiences

of being regarded as of marginal importance compared with her male
counterparts:
J1 (female): For example, when at a gig, people sometimes assume that [name] or
[name] are in charge rather than me . . . Also, when DJing, it’s
sometimes assumed that I’m just standing in whilst the real DJ has
gone to the loo!
Nevertheless, the involvement of females in a variety of activities of signif-

icance seemed to be increasingly common and, despite incidents such as that
described above, not generally regarded as abnormal by those who consumed
their products and services or attended their events. Although their contrib-
ution was not on an equal footing with that of men, the number of female
producers I came across was considerably higher than I would expect for
many other groupings. There were also clear indications that they were more
accepted in such roles in the goth scene than in many areas of culture outside
it. Indeed interviewee J1 herself was keen to point out that the gendered
assumptions she described to me were the exception rather than the rule:
J1 (female): On the other hand, these are isolated incidents and I think that, on
the whole, being female doesn’t particularly make much difference
to the way people perceive me.
This was consistent with a comment from another female goth promoter,
from Oxford:
L3 (female): the sexist attitudes in normal society for a woman to succeed don’t
exist [in the goth scene] and it is perhaps easier for them to get on.
Most notably, the organizer of the Whitby Gothic Weekend – the biggest,
most famous British goth event – was female, as were many of the volunteers
who helped her. Respondent J1 speculated that the high-profile and successful
nature of this female promoter’s involvement might have provided a useful
role model, making it easier for others to follow suit. She also suggested that
a number of high-profile goth vocalists had portrayed a positive encourage-
ment for goth women to take up active roles. Her explanation also involved
confirmation of the suggestion made in Chapter 4 of this book (see p. 48) that
the goth scene was relatively accepting of femininity more generally:
J1 (female): Women have always played a key role in the scene – Siouxsie Sioux,
Danielle Dax – and continue to do so today . . . goth would seem less
118
threatening to women than say the metal or rock scenes, whose culture
appear, to me at least, to project an image of testosterone fuelled
masculinity.
Therefore, while inequalities and stereotypical assumptions still existed in

relation to women’s involvement in subcultural productive activities, I would
cautiously suggest they were far less pronounced than in most other music
scenes. Most importantly of all, however, it was clearly feasible for any goth
with sufficient time and energy to contribute in some way to the facilitation
and construction of the subculture and, to differing degrees, most had done
so.
Volunteers or Entrepreneurs?
G4 (male): I think the business side of goth sprung up around the people because
they were a niche in the market that wasn’t being exploited . . . it’s
meant that the businesses that have come along have been by people
that knew what they were doing or what they were fitting into so they
might be a bit more sympathetic to people rather than seeing them as
fabricated consumers – they’d see them as like the same as they are.
The specific focus of this section on subcultural producers is partly in response

to Angela McRobbie’s justified call for more research emphasis to be placed
on the ‘entrepreneurial infrastructure’ within youth cultures (McRobbie 1989:
24). Specifically, she attacks a theoretical tendency to conflate commerce
with a lack of purity or a fall from grace, and calls for more attention to the
importance of small-scale DIY commerce to the emergence and development
of youth cultures and, by extension, its potential career significance on an
individual level (McRobbie 1989: 36, 1994: 161). She suggests that the tend-
ency in much work on youth cultures to focus on people in their capacity as
consumers should be complemented by an in-depth investigation of small-
scale profitable practices of cultural production, which often combine work
and leisure: ‘We . . . have to consider cultural practice for a profit, or merely
for a livelihood or as a supplement to the dole as now taking over that space
in people’s lives which we would once have called hobbies or activities’
(McRobbie 1999: 26).
Consistent with McRobbie’s emphasis, many activities of subcultural
producers did involve financial profits, in spite of their personal enthusiasm
for the goth scene. Retailers of records, clothes or accessories were the
subcultural producers most liable to make sufficient money to make at least
a modest living. In particular, the highly specialist CD retail services of
119
Goth
Nightbreed Recordings’ mail-order service based in Nottingham and Resur-

rection Records’ shop in London had become successful businesses. Similarly,
several goth-oriented clothes retail operations made comfortable, though not
excessive, livings for those involved. The proprietor of Morgana, a goth
clothes shop based in Wakefield, Yorkshire, summed up the relative success
of her business as follows:
B3 (female): We’ve been here for a long time . . . we have now moved to a bigger
shop, and we’ve opened another shop in Leeds, so we’re getting bigger
but we’re not rich.
Importantly, the goth scene only provided a sufficient market for such
businesses if targeted on a translocal scale. Indeed, my continual emphasis
on the translocal form taken by the subculture is illustrated very effectively
by the insufficient number of goths in any one local area of Britain (with the
possible exception of London) for such specifically targeted businesses to
survive on their custom alone. For this reason, such operations relied on
additional custom from goths outside the locality or from locals outside the
goth scene in order to stay afloat. Morgana’s success appeared to have resulted
from the exploitation of both avenues. The retailer, with outlets in Wakefield
and Leeds, targeted its core translocal subcultural clientele through regular
advertisements in national goth fanzines, a web page and a mail-order
catalogue, and by running stalls at goth festivals. At the same time, local
non-goths – from teenagers wanting body-piercings to middle-aged couples
wishing to spice up their sex life – accounted for a significant proportion of
sales.
PH: Could you tell me about your clientele?

B3 (female): We get a lot of ordinary people coming in . . . because they want
something different for special occasions. We get middle-aged people
coming in for some of the fetish things, for the bedroom . . . obviously
goths, anybody who knows about the shops. Most goths do actually
know the shop. They will come and travel . . . We’ve had people from
Scotland, a lot of people from down South and from Manchester.
Due to the less adaptable nature of their product for local consumers outside
the goth scene, specialist music retailers were even more reliant upon a
geographically widespread subcultural clientele. Nightbreed Recordings’
Nottingham-based mail-order service was promoted nationally and inter-
nationally toward a specialist audience, through flyers, advertisements in
fanzines, and a regularly updated catalogue, available in website and printed
form. In spite of obscurity outside the subculture, the operation enjoyed
120
custom from various countries across the globe as well as throughout Britain.
By a rather bizarre coincidence, two New York goths on holiday in Britain
visited Nightbreed’s office during my interview with the retailer. I took the
opportunity to quiz them:
PH: How did you find out about this place?

M10 (female): Everybody knows about this place. We buy CDs on mail-order.
See they have this magazine called Dark Side over there.
M11 (male): [to Nightbreed] I’ve been ordering stuff from you for several years.
I still have my letter – I have a credit!
The commercial success of entrepreneurs such as these demonstrates clearly

that, even if we were to leave aside the non-subcultural producers described
earlier in the chapter, the internal infrastructure of the goth scene could not
somehow be regarded as occupying an authentic position outside or in oppos-
ition to consumerism. Indeed, from a certain point of view, the importance
of DIY entrepreneurs to the goth scene could be seen as entirely consistent
with the most neo-liberal of political agendas, most notably perhaps the
encouragement of enterprise in the dogma and policies of the right-wing
British and American governments in the 1980s and 1990s. Crucially, how-
ever, the fact that these operations were able to be successful in commercial
terms is conducive, rather than antithetical, to my notion of subculture. That
such a small subculture was able to provide a sufficient base of committed
regular custom to support its own internal suppliers of goods financially
serves to emphasize the group’s relative autonomy rather than to undermine
it. Through enabling full-time commitment from enthusiastic insiders, the
availability and quality of all-important distinctive consumables was increased.
As a result, far from being diluted, the distinctive and coherent translocal
subcultural form taken by the grouping was strengthened by the entrepren-
eurial activities of its own participants.
While some were able to make a living from their subcultural key activities,
many promoters, bands, record labels and others received a significant top-
up to their salary, student loan or other sources of income. The promoter of
the Whitby Gothic Weekend was honest enough to accept that the money
made from ticket sales and merchandise associated with the event played a
small part in her motivations for organizing the weekend:
J8 (female): Obviously there is a financial element to it now – although it isn’t

that big because I still have to work and I still drive a car with 150,000
miles on the clock . . . Put it this way, I make enough to make a slightly
better standard of living.
121
Goth
As with those whose activities comprised their main career, such supplement-
ary financial rewards surely enhanced the likelihood of individuals becoming
involved in productive activities and, hence, the extent to which the subculture
was generated by its own participants.
The importance of profits, though, should not be allowed to obscure the
role of cultural motivations for the goth scene’s subcultural producers. As
well as playing a major role, alongside financial incentives, in inducing the
involvement of those whose practices were profitable, cultural factors com-
prised the sole source of motivation for the efforts of scores of others, who
made little or no money from their exploits. The proprietor of Resurrection
Records explained that, in spite of the commercial success of some, few
subcultural producers were likely to make much money:
A3 (male): There are very few people who are going to get a living out of goth –
there’s us and Nightbreed . . . I mean none of the promoters are making
a living out of it, the bands don’t make a living out of it.
Indeed, the testimonies of the majority of organizers, bands, DJs and pro-
ducers of fanzines and websites indicated that, in many cases, breaking even
was not even assured, as illustrated by the following comment from a
promoter in Leeds:
J4 (male): It [promoting goth events] wasn’t really a major money-making venture

even if it was advertised properly . . . there’s an awful lot more people
that lose money doing promotion than make it – and that’s what I
found, especially when I put bands on.
As indicated, such individuals were motivated almost entirely by non-financial

factors relating to their personal involvement in and enthusiasm for the goth
scene. When taken alongside the importance of such cultural motivations,
even for those who did make significant profits, this re-emphasizes the role
of insider enthusiasm, creativity and initiative in the cultural production of
the goth scene and the level of commitment many goths had to their subculture.
While commerce and subculture must be regarded as highly compatible with
one another, then, the role of cultural motivations and voluntary activities
also merit considerable attention. In the following pages, we will examine
the precise nature of these non-financial motivations and, specifically, the
way they highlight the individual subcultural involvement of such producers.
The Perfect Career
Many of the goth scene’s commercial entrepreneurs explained that they

became involved in their particular trade due to a desire to combine their
122
occupation with their personal enthusiasm for the subculture. Such a career
choice fitted in with a subcultural lifestyle. For example, there was no need
to tone down hair, make-up and clothing at work, as in certain other occupat-
ions, and it was often easier to take time off in order to attend particular
goth events. The owner of Demone, a made-to-order goth clothes store in
Leeds, explained that she only put up with the business’ excessive workload
and modest rewards because it fitted in with her own participation in the
goth scene:
D1 (female): I’ve done this to fit into my lifestyle . . . People think that it’s cool
but it’s a job and its bloody hard work and you don’t get that
much . . . but I do enjoy it because it fits in with my lifestyle.
In addition to such ‘convenience’, many commercial and voluntary pro-

ducers were motivated by the sheer enjoyment of carrying out the particular
activities in which they were involved. While the retail side of Nightbreed
Recordings was commercially successful, the same was not true, according
to the proprietor, for the company’s goth record label. This was pursued, he
said, as a result of personal passion for producing goth music:
PH: Is it good business to have a label?

T2 (male): No! [laughs] The thing you’ve got to understand is that we’re motivated
because we’re musicians, and musicians of a specific genre . . . the whole
scene relies totally on love for the genre . . . the wheels grind on interest
and love for the scene and the music.
I received a similarly amused response, when I asked the vocalist from

American band Faith and the Muse about financial rewards. In spite of an
international high profile within the goth scene and the release of numerous
CDs, she cited the band’s desire to produce and play music on their own
terms as their central motivation:
PH: Does Faith and the Muse make a living for its members?
M7 (female): Faith and the Muse is a very expensive hobby for us!
PH: Do you think it ever will?
M7: No, I really don’t. To make a living would mean to extend our music
in a way to grab a larger fan base, to water it down actually . . .
Allow me to open a small window for you . . . to tour we need
transportation, petrol, hotels, food, equipment, rentals . . . To tour
means to bring along live musicians . . . We can’t afford to pay
them . . . thus, they, like everyone, do it for the experience, the
adventure, the love of music.
123
Goth
Subcultural Perks
As well as convenience and enjoyment, the activities of subcultural producers

often resulted in significant perks related to their subcultural involvement,
such as free entry to goth events or free CDs. Those who helped out promoters
by distributing flyers or taking money at the door at goth events were usually
content to play their part in return for free entry and in some cases a comp-
limentary drink from the promoter. On a larger scale, key individuals whose
activities made them well-known throughout the goth scene were often able
to be guest-listed for events across Britain. This benefit was emphasized by
the producers of high-profile British fanzine BRV Magazine:
S4 (male): If we want to go to a goth or alternative gig we just phone up. We

either know the band or the promoter and we get on the guest list and
get free beer half the time!
Producers of fanzines, alongside goth DJs, also received subcultural perks of

a more material kind. Those who made themselves known to record
companies and bands regularly received free advance promotional goth CDs.
Meanwhile, producers of subcultural clothing were able to use their skills to
produce their own garments, and retailers could keep for themselves
occasional items purchased at bulk wholesale prices. One proprietor gleefully
explained to me that she ordered a lot of things in her own size! Of course,
that such subcultural goods and privileges constituted desirable personal
rewards again underscores the personal interest in goth music and fashion
of those who received them. Such personal interest also came into play for
some fanzines producers, in relation to their ability to meet and interview
bands for whom they, every bit as much as their readers, were enthusiastic
fans. The producer of Glasgow-based fanzine Naked Truth explained:
G3 (male): We were really excited about talking to bands that we were into. I
don’t know, it sounds sad now but you’ve heard a band on CD or
tape, and they’d phone you up, and you were like ‘ohhh!!’, you’d get
a buzz out of it.
Subcultural Capital
Alongside factors such as appearance, knowledge and ownership of the right

consumables, being seen to undertake subcultural organizational or productive
activities constituted strong evidence of subcultural commitment and tended
to raise the general profile of those involved. As such, it was a key source of
subcultural capital. This was most obviously the case for those involved in
bands, who, as well as being centre of attention at their own live performances,
124
were liable to have their names on flyers, their pictures in fanzines, and their
CDs played in goth clubs. To differing degrees they took on something of a
celebrity status within the goth scene. The vocalist from the band Manuskript
admitted that this was a key appeal:
M5 (male): Not everyone gets to go out and be a rock star on a very minor scale
even for 40 minutes every month.
Although few received the level of fandom enjoyed by high-profile goth bands,
subcultural capital also motivated the activities of many other subcultural
producers. At the top end of the scale, the promoter of Whitby Gothic Week-
end cited her subcultural high profile as a key reward of her considerable efforts.
She particularly indicated the value of this status when it was translated into
translocal friendships within the subculture:
J8 (female): The other aspect of it that I get is like my celebrity status [laughter] . . .
it is a good thing because I can go out on my own on a night any-
where in any town and I will always see someone that I know.
Others involved in DJing, fanzine writing, website construction on various

scales, or even sitting on the door at the smallest of goth events were liable
to experience some kind of increase in standing, whether in the context of a
particular local crowd or across the country. As a result of the importance
of authenticity, creativity and commitment in the goth scene’s subcultural
ideology, many were somewhat reluctant to emphasize personal status as a
motivation for their activities. The producer of Naked Truth fanzine was
not one of them, however:
G3 (male): It’s quite a good thing to do. It’s like minor fame! Especially at things
like the Whitby weekend.
The following exchange between two goths who maintained their own
websites demonstrates the value of interviewing people together. They extract
from one another a reluctant admission of the importance of personal status
as a reward for their activities:
P1 (male): It [website] was . . . trying to do something which I thought people

would use.
B1 (female): So you could go ‘look what I’ve done!’ . . .
PH: So why do you have a website then?
B1: Oh I don’t know.
P1: Go on admit it!! . . . It’s just an ego trip basically.
125
Goth
B1: I think they all are really . . . It’s just a big ‘look at me’ pointer isn’t
it?
P1: It’s like your fifteen minutes of fame isn’t it . . . on mine, the goth
map’s useful but . . . the rest of it is ‘this is me, here I am, you can
mail me!’
Importantly, while rewards like subcultural status and the gaining of friends
may be regarded as self-serving, they also relate very clearly to the cultural
affiliation of those involved to the goth scene. Status and friendships within
the confines of such a subculture would constitute little reward for those
whose social lives revolved outside it.
Contributing to ‘the scene’
The most common answer I received to my questioning as to key people’s

motives and rewards was that they wanted to contribute something to the
survival, development and, sometimes, improvement of the goth scene. Prod-
ucers of various kinds emphasized a desire to play a part in the subculture’s
advancement, as in the following quotes from the designer of a goth infor-
mation website and the promoter of a goth event in York:
D3 (male): I thought it would be useful to compile a list of clubs so people who

were travelling around could work out where to go in certain cities . . .
It just occurred to me that it could make a big difference.
J2 (female): I like seeing people enjoy themselves – there’s no other night really in
the area and I really wanted to put York back on the map.
For some, the intention was not just to facilitate the goth scene, but to change
it. The promoter of Whitby Gothic Weekend explained that she wanted to
use the festival, and her own position of influence, to change the general
atmosphere of the subculture:
J8 (female): I run it for the scene because I’m kind of on a moral crusade to make
goth a happier place to live sort of thing . . . I mean the slogan on my
compliments slips is ‘The Gothic Weekend – putting a smirk on the
face of goth’.
In his account of the growth of sociality and neo-tribalism, Maffesoli (1996:

17, 96) has argued that while they have no particular external objectives,
the emerging affinity groups he describes involve a strong moral imperative
for their own survival and regeneration: ‘the “tribes” we are considering
may have a goal, may have finality; but this is not essential; what is important
126
is the energy expanded on constituting the group as such’ (ibid.: 96). This
kind of desire to contribute to the development and survival of ‘the group as
such’, alongside more individual rewards such as subcultural capital, perks,
and sheer enjoyment of particular creative activities, is clearly demonstrated
here, on an individual level, in the motivations of the goth scene’s subcultural
producers. As Maffesoli suggests, there is no external rationale for the import-
ance attached to the constitution and reconstitution of the goth scene. The
priority relates to the ideology of voluntary commitment described in Chapter
3 or this book, but was also rooted in a very genuine personal desire of
participants not to lose a lifestyle and identity which was of considerable
personal importance to them.
So strongly held was the ideology of voluntary commitment to the sub-
culture’s well-being that many goths in interviews, general conversation and
internet discussion indicated that they found the idea of making significant
financial or other personal rewards from organizational or creative activities
somewhat distasteful. In fact, though, the desire to contribute to the well-
being of the goth scene often went hand in hand with a number of more
individual rewards. In particular, the goth scene’s criteria of status ensured,
rather ironically, that being seen to undertake apparently selfless activities
in the interests of the subculture was liable to induce particularly high levels
of personal admiration and status. While the most cynical of commentators
may suggest that this observation invalidates all claims to altruistic motives,
my own conclusion is that the activities of subcultural producers were usually
attributable both to a genuine desire to contribute something and to a mixture
of more individual rewards. The following Birmingham promoter’s contribution
to an e-mail list discussion came across as a particularly honest assessment:
Re: It Used to be about the music man

Let’s be honest, we do it for the same reason every else does, partly because we
care about the goth scene a lot and want it to keep going, but mainly because we
like the idea of being promoters, we get to talk to bands and pretend we’re really
‘cool’.
(De Bie 2000)
More significant than asking which of the non-financial motivations outlined

was most important, though, is emphasizing that all of them allude to the
committed involvement of the individuals concerned, within the goth scene.
They draw further attention, therefore, to the significant extent to which the
subculture was generated by its own participants.
127
Goth
Conclusion
This chapter should leave the reader in little doubt that commercial motiv-
ations and rewards are entirely compatible with the levels of substance of
the goth scene. At the same time, however, it is crucial to emphasize that the
relative importance of small-scale subcultural entrepreneurs, compared with
niche and mass non-subcultural businesses, is an important indicator of the
autonomy and, hence, substance of a particular grouping. Furthermore, the
importance of cultural rather than financial motivations, both to such entre-
preneurs and to the far greater number of voluntary subcultural producers,
is worthy of emphasis. This is not because commercial motivations or rewards
are somehow antithetical to the concept of subculture, but because non-
financial motivations serve to illustrate the unambiguous position of such
producers as committed participants of the subculture.
Notes
1. Non-subcultural record labels involved with early goth music included inde-
pendents and majors. Some examples of independents included Beggars Banquet,
who released material by Bauhaus and The Cult among others; Jungle Records, who
released material with Specimen; 4AD, who released material with various bands,
including The Birthday Party and Dead Can Dance. Examples of major labels included
Polydor, involved most notably with Siouxsie and the Banshees and WEA, who
contracted the Sisters of Mercy and their previously independent label Merciful
Release in 1984.
2. Examples of ‘cross-over’ bands marketed partially at goths included Garbage
(Mushroom Records) and Placebo (Elevator Music). Compilations involving 1980s
goth bands include Sisters of Mercy – Slight Case of Over Bombing (Warner UK
1993) – and Siouxsie and the Banshees – Twice Upon a Time (Polydor 1992) – and a
genre-specific goth compilation called Nocturnal (Procreate 1998).
3. Examples of non-subcultural media previews or reviews of goth events
encountered during my research included Salter, Big Issue in the North, 1998; Myres,
Melody Maker, 1997; Thompson, New Musical Express, 1999.
4. Examples of coverage in mass media include Gilbert, Independent on Sunday,
1996; Matherson and Simpson, Minx, 1997.
5. Examples of articles reviewing or featuring the release of new or repackaged
material by well-known 1980s goth bands include Malins, Q Magazine, 1998; Udo,
New Musical Express, 1996; Seagal, New Musical Express, 1998. Examples of
references to the goth influences in metal or indie music include Dalton, New Musical
Express, 1998; Oldham, New Musical Express, 1996; Tsarfin, Terrorizer, 1999; Tovey,
Terrorizer, 1999.
128
6. For an example of proclamations of the return of the goth scene itself, see Myres,
Melody Maker, 1998. Examples of coverage of goth’s influences on designer-fashion
trends include Paterson, Scotland on Sunday, 1997; Davidson, The Herald Magazine,
1999; Alford, Observer Life, 1993.
129
Buying Goth: Subcultural Shopping
7
Buying Goth: Subcultural
Shopping
The selection, purchase and consumption of particular kinds of subcultural
goods, most notably recorded music, clothing and accessories, was a key
element in participants’ experience of the goth scene. When asked to indicate
the most important aspects of their participation, 53 per cent of Whitby Festival
Questionnaire respondents selected fashion/appearance and 49 per cent,
recorded music as one of their three choices (see Appendix, Table 4, p. 201).
Answers to the open-ended follow-up question involved constant reference
to clothes, music and sometimes other consumption-related aspects of the
scene:
WQ5b: In your own words please explain what is the goth scene all about?
11 (female): The clothes, the style – the general interest in things that are dark
and macabre.
44 (female): It’s about dressing up in your best stuff . . . and listening to great
music.
64 (male): We enjoy the books, films, music and clubs.
The following interviewees provide extra weight to the point, specifically

indicating that accumulating personal collections of particular kinds of
recorded music was important to the process of intensifying their initial
involvement in the goth scene:
T3 (female): Well there were songs that we’d heard and we wanted to know who
they were by . . . yeah ‘who’s this? we must get this song’ . . .
S7 (female): Yeah, you’d hear the odd track, and then I used to buy the album
and the album was brilliant.
T3: And then you’d buy the next album.
Purchasing particular styles of clothes and make-up were equally significant

to the development of their individual identities within the goth scene:
131
Goth
S7: We [first] went to Edwards with a trace of eye-liner, a trace of lipstick.

T3: and now people don’t recognize us . . . There was a stage when we were like
‘ripped fishnets – yuk’, and then a few weeks later [mimes ripping of tights],
and that was like three pairs of ripped fishnets . . .
S7: and then it was like, ‘PVC tops, no!’, and now I’ve got a couple.
To a significant extent, it was through ownership and use of consumer

goods that goths claimed their subcultural capital, differentiating themselves
subtly from one another and more overtly from groupings and individuals
outside the subculture. Collections of commodities provided the material
manifestation of the subculture’s distinctive range of tastes. The process
through which individuals developed their subcultural ‘look’ and enhanced
their knowledge and appreciation of music revolved around selecting, purch-
asing, combining and using particular kinds of object, as did the consistency
and distinctiveness of the goth style as a whole. Furthermore, as well as being
crucial as a means to an end, the act of shopping was often an important
subcultural activity in itself (see McRobbie 1989: 24; Shields 1992a: 5).
Moving on from the emphasis on production in the last chapter, here we
illustrate the importance of consumption to the goth scene, emphasizing the
significance to the shopping routes of goths of first a variety of non-subcultural
retailers, not especially oriented to them, and second a translocal network
of specialist subcultural sources of goods. At the same time, we will focus on
the differential levels of creativity and critique involved in the selection and
use of consumables by goths. The purpose of this is not to identify or celebrate
a unified degree of creativity or active consumption among goths, but rather
to emphasize that their subcultural consumption tended to be characterized
by varying levels of discernment and innovation. More specifically, it involved
the selective, creative appropriation of goods from non-specialist sources along-
side the rather less active purchase and use of more pre-packaged, subcultural
items. For different reasons, both will be regarded as consistent with this book’s
conceptualization of the goth scene as a substantive subculture.
Sifting Through (for ‘the odd gem’)
Whilst emphasizing the importance of consumer goods to subcultural styles,

Dick Hebdige (1977, 1979) positions the creative use of these, prior to the
moment of commercial incorporation at least, as resistant to hegemonic
capitalism. More specifically, subcultural styles involved a ‘semiotic guerrilla
warfare’, whereby external everyday consumer goods were appropriated into
a subcultural context and took on new, subversive meanings (ibid. 1979: 105).
This book has already questioned notions of stylistic subversion, and this
132
chapter will not be seeking to argue that the consumption habits of goths
were somehow resistant to hegemony, whether symbolically or otherwise.
However, if we leave aside this question of stylistic subversion, Hebdige’s
discussion of the appropriation of mass commercial objects into a subcultural
context is not in itself inappropriate, either in the past or in the present
(Muggleton 2000: 146). The creativity exhibited when objects are used in
ways not envisaged by producers and marketers, alongside the general levels
of effort, thought and knowledge involved in their selection and use, are
legitimate grounds for investigation, whether or not the latter represent any
realistic threat to dominant ideology as a whole.
There is little doubt that some of the consumption practices of goths
indicated both creativity and appropriation. They frequently made use of
goods purchased from market stalls, high street chain stores and retailers of
second-hand goods, all of which being outside the internal networks of their
subculture. When asked about their shopping habits as part of the Whitby
Festival Questionnaire, 21 per cent of respondents selected ‘local chain stores’
as an important source of clothing, and 27 per cent as a key source of music.
Meanwhile, 68 per cent selected local independent stores as key sources of
clothing and 63 per cent chose the same option for music (see Appendix,
Tables 5 and 6, p. 202). Ethnographic experience indicates that a reasonable
proportion of such local independent stores are liable not to have been
specifically targeted at the goth scene. As with events, non-subcultural sources
of consumables tended to be particularly important for those participants
who lived in areas where more specialist stores were unavailable. Such
selection and use of goods from external retailers often involved considerable
discernment and innovation on the part of subcultural consumers, fitting
nicely with a somewhat depoliticized notion of subcultural appropriation.
Goths utilized a particularly wide variety of retailers in order to search for
clothes which fitted with or added to their own current version of the
subculture’s style. At the least critical level, general ‘alternative’ clothes shops
offered, under one roof, a range of reasonably pre-selected items of clothing
associated with the metal, punk, crusty and sometimes underground dance
scenes as well as with goth. The appropriative skills of goths, though, were
much more apparent in their careful selection and use of items from the
highly diverse range of clothes and accessories on offer from rag markets,
charity shops and high street stores. They partook in a creative assembly of
subcultural style, through selecting, sometimes altering and combining a
variety of objects from external sources, into their own individual version of
the goth style. The following interviewee, from Birmingham, explained that
his subcultural look was assembled in this way, and that few of his goth
clothes were marketed as such:
133
Goth
J12 (male): A lot of the stuff I wear is like recycled. It’s normal sort of clothes.
Like jeans which I’ve had for ages, and shirts which I’ve just sort of
like changed the style about and added bits on and stuff.
PH: Right, rather than buying this specific goth item?
J12: Yeah, I’ve only bought a fishnet top thing – that’s the only piece of
goth clothes that I’ve actually bought.
While in the case of this last respondent the majority of his clothing and
accessories were purchased from markets and charity shops, others made
frequent use of high street chain stores for the same purpose. The following
questionnaire respondent indicates the occasional rewards for those prepared
to sift carefully through the diverse range of clothing available in such stores:
WQ6c: How easy or difficult is it for you to find goth music and clothes to
buy?
11 (female): Sometimes you can find the odd gem in ordinary shops such as M&S.
Clothes shopping, then, was often a matter of identifying the small number
of potentially suitable items from a majority that were unsuitable, and then
placing them into an overall look which entailed an individual interpretation
of the goth style. The way in which items of clothing were worn and the
integrity of the overall look into which each item was placed were of far
greater importance than the whereabouts of its purchase (Muggleton 2000:
146). In further illustration of this point, some also made selective use of the
specialist shops or mail-order services of other styles or subcultures. Most
notably, many sought out certain kinds of rubber or PVC clothing from
retailers of fetish or general sex accessories. Such items also constituted a
useful example of appropriation since, when placed into the context of the
overall goth style and worn in goth spaces, they were often stripped of most
of their sexual connotations and appreciated largely for their aesthetic, stylistic
value. Indeed, although they did not necessarily reflect the views of most or
all other goths, the respondents quoted next, who had discovered clothes
they liked at sex stalls at a fashion show, seemed to dislike having to purchase
clothes from retailers associated with the sex industry:
S7 (female): There was another stall there that was PVC.

T3 (female): A lot of it was page-three-girl type stuff.
S7: I don’t know if they get the impression that you’re dodgy – that you
have to be dodgy to wear it.
T3: That annoys me – sometimes you have to go to these places and get
the stuff that you want.
S7: Yeah, there’s that sex shop down Dale End isn’t there and they do
really nice stuff in there – but it’s a sex shop.
134
Compact discs and records are less adaptable than items of clothing, making
the notion of appropriation more ambiguous in its relevance to goths’
consumption of music. Nevertheless, non-subcultural retailers formed an
important part of their shopping routes, and knowledge, selectivity and
creativity were demonstrated in a variety of ways. The negotiation of second-
hand-record shops, market stalls and record fairs tended to require consider-
able expertise, for example. Such institutions provided both newcomers and
established participants with the ability to improve the credibility of their
collections by spending considerable time searching out or stumbling upon
items from the back catalogues of bands associated with the subculture. In
particular they tended to be the most useful source of rare goth or goth-
related records of the past which were unavailable from other non-subcultural
shops. They also offered potential bargains to those prepared to search long
enough. While records were often organized under generic titles, it was
increasingly rare for ‘goth’ to be one of these. Searching out goth or goth-
related records, then, often required effort, patience and knowledge. While
often this involved awareness of the names of bands and releases, the follow-
ing respondent explained that he had also learned to select records on the
basis of an assessment of the style and content of covers:
M2 (male): You know sometimes you are thumbing through a load of twelve-
inches, and you just come across one and think ‘oh that’s got to be a
goth band’ and so you buy it, just from the look of it. I’ve bought
records on that basis and not been disappointed. You can just tell
can’t you? Or sometimes I got records of bands that I’d vaguely heard
of but knew nothing about the band, but thought ‘oh, I’m going to
try that’.
The fact that the majority of music purchased by goths was already associated
with their subculture rather negates the use of a Hebdigian notion of approp-
riation to describe this process. However, selection of the desirable items
certainly involved skill and knowledge, alongside elements of greater
innovation and individuality.
Notably, while usually dominated by bands associated with subculture and
consistent with its style, the record collections of goths were usually given a
particular sense of individuality by the non-subcultural music they included.
Most selected and purchased examples of music they deemed somehow
compatible with the goth style, even when its marketing involved no overt
subcultural associations. Others consistently sought selected items from other
genres for which they had developed a personal liking – most frequently in
the form of indie, metal, punk or new romantic music. Some goths even
engaged in the consciously ironic purchase of popular commercial titles
135
Goth
deemed to contradict the stylistic conventions of their subculture. Notable

examples of the latter included Shampoo and Aqua. As explained in Chapter
3, such individual transgressions as these, so long as overall collections and
tastes in clothes and music retained sufficient consistency with the subculture’s
shared tastes, were potentially beneficial to one’s standing, and certainly
demonstrated a degree of individual selection and creativity.
While, in the examples described above, we have demonstrated independ-
ence, knowledge or creativity on the part of consumers, it should be noted
that goths also engaged in the purchase and consumption of items from non-
subcultural sources in rather less active ways. Although the overall availability
of goth music in high-street or general independent record stores had declined
considerably since the early 1990s, the CDs of well-known 1980s goth bands
were still sometimes purchased in such non-subcultural spaces by goths.
Although the selection of music from such a mixed non-subcultural context
indicates considerable knowledge, we should recognize that many of these
products had very well-known associations with the goth scene due to delib-
erate niche marketing. In particular, many goths in my study had purchased
retrospective compilations, either of particular 1980s bands or of goth music
generally, which were explicitly marketed at them, and available from most
general record stores. In addition, some bought CDs featuring newer bands
such as Garbage, Placebo and even Marilyn Manson which were partially
targeted, via their image and media publicity, at goths, alongside indie or
metal fans more generally.
The significance of such externally available but subculturally targeted
CDs and merchandise should not be underestimated. The external availability
of the music of certain goth bands meant that, like non-subcultural events,
they constituted initial points of contact for potential new participants. The
following interviewee explained that hearing a Sisters of Mercy album played
in a record shop in the late 1980s, and subsequently purchasing the CD, had
been an important step in his becoming involved in the goth scene:
S2 (male): I suppose when I first got into it properly, it’s the old clichéd answer –
The Sisters of Mercy . . . I was wandering past a record shop . . . and
they were playing it . . . and I thought ‘I vaguely recognize this’. I’d
obviously heard it on the radio or whatever and so I went up to them
and said ‘what’s this?’ and they told me . . . and I had a spare tenner in
my pocket and ended up buying it. And then after that, I started kind
of fishing about for other stuff that was similar.
In addition, many who were already affiliated to the scene emphasized the
importance of externally available and very clearly targeted goth compilation
CDs, for the ongoing development of their music collections.
136
J3 (male): Compilations are a good way of finding out about stuff really I
guess . . . there’s like Gothic Rock, Gothic Rock 2, Hex Files, the new
Nocturnal thing . . .
Such CDs offered a useful taster of a number of bands labelled and marketed
as goth, whose other releases could then be followed up individually using
more specialist subcultural sources:
S2 (male): I’ve got a habit of once I’ve got one track by a group I generally back-
track through their whole back catalogue and buy everything they’ve
released.
The popularity of such externally available compilation CDs was illustrated

by the following goth DJ, who suggested that songs included on a late 1980s
compilation were, as a direct result of this, guaranteed to go down particularly
well at goth events:
G4 (male): Do you remember how you used to be able to play any track off the
first Gothic Rock album and lots of people would dance to it, but
you’d play something similar and people wouldn’t because they didn’t
know it – so lots of people must have had that album.
The use of objects from non-subcultural sources of various kinds was clearly
very important, then, to the make-up of individuals’ recorded music collect-
ions and their versions of the goth ‘look’. More so, perhaps, than any other
individual aspect of the subculture, the practices of shopping and consumption
underline significant links between the goth scene and the commercial world
outside it. The selective consumption of non-subcultural sources of goods,
though, is not inconsistent with the goth scene’s conceptualization as a
subculture. First, the term subculture – as used in this book – indicates a
relatively independent grouping within a diverse society. It therefore does
not require opposition to or isolation from any unified ‘dominant culture’,
or indeed to or from the capitalist system which penetrates all elements
of Western societies. Secondly, the fact that a significant degree of this con-
sumption from external sources involved the selection, whether ‘innovative’
or not, of items relatively consistent with an already established subcultural
set of tastes re-emphasizes the commitment of participants to the distinctive
style of the goth scene. Finally, the role of active appropriation, independent
creativity and occasional transgressions in this assemblage of style emphasizes
the important role for participants themselves in the ongoing development
of their shared style.
137
Goth
Pre-Selected Goth Style
For Hebdige, subcultures remained authentic and significant only so long as

they were based on the critical appropriation and subversion of everyday goods.
It was only during a process of commercial incorporation and dilution of
the subcultural style, after it had existed in its spontaneous form for a time,
that explicitly marketed subcultural objects emerged:
Once removed from their private contexts by the small entrepreneurs and big
fashion interests who produce them on a mass scale, they become codified, made
comprehensible, rendered at once public property and profitable merchandise.
(Hebdige 1979: 132)
This suggestion is problematic in two respects. First, it dismisses in rather an

elitist fashion the significance and substance of subcultural groupings after
the point at which their style has been exposed ‘on a mass scale’ (G. Clarke
1981: 82). One of the key contentions of this book is that the substance of
subcultures, in the form of shared identity, distinctiveness, commitment and
relative autonomy, is both significant in itself and entirely compatible with
exposure to commerce and media. Secondly, Hebdige underestimates the
importance throughout the life of subcultures, including their early moments,
of objects which are overtly packaged, marketed and sold as subcultural com-
modities. As Clarke, McRobbie and others have pointed out, the marketing
of ready-made punk style, not least by the likes of McClaren and Westwood,
was a key part of the very development of the subculture (see G. Clarke 1981:
92; McRobbie 1989: 24, 25 and 1994: 161).
Clarke rightly argues that there is little point in lauding supposed initial
innovators and disregarding those who took on subcultural styles after they
were marketed as such, when the time period between the two is at best
negligible (G. Clarke 1981: 92). Developing the point further still, there is a
need to challenge the very suggestion of distinct periods characterized exclu-
sively by either appropriation of external objects or the purchase of marketed
subcultural objects. We have already demonstrated clearly that some two
decades after the initial involvement of non-subcultural commercial interests,
the goth scene involved both the genuine appropriation of formerly non-
subcultural goods and the rather less active purchase of more subculturally
targeted objects. Crucially, however, the externally available goth-oriented
CDs and records we have described thus far constituted merely the tip of the
iceberg of pre-packaged goth style. Highly specialist retailers, which deliber-
ately stocked items oriented mostly or wholly toward the subculture, were
becoming ever more important.
138
The loyal, enthusiastic market provided by the goth scene enabled a number
of subcultural retailers to profit from providing such an already selected and
filtered range of clothes, music, accessories and even household decorations,
many of which were not available externally. In the Whitby Festival Question-
naire, some 39 per cent of respondents indicated that one of either mail order,
shops outside their locality or gigs and festivals was their single most import-
ant source of music, and 34 per cent cited one of these as their main way
of obtaining clothes (see Appendix. Tables 5 and 6, p. 202). Participation,
observation and interviews emphasized that such non-local and event-based
sources were liable in most cases to have a specialist orientation toward the
goth scene. The need to seek non-local and/or specialist sources of consum-
ables was also indicated by open-ended responses to the questionnaire:
WQ6c: How easy/difficult is it for you to find goth music and clothes to
buy?
82 (male): Reasonably easy by mail-order, much harder from shops . . .
52 (female): Easy at festivals, easy when travelling to London.
Importantly, while it certainly indicates a significant degree of self-generation

for the goth scene, such internal consumption, far from being anti-commercial,
was also enabled by the diverse free-market economy within which the
subculture operated. Furthermore, compared with the selection of items from
non-subcultural sources described in the previous section, it implies somewhat
lower levels of innovation or creativity on the part of subcultural consumers.
Rather than appropriating and adapting miscellaneous objects or even searching
for the small number of ready-made goth items available in non-subcultural
stores, the customers of specialist retailers chose from items which had already
been selected as compatible with the goth scene by the retailer. Therefore, it
would seem that in this case, Hebdige’s suggestion that ‘it is basically the
way in which commodities are used in subculture which marks the subculture
off from more orthodox cultural formations’ (1979: 103) underestimates the
importance of the pre-selection and marketing of distinct subcultural items
by specialist entrepreneurs. It may be the case, as Muggleton has argued,
that the purchase and use of pre-packaged subcultural style retains a degree
of individual adaptation and subversion, but levels of creativity surely are
less marked than in the case of the appropriation from the diverse array of
goods from the high street or the market (see Muggleton 2000: 144).
Nevertheless, the importance of consumption from specialist retailers, in
terms of facilitating participation and continually constructing the goth scene’s
range of style, is significant in illustrating the subculture’s relative autonomy.
Subcultural producers and suppliers of goth clothes and, particularly, music
139
Goth
provided a range of the most obscure and distinctive subcultural consumables,

many of which weren’t available externally. Therefore, even the most creative
users of rag markets, charity shops and the high street tended to combine
the items they appropriated with more standard subcultural goods obtained
from specialist retailers.
While general record stores, markets or record fairs were valuable sources
of older goth music, obtaining more up-to-date subcultural music often
required highly specialist record labels, distributors and retailers. Some
respondents explained that occasionally they had been able to order particular
obscure goth CDs through helpful local indie record shops and, indeed, to
purchase demo or commercially released CDs directly from bands themselves.
However, even this required prior knowledge of the bands and releases con-
cerned. In contrast, specialist goth-record shops provided their clientele with
a space to browse, listen and discuss preferred bands and CDs with sub-
culturally knowledgeable assistants. The owner of London goth-record store
Resurrection Records explained that he often recommended releases to
customers on the basis of their previous purchases.
A3 (male): I think a lot of people come in without a clue what they want.
Particularly when you think that there is a thousand different gothic
titles in there on CD – a lot of the new stuff that’s coming out gets
reviewed but a lot of it doesn’t . . .
PH: But you can still shift them by knowing about them and letting
everyone else know about them?
A3: Yeah, and knowing what people like. As the shop’s got bigger that’s
become more difficult . . . but there still is a lot of that going on.
This confirmed what I had already heard from a Birmingham respondent

who frequently visited the London shop:
W1 (male): There’s a goth record shop in London called Resurrection Records

and I found out about a lot of the new music through them because
I’ve gone quite frequently . . . they’ll say ‘you might like this, have a
listen’, and you say yes or no.
While they did not offer a physical space or the same kind of face-to-face
interaction with staff, mail-order services were centred around informative
printed or internet-based catalogues, containing similarly specialist alpha-
betically listed titles, each with a helpful description for the consumer. The
following interviewee found the latter particularly useful in this respect:
C2 (male): I’ve started getting a lot more things mail order, because [in mail order
catalogues] you’ve got the name of the band and then you’ve got a
140
little sentence underneath saying ‘sounds a bit like’ somebody else

you might have heard of.
Subcultural CD retailers then, delivered to goths a range of already filtered

goth music, enabling browsing, learning and purchasing on impulse. They
both facilitated pre-planned purchases and induced discovery of new bands
and releases. The constant availability of a range of new goth music facilitated
by such retailers, and the labels they dealt with, was crucial to the constant
regeneration of interest and enthusiasm among new and old participants in
the subculture.
Such specialist CD retailers, though, certainly did not exist in every locality.
London was the only city with anything like sufficient number of local goth
consumers to support them alone. This meant that, having made the most of
what limited goth music was stocked in local chain and independent music
stores, goths without their own local specialist store tended either to travel to
specialist shops elsewhere, or to use mail-order services. Resurrection Records’
proprietor explained that his shop was often visited by non-locals, many of
whom he had come to recognize due to the frequency of their appearances:
A3 (male): We’ve got quite a lot of locally based customers who come in once a
week or once every two weeks . . . but we’ve got a hell of a lot of
irregular customers . . . who’ll come every six months, once a year.
PH: Do you recognize them?
A3: Oh yeah, normally, and its not just people from England either . . .
there’s a sort of little band of Germans – about twenty of them – that
come over about six times a year.
A number of users of Resurrection Records and their mail-order rival

Nightbreed also emphasized the importance of the subcultural orientation
of these businesses, which were consequently far more important to them
than local chain stores or general independent record shops:
PH: Where do you get new music from these days?

S1 (male): from basically Nightbreed – that’s the main place. It’s only very rarely
that I get anything from a record shop now. I gave up years ago. It’s
all mail order.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that an equally important subcultural

source of recorded music for many goths and particularly for newcomers
was home taping. Paul Willis’s observation of the reliance of many young
people on the receipt of tapes filled with music from friends with greater
knowledge or bigger record collections than them was certainly applicable
141
Goth
to the goth scene (Willis 1990: 63). While ownership of originals tended to
entail greater subcultural capital, those individuals who did not often use
specialist goth retailers were able to obtain goth music through friends who
did. Equally, there was a tendency for individuals to use tapes their friends
had recorded for them as a tester, to decide whether they wanted to purchase
particular CDs themselves. In this respect, as Willis points out, the supplier
of the tape takes the role of a ‘trusted and accepted consumer guide’ (ibid.).
Given that the tapes received by goths were often compiled by other goths,
home taping and, indeed, the related practice of lending out records and
CDs can be considered a largely internal form of music distribution. However,
it also played a crucial role in the process of the recruitment of individuals
into the goth scene and the cementing of initial contact with the subculture.
The following questionnaire respondents suggest that it was compilation tapes
or lent records which sparked their initial interest in the goth scene:
WQ7b: Please give details about what or who got you into the goth scene.
48 (male): Got lent some records.
61 (male): A friend gave me a compilation and I loved it.
Similarly, the following interviewee suggested that being lent a considerable

number of obscure goth records by a friend he met at college helped him
transfer from listening to a small number of externally exposed goth bands
to becoming self-consciously passionate about goth music:
J7 (male): He came into college and brought a bag full of records . . . and there
was stuff that I’d never heard of before . . . I just went home and that
night musically things really changed . . . I realized . . . that other bands
did exist and that the stuff I was listening to was so tame in comparison
to what was available. I think that was where . . . I really started to
believe in what I was listening to. It got me emotionally; it was like
‘yeah, this is the sort of stuff you want to listen to’. I think it was then
– when I got the Birthday Party stuff and the Bauhaus stuff . . . that I’d
got this stuff that I called goth.
In a similar fashion to the operation of subcultural word of mouth in general

terms, then, the informal transfer of recorded music between friends was of
crucial importance to the construction and facilitation of the goth scene.
Like subcultural retailers and commercial compilation CDs, subcultural friends
tended to offer a pre-selected range of subculturally acceptable material.
Goth, or potentially goth-compatible clothes and accessories were slightly
more likely to be available in various local stores than music was. The greater
adaptability of clothes meant garments or accessories from non-subcultural
142
sources were far more suitable for appropriation or adaptation than CDs or
records. Nevertheless, most goths increased their choice and obtained parti-
cularly obscure subcultural items through mail order or through travelling
to particular subcultural shops elsewhere. Such translocal subcultural
shopping was most important for those with fewest facilities close by. As the
following interviewee from Plymouth put it:
PH: So how about clothes then?

S1 (male): Mail order again really – there’s never been any really goth shops
down here.
As a result of such travelling and especially of mail order, many respondents

from small or remote towns and cities did feel satisfied with the overall
availability of goth music. The following respondent was from a coastal town
in North Wales:
D4 (male): I buy goth music every month. This is mail order from Nightbreed
or Resurrection Records . . . choice isn’t really limited by living in
Llandudno as long as you don’t mind putting your faith in mail order.
Many, though, found mail order of less value for clothing than for music, as
a result of practical difficulties, such as the inability to try things on for size
and the costs of postage. As a result, travelling to visit specialist shops else-
where was often preferred. The proprietor of Morgana, a well-known goth
clothes store with branches in Wakefield and Leeds, explained that they were
frequently visited from across the country (see Figure 7.1). She also explained
that the company’s mail-order service had proved a valuable translocal means
of promotion, in that many customers who had initially ordered clothes by
post had subsequently travelled to the shop in order to browse through the
stock first-hand.
B3 (female): [mail order] has worked really well. It worked not only in terms of
turnover, but also worked in terms of getting people down here and
getting our name about. You know a lot of people that order
something and then they’ll travel to see us . . . we’ve had people up
from London, the Midlands, Newcastle, Scotland, Wales – literally
from all over the place.
Stores such as Morgana also raised their custom by running stalls at certain
translocal goth events. Along with travelling to the shops themselves, such
events were also a popular and useful source of a variety of obscure goth
clothing. While she used mail order for music, the following respondent
143
Goth
Figure 7.1 Inside Morgana’s specialist clothes store in Wakefield. (Photograph:

P. Hodkinson).
regarded travelling to shops and events outside her home town of Bedford
as crucial to developing her collection of goth clothes:
S6 (female): I personally find mail order useless . . . except for music, for which it
is indispensable. London is within easy reach for clothes . . . occasion-
ally I get to other towns, most recently Leicester and Oxford . . .
London sprees happen about once a month, otherwise I wait for gigs,
Whitby, etc.
144
Like respondent S6, lots of goths relied to some extent on the subcultural
retail stalls at goth events. These ranged from bands selling demo tapes and
T-shirts at low-profile gigs to entire markets including subcultural retailers
from across Britain, at big translocal festivals. In particular, the Bizarre Bazaar
during the daytime at the Whitby Gothic Weekend regularly enticed most of
the goth retailers I came across to hire a pitch. The Bazaar had become a
key part of the festival for many participants due to the range of obscure
subcultural items available in one place (see Figure 7.2). When asked to choose
Figure 7.2 Faithful Dawn/Dark Beat Records stall at the Whitby Gothic Weekend
Bizarre Bazaar. (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright).
145
Goth
their three favourite aspects of the festival in the Whitby Festival Question-
naire, 21 per cent included ‘buying new clothes, music, accessories’ as one of
their choices (see Appendix, Table 2, p. 200). On the same questionnaire, in
response to questions asking how they obtained goth clothes and music, 53
per cent selected ‘gigs and festivals’ among their three choices (see Appendix,
Tables 5 and 6, p. 202).
Constructing Translocal Consistency
Specialist retailers continually provided goths with a relatively easy and reli-
able source of additions to their subcultural appearance or music collection.
As well as helping to generate and maintain the enthusiasm of participants,
the pre-selection of items by a relatively small number of businesses reinforced
the consistency and distinctiveness of a style which would surely have dissip-
ated rather more had it been reliant entirely upon individual appropriations.
As will be discussed in the following pages, goth retailers, through the way
they and their customers operated translocally, played a particularly important
part, alongside media, events and word of mouth, in the consistency of the
goth style from place to place. However, they also contributed to subtle local
differences.
It has already been suggested that subtle variations in clothes and music
occurred as a result of the particular play-lists of local DJs or indeed the
tastes of other influential individuals. Equally important in this respect were
the particular items stocked by local retailers. In Plymouth, for example, a
number of goths wore rubber and PVC clothes that they had been inspired
to purchase as a result of the opening of a new fetish-wear shop in the city.
As a result of the general lack of local goth-specific retailers, and the distance
of Plymouth from major shopping cities, this retailer became one of the main
sources of clothing for goths in the city. A number of respondents suggested
that for this reason the Plymouth goth scene was particularly fetish-oriented:
G4 (male): If you consider fetish wear – you know, very extreme – that’s more
common in Plymouth, because of Westward Bound [fetish shop] . . .
Because there’s no goth shops at all down here, if you want to buy
bizarre clothes you have to go there and so people . . . went ‘cool clothes
to buy’ and so they wore it and so naturally other people come along
and think ‘what do goths wear? Aha they go to Westward Bound’.
Such local differences should be placed into perspective, however. The

distribution throughout Britain of general styles and, often, exact same items
146
of clothing and music, whether through direct mail order, or via local retailers,
played a significant part in the continuing consistency of the subculture from
city to city and its distinctiveness, as a whole, from other styles. In relation
to the above example, PVC and rubber clothing may have been of particular
prominence among goths in Plymouth, but it had been sold by goth retailers,
and worn by enthusiasts across Britain for some years prior to my research
there. It is liable to have been the initial development of interest in this
particular style, through translocal subcultural networks, that first prompted
goths in Plymouth to regard a fetish shop as compatible with their scene.
More generally, my observations revealed few significant differences between
the record and clothes collections of goths in the three cities of Plymouth,
Leeds and Birmingham on which the majority of my research was focused.
In spite of perceptions of local differences by certain respondents, my overall
impression, as already indicated, was that each city had a similar range of
goth fashion and music tastes, broadly consistent with the themes described
in Chapter 3.
While non-subcultural selections and adaptations made by individual
participants were important to the development of the style, its translocal
consistency was reliant upon the network of individuals involved in the
production and retail of subcultural consumables, most of whom – as we
have seen – were involved in the goth scene themselves. Bands – by the kind
of music they recorded, the images they presented, and the merchandise they
sold – could influence the general tastes of their translocal audiences and,
indeed, those of other goth bands. Record labels, too, due to being labelled
by themselves or others as goth, played a role in defining and constructing
the boundaries of the genre through the particular bands they chose to work
with, and the stylistic directions in which they sometimes encouraged or
discouraged them to go. Because of the specialist nature of their music policy,
some labels were regarded as guarantors of genre and quality and because
of this, some goths religiously collected their releases:
C2 (male): These days, if it’s on Apocalyptic Vision . . . then I usually like it.
The consumables stocked or recommended by goth-specific retailers,

though, played perhaps an even bigger role in constructing the boundaries
of inclusion and exclusion of the goth scene. If a band or album was included
on the shelves of a well-respected subcultural record shop, or in the catalogues
of a specialist mail-order retailer, its acceptability among goths throughout
Britain and indeed further afield was liable to be significantly strengthened.
As a useful example, a mail-order service known as Cheeky Monkey (1999),
run by the well-known and influential organizer of the Whitby Gothic
147
Goth
Weekend, included under the title ‘alternative, goth and credible’ a number
of 1980s chart recordings as well as goth music. As well as reflecting the
existing nostalgic penchant of some older goths for such music, this move,
in the context of a catalogue regarded by goths to reflect their tastes, is likely
to have helped construct such music as generally consistent across Britain
with being a goth. In similar ways, all goth retailers acted as subcultural
gatekeepers. Furthermore, it was clear from a number of the interviews I did
with retailers across the country, that they had considerable influence upon
one another. If one goth-clothes store discovered a new supplier or clothing
line which became popular, it was only ever a matter of time before similar
items could be found in other goth stores across the country. Needless to
say, this chain of influence within the network of subcultural retailers further
cemented the translocal consistency of the overall goth style.
Shopping as Subcultural Participation
As well as being important to the ability of goths to develop their collections

of subcultural goods, and to the construction of a translocally consistent and
distinctive style, subcultural shopping was an important source of information
about other consumables, sources of consumption, or subcultural events.
Thus, if one purchased a goth CD on mail order, it usually arrived accomp-
anied by flyers advertising other goth CDs, or forthcoming subcultural events.
Furthermore, once on the mailing list of this company or any similar one,
the consumer would be subject to occasional mail-outs containing such flyers.
Similarly, goth retailers, as well as some general alternative record and clothes
shops, tended to simultaneously play the role of information points, through
displaying a multitude of posters and flyers advertising goth events, demo
tapes, fanzines and even other retailers. As the owner of Resurrection Records
put it:
A3 (male): I think that in London it’s helped to get a focal point for the scene, not
just for people to come and buy things, but there’s posters all over the
walls telling people about gigs. There are times when I feel like an
information post.
This notion of shops as a ‘focal point’ for certain groups of individuals is

consistent with the findings of Sara Cohen (1991: 54) and Ruth Finnegan
(1989: 275), both of whom emphasize the importance of record and/or music
shops as centres of information and gossip for local music scenes. As Finnegan
puts it: ‘They [shops] were both formally and informally involved in the
148
musical life of the area . . . they and their staff were part of local music
networks . . .’ (Finnegan, 1989: 277). The difference in the case of subcultural
goth retailers was that rather than being oriented toward a diverse localized
music scene, they tended to operate within and facilitate a specialist translocal
subculture. Although the subcultural information on their walls tended to
have a local or regional emphasis, most also promoted goth events, products
and bands based elsewhere in Britain and further afield.
Shops played the role of focal points for the goth scene, not only through
the information displayed on their walls, but also in providing a day-time
social space for subcultural participants and, hence, an important setting for
channels of word of mouth. One interviewee explained that the Morgana
clothes shop in Wakefield was central to her learning about and then becom-
ing involved in the goth scene. As well as offering a choice of pre-selected
goth clothing, accessories, and fanzines, the shop became an important space
for observing, learning and socializing. I noticed for myself a tendency for
regular customers to drop into the shop for a chat, something which had
enabled this individual to both take part in and learn more about the goth
scene. It was all the more important in this respect because she was under
sixteen and only rarely able to go out at night.
R1 (female): I used to go into Morgana every Saturday because basically I had

nothing else to do and I was just there observing people, what they
were wearing, what they were doing, what they were talking about.
And of course at that point I was too young to go out.
PH: Yeah, because I guess most people . . . would see people in clubs and
things . . . but I suppose the shop has lots of people in there all the
time talking and stuff.
R1: Because it’s such a small-scene shop . . . they [proprietors] know most
of the people that come in and so therefore I listened to the convers-
ations and later on I joined the conversations . . . and people who
came regularly got to know me and introduced me to more people
and then I made friends with them.
Albeit in a rather more limited form, then, such shops offered the kinds of
facilities available at events, in terms of a specialist social space and the
provision of subcultural information.
More generally it was clear that, as well as operating as a means to an
end, in terms of developing a personal appearance and offering subcultural
connections, shopping was often a fulfilling subcultural activity in its own
right. While almost always regarded by respondents as secondary to goth events,
going shopping and hanging around in certain town- or city-centre locations
in the daytime was sometimes – consistent with the general observations of
149
Goth
Rob Shields relating to shopping malls – an important group social occasion

(Shields 1992a: 5). Often participants would meet up with one another by
chance, while on other occasions group shopping trips were organized in
advance. Most notably, in the same way that goths travelled in groups to
events elsewhere, they sometimes organized trips to different cities with the
express purpose of negotiating the subcultural routes through their shopping
centres.
Though to a lesser overall extent than at goth events, identities were affirmed
and subcultural friendships were expanded and cemented in the course of
shopping trips. Considerable subcultural capital and, hence, social rewards
were on offer because of the likelihood of encountering other goths, even if
shopping alone. Individually and collectively differentiating between and
selecting from a range of subcultural and potentially subcultural goods in
the spaces in which they were sold were means by which shared tastes and
individual differences were played out, as well as comprising a perfect way
to demonstrate the depth and appropriateness of one’s knowledge and tastes.
Although they did not make the kind of effort they would have done for an
event, many goths spent time dressing up in order to go shopping, something
which maintained or enhanced their level of acceptance from their comp-
anions and enabled them to experience maximum group camaraderie. It also
made them and their friends particularly visible to other subcultural partic-
ipants among the crowds of shoppers. At the same time, the effort made
with appearances served as a defiant means of collective differentiation from
perceived outsiders to the subculture, who, given the constant movement
between different subcultural and non-subcultural spaces, would be encount-
ered far more frequently than in the course of a subcultural night out. Any
receipt of abuse, though certainly not enjoyed, would ultimately serve as a
rite of passage for newcomers, and a reinvigoration of defiant subcultural
commitment and collective identity for established participants.
Conclusion
That the selling, buying and use of certain objects were critical to the goth
scene’s continual construction and facilitation is clear, I feel. Obtaining and
displaying the right commodities was, more than anything, the key to
subcultural capital, and hence to identity. An understanding of the sources
of such consumables and the ways in which they were consumed is, therefore,
central to any discussion of the facilitation and construction of such a sub-
culture. In general terms, while the consumption so crucial to the goth scene
cannot be regarded as entirely innovative or active, it embodied such qualities
150
in part. It involved a mixture of the creative appropriation of objects from

non-subcultural commercial sources and the somewhat less imaginative use
of pre-packaged subcultural goods, which were often obtained from within
the goth scene’s own translocal networks. While neither indicates absolute
authenticity, both are consistent with this book’s notion of subculture. The
consistent ways in which goths selected and used non-subcultural objects
emphasized their commitment to a relatively distinctive set of stylistic sub-
cultural themes. On the other hand, the increasing importance of clothes,
accessories and music produced, promoted or retailed within essentially sub-
cultural networks serves to emphasize the relative self-generation and, hence,
autonomy of the subculture. Finally, going shopping was significant in prov-
iding goths with up-to-date information about other aspects of the goth scene,
and often constituted a minor subcultural social occasion in its own right.
151
Communicating Goth: ‘Traditional’ Media
8
Communicating Goth:
‘Traditional’ Media
Much subcultural theory has positioned media, like commerce, as part of
the cultural ‘mainstream’ and hence external to subcultures. In some cases,
theorists celebrated the initial spontaneity and authenticity of subcultures,
which were deemed, essentially, to be outside and in opposition to media
until their subsequent incorporation back into the realms of mass culture
(Hebdige 1979). Meanwhile those who described the inadvertent strength-
ening of subcultures through the labelling effects of moral panics still located
media in a negative relation to subcultures from outside (Young 1971; Cohen
1972). The notion of an essentially oppositional relationship between media
and subcultures is also retained by those who cite societal saturation with
the former as evidence for the redundancy of the latter as a concept (Redhead
1993: 5; Muggleton 1997). The possibility that media operating essentially
within subcultures might play a positive role in the construction and facilitat-
ion of their substantive form is often rather marginalized by theorizing which,
for the most part equates ‘the media’ with either a superficial mass culture
or a fluid postmodern diversity.
The value of Sarah Thornton’s work (1995) on the media construction of
club cultures, in the removal of such an assumption and hence the assertion
that subculture can retain relevance in a media-saturated society, is therefore
considerable. Crucially, her insistence on the importance of media to the
development of club cultures rests on a distinction between different forms
of media. While detailing an important labelling and publicizing role for
mass-media moral panics, she demonstrates that more specialist media simult-
aneously played positive roles in the construction of club culture. On the
one hand, niche media, in the form of music and style magazines, are argued
to have constructed a coherent subculture out of what was ‘little more than
an imported type of music with drug associations’ (Thornton 1995: 158).
On the other, even more small-scale specialist micro media, notably flyers
and fanzines, are deemed to have been significant in distributing practical
information about music and events. Through identifying these distinct roles,
153
Goth
Thornton is able to demonstrate that together, mass-, niche- and micro-media

are crucial to the very existence of subcultures:
Youth subcultures are not organic, unmediated social formations, nor are they
autonomous grassroots cultures which only meet the media upon recuperative
‘selling out’ or ‘moral panic’. On the contrary, the media do not just represent but
participate in the assembly, demarcation and development of music cultures.
(ibid.:160)
Though Thornton does not emphasize it herself, the importance of media is

particularly apparent in relation to the translocal form taken by many sub-
cultures. The spanning of geographical distance by such substantive groupings
implies a particular dependence upon communications technologies – a point
which surely applies as much to the supposedly spontaneous movements of
the 1960s and 1970s as to those at the turn of the millennium.
Useful though her distinctions are, we will adapt Thornton’s media typol-
ogy, somewhat, consistent with the subcultural/non-subcultural taxonomy
used throughout this book in relation to key elements of the goth scene. As
before, the purpose is to differentiate between those elements and institutions
of the goth scene which were relatively exclusive and autonomous (subcultural),
and those oriented to a larger, more diverse market (non-subcultural).
Importantly, the notion of subcultural media here implies those which operate
largely within a single subculture, something which contrasts with Thornton’s
choice of the term ‘subcultural consumer magazines’ (ibid.: 155) to describe
niche media which actually tend simultaneously to court a variety of different
music scenes. Our concept of subcultural media is also rather more specific
than the general notion of ‘alternative media’ which has been utilized by
some theorists to describe a particular variety of non-corporate forms of
communication (Atton 2002). Such distinctions are important, since the goth
scene in Britain had become particularly reliant upon media forms which, as
well as being small-scale, do-it-yourself and targeted, were essentially internal
to a particular subcultural community. Specifically, the sharp decline in non-
subcultural media coverage of goth music at the beginning of the 1990s was
accompanied by an increasingly important role for printed subcultural media,
discussed later in this chapter, and equally specialist forms of internet com-
munication, discussed in Chapter 9. The growing importance of such internal
media, produced and consumed by goths, further emphasizes the levels of
relative independence and self-generation we have identified in relation to
shopping and, even more so, to going out. First, though, we shall examine
the roles played by past and present non-subcultural media coverage of the
goth scene.
154
Consuming Non-Subcultural Media
It should be clear from the discussion in Chapter 6 that mass and niche media
played a key role in the initial construction of the goth scene during the
early to mid-1980s. In particular the niche-music press constructed and then
re-emphasized the boundaries of the scene again and again through regular
coverage of goth bands and their fans. Niche or mass-media coverage of the
goth scene also played a role, throughout the 1980s, in the recruitment of new
participants to the music, the style and the conscious sense of identity and
distinctiveness which now accompanied them. For the following respondent,
a No. 1 Magazine article around the middle of that decade, which he had
photocopied and kept, was crucial to his initial discovery of the goth scene.1
PH: What is the first thing you can remember about goth or anything
like that?
S1 (male): Well actually that [indicates photocopied article] was one of my first
references.
As well as publicizing the goth scene to potential recruits, the article he showed
me contained numerous illustrations and provided lists of bands, types of
clothes, hair styles and jewellery which were associated with the goth scene.
As such it both constructed the boundaries of the subculture and facilitated
recruitment. Many other respondents who discovered the goth scene in the
1980s suggested that mass-media coverage, in the same way as non-subcultural
events, shops and friends, acted as an initial hook which triggered off the
conscious search for less well exposed aspects of the goth scene. The following
interviewees, for example, indicated the importance of television and radio
coverage of goth bands during the 1980s:
L2 (female): Ooh, what was it called? What was that really cool music programme
called? They had the Cure in concert on it. What was it called?
D2 (female): The [Old Grey] Whistle Test?
L2: Yeah that was it – they had lots of stuff on.
D2: There was also The Tube as well . . . they had live bands on.
D2: I used to like the music anyway. I didn’t actually know that it was
goth. I used to listen to John Peel, in the evenings and I used to tape
off the better stuff, that’s how I first got to hear like The Chameleons
and Alien Sex Fiend, and The Sisters of Mercy.
The point was also emphasized by the following responses to the Whitby
questionnaire:
155
Goth
WQ7b: Please give details about what or who got you into the goth scene.
14 (male): Seeing Sisters of Mercy on TOTP [Top Of The Pops] and Mission
on radio.
16 (female): Heard a song by the Cure on television – bought the album and
albums by related bands, then discovered the clothes.
In spite of the sharp decline in coverage from the early 1990s onward,
occasional instances of niche and mass-media coverage, alongside occasional
exposure of the goth style to society outside it in non-subcultural retailers or
nightclubs, continued to constitute a potential link into the subculture for
some would-be participants. While most respondents emphasized events and
friends as the primary factor behind their recruitment, it certainly seems plaus-
ible that the occasional pictures, articles and information in general alternative
and rock music magazines may have complemented the impact of inter-
personal factors.
As well as being a recruitment tool, however, niche and mass-media
appearances by goth bands seemed something to be collectively enjoyed and
celebrated by those already enrolled. Contrary to Thornton’s assertion that
positive mass-media coverage is the ‘subcultural kiss of death’ (1995: 135),
it seems, in small quantities, to have been something which generated further
enthusiasm and strengthened the sense of identity of many goths. In spite of
the fears they had of their subculture becoming over-popular, there was a
certain pride in occasional displays to the general populace of the music and
fashion so close to their hearts. Many interviewees were as keen to show off
videos they had compiled of television appearances by their favourite bands
in the 1980s as they were to dig out their old copies of music magazines.
Music-press coverage during the period of my research tended, as a result
of its rarity, to provoke enthusiastic discussions among goths as to its degree
of accuracy and its possible effects on their scene. Numerous threads of discus-
sion on goth internet discussion groups focused on media coverage of the
subculture. For example, an article in Melody Maker (Myres 1998) on the
supposed return of the goth scene provoked the following post to a goth
internet discussion group, prompting the expression of a variety of positive
and negative opinions on the article and the chances of a revival for the
subculture.
Subject: Melody Maker Goth feature

Melody Maker have devoted a whole page on Goth for the first time this decade.
Very predictable but not a complete waste of space and does happily announce
that “Goth is Back” with good plugs for Slimelight, Full Tilt and the Deviant
Society. Either way, it’s something to build on . . .
(Wilson 1998)
156
For some respondents, niche music-press coverage, as well as being a source

of enthusiasm and debate, provided useful practical information about CD
releases and gigs. The limited coverage of the goth scene in metal magazines
such as Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Terrorizer toward the late 1990s had
attracted some goths to take advantage of the ease of finding and purchasing
them, compared with more specialist fanzines, and to use them as a means
of keeping up with what was happening:
S7 (female): There is the odd thing [article] like about the Sisters of Mercy or
whatever . . . and you find out about concerts in the goth scene.
While most of its material was focused on bands which most goths considered
to be metal, Terrorizer frequently emphasized goth influences in such music.
In one issue, for example, it referred to the music of Moonspell and Type O
Negative as ‘Goth Metal’ and ‘Gothadelic’ respectively (Tsarfin 1999; Tovey
1999). Apparently aware of the possible interest of goths themselves, the
magazine had also begun to include a very small but regular section focused
on recent CD releases associated with the more exclusive subcultural world
of the goth scene. Knowledge of the tendency for some goths to read such
magazines, alongside a hope that their products would appeal to other readers,
also led some goth entrepreneurs to purchase advertising space in them, as
in the case of a mail-order goth clothing business:
A4 (female): My boyfriend at the time always got Terrorizer magazine – which

happens to be a hard-core metal magazine and . . . all the blokes in
it wore gothic clothing, so we put a big ad in it – and it had a massive,
massive response . . . that first advert was in a Marilyn Manson
special, which helped.
Meanwhile, from the point of view of readers, another respondent explained

that, for him, a variety of niche-music magazines had been a useful source
of free posters with which to decorate his bedroom walls as well as an
influence on his music purchases:
G4 (male): I did have like lots of posters from magazines and that on my walls . . .
They [magazines] did influence me musically in that after reading them
for a while you get to recognize reviewers’ names and that. If they’ve
reviewed an album you like anyway and they thought it was good,
and then you see their name reviewing something else and they thought
it was good then that’s like a friend’s recommendation.
157
Goth
Importantly, the role of non-subcultural media in terms of providing infor-

mation and influence, provoking enthusiasm and facilitating recruitment also
implies that such publications and broadcasts constructed what was included
and excluded within the boundaries of the goth scene. Nowhere was this
more notable than those articles which addressed the possible re-emergence
of the goth scene as a whole. For example, an isolated Melody Maker article
insisted that:
Goth is back. Look over your shoulder: the shadows are stretching, darkness is
encroaching and with it comes a mutated form of the human race. They dress
differently, they talk differently and they group together in secret, hidden haunts.
(Myres 1998: 23)
Alongside the inevitable photographs of goths, the text of such articles often
selectively referred to, and hence reinforced and constructed, the consistent
defining characteristics of the subculture. This can also be illustrated by an
extract from an article entitled ‘The New Black’, which reported on a ‘goth
comeback’ in the ‘Lifestyle’ section of The Big Issue:
Look closer at the people out on the streets when the sun’s gone down and you’ll
see how many have started painting the world black – nails, lips, eyes, and bedroom
walls. Then layering themselves in black leather and lace and backcombing their
hair . . . Pale faced kids with . . . acne poking through a layer of talcum powder.
(Owen and Mitchell 1997: 31)
As part of the discussion of non-subcultural commercial producers in Chapter

6, I described a recent moral panic about the goth scene, in the British press,
which had been triggered by the apparent connections to the subculture of
those responsible for the Columbine High School shootings. We have already
seen that, according to some traditional subcultural theorists, negative moral-
panic-style mass-media presentations of subcultural groupings can inadvert-
ently become self-fulfilling prophesies (Young 1971; S. Cohen 1972). While
attacking their somewhat one-dimensional notion of ‘the media’, Thornton
reproduces elements of moral-panic theories in her explanation of the media
construction of club cultures. She argues that negative mass-media coverage
of the Acid House phenomenon in the 1980s served to ‘baptize’ participation
in club culture, to confirm its status as a genuine form of transgression and,
hence, to strengthen the resolve of those involved and the attractiveness of
the subculture to others (Thornton 1995: 129). On the basis of this, there are
three main ways, perhaps, in which the goth scene might have been affected
by its sudden public notoriety in relation to the school shootings. First, the
notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy would suggest that the values of the
158
subculture might have changed in accordance with its media portrayal as,
among other things, racist and violent. Secondly, the strength of identity of
existing members could have been enhanced due to a collective feeling of
victimization. Thirdly, recruitment levels could have risen as a result of the
general publicity and notoriety.
In relation to the values of the goth scene, there was little if any discernible
movement, in Britain at least, toward the values or actions with which it
was associated in the media during the year which followed the shootings.
The long-term rootedness of the subculture’s values, the extremity of the
incident in question and, sometimes, the ability to dismiss it as a reflection
of a perceived ‘American culture’, meant that participants in Britain distanced
their subculture as far as possible from the shootings and the alleged values
of its perpetrators. This can be illustrated by the widespread condemnation
of the two killers and, indeed, of media scapegoating, on a British goth internet
newsgroup, whose members expressed horror at the media’s association of
their subculture with the incident.
Subject: Re: US killings Rant rant rant . . .

After all Goth is a medium for free expression; killing people, no matter what the
justification, is the ultimate form of counter argument to this ideal. Does any goth,
anywhere, really derive pleasure for the knowledge that some school children were
gunned down?
It is a shame, albeit very convenient for the powers-that-be, that American culture
is unable (or unwilling) to question the free availability of fire-arms and seeks to
blame any form of outsider for this atrocity. Am I the only one who can find some
allegory in the racism that seems to have been connected with these murders and
the need to blame anyone who looks or sounds different.
(Tudway 1999)
While there was no sense whatever in which the media association of the
goth scene with violence and intolerance became a self-fulfilling prophecy,
the incident did appear to reinforce the sense of collective identity of goths.
It was apparent that their sense of being misrepresented and scapegoated by
the mass media served to unite them and engender reinvigorated camaraderie.
As well as discussing the accuracy and implications of the media coverage,
many goths took it upon themselves to write to newspapers in defence of the
subcultural lifestyle they so cherished. Consistent with elements of Thornton’s
observations, then, there was a sense in which, although its participants were
horrified, the goth scene gained from the attention and misunderstanding.
The collective dislike of a prejudiced ‘mainstream society’ – the perceived
source of the injustice – was intensified and, with it, the defiant sense of
identity they shared.
159
Goth
Also, the moral panic, through the sheer weight of publicity it and the
niche-media reaction to it gave the goth scene, is likely to have contributed
to recruitment. As well as making the subculture visible to an unrecruited
audience, the disapproving moral tone may have attracted teens in search of
an apparently rebellious identity. What is less clear, of course, is whether the
original negative mass-media coverage, or the subsequent defensive articles
in the niche-music press were most significant in this respect. As Thornton
and McRobbie have pointed out, the critique of tabloid moral panics has sold
numerous copies of ‘alternative’ niche music and style magazines (Thornton
and McRobbie 1995: 190). On the whole, although this sudden mass- and
niche-media coverage could hardly have failed to affect the goth scene, its
impact, in Britain at least, was less noticeable than many (including myself)
had expected. This was partly because, unlike with the continuous flow of
religiously inflected moral-panic-style coverage in parts of the American media
both before and after the shootings, British newspapers appeared to lose
interest in the demonization of the goth scene after a few weeks.
The purpose of this section has been to emphasize the variety of particular
ways in which non-subcultural media contributed to the goth scene as a
cultural entity both prior to and, to a lesser extent, during my four years of
research. In spite of their importance, the overall decline in niche- and mass-
media coverage of the goth scene from the beginning of the 1990s served,
ultimately, to increase the subculture’s level of obscurity from society outside
it, and its reliance upon specialist or subcultural media produced by and for
subcultural insiders. As explained earlier, the media forms included in this
category roughly correspond to Sarah Thornton’s notion of ‘micro-media’,
the definition of which is worth citing:
Flyers, fanzines, flyposters, listings, telephone information lines, pirate radio, e-

mailing lists and internet archive sites . . . An array of media, from the most
rudimentary of print forms to the latest in digital interactive technologies, are the
low circulating, narrowly targeted micro-media . . . (Thornton 1995: 137)
Increasingly, subcultural communication was taking place through the inter-

net, something focused on at length in Chapter 9. However, the decline in
mass- and niche-media coverage of the goth scene also had enabled fanzines,
flyers, posters and mail-outs, all of which had existed from the very beginnings
of the goth scene, to acquire a greater significance in the translocal facilitation
and construction of the subculture. The discussion of subcultural print media,
here, will be split into two parts, the first of which covers fanzines, and the
second, flyers and posters. Essentially, we will examine the extent to which
each media form should be considered subcultural, and investigate the role
160
each played in relation to the survival and development of the goth scene as
a translocal subculture.
Goth Fanzines
Marion Leonard, writing about the small-scale media networks of Riot Grrrl,
usefully defines fanzines, or ‘zines’, as ‘self-published, independent texts
devoted to various topics including hobbies, music, film and politics [which
are] usually non-profit making and produced on a small scale by an individual
or small group of people . . .’ (1998: 103). Preceded by early science fiction
fan magazines and then overshadowed, in some respects, by the larger-scale
‘underground press’ associated with 1960s counter-culture, the growth of
fanzines culminated in their well-documented part in the punk phenomenon
(Sabin and Triggs 2000: 7, Atton 2002: 56). After that point, as well as con-
tinuing to be commonly associated with popular music, science fiction and
politics, fanzines emerged as a key grass-roots means of communication among
football fans. Chris Atton has rightly pointed out that the orientation, form
and readership of fanzines is diverse and that consequently, the medium should
not be regarded as subcultural by definition (2002: 57). At the same time,
however, it is clear that a number of fanzines do take the form of subcultural
media as defined in this book – that is – written by, about and for enthusiasts
of the same substantive lifestyle grouping.
Thornton (1995: 139–40) rather plays down the significance of fanzines
relating to club culture, arguing that most emerged after, and were over-
shadowed by, the extensive coverage of acid house in mass and niche media.
This conclusion is consistent with the comparatively marginal role played
by the numerous goth fanzines of the 1980s. With possible exceptions,
including a publication called Artificial Life toward the beginning of the
decade, such self-produced media were rather eclipsed by the far higher-profile
niche-music press coverage of the subculture. The focus of this section, though,
will be on the more crucial subcultural role played by mid- to late 1990s goth
fanzines in the absence of extensive non-subcultural media coverage. As will
become clear, such publications varied considerably in terms of regularity,
longevity, content, circulation, numbers involved in production, and quality
of printing. However, they shared a number of features which related to
their status as subcultural media.
In spite of charging a cover price and, in some cases, generating revenue
from advertising, significant financial profit from fanzine production was,
consistent with the general findings of Atton, a poor prospect (2002: 59).
Consistent with many other elements of the subculture, then, goth fanzines
161
Goth
were edited and written by enthusiasm-motivated goths. Indeed they were

an extremely participatory form of print media. The increasing ease of access
to word-processing and photocopying technologies meant that almost anyone
prepared to exert the considerable effort required could edit, print and
distribute his or her own fanzine (Leonard 1998: 105). Thus, there were a
multitude of small-scale, A5-size, black-and-white goth fanzines which often
took a relatively personal tone. One example I came across was Cyber Optic,
which consisted of approximately thirty A5-size pages of news, reviews and
interviews relating largely to its author’s own musical and stylistic preferences.
However, as the costs of higher-quality printing were also declining, A4-size
glossy fanzines had emerged, including Kaleidoscope, Naked Truth, Meltdown,
The Black Box, BRV Magazine and its off-shoot TombRaver. Some of these
had begun to draw a distinction between themselves and their more amateur-
looking A5 counterparts by referring to themselves as magazines. They are
Figure 8.1 Selected goth fanzines: Kaleidoscope issue 9, BRV Magazine issue
22, Tomb Raver issue 25, Meltdown issue 7, Gothic Times issues
2,4,5, Dawn Rising issues 11,12,13 (Photograph: S. L. Wainwright).
Fanzines reproduced with the kind permission of Faithful Dawn
(Dawn Rising) and the editors of Kaleidoscope, BRV Magazine, Tomb
Raver, Gothic Times and Meltdown [www.meltdownmagazine.com,
PO Box 543, Beaconsfield, HP9 1WL].
162
referred to in this chapter, though, as fanzines because they were independent,

voluntary, specialist and motivated by enthusiasm as well as having low
circulations.2
Even the most high-profile goth fanzines, though, were highly participatory,
in the sense that, although edited and produced by a very small number of
individuals, a diversity of contributors were responsible for their content,
particularly in the case of letters, poems, pictures, reviews or advertisements
sent in by readers. The producers of the well-known fanzine, BRV Magazine,
explained that articles were often sent to them without any prompting and
that, in addition, they sometimes actively called for voluntary contributors:
J9 (female): We’ve got six regular reviewers at the minute and they all like different
stuff . . .
PH: How did you get in contact with them?
S4 (male): They were subscribers anyway. They started sending stuff off their
own bat. You know, they’d review stuff that they’d bought themselves.
J9: and then we put an advert in an issue saying ‘wanted – music reviews,
in exchange for free issues and free promo stuff ’ telling them to send
an example of their writing in.
Importantly, such fanzine contributors were usually geographically dispersed,

both emphasizing and reinforcing the internal translocal connections within
the goth scene. Though the fanzine was edited and printed in a single location,
BRV Magazine’s regular reviewers, for example, lived in various locations across
Britain and, in one case, in Hungary. Similarly, The Black Box, a professional-
looking glossy fanzine based in Madrid, had regular reviewers of gigs and
CDs based in Germany and Scotland. The latter contributor, who was brought
up in Spain and moved to Scotland to attend university, explained that his
involvement was initiated by himself when he was a reader of the fanzine:
M6 (male): I thought the people in Spain would be interested in knowing some-

thing about the gothic scene in Scotland, or in the UK in general, so I
sent them [the fanzine] a letter saying ‘if you are interested I can write
about bands, interview bands, whatever you want’ and they were very
pleased.
The internal means of distribution of goth fanzines – and, hence, their

audience – was also key to their description as subcultural media. Whether
posted directly to subscribers, peddled at goth gigs and festivals (see Figure
8.2) or retailed in sympathetic clothes or record shops, they were rarely visible
outside subcultural networks.
163
Goth
Figure 8.2 Meltdown, peddled at the Whitby Gothic Weekend. (Photograph: S. L.

Wainwright) Publication reproduced with the kind permission of the editor
of Meltdown.
With the exception of a one-off advertisement in non-subcultural metal

magazine, Kerrang! and availability within a very small number of general
‘alternative’ record or clothes shops, BRV Magazine was confined exclusively
to the goth scene. Its producers had rejected the idea of distribution via a chain-
store newsagent due to the extent of their reliance on a small regular goth
readership:
S4 (male): It just wouldn’t work. Even if the [goth] scene did get bigger and a bit
more popular again it’s only going to be very short-term, and the costs
of actually setting up a full-on distribution with a magazine and stuff
164
for something that’s only ever going to last about a year or two before
the scene sinks back into the underground again . . . it’s just not
financially viable.
The implication of such lack of external availability was that to discover

and purchase goth fanzines, one had already to be involved in subcultural
networks. Outsiders were unlikely to know about, never mind attend, the
subcultural retailer or festival at which they were displayed and sold, and
even less likely to find out the relevant address to set up a postal subscription.
Leonard makes a similar point in relation to the Riot Grrrl fanzine network:
Acquiring the addresses of zines involves tapping into the informal friendship
networks active within riot grrrl. Whilst some grrls produce contact lists, other
addresses are printed in review sections of zines or enclosed with the publication
in the form of small ‘flyers’ . . .
(Leonard 1998: 106)
Unlike non-subcultural media, then, fanzines played little if any part in the
recruitment of individuals to the goth scene. Far from being conducive to
movement or ‘flow’ between groupings, as emphasized in notions of neo-
tribalism and other postmodern-oriented theorizing, they emphasize the
substantive, bounded form taken by the goth scene.
Furthermore, like the subculture itself, they operated translocally. While
the readers of some smaller publications were concentrated in the same region
as the fanzine’s producers, larger fanzines reached widely dispersed subcultural
readerships. The producers of BRV Magazine estimated that its sales spanned
most of Britain and that, on top of this, approximately 15 per cent were
exported to Europe, the United States, Australasia and South America, either
by direct subscription or via small-scale subcultural record distributors.
Similarly, the producers of Glasgow fanzine Naked Truth suggested that their
base country of Scotland accounted only for a tenth of sales, and that a
quarter of the remainder went beyond British shores.
G3 (male): Next week we’ll sell about a hundred at Whitby [i.e. to geographically
dispersed festival goers], and then the subscribers ones will go out all
over the world, and then we’ll probably sell about two in Glasgow the
week after!
The geographical dispersal of fanzines can also be illustrated from the point
of view of readers. The following individual, for example, explained that as
well as reading various fanzines from across Britain, she ordered some from
the United States:
165
Goth
PH: Which fanzines do you get then?

S3 (female): I get Bats [BRV] and Legends, I did get one called Blurred Victorian
Child . . . I do tend to get things like Propaganda as well, and a lot
of the other American zines because it’s nice to know what’s going
on over there as well.
Fanzines’ status as specialist subcultural media, and their role in facilitating

the substantive form taken by the goth scene, can further be illustrated by
their content. In spite of differing from one to another in their precise focus,
they rarely went beyond the blurry outer boundaries of the subculture’s range
of stylistic themes. Cyber Optic, mentioned above, took a self-consciously
light-hearted approach and emphasized techno, industrial or ‘cyber-goth’
styles in which its producer was most involved. Other publications, such as
Crimson, were dedicated to the interests many goths had in vampires. Mean-
while, some fanzines were targeted at the fans of particular goth bands. Dawn
Rising, for example, was a free newsletter dedicated to and produced by the
band Faithful Dawn as a means of promotion. Larger zines such as BRV
Magazine, The Black Box, Naked Truth and Kaleidoscope were usually more
inclusive in terms of content – covering a wide range of styles associated
with the subculture.
The particular ways in which the subcultural content of fanzines served to
facilitate and construct the goth scene as a subculture is a key concern in
their discussion here. Most importantly, perhaps, they provided centralized
specialist notice boards for the pooling of practical information relating to
subcultural consumables, forthcoming gigs, festivals and CD releases.
Although such information was often available on separate flyers produced
by the organizers of such events or services, fanzines acted as subcultural
filters, pulling together and co-ordinating a multitude of relevant information.
Larger fanzines also sometimes included free compilation CDs, which enabled
fans to sample for themselves the sounds of various bands, rather than relying
on the views of a reviewer.
Importantly, such information, in line with fanzines’ widespread circulation,
tended to involve geographically dispersed subcultural events and products.
The ‘Gig Dates’ section of issue twenty-four of BRV Magazine (1998), for
example, included details of forthcoming events in London, Nottingham,
Torquay, York, Birmingham, Bristol, Southampton, Sheffield, Newcastle Upon
Tyne, Edinburgh, Derby, Blackpool, Morecambe, Leeds and Whitby in the
UK, as well as goth festivals in Leipzig and Hanover in Germany. Mean-
while, the issue’s CD reviews section involved globally dispersed artists and
record companies from New Zealand, the United States, Belgium, Italy,
France, Germany, Australia, Spain and Austria, as well as Britain. Through
166
the provision of such translocal information, fanzines created concrete links

between goth bands, businesses, promoters and of course general participants
across Britain and further afield.
When asked how they found out about music and events, most respondents
mentioned flyers, the internet and word of mouth as most important. How-
ever, fanzines were often mentioned as a partial factor:
R1 (female): Now I tend to read a lot more of the fanzines that people are produc-
ing. I basically go on recommendation really. If a fanzine recommends
something then I’ll bear it in mind and if I hear more people saying
they like it as well then I’ll buy a CD.
That fanzines played a significant informative role in these respects was clearly
beneficial not only to consumers but also to those providing the music, com-
modities or events who were able, through such internally targeted media,
to reach their highly specialist, geographically dispersed market. The vocalist
of goth band Manuskript linked coverage in the goth scene’s internal network
of fanzines with his band’s early development, particularly in terms of their
being asked to play outside their immediate locality. He compared his band
with other student bands who, due to the lack of equivalent subcultural media
infrastructure, remained local and largely unsuccessful:
M5 (male): There were people writing fanzines, and we could get gigs at other
places, and it took off in a very small way– getting your name about
in a few fanzines and doing gigs in other places. For a band that’s
only really been going for a year and can’t really play properly, the
chance to go off and do some gigs in towns far away is quite
exciting . . . while all the other student bands were just knocking
about at university and not doing anything . . .
In something of a circular fashion then, goth enthusiasts were able to use the
information in fanzines to get the most out of the translocal goth events and
products available, which increased the chances of success for those resp-
onsible for producing or providing such services. This in turn contributed to
more and possibly better music, events or clothes becoming available and
greater numbers of individuals becoming involved in their production and
distribution.
Fanzines also helped construct the values of the goth scene. They had the
ability, to some degree, to reinforce or alter the tastes held by their readers
and to define the boundaries of the subculture they came to represent. This
was partly because, due to their insider status and specialist content, they
tended to have considerable subcultural credibility (Thornton 1995: 137).
As the following respondent from Plymouth put it:
167
Goth
S1 (male): Fanzines are not watered down, they’re pure goth. You know you
are going to get a decent read and that it’s going to be about things
that you want to read about.
Although fanzine readers, like any other media audience, inevitably brought
their own experiences, tastes and viewpoints to their interactions with the
publications, the general credibility of such media meant their content was
liable to exert some influence over at least a proportion of their readership.
Most notably, they played the role of gatekeepers. Whether they were praised
or lambasted, the fact that particular events, bands, images, books or films
were deemed zineworthy was potentially influential in itself. Furthermore,
some fanzine readers were in positions of influence themselves, and liable to
pass on their agendas. One DJ said specifically that during a year in which
he was unconnected to the internet, fanzines became his main way of keeping
up to date with new goth music. Given the importance of DJ playlists in
shaping the tastes of participants (see Chapter 6), fanzines can be regarded
in this case as having a potential indirect effect on the tastes of non-readers
as well as those of readers themselves. I probed the producers of BRV Magazine
about the ways in which they decided what kinds of music to include in
their reviews section. Their reply usefully reveals some of the ways in which
judgements were made and boundaries drawn:
S4 (male): The thing I’ve told record companies is, ‘if it’s melodic, if it’s musical
and it’s got vocals that you can see that they are remotely vocals then
we’ll do it, but anything that’s just noise with people grunting over
the top just goes in the bin’ . . . There is a lot more mainstream stuff
that is getting a lot darker . . . we had Tour of Satana in the last
issue . . . she does look quite gothy . . . and then we’ve got Stream –
they’ve got a goth background . . .
They accepted that such decisions about inclusion and exclusion, in such
a subculturally well-respected fanzine, were liable to be influential:
J9 (female): It has a big role because it’s a central point for all the reviews, gig
dates, current interviews, where people discover who they like and
who they don’t. You have to be careful what you put in because to a
certain extent you can influence the gothic community as a whole . . .
you’re in a position where you have a bit of power I guess.
While the potential agenda-setting influence of large fanzines such as BRV

Magazine was of most significance here, smaller, more taste-specific public-
ations also played a role. The producer of Cyber Optic, for example, revealed
168
that he had hoped to introduce more humour into the goth scene by including
it in his fanzine:
M9 (male): When I started up properly I rounded up some other zines and

discovered most goth rags were sadly lacking in humour and frankly
most of them were rather dull. I suppose I wanted to show people
that being a goth didn’t mean you had to amputate your sense of
humour.
He also hoped that Cyber Optic’s particular focus on bands claiming to merge
traditional goth styles with elements of dance music would influence readers.
While such influences were increasingly accepted by some within the goth
scene, it seems likely that the coverage would indeed have functioned to
further legitimize this aspect of the subculture.
As well as influencing subcultural agendas and boundaries, fanzines played
a role in maintaining and generating enthusiasm and interest for the goth
scene. Reading them allowed individuals to feel involved and up to date with
their subculture from place to place. Such knowledge was a potential source
of considerable subcultural capital for those in possession of it. The following
respondent, though, suggested that in addition to any importance in terms of
status, fanzines enabled her, as a fan, to indulge her genuine curiosity about
the bands she liked:
PH: So what is the appeal of fanzines then?

R1 (female): You know the gigs that are coming up and everything . . . and also,
this sounds very teeny [ie. teeny bopper], but you get interviews with
the bands and everything – and it lets you find out more about the
people who are doing it professionally and stuff – it’s just interesting.
Finally, the best-known fanzines functioned to reinforce the translocal sense

of shared identity within the goth scene. Their exclusiveness to the subculture
and their construction of a common agenda meant that, abstractly, they con-
nected their geographically dispersed goth readers with one another through
their common consumption of the publication. Consistent with Benedict
Anderson’s well-rehearsed argument that early print media functioned to
construct ‘imagined’ national identities in the past, it is clear that, on a smaller-
scale, the accessibility of more and more advance forms of such technology
enabled goth participants, in the absence of external media interest, to produce
fanzines which helped construct and reinforce the translocal sense of
community which characterized their subculture (Anderson 1991). As Atton
has put it, in relation to the medium in general terms, ‘fanzines can . . . activate
or establish a community’ (Atton 2002: 54). In this respect and the others
169
Goth
described, fanzines contributed internally to the ongoing generation of the

goth scene as a committed, distinctive and relatively autonomous cultural
entity. However, it would be mistaken to overestimate their centrality to the
construction of the goth scene. Although most read them occasionally, and
their content was often passed on indirectly through DJs, bands, promoters
and word of mouth, only a minority of my interviewees were avid, regular
fanzine readers. In general terms, as more and more individuals gained internet
access, fanzines were beginning to be eclipsed by the more instant interactive
forms of communication offered by such technology. Furthermore, as a direct
source of practical information, fanzines were probably of less overall
significance than posters and flyers.
Goth Flyers and Posters
While fanzines constituted independent subcultural commodities in their own

right, the sole function of flyers and posters was the direct promotion of
events, record releases or businesses. Even during the period when the goth
scene received extensive non-subcultural media coverage, flyers remained a
crucial means of letting a specialist clientele know about local gigs or regular
nightclub events too small-scale to make it into the pages of the music press.
Since the decline in niche-media coverage of goth, the importance of flyers
and posters extended to almost all goth events and, indeed, to some of its
subcultural retail operations and record labels. While still crucial to the local
advertising of events, we shall see that flyers in particular had also become
translocal media. Arguably they were the most effective source of practical
subcultural information in the goth scene, whether viewed or received in
pubs, in shops or through the post.
Goth flyers and posters constituted subcultural media due to their highly
specialist audience targeting. Most overtly, they functioned to select a largely
subcultural audience through the pictures, symbols and information about
music which they included (see Thornton 1995: 112). Most flyers for goth
events, products or services emphasized the term ‘goth’ and often other genres
or subgenres which goths were known to like or whose fans were known to
be sympathetic to goth, such as ‘industrial’, ‘darkwave’ and sometimes
‘alternative’. It was generally understood that, in spite of the mention of
such additional genres, the stipulation ‘goth’ anywhere on a flyer tended to
indicate, more than anything else, the orientation of the night. After all, few
people but goths themselves would emphasize such a marginal genre. In
addition, flyers or posters for nightclub events targeted their clientele by
naming live goth bands, listing examples of the recorded music played, and
occasionally naming individual DJs.
170
Figure 8.3 Selected goth flyers. With thanks to their producers. (Photograph: S. L.
Wainwright).
While the content of flyers and posters played an important role in inform-
ing the audience of the musical or stylistic orientation of an event, the most
important factor in their targeting was the selective ways in which they were
displayed and distributed. Thus, in the local area of the event concerned, flyers
would be given out and posters displayed in pubs and clubs whose clientele
consisted largely of goths. Sometimes potential punters were targeted even
more explicitly, by distributing flyers selectively to individuals, on the basis
of their appearance. Posters and flyers were also placed in particular local
subcultural record or clothes shops and non-subcultural stores known to be
popular among goths. Although the content of the flyers usually ensured that
few non-goths would turn up, their presence in non-subcultural niche record
shops was an instance of exposure of information about goth events outside
the internal networks of the subculture. For the most part, though, events were
advertised exclusively to local goth enthusiasts, through attempting to catch
their eyes during their day- and night-time routes through the city (Thornton
1995: 141). This strategic positioning of flyers is illustrated in the account
the following promoter gave of the ways he advertised a regular nightclub
in Birmingham:
171
Goth
K3 (male): We just spent about two months fly-posting every other [goth] night
everywhere in Brum [Birmingham] . . .
PH: Where did you put [the flyers], what sort of places?
K3: . . . years and years ago all the goths used to hang about outside the
Virgin Megastore – that used to be like the in place on a Saturday
afternoon . . . everybody used to congregate there – so we put loads of
flyers there.
Although lots of flyer and poster advertising was weighted towards goths
who lived in or close to the town or city concerned, they were increasingly
distributed further afield. In the case of events deemed likely to attract travel-
ling clientele, they were sometimes sent to sympathetic subcultural producers
based in other cities who would distribute and display them at their own
particular event or business or, if particularly enthusiastic, throughout the
goth routes in their areas. This often tended to be confined within a few
regions within reach of the event. One of the promoters of The Wendy House,
a monthly goth club night held in Leeds, indicated he had generated such a
regional network of flyer contacts:
K1 (male): For the Wendy House more and more people will travel up, because
we advertise it everywhere. I’ve got flyer contacts in York, flyer and
poster contacts in – you know its all this goth network thing around
the North . . . you just send loads of flyers to people and just expect
them to give them out!
PH: It sounds like its mostly a regional thing, rather than being national
or international?
K1: Yes, we’ve tried to get people from London and stuff like that but it’s
going to mainly be people from roughly our region.
As well as being placed in regular events and shops in other areas, flyers
and posters were distributed by promoters at goth festivals. Such events pro-
vided access to a large specialist group of people who had travelled from
elsewhere and, hence, might be willing to do so again. The value of such a
large, captive, translocal audience explained the barrage of flyers for events,
products and businesses all over Britain which one was liable to encounter
at goth festivals. Flyers were also distributed translocally by post, using lists
of addresses volunteered by interested individuals at events or via e-mail.
Often, those promoters or bands without their own mailing list were able to
get their flyer included in the envelopes sent out by those who did have one,
in return for a reciprocal favour of some kind. For example, it was common
for fanzines mailed to subscribers to be accompanied by numerous flyers. As
one fanzine reader from Plymouth explained to me:
172
S1 (male): You generally find that fanzines . . . you open them up and half a million
leaflets fall out . . . I get so many leaflets for bands that are playing in
London.
Even more so, perhaps, than targeted local means of flyer distribution, such
mailing lists functioned to facilitate the participation of an already initiated
subcultural audience rather than to induce the recruitment of newcomers.
The low costs and potential for precise subcultural targeting of posters
and, especially, flyers made them important means of distribution of sub-
cultural information. The ability of the target audience to pocket flyers and
refer to their information later, as opposed to remembering or copying down
details, also contributed to their effectiveness. As a means of direct promotion,
then, they were a crucial practical facilitator both for the participation of
individuals and for the promoters or proprietors of events and services whose
exploits were more likely to be successful. Alongside fanzines, then, this medium
also formed a key part of the contribution of subcultural participants them-
selves to the general survival of their subculture.
Conclusion
Emphasis on the importance of various kinds of non-subcultural media

coverage to the initial development and subsequent recruitment to the goth
scene during the 1980s serves to avoid the trap of regarding it, or indeed any
other subculture, as somehow spontaneous, authentic and independent. There
is no necessary inconsistency between the important roles played by such
external media coverage and the defining criteria of subculture emphasized
throughout this book. The second section of this chapter, though, has begun
to establish a separate point, that the goth scene was increasingly reliant upon
its own autonomous forms of subcultural communications. Fanzines, flyers
and posters produced by goths for goths played a crucial role in the facilitation
of event attendance, the promotion of subcultural commerce, the generation
of enthusiasm and the forging of concrete translocal links within the
subculture. As well as further demonstrating the degree of participation by
goths in the survival and development of their own subculture, this emphasizes
the invisibility of elements of the goth scene from outside society. In contrast
to suggestions that media saturation might result in the destruction of sub-
stance and community, the case of the goth scene begins to demonstrate that
certain forms of media can play a critical role in the development and survival
of the most committed, distinctive and autonomous forms of collective
identity. We shall see in Chapter 9 that, contrary to some expectations, this
point held every bit as true for the internet as it did for off-line media.
173
Goth
Notes
1. According to the respondent, this article appeared in No. 1 Magazine in 1986.

2. For example, the editors of one of the highest-profile British goth fanzines,
BRV Magazine, estimated a circulation of approximately 2000, while Naked Truth’s
editor said his well-known fanzine’s figure was closer to 400.
174
Communicating Goth: On-line Media
9
Communicating Goth: On-line
Media
We are struck, as we use the internet, by the sense
that there are others out there like us. (Jones 1997: 17)
Having established the significance of the goth scene’s network of printed

media, the focus now turns to the role played by on-line communications in
the facilitation of the subculture, as more and more of its participants gained
access to the internet and became what were known to some insiders as
net.goths. If the appropriateness of my description of fanzines, flyers and
posters as relatively autonomous subcultural media was reasonably uncon-
troversial, my insistence that the internet might also have enhanced the
autonomy and substance of the goth scene may, at first, appear more open
to question. After all, as well as being linked with the most large-scale and
powerful of commercial interests, the internet is accessed every day by millions
of diversely oriented individuals around the globe. In his famous work The
Virtual Community, Howard Rhinegold emphasizes the potential of the
internet to bring the most diverse of individuals into ‘a world in which every
citizen can broadcast to every other citizen’ (Rhinegold 1994: 14). Referring
to Usenet’s network of on-line discussion forums in the singular as ‘arguably
the world’s largest conversation’ (ibid.: 130) he argues the case for con-
ceptualizing the net as a mass medium: ‘It is a mass medium because any
information put onto the Net has a potential worldwide reach of millions’
(ibid.: 130).
Meanwhile, for those of postmodernist persuasions, the diverse yet fluid
nature of the internet accelerates the breakdown of boundaries between
established social categories and, hence, the fragmentation of individual
identities and stable communities (Poster 1995; Turkle 1995). Sherry Turkle
describes a ‘culture of simulation’ characterized by the ability to ‘invent
ourselves’ by moving freely between an infinite number of potential identities
and, indeed, playing out several at any one moment in time (1995: 9–26). In
relation to this book’s notion of subculture, such a perspective implies that
175
Goth
groupings such as the goth scene would have their distinctiveness, commit-
ment, identity and autonomy thoroughly dissolved by the ability of individuals
to move from one virtual affiliation to another on a mouse-click. Consistent
with this, Marion Leonard suggests that on the internet, ‘the ease of accessing
any site disrupts the concept of underground community’ (Leonard 1998:
111). In line with more general postmodernist interpretations of contemporary
culture, then, the implication is of the melting if not the evaporation of cultural
and subcultural boundaries by a mass medium which offers a taste of every-
thing to everyone.
In practice, however, the use of the World Wide Web and on-line discussion
groups by goths couldn’t have contrasted more with such a picture. Far from
distracting them into other interests or dissolving the boundaries of their
subculture, the internet usually functioned, in the same way as goth events,
to concentrate their involvement in the goth scene and to reinforce the
boundaries of the grouping. The key general point here is that regardless of
the number of individuals on-line, the internet does not, in practice, function
as a singular mass medium but rather as a facilitating network which connects
together a diverse plurality of different media forms. Some of these are widely
used and well known, as in the case of web sites associated with already
established media or commercial organizations, while the vast majority are
smaller-scale specialist sites and discussion facilities, many of which associated
with particular interest communities or subcultures. Crucially, the technical
ability to engage with each specialist culture represented on the web does
not mean that anyone is likely to do so. Furthermore, the means by which
websites and discussion groups are accessed can have the effect of clustering
them together by subject matter and of encouraging users to pursue existing
interests rather than to discover new ones. It is through elaboration of this
key point that we may begin to understand how websites and discussion
groups related to goth were more a part of the overall subcultural infrastruc-
ture of the goth scene than they were a part of any all-encompassing, fluid
internet culture.
Goth Web
World Wide Web searches I conducted on the word ‘goth’ always resulted in
pages and pages of relevant sites, the vast majority of which seemed directly
related to the goth music and fashion scene in which we are interested. These
goth sites ranged from personal homepages, to promotional devices for part-
icular goth bands or businesses, to general subcultural information sites. In
spite of the huge potential audience and the apparent ease with which they
176
could have been accessed by anyone, the practical reality was that the users
of goth websites tended to be involved in the goth scene. This is because
more than any other medium the World Wide Web requires users to choose
in advance what to view. As a result, the chances of stumbling accidentally
upon specialist sites without any prior interest are rather slim. Thus, while
keyword searches were an efficient way of guiding existing goth participants
and initially interested potential newcomers to a wealth of material on the
subculture, they were hardly likely to result in non-participants accessing
goth sites by chance. Similarly, hypertext links enhanced goths’ ability to
navigate precisely between subcultural websites, but not their chances of
contact with non-subcultural content or individuals. Put simply, the vast
majority of links to goth sites were located on other goth sites, something
which meant that, collectively, they formed a specialist and relatively auton-
omous sub-network. Furthermore, there were certain particularly well known
sites, such as Darkwave, which acted as nodal points directing users to a
variety of useful subcultural resources in the sub-network (Darkwave,
accessed 2000).
This goth web was connected more closely to other elements of the
subculture – both on- and off-line – than it was to non-subcultural parts of
the web. Further exclusive ‘links’ to goth sites, then, were provided in the
form of addresses included on printed subcultural flyers, fanzines and CD
inlays and transferred from one goth to another in conversation, whether
face to face, over the telephone or via personal e-mail. In addition, URLs
included as part of e-mails to the goth discussion groups comprised a part-
icularly important means by which websites were accessed because they
usually appeared in the form of active hyperlinks. A number of interviewees
said that links in the body of discussion group e-mails were an important
way in which they discovered new websites:
B2 (male): I find that a lot of the links that I follow do tend to be links that have
been advertised on UPG [uk.people.gothic newsgroup].
All these modes of access, of course, required a clear prior involvement in

the goth scene, both in terms of coming into contact with the information
and having the motivation to use it. Although hard to prove empirically,
then, the weight of logic suggests strongly that most users of goth websites
were already interested in their themes.
Similarly, the ability to decide for themselves what content to view tended
to mean that the leisure-time web use of goths themselves, consistent with
their commitment to the subculture in other ways, tended to be particularly
concentrated on goth sites. Many goths in the late 1990s would surely have
177
Goth
identified with the following respondent’s explanation of her keenness, when

she first gained access to the internet, to investigate its goth-related contents:
M8 (female): When I first went to [university] they said ‘oh yes, the internet is a
wonderful new research resource you can use, go and find all these
sites about anthropology’, and I was like ‘sod that!’ and typed in
‘goth’ and wahey!
To differing degrees, all respondents also used non-goth sites in their leisure
time, from on-line newspapers or comics, to railway timetables, to on-line
gaming. However, all who were asked about it said that such additional uses
were less frequent than those related to the goth scene.
M8 (female): the goth stuff tends to be something which you do every day, and
the other stuff tends to be every now and again.
As well as functioning as yet another illustration of the practical commitment

of goths to their subculture, the specialist web-use of individual goths, along-
side the relative obscurity of goth pages to most outsiders, clearly emphasizes
that such sites were consistent with the relative autonomy of the grouping
rather than antithetical to it.
The conceptualization of goth websites as subcultural media is further
reinforced by the involvement of most of their producers in the goth scene,
whether the sites were personal home pages or promotional devices for sub-
cultural events or products. The availability of free web space was conducive
to considerable grass-roots participation by goths in the construction of their
subculture. The ability to create as well as consume subcultural media without
paper, scissors, photocopying, envelopes or a cover price led a high proportion
of net.goths to create their own sites. As a rough illustration, in January 1999,
out of 366 goths who left details on one respondent’s website map of British
goths on the internet, 156 had indicated they had their own web pages
(Net.Goth Map, accessed 1999). Inevitably, only a relatively small number
would become well known among goths, but there remained the potential
for anyone to reach a significant translocal audience. Posting links to a new
site on a goth newsgroup or mailing list, for example, was an effective means
of encouraging potentially interested visitors. Having advertised my own
hastily cobbled together website on a goth e-mailing list, I not only found
that its number of visitors trebled in the following days, but that some months
later, other goths on the list had placed links to my site on their own. There-
fore, as well as being largely used by a specialist audience, goth websites
also gave individual participants the potential to involve themselves in the
construction of their subculture.
178
Goth Discussion Groups
The most significant aspect of the internet for most goths and, therefore, the
construction of the goth scene as a whole, was not in fact the World Wide
Web, but discussion facilities such as Usenet newsgroups and e-mail lists.
P1 (male): It’s mainly mail and newsgroups . . . for us, I only use the web if I want
to go and find something.
Preceded by various academic and government conferencing systems in the

1980s, both newsgroups and e-mail lists consist of an ever-developing pool
of posts on various issues (threads) to which any subscriber can add his or
her own contribution. In other words, they are far more interactive than most
websites, allowing ongoing all-to-all communication. The first goth news-
group, alt.gothic, was formed as an international, though in practice largely
American-centred forum, in the early 1990s. A few years later, as the number
of subscribers and posts increased, British goths formed a smaller, national
group known as uk.people.gothic. More recently, a number of e-mail lists
emerged, based on the goth scene in particular areas of Britain and Ireland.
Examples included Contaminatii and Tainted (both for England’s West
Midlands), Mancgoff (Manchester), North Goths (North of England),
Scotgoth (Scotland), Iegoth (Ireland), and Tarts and Sluts (both for London).
Subscribed to by goths, and highly participatory, these newsgroups and
mailing lists, even more so than goth websites, were subcultural media.
Notions of Usenet as a singular mass-mediated conversation among millions
(Rhinegold 1994: 117) or a meta-community (ibid.: 121) simply weren’t borne
out by this example. Rather, the distinct and separate nature of goth discussion
groups fits in to Hill and Hughes’s point that facilities such as Usenet function
to reinforce existing beliefs and affiliations rather than fundamentally to
change attitudes and that, as a result, they ‘tend to draw people into isolated
groups, conversing among themselves’ (Hill and Hughes 1998: 73). Those
who accessed goth newsgroups or mailing lists, then, were liable to do so as
a result of a prior interest. It was possible for outsiders to find out about
them, through Usenet’s listing of groups for example. However, the likelihood
of an individual without an initial interest subscribing to a mailing list with
‘goth’ in its title was surely only slightly higher than that of the same person
deciding to spend the evening in a goth pub as a result of having coincidentally
walked past it. Conversely, the following respondent, who was a member of
the subculture, said that as soon as he found out about Usenet, the first thing
he did was to search for and join a goth group:
179
Goth
J11 (male): A friend told me about newsgroups. I looked to see if there was a
goth one, and there was – it went downhill from there!
It seemed even more common, though, for respondents to learn directly about
particular goth discussion groups through off-line word of mouth with other
goths.
V1 (female): My experience [of discovering uk.people.gothic] is that I got told

about it from someone else who got told about it from someone
else who got told about it from someone else.
In the unlikely event that a non-goth did subscribe to a goth discussion

forum, however, the chances of their persevering for long were also relatively
faint, due to the specialist and exclusive nature of discussion, and the tendency
for mistrust and hostility towards outsiders. The ways in which internet
communities tend, in the words of Hill and Hughes (1998: 69), to ‘vigorously
and successfully defend their electronic boundaries’ has been a key concern
of the growing body of literature on discussion-group-based, computer-
mediated communities (see Jones 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000; Smith and Kollock
1999). Nessim Watson, for example, describes ways in which the norms and
relations of an on-line group of Phish fans were informally regulated via
responses from established members. In particular, Watson emphasizes the
role of flaming – the practice of sending aggressive messages, either to an
individual’s e-mail address or to the whole group – as a means of controlling
the behaviour of newcomers and excluding outsiders (Watson 1997).
Consistent with this, the posting of inappropriate or ill-informed messages
by those not sufficiently socialized into goth discussion-group norms was
liable to result in being flamed. While sometimes goths found themselves on
the end of such treatment, it was particularly effective in excluding perceived
outsiders:
M8 (female): Anyone who’s not really interested in goth and just starts posting
loads of crap usually gets told to sod off.
A less direct but equally effective means by which the content of discussion
groups was regulated occurred when particular messages or individuals were
completely ignored by other members of the group. The following respondent
explained that when he was a newcomer to uk.people.gothic, he found it
hard, initially, to get anyone to respond to his messages because he had not
learned what sort of topics and modes of behaviour people were interested
in:
180
B2 (male): I made the big mistake of not finding out about UPG [uk.people.gothic]
before posting to it and I made a least three posts before reading the
FAQ and everyone completely ignored me for a week.
If the passer-by, in my previous analogy, did decide to enter the goth pub
out of curiosity, it seems likely that the music and decor of the building,
alongside the clothing, body language and stares of other clientele, will have
created a specialist and exclusive atmosphere and made the individual feel
uncomfortable. Consistent with this, in the virtual space of a goth discussion
group, having one’s comments ignored, receiving directly hostile replies and
generally feeling unable to participate in the specialist conversations was pot-
entially just as effective. It is, of course, possible to lurk on discussion groups,
without disclosing one’s presence to the rest of the group. However, while
many goths did spend time learning the conventions of such groups before
they began to take part properly, it is not at all clear why an uncommitted
outsider would have wished to spend his or her time doing so.
As well as being even more internal and exclusive than goth websites,
discussion groups were more interactive. As Rhinegold (1994: 130) rightly
observes, ‘every member of the audience is also potentially a publisher’. There
is no need, therefore, to advertise one’s contributions to ensure they are read,
as in the case of a website, because subscribers will automatically receive the
message. Any goth with net-access, then, was able to express opinions, request
information, or promote events, services or websites to a specialist subcultural
audience. Of course, just as certain websites became well known, some discus-
sion group members developed a particularly high profile. The maintainer
of a prominent goth-scene information website suggested that this had raised
his profile on goth discussion groups:
D3 (male): because I provide information . . . it has the side effect that people tend
to pay a lot more attention to my opinions in posts.
However, the fact that certain individuals commanded more attention than
others did not stop anybody, through his or her on-line social skills or merely
the subject matter of his or her posts, from having on occasion significant
influence or, indeed, developing a more permanent reputation over time.
Enhancing Subcultural Participation
Goth websites, then, and, even more so, newsgroups and e-mailing lists,
contributed to and illustrated the autonomy and self-generation of the goth
181
Goth
scene through their relative exclusiveness and their high levels of participation.
Crucially, rather than leading to the replacement of an off-line lifestyle with
an on-line one, resources and forums on the internet functioned to facilitate
the subculture as a whole through providing specialist knowledge, construct-
ing values, offering practical information and generating friendships. In
particular, due to being more up-to-date, more interactive and easier to access
than fanzines, goth on-line resources became more and more significant in
comparison to their printed counterparts, during the course of my research.
First, various kinds of socially valuable subcultural knowledge could be
gleaned from the internet. In-depth details about particular bands, for
example, could be obtained from either official or unofficial sites dedicated
to them in part or in full. For example, as well as offering practical inform-
ation on gigs and releases, Faithful Dawn’s official website offered a history
of the band, several photographs and a section detailing the current music
tastes of the two band members (Faithful Dawn site, accessed 1999). More
independent e-zines, such as Gothicland, meanwhile, offered a range of articles
on goth bands, clubs, fashion and various other aspects of the goth scene
(Gothicland, accessed 2000). A number of Frequently Asked Questions sites
were designed to provide basic knowledge to potential newcomers to the
goth scene. The alt.gothic FAQ, for example, offered a definition and history
of the goth scene, giving examples of past and current bands, acceptable styles
of clothing, pictures, and links to other useful sites (alt.gothic FAQ, accessed
2000). Newsgroups and e-mailing lists also offered subcultural knowledge,
opinions and values. Through reading and taking part, one might learn about
new developments in goth tastes or behaviour, or gain the latest knowledge
about goth bands. The following post to uk.people.gothic, for example,
enabled readers to be ‘in the know’ by informing them of the recent split of
a goth band. Though the news was quickly passed on to subscribers of other
goth groups, many without net access were unaware of it for some time.
Subject: The end of Nekromantik (sob weep etc)

Go and look at the web site if you didn’t already know, all the explanations are
there apparently. Really shit to lose one of the few ‘goth’ bands that actually looked
to be going anywhere.
(Sneekybat 1999)
In addition to satisfying genuine interests, up-to-date knowledge was

important to the development of individual subcultural capital, whether in
relation to the impressiveness of music collections and personal appearance
or merely through the ability to hold one’s own in conversation with other
goths.
182
However, the material and opinions included on websites and discussion

threads also played a role in the overall construction of subcultural shared
tastes and values. On frequently asked questions sites, even the most thorough,
open definitions overtly constructed the translocal boundaries of the goth
scene and are liable to have been particularly influential for those newcomers
toward whom they were often targeted. In the following short extract from
the uk.people.gothic FAQ, particular hairstyles and items of clothing and
jewellery are specifically established as suitable for late 1990s goths:
Goth fashion changed subtly [in the 1990s], with crimped hair, high ponytails
and combat trousers from the Grebo/Crusty scene, long straight hair, velvet and
lace from Victorian Horror, leather and rubber wear from the fetish scene, hair
bunches, zip tops and hooded tops from techno. There is also a slow take-up of
tattooing and piercing . . . By far the most popular goth fashion item remains
skintight black jeans.
(uk.people.gothic FAQ, accessed 2000)
Just to be clear, the point is not to assess the accuracy of such accounts, but
merely to emphasize that by what they chose to include and exclude, they
played an important gatekeeping role in reinforcing and developing the value
system of the subculture.
The interactions on discussion forums are also liable to have affected
perceptions of the scene’s boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Discussions
about bands and items of clothing were common. The positive mention of
artefacts in question by even one or two subscribers was sometimes sufficient
to establish their acceptability within the subculture, even if they were not
appreciated by all. In a particularly good example, the growing acceptability
of male goths wearing certain kinds of skirts was reflected, and thus reinforced
in a discussion on the Contaminatii mailing list. Below is an extract from
one of the contributions:
Re: Skirts on Blokes

I quite like blokes in skirts – not the ‘HEY LOOK AT ME – I HAVE A PVC MINI
SKIRT ON’ style but more subtle longer skirts can look quite good.
Thought [name] looked quite swish in his long skirt at Whitby. Not very keen on
blokes in very short, tight mini-skirts . . .
(Hemming 1999)
If it was important for communicating knowledge and constructing

subcultural tastes and values, the internet played an even more crucial role
in providing everyday practical information to goths. Via discussion-group
threads or relevant web pages, up-to-date details could be obtained about
183
Goth
forthcoming events, CD releases, retailers or fanzines. Respondents emph-

asized that on-line information tended to be more accurate and up-to-date
than was the case for even the most reputable of fanzines. Although some
websites did become out-of-date, others had developed particular reputations
for containing the very latest subcultural information. One site, Helix, had
become particularly well known and trusted for providing regularly updated
information about goth and ‘goth-friendly’ clubs and events across Britain
(Helix, accessed 1997–2000). The author of the site explained that, as a result,
much of the information had started to be posted in by promoters and bands
themselves, something which further enhanced the site’s accuracy:
D3 (male): When it first started all the information I got was people saying ‘I’ve
found a flyer that says this’ . . . these days I’d say that at least
half . . . comes either from the bands themselves . . . and from the
promoters.
Nevertheless, it was discussion groups that were the most important on-line
source of information for British goths. For this reason Helix’s maintainer
complemented his website by posting regular events updates to the newsgroup
uk.people.gothic and to subscribers of his own e-mailing list. Event promoters,
bands, record labels and retailers also made announcements about events or
services on discussion forums. In the example below, a message to uk.people.
gothic provides information about the opening of a new branch of a well-
known goth clothes shop in London. The information is passed on by a
prominent goth promoter:
Subject: A new Black Rose emporium in Camden

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but . . .
The Black Rose, London’s prime outlet for clothing of the goffick variety, will
shortly open a new branch in Camden. The new Rose (ha!) will be located in the
Stables Market, i.e. at the top end of the market area, beyond the railway bridge.
(Johnson 1999)
It was also common for participants specifically to request information on

discussion groups, something which invariably resulted in a positive reply.
One request on the Contaminatii group, for information about the forth-
coming Whitby Gothic Weekend, resulted in several replies, including one
which included the entire line-up for the event. The maintainer of Helix
explained that subscribers to newsgroups and mailing lists were unlikely to
avoid receiving such information due to the regularity of their participation
in the groups. In illustration of the point he used the example of his regular
posting of information about the Whitby Gothic Weekend:
184
D3 (male): Every single net.goth in the UK knows that Whitby happens and they
know exactly what date the tickets go on sale and every single week
they have it drummed into them by Helix.
Information posted to newsgroups became even more effective, from the

point of view of promoters, if it managed to spark off discussion among
subscribers. For example, the aforementioned request on Contaminatii for
information about the Whitby Gothic Weekend prompted another subscriber
to ask which list members were likely to be going to the event. Below is one
of the responses:
Subject: Re: Whitby

Let’s see . . . Me, [name], [name], [name], [name] . . .
the 20+ other Cov people who [name] has sold tickets to, and [name] from Leicester,
[name] from Bristol . . . And a few I’ve forgotten. Last year’s ticket shortage seems
to have scared people into deciding early . . .
(White 1999)
A collection of individuals enthusing in such a way about their intentions

to attend an event was liable to attract far more additional people to it than
a non-interactive, impersonal advertisement from its promoter. The inter-
active nature of such forums enabled something of an on-line equivalent of
‘word of mouth’ to take place. Its advantage over its traditional face-to-face
equivalent, though, was the size of the audience for each contribution. Its effect-
iveness in terms of encouraging attendance at events was pointed out by one
subscriber to a goth mailing list as part of a discussion about the large number
of messages the list was getting:
Subject: Re: Toreador on Saturday

I *like* reading lots of posts about things that are going to happen. It gets me
excited, and makes me look forward to things more. It also serves to make me
jealous when I don’t go to events, and therefore gets me off my backside more.
(Harvey 1999)
Another important reason why many relied upon discussion forums as

their source of information about events and clubs was that, as well as finding
out what was going on where, there was a chance of arranging to meet up
with fellow subscribers at the venues concerned. Gaining new contacts and
friends with whom, ultimately, to socialize off-line was another important
aspect of interactive on-line communications within the goth scene:
185
Goth
J11 (male): I have met many people on the net. First by e-mailing them and then
arranging to meet at gigs etc.
In particular, some found online introductions easier than approaching people

in goth clubs:
P1 (male): I mean . . . she’s made a lot more friends . . .

B1 (female): Yeah, people who I never would have spoken to . . . because in real
life I’m too shy. It’s a good icebreaker – you get chatting to them
without you having to be face to face. You can find out about them.
While, for some users, interactive goth discussion groups constituted forums
for the full playing out of subcultural friendships, for many others, interacting
on-line was regarded predominantly as a facilitator of off-line socializing:
B2 (male): I don’t count posting to UPG as socializing! Posting to UPG and

Contaminatii is in order to organize and meet to socialize. Socializing
to me is about face-to-face stuff.
The new goth friendships enabled by on-line interactive communications not

only increased the attraction of continuing to take part in goth discussion
groups, but also provided further incentive for participants to attend ‘real-
life’ goth events. The following interviewee explained how this worked for
him and his friends:
P1 (male): We’d have a lot less nights knowing where people are [without the
internet] because people post and say ‘well I’m going out’ and you
think ‘well I haven’t seen so and so for a long time so I’ll go out’.
The fact that the specialist information, collective enthusing, and on-line
friendships facilitated by the internet encouraged attendance at goth events
was the most significant contribution of the medium to the goth scene in general.
Given the capacity of events themselves to encourage further participation,
it is clear that the internet formed a key link in enhancing participants’
practical commitment to the subculture. More generally this very effectively
illustrates Wellman and Gulia’s point that, rather than spelling the end of
face-to-face interaction and community, on-line technologies can function
to complement and enhance off-line social activities and affiliations (Wellman
and Gulia 1999: 170). Far from being a separate social or cultural entity, the
internet consists of a range of resources used to enhance, facilitate and
complement distinct lives and affiliations off the screen (Kendall 1999: 60).
186
Worldwide Goth?
It has been emphasized at various points during this book that, thanks to a
mixture of subcultural travel, commerce and communication the goth scene
provided a clear illustration of Ulf Hannerz’s point that small cultural group-
ings need not be narrowly confined in space (Hannerz 1996). As one might
expect, the internet played an important part in the translocal connections
within the subculture, enabling the instant transfer, across any geographical
distance, of highly specialist information, knowledge, views and conversation.
In a similar way to fanzines, sites on the World Wide Web offered details of
releases and tours of goth bands based in countries across the world. Mean-
while, official band sites and CD retailers offered the opportunity for globally
dispersed fans to purchase CDs and merchandise directly by credit card. There
was also a fully international list of goth clubs organized under the names
of towns, cities, countries and continents (International Goth Club Listing,
accessed 2000). Clicking on the name of a club connected the user to further
information, sometimes in the form of the relevant promoter’s own site.
Such facilities clearly enhanced the ability of goths with internet access to
find out what was happening in the goth scene in those areas of the world in
which it had manifested itself. In particular, those participants able physically
to cross national boundaries used websites to find congregations of goths in
otherwise unfamiliar countries. The British information on Helix was fre-
quently accessed by non-British goths intending to visit the country, something
illustrated to its author when, to his delight, he came across a Danish goth
in London with a print-out of his site:
D3 (male): The best thing of all was when I was running around in London
shopping and some chap from Denmark came up to me and he said
‘excuse me I’m trying to find this place’ and he had a bit of paper and
it was a print-out from my web site, and I was well impressed. He’d
printed it out in Denmark and brought it with him to England.
Non-British goths visiting the country also used uk.people.gothic, to find

out practical information about goth events. The questionnaire respondent
below, from the United States, had relied upon the forum to find out about
the Whitby Gothic Weekend:
WQ1b: How did you get information about the Oct ’97 Whitby weekend?
46 (male): Endless babble on UPG transfers over to America . . .
As well as constituting a resource for those already intending to visit different

countries, the discussion about high-profile events on newsgroups sometimes
187
Goth
prompted transnational travel among those receiving it. Large-scale events

were sometimes attended by goths from outside Britain, specifically in order
to meet up with transnational friends made through discussion groups and
personal e-mail. An e-mail interviewee from the United States illustrates the
point:
C3 (male): Virtually all ‘goth contact’ I have is with people outside of my [local]
community . . . In fact, I came to the Whitby Gothic Weekend as a
vacation to meet many people with whom I’d been corresponding [on-
line] for years.
It seems reasonable then, to conclude that many such individuals would have
had less incentive to travel internationally were it not for the internet.
As well as facilitating international travel, the connections created by
websites and discussion forums are liable to have contributed toward greater
transnational consistency of the values and tastes of the subculture. For
example, the definitions of the goth scene provided on high-profile goth sites,
such as the uk.people.gothic and alt.gothic FAQs, tended to be relatively
consistent with one another. Equally important, though, was the potential
transnational influence created by a multitude of smaller sites, as well as
international conversations on discussion groups and, of course, the trans-
national travel they encouraged.
In spite of the potential for any participant with an internet connection to
access all manner of subcultural material, resources and individuals from
around the world, in practice the goth scene did not approximate a globalized
‘village’ or community. While the technological potential for everyday inter-
national communication was utilized by some individuals, the majority of
British goths seemed to focus their internet use rather more precisely. First,
language differences ensured that much foreign correspondence engaged in
by British goths was liable to be concentrated on English-speaking countries.
More importantly, because the net was used largely as a facilitator for particip-
ation in goth scene off the net, users tended to seek information which was
of most practical use in this respect. Consequently they sought to find out
about events they were able to attend, and to interact with individuals with
whom face-to-face contact was a realistic possibility. While they seemed to
recognize the potential of international information and conversation for those
able to travel abroad regularly, most respondents did not have the time or
money to do so, and hence focused their internet use on the British goth scene.
B2 (male): It’s one hundred per cent UK events and UK people really . . . I’ve
visited Swiss and German web sites and I speak a bit of German . . .
but really I’m only interested in the UK scene.
188
PH: Why is that?

B2: Foreign language and I haven’t got the money to go there.
V1 (female): But I mean of course it would be very useful if we wanted to go on
holiday to Madrid, and we wanted to go to a goth club in Madrid . . .
but since we haven’t got the money to do that there’s no point.
Using the web as a means to participate in the ‘real-life’ goth scene, then,
meant that British respondents tended to use websites such as Helix and
Darkwave, and discussion groups such as uk.people.gothic in preference to
their international equivalents. The material was liable to be more relevant
and, in the case of discussion groups, there was a smaller number of messages
to sift through and a greater likelihood of getting to know fellow subscribers.
Due to its smaller subscription base, uk.people.gothic was more cohesive
than alt.gothic, and enabled each individual poster to gain the attention of
others:
P1 (male): In alt.gothic you’re going to get a couple of thousand messages a

day, uk.people.gothic you’re going to get less people, so people will
read more. It’s a smaller group, you get more coverage, more people
will actually read your messages and they’ll have more time to answer
it.
If its role as a connector between nations was somewhat limited, the internet
played a key role in enabling dense translocal communications within the
subculture across Britain. This came across clearly when I asked the following
interviewee what, for her, was the most important effect of the internet on
the goth scene:
M8 (female): I think it’s created much more inter-city socialization and the ability
– its easier to go to places and meet people and go to events and
things and you know, not feel so intimidated by – because you’re
likely to know people and stuff.
Most notably, then, on-line communications contributed to the cycle of

translocal friendships and intercity travel described in Chapter 5, and in turn,
the consistency of goth values and tastes across Britain. The feasibility of
travel within the country meant that the information, the on-line enthusing,
and ease of arranging somewhere to stay the night encouraged participants
to travel out of their localities to attend goth events. In particular, a desire to
meet up with translocal subcultural contacts made on the internet provided
an extra motivation.
189
Goth
Whilst groupings such as uk.people.gothic or websites delineated as national

were of most obvious importance in enhancing translocal travel, individual
local e-mail lists also played their part, through enabling groups of local
enthusiasts to arrange collective day or night trips with maximum ease. In
the example below, the author is enquiring, on a British West Midlands list,
about a possible trip to a club in Leeds:
Subject: Wendyhouse
it’s rumoured that brumites [Birmingham people] are going. Who are you and
what is in the boot? will [name] fit in?
(Hobberstad 1999)
Local lists were equally useful for those intending to travel to events in the
area they covered. In the following message to the Contaminatii, the author
requests a place to stay the night for some goths travelling from Manchester
to attend a forthcoming goth gig in Birmingham:
Subject: Dream Disciples

Seeing as a bunch of the mancgoffs seem to have acquired a strong liking for
road-trips, we will be descending on Brum for the Dream Disciples gig . . .
Now, the traditional request, anyone got any falling over space that we could
impose upon? If I can persuade people, we’ll be down on the Friday for clubs and
stuff before heading north on Sunday.
(Amison 1998)
It was equally common for goths visiting certain towns or cities within Britain
to request and receive information about the goth scene in their destination
area, whether on uk.people.gothic or the relevant local mailing list.
On-line translocal contact and the travel it facilitated and encouraged,
then, made a clear contribution to the concrete connections between goths
from different areas of Britain and, as a result, to the translocal consistency
of the subculture. What may come across as rather less expected, however,
is that the internet was also used by goths as a means of enhancing their
localized, day-to-day subcultural participation. It has recently been argued
that, while it can certainly be used to ‘connect with people and cultures in
faraway places’ the internet also enables users to ‘find out about one’s
neighbour and events in one’s own municipality’ (Sanderson and Fortin 2001:
191). Although focused on highly specialized material and individuals rather
than local communities in any general sense, goth e-mailing lists designated
as local or regional were otherwise consistent with this point. Even to the
most ardent of translocal night trippers, they provided a useful way to com-
municate regularly with local goth friends, to find out about low-profile events
190
nearby, and to arrange to meet up with one another. For many, such lists had
become as important as uk.people.gothic, a particular attraction being the
frequency with which one was liable to meet other subscribers face to face:
PH: So is the local list more useful to you then?

B1 (female): Yeah
P1 (male): Its because there are more people that you know on it . . . you can
talk to them on- and off-line, it’s a good thing.
The greater relevance of a high proportion of posts to local mailing lists, due
to the ease of meeting fellow subscribers at the local events discussed, gave
them a unique value.
At the same time, though, such local lists did not stop people from involving
themselves in regular translocal communications. The following respondents
explained that the two served different purposes and that, as a consequence,
they used both:
B2 (male): I subscribe to UPG to find out what’s going on in the country and
Contaminatii to find out what’s going on in the West Midlands.
V1 (female): I’m the opposite, I mostly read UPG because it’s a lot wider spec.
Furthermore, certain individuals subscribed to several different local mailing

lists, some of which were supposed to be focused on areas hundreds of miles
from where they lived. Often this was because they had visited such areas
and made goth friends there. As a result of such multiple subscriptions, it
was common for information and discussion on one group to spill over onto
others, and indeed for the subscriber-base of each ‘local’ list to extend well
beyond its intended area. This meant that in spite of their use in terms of
facilitating everyday provincial participation, local and regional lists were
very much part of a national subcultural network.
A Temporar
Temporar
emporaryy Sub-Subcultur e?
Sub-Subculture?
As explained, goths tended to use the internet as a means to enhance their

general participation in the goth scene. It was increasingly significant to their
level of commitment to and attachment to the subculture off-line. Never-
theless, the shared experience of taking part in the goth scene on the internet
had led, to start with at least, to the positioning of those involved as something
of a sub-group within the subculture as a whole. Most overtly, their self-
description as net.goths demonstrated a consciousness of affiliation, not only
to the translocal goth scene, but to a particular on-line sub-group. The term
191
Goth
net.goth was even specifically defined on newsgroup FAQs. Although most

participants themselves might have used wider definitions, the version
associated with uk.people.gothic read as follows: ‘“net.goth” is now applied
to anyone who frequently posts to uk.people.gothic, aus.culture.gothic or
alt.gothic, and a strong sense of community has grown up around this Internet
culture’ (uk.people.gothic FAQ, accessed 2000). This ‘sense of community’
was particularly obvious during the late 1990s when, at large-scale translocal
events such as the Whitby Gothic Weekend, subscribers to uk.people.gothic
wore net.goth badges displaying their e-mail pseudonym to identify themselves
to subscribers who had not, as yet, seen one another in the flesh.
The sense of identity was also manifest in practice, in that interactions on
the net were complemented by a tendency to socialize with fellow net.goths
in off-line situations.
P1 (male): How many people can we say that we know now that aren’t on the
net, barring [name] and [name]?
B1 (female): But that’s barring all the ones I was going to mention!
It was clear that using the goth scene’s online facilities, whether in terms of
individual friendships or general discussion groups, gave net.goths a shared
set of experiences – something which sometimes resulted in cliquish behaviour
at events and clubs:
M1 (male): Net-goths are a clique, no matter how much they deny the fact.
Naturally there are people who span both worlds, and I’m not saying
that the rest are associating only with other net.goths consciously.
But it’s a natural thing to get together in real life with people who
you’ve had a conversation with via the net. It’s common ground.
Although they incorporated a similar range of appearance and music-

related tastes and values to those of the subculture as a whole, goth discussion
groups also involved certain on-line norms and values distinct from those of
the subculture as a whole. As I was to find out when I first came into contact
with them in 1997, although it remained extremely important, acceptance
or veneration in the goth scene in general terms was not sufficient, in itself,
to fit in with net.goth discussion groups. It was also necessary to gradually
learn specific on-line codes of behaviour. Factors such as the extent of one’s
ability effectively and appropriately to express oneself on-line, and the
perceived subcultural quality of one’s personal website, became additional
sources of subcultural capital, or the lack of it. Occasionally then, individuals
who, due to their appearance, might have been regarded as low in subcultural
192
capital were able, through the perceived subcultural quality of their on-line
behaviour or achievements, to become veritable celebrities among net.goths.
D3 (male): I believe there is such a thing as a net-celebrity – someone who . . .

because of their behaviour on-line . . . they are more important than
the average person on the net.
However, internet access throughout Western societies has increased at an

astounding rate during the late 1990s and beyond. As more and more goths
gained access to the internet, whether from home, work or university, the
distinctiveness, both perceived and actual, of net.goths as a subgroup started
to become less and less marked toward and beyond the year 2000. Rather
than being something which made one distinctive, use of the internet was
becoming a normal aspect of participation in the goth scene. As a result, the
notion of being a net.goth became less significant and instead, an ever-
increasing proportion of goths had their participation enhanced and intens-
ified as a result of the resources, information, ideas and friendships on offer.
The role of the internet in the general construction and facilitation of the
goth scene, then, seemed liable only to increase in importance.
Conclusion
In relation to the goth scene, on-line media functioned as subcultural, in

that they were produced and used mostly by goths, or interested potential
goths, and obscure to most outsiders. As well as contrasting with general
suggestions that media induce the disintegration of substantive cultural
groupings, this raises important questions about suggestions that the internet
operates as a singular mass medium or a separate ‘virtual’ world. The way
in which goth on-line media operated made them more comparable to small-
scale communication forms such as fanzines, flyers and word of mouth than
to television, tabloids or even the music press. Nevertheless, their interactive
potential and capacity for the rapid and ongoing translocal transfer of data
meant that, as the proportion of goths using them multiplied, they became
more effective and important than their off-line equivalents in the construction
and facilitation of the goth scene.
In general terms, the role of the internet in relation to the goth scene prov-
ides further evidence of the consistency of the grouping with all the indicators
of subculture outlined in Chapter 2. That goths so often chose to concentrate
their leisure-time internet use on specialist subcultural material provides us
with yet another illustration of both their practical commitment and their
193
Goth
strength of identity. Furthermore, the knowledge, information, friendships

and enthusiasm provided by these goth websites and discussion groups played
a direct role in enhancing the intensity of participation and sense of belonging
of their users. Although its transnational effects may have been limited, the
internet, more than any other medium, increased both electronic and face-
to-face contact between goths from different localities and, in doing so,
enhanced individuals’ sense of their subculture as translocal. Such connections
also served to reinforce the consistency of the subculture’s distinctive range
of tastes and values from place to place, particularly within, but also outside
of Britain.
The role of such exclusive subcultural media in enhancing the three defining
characteristics of identity, commitment and consistent distinctiveness also
serves to emphasize its consistency with the fourth. The importance, to the
translocal facilitation and construction of the goth scene, of media produced
and used predominantly by goths, illustrates the relative autonomy of the
subculture. Far from disrupting the notion of underground community, a
translocal network of specialist, interactive forms of communication,
operating as an increasingly important part of a general subcultural infras-
tructure, underlines the contemporary relevance of such a metaphor.
194
Concluding Thoughts
10
Concluding Thoughts
In spite of the obviousness of the goth scene’s distinctiveness and group
identity, I was impressed, at the start of the research on which this book is
based, by theories which rejected the notion of subculture, in order to
emphasize the rather more partial and temporary nature of contemporary
affiliations. Four years on, I remain sure that lifestyles and groupings char-
acterized by considerable fluidity and multiplicity are increasingly prevalent
throughout consumption-oriented Western societies. Notions such as neo-
tribalism, as developed by Maffesoli (1996), Bauman (1992a, 1992b) and,
later, Bennett (1999), may prove useful in understanding such trends where
they apply. However, as my subjective interest in the goth scene was trans-
formed into an in-depth research project, it became ever more clear that,
although this grouping embodied elements of diversity and ephemerality, it
was far more notable for traits which indicated greater levels of cultural
substance.
This level of substance has been illustrated by a range of research data
throughout this book, in relation to the four key indicators outlined at the
end of Chapter 2. First, we have seen that the goth scene was characterized
by a set of values and tastes which, although diverse and changeable, were
sufficiently distinctive and consistent, from time to time and place to place,
to enable participants easily to differentiate insiders from outsiders. Second,
the majority of participants, during the time of their involvement, shared a
translocal sense of affiliation and collective distinction, which tended to be
prominent in their overall sense of identity. Third, while it did not account
for all their practical activities, the grouping tended to dominate the leisure
time, consumption habits, social lives and internet use of its members for a
significant period of time. Fourth, without being in any way isolated, the
1990s British goth scene operated relatively autonomously. In spite of the
continued role of certain external goods, services and businesses, we have
seen that the key interdependent practical elements of the goth scene – events,
consumables and media – were often produced by and oriented toward goths.
Forming something of an interconnected subcultural infrastructure, such
specialist products, services and spaces often served to limit the frequency
with which goths came into contact with lifestyles and groupings outside
195
Goth
their subculture. In more general terms, they played a highly significant role in
facilitating the aforementioned distinctive values, shared identity and practical
commitment, thus emphasizing the relative self-generation of the goth scene.
Through offering a redefinition of the concept of subculture based on the
indicators of relative distinctiveness, identity, commitment and autonomy,
this book attempts to provide a means for conceptualizing the goth scene and
other elective groupings characterized more by their substance than by their
fluidity. In so doing, it avoids the over-generalization of superficiality, mean-
inglessness and the breakdown of substantive groupings which, in different
ways, characterizes theories of mass culture, of postmodernism and, sometimes,
of fluid collectivities. At the same time, it avoids a tendency to regard localized
face-to-face cultural practices, identities and communities as the only possible
example of small-scale, substantive cultural groupings in an otherwise media-
saturated world. Rather than proposing a new subcultural theory as an equally
sweeping alternative way of conceptualizing society, though, the intention
has been to clarify and, hence, place limits upon the use of the term, without
being over-prescriptive. The suggestion is that alternative terminology, notably
the notion of neo-tribalism, might also be clarified and limited, in order to
describe and understand those contemporary lifestyles and affiliations, which,
in contrast to subcultures, are fundamentally ephemeral and partial.
While retaining the term it provided us with, this book also avoids key
problems with traditional subcultural theory, particularly its Birmingham
School incarnations. In particular, this book’s conception of subculture does
not rest upon spontaneous expression of shared structural contradictions and
need not involve any other form of symbolic or direct ‘resistance’. While it is
certainly conceivable that they may apply in certain cases, external political
goals or effects were less important, in the example of the goth scene, than
the desire to feel distinctive and to belong to a community. Furthermore, rather
than being entirely reliant upon ‘authentic’ processes of mutual gravitation
or spontaneous reaction, the goth scene was and always had been thoroughly
reliant upon media and commerce in a variety of forms. Consistent with
elements of the work of McRobbie (1989, 1994, 1999) and Thornton (1995),
it is a key finding of this research that the involvement of profit motives and
communications media can be highly conducive to the cultural substance
deemed here to characterize subcultures. Meanwhile, partly thanks to the
involvement of specialist media and commerce, it is clear that substantive
forms of affiliation such as the goth scene can take an interconnected and
consistent translocal form.
While I have often stressed the levels of cultural substance which embodied
the goth scene, the book should not be taken as a celebration of the subculture
or the form it took. In spite of my obvious emotional attachments as an insider,
196
Concluding Thoughts
the intention has been to avoid moral judgements relating to the possible
virtues or drawbacks, to participants and to society as a whole, of subcultures
as compared to more fleeting forms of affiliation. Aside from my emotional
attachments as an insider, there were particular characteristics of the goth
scene which I became particularly impressed by; most notably, the extreme
creativity of some goths as consumers, the levels of insider participation in
the facilitation and construction of the subculture, the relatively high levels
of gender equality and the partial transgression of boundaries of gender and
sexuality. Equally, however, I often found myself somewhat frustrated with
the boundary-drawing which was engaged in by many goths and the result-
ing tendency for a degree of narrow-mindedness towards fashion, music,
individuals and cultural groupings deemed incompatible with the subculture.
In some respects, perhaps, such pros and cons reflect more general debates
over the social desirability of substantive communities, whether in relation
to ethnic, sexual, national, local, political or leisure-based forms of affiliation.
In all these types of community, the higher the level of overall substance, the
greater will be the prospect of meaningful identity and fulfilment, active
cultural or political participation, independence from external control and
transgression of norms. Equally, however, it would seem that as substance
increases, so does the rootedness of each community’s alternative set of norms
and the strength of the boundaries and exclusions they give rise to.
Though they may warrant more specific attention in future research or
theory, though, such judgements about moral advantages and disadvantages
are perhaps of lesser overall consequence, in the context of this particular
piece of work, than the lessons I hope that it might provide toward an under-
standing of the ways in which particular elements of contemporary consumer
societies can work. Whether celebrated or decried, for example, the case of
the goth scene clearly shows that various forms of commerce and off- and
on-line media can be conducive to substantive translocal cultural groupings.
Similarly, the detailed account of the processes through which, in a society
characterized by increasing instability, most goths came to reject multitudes
of fleeting affiliations in favour of a single intensive subcultural lifestyle,
provides an important contribution to social understanding, regardless of
whether such a choice of lifestyle is deemed virtuous. As a final example,
whether or not their efforts are deemed morally worthwhile, descriptions of
the considerable control exercised by goths over the facilitation and construc-
tion of their subculture make an important contribution to crucial debates
over the general potential for grass-roots agency and active participation in
contemporary society.
Moving briefly onto some methodological reflections, the decision to
conduct in-depth, multi-method ethnographic research of one grouping rather
197
Goth
than more superficial accounts of several should enable confidence in the

findings of this book relating to the British goth scene. If nothing else the
project has convinced me that it is better to achieve a thorough, detailed and
cross-verified understanding of one grouping than to rely on a far less well-
grounded account of several. While it would be odd if all goths thoroughly
agreed with my every observation and argument, I would hope that the largely
positive implications of my position as critical insider within the project might
add further weight to them. Nevertheless, there are inevitable limitations to
the scope of my conclusions. As well as being based on a particular grouping,
the findings described in this book are largely focused upon a particular
country and a particular period of time. Whether the levels of cultural sub-
stance I unearthed in the case of the late 1990s British goth scene would be
replicated in a study based on the United States or mainland Europe remains
open to question, as does the extent to which the translocal British goth
scene will survive and retain its subcultural form in years to come.
Such limitations in terms of breadth, however, are more than compensated
for, in my view, by the depth and quality of knowledge provided by the long-
term focused ethnographic approach. Although its acknowledgement is
important, the specificity of my case study does not somehow render the
levels of affiliation, commitment, consistent distinctiveness and autonomy
which characterized the late 1990s British goth scene entirely peculiar to it.
The mixture of malleability and clarity offered by this book’s reworking of
subculture and, indeed, its development of a conception of translocal, should
hopefully make them useful for future researchers, whether as suitable
descriptors for the groupings they focus on, or merely as yardsticks for com-
parison and contrast.
In respect of future work, I would stress in particular that acknowledging
the need to examine individual negotiation and movement between different
affiliations should not lead to an abandonment of research which is focused
on the workings of particular groupings. I would especially encourage further
research, not only on other examples of subculture, as defined here, but also
on translocal and media-facilitated forms of community in general terms.
Further development of the growing body of literature on virtual communities
would clearly be an important part of this, although such research needs to
do more to place the analysis of on-screen interactions in the context of off-
line practices, identities and facilitating institutions. Consistent with this
book’s reworking of subculture, I regard it as important both to outline and
account for the levels of substance or fluidity of different communities and,
particularly, to investigate the extent of their relationship with both on- and
off-line forms of media and commerce. Though other valuable criteria may
emerge, my hope is that a focus on levels of consistent distinctiveness, shared
identity, commitment and autonomy may provide a useful starting point here.
198
Appendix
Appendix: Quantitative
Questionnaire Results
These tables show those results from quantitative sections of the October
1997 Whitby Festival Questionnaire which are referred to directly in the text
of the book.
Table 1. Social Profile of Respondents
%
1.1 Age
16–20 19
21–25 40
26–30 35
30+ 6
(valid cases 109, data rounded to nearest valid per cent)
1.2 Gender
Male 51
Female 49
1.3 Occupation (based on Std. Occupational Classification –

categories merged)
Managers/Administrators 11
Professional/Associate Professionals 24
Clerical/Secretarial 3
Personal & Protective Services 3
Sales 4
Plant/Machine Operators: 3
Unemployed: 12
Students (undergraduate and postgraduate) 39
1.4 Ethnicity
White 97
Other/mixed 3
199
Appendix
Table 1. Social Profile of Respondents (continued)
%
1.5 Do you live with a partner or spouse?
Yes 33
No 67
1.6 Do you have any children for whom you are responsible
Yes 9
No 91
Table 2. Attractions of Whitby Gothic Weekend

WQ2a – What, for you, are the most important attractions of the Whitby Gothic
Weekend?
Respondents invited to rank their top three choices from a list of fourteen (including
‘other’). Table shows percentage of respondents selecting each option as their first
choice and then percentage selecting each option somewhere among their three
choices. Table shows most popular options.
Attraction Proportion Proportion selecting

selecting option as either 1st, 2nd
as 1st choice % or 3rd choice %
Social atmosphere 43 68
Safe environment 2 10
Seeing particular favourite bands 5 20
Live goth music 14 38
Making new friends 9 32
Romance/sex 3 10
Seeing old friends 13 42
Dressing up 3 25
Buying clothes, music, accessories 4 21
Large goth discos 2 17
200
Appendix
Table 3. Travelling to Events

WQ3a – In the past year, how many goth or goth-related events have you attended
which involved travelling more than 30 miles from home?
No. of events Proportion selecting option %
None 9
1 to 3 31
4 to 10 24
More than 10 36
Table 4. Most Important aspects of goth scene

WQ5a – Which of the following are most important to your participation in the
goth scene?
Respondents invited to rank their top three choices from a list of eight (including
choices.
Attraction Proportion Proportion selecting

selecting as selecting as either 1st,
1st choice % 2nd or 3rd choice %
Socializing 43 71
Nightclubs/pubs 11 66
Fashion/appearance 10 53
Recorded music 19 49
Live music 15 38
Books 1 10
Films 0 3
Other 2 4
201
Appendix
Table 5. Sources of Goth Music

WQ6a – Where do you buy goth music from?
Respondents invited to rank their top three choices from a list of seven (including
choices.
Source Proportion Proportion selecting

selecting as as either 1st, 2nd
1st choice % or 3rd choice %
Local Independent Shops 42 63

Local Chain Shops 5 27
Shops Outside Locality 13 33
Gigs/Festivals 9 53
Mail Order 17 45
Don’t Buy 11 11
Other 5 5
Table 6. Sources of Goth Clothing and Accessories

WQ6b – Where do you buy goth clothes and accessories from?
Respondents invited to rank their top three choices from a list of eight (including
choices.
Source Proportion Proportion selecting

selecting as as either 1st, 2nd
1st choice % or 3rd choice %
Local Independent Shops/

Market Stalls 47 68
Local Chain Shops 3 21
Non-Local Shops 21 41
Gigs/Festivals 10 53
Mail Order 3 26
Home Made 5 6
Don’t Buy 10 10
Other 2 3
202
Bibliography
Bibliography
Books and Academic References
Adorno, T. (1941), ‘On Popular Music’, in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds) (1990),
On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, London: Routledge.
Adorno, T. (1944), ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’, in J. Bernstein (ed.) (1991), The
Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, London: Routledge.
Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1944), ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception’, in J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Woollacott (eds) (1977), Mass
Communication and Society, London: Edward Arnold/Open University Press.
Anderson, B. (1991), Imagined Communities, London: Verso.
Ang, I. (1985), Watching Dallas, London: Methuen.
Atton, C. (2002), Alternative Media, London: Sage.
Baudrillard, J. (1983), Simulations, New York: Semiotext.
Baudrillard, J. (1988) ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, in M. Poster (ed.), Baudrillard:
Selected Writings, Cambridge: Polity.
Bauman, Z. (1992a), Intimations of Postmodernity, London: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (1992b), ‘Survival as a Social Construct’, Theory, Culture and Society,
9(1): 1–36.
Bauman, Z. (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge:
Polity.
Baym, N. (1995), ‘The Emergence of Community in Computer Mediated Commun-
ication’, in S. Jones (ed.), Cybersociety: Computer Mediated Communication and
Community, London: Sage.
Baym, N. (1997), ‘Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community: Inside an
Electronic Fan Culture’, in S. Kiesler (ed.), Culture of the Internet, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bayton, M. (1997), ‘Women and the Electric Guitar’, in S. Whiteley (ed.), Sexing the
Groove: Popular Music and Gender, London: Routledge.
Becker, H. (1963), Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, New York: Free
Press.
Bennett, A. (1999), ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between
Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology 33(3): 599–617.
Bennett, A. (2000), Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place,
Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Blumer, H. (1969), Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, Englewood
Cliffs, Prentice Hall.
203
Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London:

Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London:
Routledge.
Butler, J. (1991), ‘Imitation and Gender Subordination’, in D. Fuss (ed.) (1991), Inside/
Out, London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1993), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, New York:
Routledge.
Came, H. (1996), ‘Towards a Free and Loose Bisexual Future’, in S. Rose and C.
Stevens (eds), Bisexual Horizons, Politics, Histories, Lives, London: Lawrence &
Wishart.
Chambers, I. (1985), Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture, London:
Macmillan.
Chambers, I. (1988), Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience, London:
Routledge.
Chaney, D. (1996), Lifestyles, London: Routledge.
Clarke, G. (1981), ‘Defending Ski-Jumpers: A Critique of Theories of Youth
Subcultures’, in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds) (1990), On Record: Rock, Pop
and the Written Word, London: Routledge.
Clarke, J., Hall, S., Jefferson, T. and Roberts, B. (1977), ‘Subcultures, Cultures and
Class: A Theoretical Overview’, in S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds), Resistance Through
Rituals: Youth Cultures in Post-War Britain, London: Hutchinson.
Cohen, Albert (1955), Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, London: Collier-
Macmillan.
Cohen, Anthony (1985), The Symbolic Construction of Community, Chichester: Ellis
Horwood.
Cohen, P. (1972), ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community’, Working
Papers in Cultural Studies, 2: 5–70.
Cohen, Sara (1991), Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making,
Oxford: Clarendon.
Cohen, Sara (1993), ‘Ethnography and Popular Music Studies’, Popular Music, 12(2):
123–137.
Cohen, Sara (1994), ‘Identity, Place and the “Liverpool Sound”’, in M. Stokes (ed.),
Ethnicity, Identity and Music, Oxford: Berg.
Cohen, Stanley (1972), Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods
and Rockers, London: MacGibbon & Lee.
Curtin, M. (1996), ‘On Edge: Culture Industries in the Neo-Network Era’, in R.
Ohman (ed.), Making and Selling Culture, London: Wesleyan University Press.
Denzin, N. (1989), Interpretive Interactionism, London: Sage.
Dirlik, A. (1996), ‘The Global in the Local’, in R. Wilson and W. Dissanayake (eds),
Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, London: Duke
University Press.
Dorfman, A. and Mattelart, A. (1991), How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist
Ideology in the Disney Comic, New York: International General.
204
Bibliography
Dyer, R. (1997), White, London: Routledge.

Eadie, J. (1996), ‘Being Who We Are (and anyone else we want to be)’, in S. Rose
and C. Stevens (eds), Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives, London:
Lawrence & Wishart.
Featherstone, M. (1991), Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage.
Fernback, J. (1997), ‘The Individual Within the Collective: Virtual Ideology and the
Realisation of Collective Principles’, in S. Jones (ed.), Virtual Culture: Identity
and Community in Cybersociety, London: Sage.
Fernback, J. (1999), ‘There is a There There: Notes Toward a Definition of Virtual
Community’, in S. Jones (ed.), Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods
for Examining the Net, London: Sage.
Finnegan, R. (1989), The Hidden Musicians, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foster, P. (1996), ‘Observational Research’, in R. Sapsford and V. Jupp (eds), Data
Collection and Analysis, London: Sage.
Frith, S. (1981), ‘The Magic That Can Set You Free: The Ideology of Folk and the
Myth of the Rock Community’, Popular Music, 1: 159–68.
Frith, S. (1983), Sound Effects, Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock ’n’ Roll,
London: Constable.
Frith, S. and McRobbie, A. (1978), ‘Rock and Sexuality’, in S. Frith and S. Goodwin
(eds), On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, London: Routledge.
Gelder, K. and Thornton, S. (eds) (1997), The Subcultures Reader, London: Routledge.
Gillespie, M. (1995), Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change, London: Routledge.
Goodwin, J. (1991), ‘Popular Music and Postmodern Theory’, Cultural Studies, 5(1):
174–190.
Gordon, M. (1947), ‘The Concept of Subculture and its Application’, in K. Gelder
and S. Thornton (eds) (1997), The Subcultures Reader, London: Routledge.
Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) (1977), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures
in Post-War Britain, London: Hutchison.
Hannerz, U. (1996), Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places, London:
Routledge.
Harris, K. (2000), ‘“Roots”?: The Relationship Between the Global and The Local
Within the Extreme Metal Scene’, Popular Music 19(1): 13–30.
Harvey, D. (1989), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Logics of
Social Change, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hebdige, D. (1977), ‘The Meaning of Mod’, in S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds), Resist-
ance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, London: Hutchinson.
Hebdige, D. (1979), Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen.
Hebdige, D. (1988), Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things, London: Routledge.
Hetherington, K. (1992) ‘Stonehenge and its Festival: Spaces of Consumption’, in R.
Shields (ed.), Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption, London: Routledge.
Hetherington, K. (1998a), Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics,
London: Sage.
Hetherington, K. (1998b), ‘Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity: New Age Travellers
and the Utopics of the Countryside’, in T. Skelton and G. Valentine (eds), Cool
Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, London: Routledge.
205
Bibliography
Hill, K. and Hughes, J. (1998), Cyberpolitics: Citizen Activism in the Age of the
Internet, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hine, C. (2000), Virtual Ethnography, London: Sage.
Hollows, J. and Milestone, K. (1995), ‘Inter City Soul: Transient Communities and
Regional Identity in an Underground Urban Club Culture’, Paper presented at
British Sociological Association Annual Conference: ‘Contested Cities’, University
of Leicester, 13–15 April.
Irwin, J. (1970), ‘Notes on the Status of the Concept Subculture’, in K. Gelder and
S. Thornton (eds) (1997), The Subcultures Reader, London: Routledge.
Jameson, F. (1982), ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in H. Foster (ed.) (1985),
Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press.
Jameson, F. (1991), Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London:
Verso.
Jenkins, R. (1983), Lads, Citizens and Ordinary Kids: Working Class Youth Life-
Styles in Belfast, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jones, S. (ed.) (1995), Cybersociety: Computer Mediated Communication and
Community, London: Sage.
Jones, S. (1997), ‘The Internet and its Social Landscape’, in S. Jones (ed.), Virtual
Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety, London: Sage.
Jones, S. (ed.) (1997), Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety,
London: Sage.
Jones, S. (ed.) (1999), Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for
Examining the Net, London: Sage.
Jones, S. (ed.) (2000), Cybersociety 2.0, London: Sage.
Kendall, L. (1999), ‘Recontextualising “Cyberspace”: Methodological Considerations
for On-Line Research’, in S. Jones (ed), Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues
and Methods for Examining the Net, London: Sage.
Kruse, H. (1993), ‘Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture’, Popular Music
12(1): 31–43.
Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1987), The End of Organised Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity.
Leonard, M. (1997) ‘“Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world”: Feminism,
“subculture” and grrrl power’, in S. Whiteley (ed.) Sexing the Groove: Popular
Music and Gender, London: Routledge.
Leonard, M. (1998), ‘Paper Planes: Travelling the New Grrrl Geographies’, in T.
Skelton and G. Valentine (eds), Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures,
London: Routledge.
Liebes, T. and Katz, E. (1993), The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of
Dallas, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Polity.
Locher, D (1998), ‘The Industrial Identity Crisis: The Failure of a Newly Forming
Subculture to Identify Itself’, in J. Epstein, Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern
World, Oxford: Blackwell.
Lury, C. (1996), Consumer Culture, Cambridge, Polity.
MacDonald, D. (1957), ‘A Theory of Mass Culture’, in B. Rosenberg and D.White
(eds) Mass Culture, Glencoe: Free Press.
206
Bibliography
Maffesoli, M. (1996), The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass
Society, London: Sage.
Malbon, B. (1998), ‘The Club: Consumption, Identity and the Spatial Practices of
Every-Night Life’, in T. Skelton and G. Valentine (eds), Cool Places: Geographies
of Youth Cultures, London: Routledge.
Malbon, B. (1999), Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality, London: Routledge.
Mann, C. and Stewart, F. (2000), Internet Communication and Qualitative Research:
A Handbook for Researching Online, London: Sage.
Marcuse, H. (1964), One Dimensional Man: The Ideology of Industrial Society,
London: Sphere.
McLaughlin, M., Osborne, K. and Ellison, N. (1997), ‘Virtual Community in a
Telepresence Environment’ , in S. Jones (ed.), Virtual Community: Identity and
Communication in Cybersociety, London: Sage.
McRobbie, A. (1980), ‘Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique’, in
A. McRobbie (2000), Feminism and Youth Culture, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A. (1989), ‘Second Hand Dresses and the Role of the Rag Market’, in A.
McRobbie (ed.), Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion
and Music, London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A. (1994), Postmodernism and Popular Culture, London: Routledge.
McRobbie, A. (1999), In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion and Popular Music,
London: Routledge.
McRobbie, A. and Garber, J. (1977), ‘Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration’, in S.
Hall and T. Jefferson (eds), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-
War Britain, London: Hutchinson.
Mercer, M. (1988), Gothic Rock Black Book, London: Omnibus Press.
Mercer, M. (1991), Gothic Rock: All You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Too
Gormless to Ask, Birmingham: Pegasus.
Merton, R. (1972), ‘Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge’,
American Journal of Sociology, 78.
Meyer, M. (1994), The Politics and Poetics of Camp, London: Routledge.
Miyoshi, M. (1996), ‘A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism
and the Decline of the Nation State’, in R. Wilson and W. Dissanayake (eds), Global/
Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, London: Duke
University Press.
Muggleton, D. (1997), ‘The Post-Subculturalist’, in S. Redhead (ed.), The Club
Cultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies, Oxford: Blackwell.
Muggleton, D. (2000), Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style, Oxford:
Berg.
Negus, K. (1992), Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry,
London: Arnold.
Peet, R. (1982), ‘International Capital, International Culture’, in M. Taylor and N.
Thrift (eds), The Geography of the Multinationals, London: Croom Helm.
Peet, R. (1989), ‘The destruction of Regional Cultures’, in R. Johnston and P. Taylor
(eds), A World in Crisis? Geographical Perspectives, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
207
Bibliography
Plummer, K. (1995), Telling Sexual Stories, London: Routledge.

Polhemous, T. (1997), ‘In the Supermarket of Style’, in S. Redhead (ed.), The Club
Cultures Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Poster, M. (1995), The Second Media Age, Cambridge: Polity.
Redfield, R. (1955), The Little Community: Viewpoints for the Study of a Human
Whole, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Redhead, S. (1993), ‘The End of the End of Century Party’, in S. Redhead, Rave
Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture, Aldershot, Avebury.
Redhead, S. (ed.) (1997a), The Club Cultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural
Studies, Oxford: Blackwell.
Redhead, S. (1997b), Subcultures to Clubcultures – An Introduction to Popular
Cultural Studies, Oxford: Blackwell.
Reynolds, S. (1990), Blissed Out, London: Serpent’s Tail.
Rhinegold, H. (1994), The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic
Frontier, New York: HarperPerennial.
Richard, B. and Kruger, H. (1998), ‘Ravers’ Paradise. German Youth Cultures in the
1990s’, in T. Skelton and G. Valentine (eds), Cool Places: Geographies of Youth
Cultures, London: Routledge.
Sabin, R. and Triggs, T. (2000), Below Critical Radar, Hove: Slab-O-Concrete.
Sanderson, D. and Fortin, A. (2001), ‘The Projection of Geographical Communities
into Cyberspace’, in S. Munt (ed.), Technospaces: Inside New Media, London:
Continuum.
Schiller, H. (1985), ‘Electronic Information Flows: New Basis for Global Domination’,
in P. Drummond and R. Paterson (eds), Television in Transition, London: British
Film Institute.
Schiller, H. (1991) ‘Not Yet the Post-Imperial Era’, Critical Studies in Mass Commun-
ication, 8: 13–28.
Schiller, H. (1992), Mass Communication and American Empire, 2nd edn, Oxford:
Westview, 1992.
Shank, B. (1994), Dissonant Identities: The Rock ’n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas,
Hanover: University Press of New England.
Sharf, B. (1999), ‘Beyond Netiquette: The Ethics of Doing Naturalistic Discourse
Research on the Internet’, in S. Jones, Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues
and Methods for Examining the Net, London: Sage.
Shields, R. (1992a), ‘Spaces for the Subject of Consumption’, in R. Shields (ed.),
Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption, London: Routledge.
Shields, R. (1992b), ‘The Individual, Consumption Cultures and the Fate of Com-
munity’, in R. Shields (ed.) (1992), Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption,
London: Routledge.
Shuker, R. (1994), Understanding Popular Music, London: Routledge.
Shutz, A. (1964), Studies in Social Theory, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Shutz, A. (1970), On Phenomenology and Social Relations, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. (eds) (1998), Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures,
London: Routledge.
208
Bibliography
Slobin, M. (1993), Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West, Hanover: University

Press of New England.
Smith, M. and Kollock, P. (1999), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge.
Song, M. and Parker, D. (1995), ‘Commonality, Difference and the Dynamics of
Discourse in In-Depth Interviewing’, Sociology 29(2): 241–56.
Stratton, J. (1985), ‘On the Importance of Subcultural Origins’, in K. Gelder and S.
Thornton (eds) (1997), The Subcultures Reader, London: Routledge.
Straw, W. (1991), ‘Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes
in Popular Music’, Cultural Studies, 5(3): 368–88.
Straw, W. (1997), ‘Organised Disorder – The Changing Space of the Record Shop’,
in S. Redhead (ed.), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Strinati, D. (1995), An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, London:
Routledge.
Thornton, S. (1995), Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge:
Polity.
Thornton, S. and McRobbie, A. (1995), ‘Rethinking Moral Panic for Multi-Mediated
Social Worlds’, in A. McRobbie (2000), Feminism and Youth Culture, 2nd edn,
London: Macmillan.
Tomlinson, J. (1991), Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction, London: Pinter.
Tonnies, F. (1955), Community and Association, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Triggs, T. (2000), ‘Liberated Spaces. Identity Politics and Anti-Consumerism’, in R.
Sabin and T. Triggs (eds), Below Critical Radar. Fanzines and Comics from 1976
to Now, Hove: Slab-O-Concrete.
Turkle, S. (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, London:
Phoenix.
Wallis, R., and Malm, K. (1984), Big Sounds From Small Peoples, London: Constable.
Wallis, R. and Malm, K. (1992), Media Policy and Music Activity, London: Routledge.
Watson, N. (1997), ‘Why We Argue About Virtual Community: A Case Study of the
Phish.Net Fan Community’, in S. Jones (ed.), Virtual Culture: Internet and
Communication in Cybersociety, London: Sage.
Wellman, B. and Gulia, M. (1999), ‘Virtual Communities as Communities’, in M.
Smith and P. Kollock (eds), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge.
Whyte, W. (1943), Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Widdicombe, S. and Wooffitt, R. (1995), The Language of Youth Subcultures: Social
Identity in Action, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Willis, P. (1978), Profane Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Willis, P. (1990), Common Culture: Symbolic work at Play in the Everyday Cultures
of the Young, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Wilson, R. and Dissanayake, W. (eds) (1996), Global/Local: Cultural Production
and the Transnational Imaginary, London: Duke University Press.
Young, J. (1971), The Drug Takers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use, London:
Paladin.
209
Bibliography
Newspaper/Magazine References
Alford, L. (1993), ‘Art of Darkness’, Observer Life, 31/10/93: 10–11.

BRV Magazine (1998), ‘Gig Dates’, Issue 24: 5.
Collins, A. (1991), ‘Ghoul’s Out: Bluffers Guide to Goth’, New Musical Express,
30/11/91: 22–23.
Dalton, S. (1998), ‘Garbage: Version 2.0’, Album Review (Mushroom), New Musical
Express, 09/05/98.
Davidson, J. (1999), ‘Go Goth Young Girl’, The Herald Magazine, 30/09/99: 30–3.
Gilbert, J. (1996), ‘Goths Vamp it Up in Drac-by-the-Sea’, Independent on Sunday,
29/09/96: 4.
Malins, S. (1998), ‘Black Arts: Goth. It Wore Dark Eyeliner, Invented Nine Inch
Nails and Today Lives in Morecambe’, Album Review (Nocturnal, Procreate), Q
Magazine, 07/98: 124.
Matherson, L. and Simpson, G. (1997), ‘Oh My Goth: Weird Picture Report’, Minx,
07/97: 68–70.
Myres, B. (1997), ‘Some Might Slay’, Melody Maker, 11/10/97: 25.
Myres, B. (1998), ‘Re-Release the Bats’, Melody Maker, 12/12/98: 23.
New Musical Express, 01/05/99, front cover.
No. 1 Magazine, (1986), ‘Glad to be Goth’, 1986: 34–5 (based on information
provided by respondent – unsure on precise date).
North, R., (1983), ‘Positive Punk’, New Musical Express, 02/83.
Oldham, J. (1996), ‘Placebo: Placebo’, Album Review, New Musical Express, 14/
09/96.
O’Sullivan, K. (1999), ‘Rock King of Evil the Kids Adore: The Hero’, The Mirror,
22/04/99.
Owen, R. and Mitchell, J. (1997), ‘The New Black’, The Big Issue, 27/11/97: 31.
Paterson, R. (1997), ‘Goth It’, Spectrum (Scotland on Sunday), 12/07/97: 5.
Salter, M. (1998), ‘Dark, Satanic Thrills’, The Big Issue in the North, 08/98: 22–3.
Seagal, V. (1998), ‘Nocturnal’, Album Review, New Musical Express, 06/06/98.
Thompson, D. and Greene, J. (1994), ‘Undead Undead Undead: The History of the
Gothic Movement’, Alternative Press, 11/94.
Thompson, N. (1999), ‘The Mission: London WC2 Astoria’, Gig Review, New
Musical Express, 01/12/99.
Tovey, S. (1999), ‘Moonspell: From the Cocoon Unfolds the Butterfly’, Terrorizer,
10/99: 32–3.
Tsarfin, Z. (1999), ‘Typonegative: The Wire in the Blood’, Terrorizer, 10/99: 38–9.
Udo, T. (1996), ‘The Mission: Blue (Equator)’, Album Review, New Musical Express,
29/07/96.
Wright, G. and Miller, S. (1999), ‘A Clique Within a Clique, Obsessed with Guns,
Death and Hitler’, The Guardian, 22/04/99: 3.
Younge, G. and Ellison, M. (1999), ‘ Black Tuesday’, The Guardian, 23/04/99: 2–3
(G2).
210
Bibliography
Web Site References
alt.gothic FAQ (accessed July 2000), www.darkwave.org.uk/faq/ag

Darkwave.org.uk (accessed 1999–2000), www.darkwave.org.uk
Faithful Dawn Homepage (accessed January 1999), www.ourworld.compuserve.com/
homepages/outletpromotions
gothicland (accessed July 2000), www.gothicland.com
helix (accessed 1997–2000), www.pennangalan.co.uk/Helix
International Goth Club Listing (accessed August 2000), www.vamp.org/Gothic/
clublist.html
net.goth map, (accessed 1999–2000), www.gothmap.org.uk
Scathe, P. (accessed August 2000), A History of Goth, www.scathe.demon.co.uk/
histgoth.htm
uk.people.gothic FAQ (accessed July 2000), www.darkwave,org.uk/faq/ukpg
On-Line Discussion Group References
Amison, N. (November 1998), ‘Dream Disciples’, Contaminatii mailing list.

De Bie, C. (April 2000), ‘Re: It Used to be About the Music Man’, Tainted mailing
list.
Harvey, P. (November 1999), ‘Re: Toreador on Saturday’, Tainted mailing list.
Hemming, L. (May 1999), ‘Re: Skirts on Blokes’, Contaminatii mailing list.
Hobberstad, M. (January 1999), ‘Wendyhouse’, Contaminatii mailing list.
Johnson, M. (January 1999), ‘A New Black Rose Emporium in Camden’, uk.people.
gothic.
MurkyGoth (May 1999), ‘Re: Torrie Info’, Contaminatii mailing list.
Sneekybat (January 1999), ‘The End of Necromantik (sop weep etc)’, uk.people.
gothic.
Tudway (April 1999), ‘Re: US Killings rant rant rant’, uk.people.gothic.
White, J. (January 1999), ‘Re: Whitby’, Contaminatii mailing list.
Wilson, G. (December 1998), ‘Melody Maker Goth Feature’, uk.people.gothic.
Miscellaneous References
McCullie, D. (1999), Wendy House promotional stickers.
Discography
Please note that what follows is NOT a general discography for the goth
scene. It merely contains selected examples of releases from artists which
have been referred to directly in the text or the endnotes.
211
Bibliography
Alien Sex Fiend (1983), Ignore the Machine/The Girl at the End of My Gun, Anagram.
All About Eve (1988), All About Eve, Mercury.
Apoptygma Berzerk (1996), Seven, CD, Tatra Productions.
Aqua (1997), Barbie Girl, CD, Universal Music.
Bauhaus (1979), Bela Lugosi’s Dead/Boys/Dark Entries, Small Wonder.
The Birthday Party (1981), Release the Bats/Blast Off, 4 AD.
Bowie, David (1972), Ziggy Stardust, RCA.
Covenant (1998), Europa, Off Beat.
The Cult (1985), Love, Beggars Banquet.
The Cure (1981), Faith, Fiction.
The Cure (1987), Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Fiction.
The Cure (1989), Disintegration, Fiction.
Dead Can Dance (1988), The Serpent’s Egg, 4AD.
Die Laughing (1996), Heaven in Decline, Grave News.
Faith and the Muse (1999), Evidence of Heaven, Neue Asthetik Multimedia.
Faithful Dawn (1999), You Are Here, Dark Beat Records.
Fields of the Nephilim (1987), Dawnrazor, Situation Two.
Fields of the Nephilim (1990), Elizium, Beggars Banquet.
Front Line Assembly (1996), Plasticity, Off Beat.
Funhouse (1996), Never Again, M&A Musicart.
Garbage (1995), Garbage, Mushroom Records.
The Horatii (1999), Succour Punch, Resurrection Records.
Joy Division (1980), Love Will Tear Us Apart/These Days, Factory.
Manuskript (1999), Devil’s Advocate, Resurrection Records.
Marilyn Manson (1996), Antichrist Superstar, Nothing/Interscope.
Merry Thoughts (1993), Millennium Done: Empire Songs, Dion Fortune Records.
The Mission (1986), Serpent’s Kiss/Wake, Chapter 22.
The Mission (1990), Butterfly on a Wheel/The Grip of Disease, Mercury.
Nekromantik (1998), Fairy Catcher, Dark Beat Records.
Nine Inch Nails (1994), Closer, Island Records.
Nosferatu (1993), Rise, Possession Records.
Placebo (1998), Without You I’m Nothing, Elevator.
Play Dead (1982), Propaganda/Propaganda (mix), Jungle.
Sex Gang Children (1982), Beasts, Illuminated.
Shampoo (1995), Trouble, Food Ltd.
Siouxsie and the Banshees (1981), Ju Ju, Polydor.
Siouxsie and the Banshees (1988), Peepshow, Wonderland/Polydor.
Siouxsie and the Banshees (1992), Twice Upon a Time, Polydor.
Sisters of Mercy (1985), First and Last and Always, Merciful Release/WEA.
Sisters of Mercy (1987), Floodland, Merciful Release/WEA.
Sisters of Mercy (1993), Greatest Hits Volume One: A Slight Case of Over Bombing,
Warner Music UK.
Specimen (1983), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Jungle Records.
Suspiria (1997), Drama, Nightbreed Recordings.
212
Bibliography
Synthetic (1999), MIDI Slave, Resurrection Records.

Type O Negative (1996), October Rust, Roadrunner.
UK Decay (1981), For Madmen Only, Fresh.
Various Artists (1992), Gothic Rock, Jungle Records.
Various Artists (1995), Gothic Rock 2, Jungle Records.
Various Artists (1998), Nocturnal, Procreate.
Various Artists (1997), Hex Files Vol. 1, Credo Records.
Various Artists (1997), Hex Files Vol. 2, Credo Records.
Virgin Prunes (1982), If I Die, I Die, Rough Trade.
VNV Nation (1998), The Solitary EP, Off Beat.
213
Index
Index
affiliation, see subcultural affiliation Came, H., 55–56, 72
appropriation, 10–11, 15–16, 38, 132–4, capital, see subcultural capital
137, 138, 139, 142–3, 146, 151 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Adam and the Ants, 57–8 (CCCS), 10–11, 15, 79
Adorno, T., 13, 14, 15, 26, 79 see also Birmingham school
Alien Sex Fiend, 36, 37, 155 Chambers, I., 17
All About Eve, 37, 54, 63n6 Chaney, D., 16, 20–21, 24, 31, 74
alternative culture, 27, 56–7, 133 Chart Show, The, 112
Anderson, B., 169 Chicago school, 9–10, 11, 29, 31, 81
androgyny, 35, 36, 55, 61, 70 Clarke, G., 11, 61, 109, 138
Ang, I., 15 Clarke, J., 10, 11
Apoptygma Berzerk, 47, 63n5, 89 clothes, see dress
Artificial Life (fanzine), 161 Cohen, Albert, 9–10, 11, 75, 81
Atton, C., 16, 154, 161, 169 Cohen, Anthony, 65
autonomy, see subcultural autonomy Cohen, P., 10, 11
Cohen, Sara, 4, 6, 18, 25–6, 27, 69, 77, 89,
Batcave, The (venue), 36, 48, 55, 110 102, 117, 148
Baudrillard, J., 17, 19, 22 Cohen, Stanley, 10, 12, 75, 113, 153, 158
Bauhaus, 36, 48, 53, 69, 89, 110, 128n1, colour (in dress), 2, 4, 42, 46–7, 58, 97, 158
142 Columbine High School, 113, 158–9
Bauman, Z., 19, 20, 72, 96, 195 commerce
Baym, N., 28 role of, 9, 10, 11, 12–13, 13–16, 16–19,
Bayton, M., 117 21, 25–7, 28, 32–3, 60, 78, 109, 138,
BBC, 111, 112 196
Becker, H., 9, 10, 74, 81 subcultural, 7, 12, 29, 33, 78, 87, 107,
Bennett, A., 20, 25, 38, 72, 87, 91, 195 108, 109, 111, 114–19, 119–28, 132,
Big Issue, The, 158 138–41, 142–8, 148–150, 171, 172,
Birmingham school, 10–12, 15, 26, 29, 30, 195, 196
31, 196 non-subcultural, 110–11, 114, 132, 133,
see also CCCS 136–7, 138, 171
Birthday Party, The, 36, 128n1, 142 see also translocal
Black Box, The (fanzine), 162, 163, 166 commitment, see subcultural commitment
Blumer, H., 5 consistent distinctiveness, 2, 7, 28, 29–30,
body, 53–4 37, 39, 40–1, 60–2, 65, 73–6, 83, 89,
Bourdieu, P., 73–4, 79, 81 107, 109, 132, 137, 138, 146, 150, 155,
Bowie, David, 35, 55 170, 173, 176, 187, 188, 193, 195–6, 198
BRV Magazine, 116, 124, 162–4, 165, 166, consumption practices, 7–8, 10, 13–16, 20,
168, 174n2 22, 92–3, 98, 109, 131–151, 197
bunde, 21–2, 23 Crimson (fanzine), 166
Butler, J., 48 Cult, The, 36, 37, 128n1
215
Index
Cure, The, 36, 37, 54, 63n6, 110, 155 friendships, 2, 7, 31, 81, 83, 88, 90, 91,
Curtin, M., 15–16 94–6, 97–8, 103–5, 106, 107, 125, 126,
Cyber Optic (fanzine), 162, 166, 168–9 141–2, 149–50, 182, 185–6, 189, 194
Frith, S., 77, 111, 117
dancing, 89–90, 91
Dawn Rising (fanzine), 162, 166 Garbage, 86, 112, 128n2, 136
Denzin, N., 6 Garber, J., 15
Dirlik, A., 14, 15 gatekeeping, 147–8, 167–9, 183
distinction 7, 10, 23, 30, 52, 62–3, 65, Gelder, K., 9
73–80, 81, 90–1, 95–6, 150, 180, 197 gender, 15, 17, 48, 56, 70, 72, 77, 117–19,
DIY entrepreneurs, 7, 16, 229, 121 197
Dorfman, A., 14 see also femininity, androgyny
Dorrell, David, 37 Gillespie, M., 4, 5
dress, 1, 36, 37, 46, 48–52, 56–8, 61–2, 71, global homogenization, 14–15, 19
72, 82, 90, 96, 97, 100, 113, 123, Goodwin, J., 18
131–2, 134, 142–4, 146, 150, 151, 183 Gordon, M., 9
dressing up as social event, 2, 92 Gothic Times (fanzine), 162
and status, 2, 40, 46, 57, 62, 92 Greene, J., 36
see also subcultural capital Guardian, The, 113
Dyer, R., 70–1 Gulia, M., 28, 186
Eadie, J., 72 hairstyle, 1, 36, 37, 56–7, 61–2, 80, 81,

ethnicity, 17, 70–1, 72, 77, 197 123, 183
ethnography, 4, 5, 25, 62, 70, 197–8 Hannerz, U., 26–7, 187
events Harris, K., 22, 24, 27, 72
role of, 32, 60, 85–6, 113–14, 146, 184 Harvey, D., 16
subcultural, 4, 7, 86, 88–98, 99–108, Hebdige, D, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 55, 61,
110, 114–15, 116, 143, 145–6, 170, 132–3, 135, 138, 139, 153
188, 195 hegemony, 10, 132–3
non-subcultural, 86–8, 91–2, 107 Hetherington, K., 18, 21–2, 23, 24, 31, 74
Hill, K., 179, 180
Faith and the Muse, 78, 123 Hine, C., 5
Faithful Dawn, 166, 182 Hollows, J., 103
fanzines, 3, 8, 27, 32, 83, 89, 92, 98, 114, homogenization, see global homogenization
115, 116, 120, 124, 153, 160, 161–70, Horkheimer, M., 13
173, 177, 193 horror, 44–5, 61
fashion, see dress, style Hughes, J., 179, 180
Featherstone, M., 18
femininity, 36, 48–56, 57, 61, 86, 90 ideals, see subcultural ideals
Fernback, J., 28 identity
fetishism, 51–2, 55, 56, 57, 81, 120, 133–4 multiple/fluid, 17–18, 20–3, 25, 74, 195
Fields of the Nephilim, 37, 54, 63n6 shared, 1, 2, 5, 7, 18, 19, 21, 25, 27–8,
film, 45, 131 29, 30–1, 37, 62, 65, 69, 73–5, 106,
Finnegan, R., 25–6, 27, 69, 89, 148–9 109, 138, 150, 155, 159, 169, 173,
flyers, 3, 8, 89, 98, 115, 116, 120, 148, 153, 176, 191–2, 193–4, 195–6, 198
160, 166, 167, 170–3, 177, 193 see also local, translocal
Fortin, A., 190 indie, 47, 56–7, 86, 87, 112, 135
Foster, P., 5 individuality, 38–41, 62, 66–7, 76–7,
Frankfurt school, 13–15 133–4, 135, 139
216
Index
internet Marcuse, H., 13, 14

role of, 8, 18–19, 28, 113, 160, 167, 170, Marilyn Manson, 79, 87, 112, 113, 136,
175–94, 195, 197 157
discussion groups, 3, 5, 28, 89, 92, 115, mass culture, theories of, 13–16, 19, 26,
179–181, 188, 189, 191–2, 194 153, 196
web sites, 3, 32, 89, 92, 114, 115, 120, Mattelart, A., 14
122, 125–6, 176–8, 179, 181–2, 183–4, McLaughlin, M., 28
187, 188, 189, 192, 194 McLuhan, M., 28
see also net.goth McRobbie, A., 12, 15, 16, 31–2, 61, 117,
Irwin, J., 9 119, 132, 138, 160, 196
media
Jameson, F., 16–17, 19 role of, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12–13, 13–16,
Jenkins, R., 20–1 16–19, 20, 26, 28, 32–3, 36–7, 44,
jewellery, 48, 100 55, 57, 60, 109, 138, 146, 153–4, 196
see also piercings subcultural media, 4, 7, 29, 33, 37, 85,
Jones, S., 175, 180 87, 89, 92, 96, 107, 108, 109, 115–16,
Joy Division, 35, 36 154, 160–174, 178, 179, 193–4, 195,
196
Kaleidoscope (fanzine), 162, 166 non-subcultural media, 111–13, 132,
Katz, A., 15 155–60, 173
Kendall, L., 19, 186 see also translocal
Kerrang!, 157, 164 Melody Maker, 111, 156, 158
Kollock, P., 180 Meltdown (fanzine), 162
Kruger, H., 61 Mercer, M., 37, 112
Kruse, H., 26, 27, 28 metal, see rock
labelling, 10, 12, 65, 66–7, 111, 147, 153 Metal Hammer, 157
Lash, S., 16 methodology, 4–6, 197–8
Leonard, M., 27, 117, 161, 162, 165, 176 see also ethnography
Liebes, T., 15 Meyer, M., 48
lifestyle (as concept), 20–1, 23–4, 29, 38 Milestone, K., 103
local Mirror, The, 113
identity, 24–7, 68–9, 99–100, 146–7 Mission, The, 1, 37, 54, 63n6, 110, 156
music scenes, 24–6, 68, 148–9 Miyoshi, M., 14
Locher, D., 74 moral panics, 8, 113, 153, 158–60
Lury, C., 70 Muggleton, D., 5, 12, 17–18, 19, 23, 30,
38–9, 61, 66, 72, 77, 78, 79, 133, 134,
macabre, 4, 36, 41–8, 61, 86, 113, 131 139, 153
MacDonald, D., 13 music
Maffesoli, M., 19–20, 21, 23, 29, 31, 72, role of, 13–15, 17, 22, 25–6, 35, 42, 71,
76, 96, 126–7, 195 72, 80, 81, 82, 96, 131, 151
mail order, 3, 115, 120, 139, 140–1, 143 goth, 35–7, 41, 47, 54, 57, 89, 135–7,
mainstream, 15, 17, 52, 56, 62, 73–9, 153, 140–2, 169
159
make-up, 1, 36, 42–3, 46, 47, 48, 61–2, 80, Naked Truth (fanzine), 124, 125, 162, 165,
90, 100, 123, 131–2 166, 174n2
Malbon, B., 87, 89, 91, 92–3 Negus, K., 110–11, 117
Malm, K., 14 Nekromantik, 63n5, 182
Mann, C., 5 neo-Frankfurt-School, 23
Manuskript, 63n5, 125, 167 neo-Marxism, 10, 11, 13
217
Index
neo-tribe, 19–20, 23, 29, 35, 38, 72, 126, Sisters of Mercy, The, 37, 83, 110, 128n1,
195, 196 128n2, 136, 155, 156, 157
net.goth, 175, 178, 191–3 Slobin. M., 27, 103–4
New Musical Express, 37, 111, 113 Smith, M., 180
new romantic, 4, 57–8, 135 social class, 10–11, 16, 17, 21, 29, 70–2
No 1 Magazine, 155, 174n1 sombre, 4, 36, 41–8, 61, 86, 113, 131
Song, M., 4
Old Grey Whistle Test, The, 111, 155 Sounds, 111
outsiders, see distinction Specimen, 36, 37, 49, 128n1
Stewart, F., 5
Parker, D., 4 Stratton, J., 27
Peel, John (DJ), 111, 155 Straw, W., 22, 56, 111
Peet, R., 14, 19 Strinati, D., 15, 16
piercings, 2, 56–7, 120, 183 style
Placebo, 86, 112, 128n2, 136 semiotic interpretations of, 10–12, 59–62
Plummer, K., 71 see also subcultural style
Polhemous, T., 18, 38 subcultural
Poster, M., 18, 175 affiliation , 21–2, 57, 62, 65–85, 87, 99,
postmodernism, 16–19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 72, 126, 176, 186, 191, 194, 195, 196–7,
153, 175, 196 198
proto-communities, 22 autonomy, 7, 29, 31–3, 109, 114, 116,
pseudo-individuation, 13, 15–16 128, 138, 139–40, 151, 170, 173, 175,
punk, 4, 10, 13, 27, 35–6, 46, 51, 56–7, 81, 176, 177, 178, 181, 194, 195–6
133, 135, 138 capital, 80–3, 90–2, 94, 95, 96, 99,
106–7, 108, 124–6, 127, 132, 135,
quantitative research, 6 136, 142, 150, 182, 192–3
queer theory, 48 commitment, 29, 31, 78–9, 80, 82, 83,
87, 96, 100, 103, 105, 109, 122, 124,
race, see ethnicity 128, 137, 138, 151, 170, 173, 176,
Redhead, S., 91, 153 178, 186, 191, 193, 195–6, 198
Reynolds, S., 27 ideals, 28, 47–8, 61, 62, 80, 125, 127,
Rhinegold, H., 175, 179, 181 167, 183, 192
Richard, B., 61 identity, see identity, shared
riot-grrrl movement, 27, 117, 161, 165 style, 2, 11, 28, 35, 38–62, 82, 89, 96–7,
rock, 57, 86–7, 89, 133, 135, 157 100, 107, 132–4, 137, 138–9, 146,
151, 155
Sabin, R., 161 substance, 7, 28–33, 114, 128, 132, 175,
Sanderson, D., 190 195–7, 198
Scathe, P., 36–37 theory, traditional, 9–13, 23
scene (as concept), 22, 24, 38, 72 see also commerce, events, media
Schiller, H., 14, 19 subculture, reworking of, 28–33
sexuality, 51–2, 54–6, 71–2, 77, 90, 134, 197 substance, see subcultural substance
Shank, B., 25, 27, 69
Shields, R., 21, 23, 72, 132, 150 Terrorizer, 157
shopping, see consumption practices Thompson, D., 36
Shuker, R., 112 Thornton, S., 5, 9, 11–12, 26, 31–3, 39, 65,
Shutz, A., 5 70, 74, 76, 77, 79–80, 81, 88, 110, 111,
Siouxsie and the Banshees, 35–6, 37, 110, 112, 113, 153–4, 156, 158, 159–60, 161,
118, 128n1, 128n2 167, 170, 171, 196
218
Index
Tomb Raver (fanzine), 162 undead see vampires

Tomlinson, J., 15 Urry, J., 16
Tonnies, F., 40
Top of the Pops, 112, 156 vampires, 36, 44–6, 113, 166
translocal virtual community, 28, 175, 179, 180
commerce, 26, 27, 103, 107–8, 115, VNV Nation, 47, 63n5
120–1, 132, 143–4, 167, 197
identity, 7, 16, 22, 27–8, 33, 68–9, 73,
Wallis, R., 14
106–8, 146–8, 169, 183, 190, 194,
Watson, N., 28, 180
195, 198
Wellman, B., 28, 186
media, 8, 26, 27–8, 107–8, 166–7, 170,
Whitby Gothic Weekend, 1–3, 4, 6, 103–5,
173, 187, 189–91, 193–4197
106, 112, 115–16, 118, 121, 125, 126,
transnational communication, 187–9
145–6, 147–8, 184–5, 187, 188, 192
travelling, 28, 99–100, 101–7, 120–1, 141,
Whyte, W., 9
143–4, 150, 172, 187–8, 189–91
Widdicombe, S., 30, 66
Triggs, T., 117, 161
Willis, P., 10–11, 15, 22, 114, 141–2
Tube, The, 111, 155
Wilson, Tony, 36
Turkle, S., 18–19, 175
Woofitt, R., 30, 66
Type O Negative, 87, 112, 157
uk.people.gothic (UPG), 177, 179, 180–1, Young, J., 10, 12, 75, 153, 158
182, 183, 184, 186, 187–88, 189, 190,
191, 192 Zig Zag, 111
219

What It Means Being Goth - A PHD On Dark Matter and Even Darker Energy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What It Means Being Goth - A PHD On Dark Matter and Even Darker Energy

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

What It Means Being Goth - A PHD On Dark Matter and Even Darker Energy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Goth

Dress, Body, Culture

Previously published titles in the Series

Oxford • New York

© Paul Hodkinson 2002

All rights reserved.

Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN 1 85973 600 9 (Cloth)

Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Wellingborough, Northants.

1 From Participant to Researcher 1

3 Goth as a Subcultural Style 35

4 Insiders and Outsiders 65

5 Events, Friendships and Commitment 85

6 Selling Goth? The Producers of Subcultures 109

7 Buying Goth: Subcultural Shopping 131

8 Communicating Goth: ‘Traditional’ Media 153

9 Communicating Goth: On-line Media 175

10 Concluding Thoughts 195

Appendix: Quantitative Questionnaire Results 199

8.2 Meltdown, peddled at the Whitby Gothic Weekend.

A car pulls up outside my home in the English city of Birmingham on a

about the reactions of other travellers to our collective presence and a

Becoming a Critical Insider

It would be mistaken, though, to assume as a result of such complexities

Achieving maximum understanding of a grouping such as the goth scene,

Outlining the Elements of a Subculture

Traditional Subcultural Theory

The beginnings of subcultural theory involved various theorists associated

Thus the scooter, a formerly ultra-respectable means of transport was appropriated

Consistent with materialist perceptions of the futility of resistance on a

on the part of subculturalists and, more importantly, underestimates the

Similarly Angela McRobbie indicates a neglect of the role of small-scale

While many of these criticisms of subcultural theory reflect genuine flaws,

that subculture, with its implications of substance, authenticity, distinctiveness

Mass Culture and Pseudo-individuation

In the late twentieth century, notions of mass culture resurfaced in the

The implication from Adorno is that there can be no meaningful or substant-

pseudo-individuation, appropriation and incorporation, underestimates the

From Sameness to ‘Similarity of Difference’

Interestingly, the exaggerated implication, in theories of mass homogenization,

innovation and experimentation in an intense drive to produce ‘ever more

The cultural implications of saturation by simulacra, then, are that consumers

modernity was an era of clearly differentiated, yet internally homogenous,

of texts in multi-user domains than in the many aspects of cyberspace more

A number of recent contributions to the study of lifestyles have sought to

within a wider sociality (Maffesoli 1996: 96). Furthermore, neo-tribal member-

The tribe-forming and dismantling sociality is not a symptom of declining

Writing more recently, Bennett (1999, 2000) specifically advocates the

subcultural groupings (e.g. Jenkins 1983; Chaney 1996). Richard Jenkins

applies the term to various contemporary groupings, including new age

David Muggleton, cited earlier in full support of postmodern theory, has

Subculturalists are postmodern in that they demonstrate a fragmented, heterogenous

It is not readily apparent what to make of this remarkable plethora of

More importantly, perhaps, a number of the individual explanations,

In contrast to much of the theory described in the previous two sections,

fairly consistently by ethnographies of popular cultural practices and identities

Consistent with Bennett’s emphasis on locality are a series of ethnographic