What is the definition of goth?

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This came to me while reading the micro-goth thread. What is the definition? How can Jesus and Mary Chain sing about death, disease, and enjoying the rain not be considered goth and The Cure singing mainly love songs be considered goth?

To me VU were probably the proto goth band. Definitions have changed over time and I honestly am not up to date with darkwave and current goth tastes but isn't it enough just to be sad?

― hector (hector), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 22:57 (twenty years ago)

Jesus and Mary Chain are dripping with gothy tendencies; I don't care waht anyone says.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:01 (twenty years ago)

http://planetx.htmlplanet.com/goth.html
http://www.scathe.demon.co.uk/histgoth/name.htm

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:01 (twenty years ago)

http://blood-dance.net/goth/origins.html
http://www.scathe.demon.co.uk/resgoth.htm

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

http://www.studiohunty.com/tamagothi/

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:07 (twenty years ago)

Excellent discussion on this thread where Dan's theory re: The Jesus and Mary Chain is decisively disproven!!!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

http://www.nyx.net/~astoker/gothmusic.html

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

less links more talk

tamagoth looks cool, I gotta try it.

― hector (hector), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:34 (twenty years ago)

Actually I thought that Dan's theory on Jesus and Mary Chain had not been disproven on that microgoth thread. Merely bandied about.

― hector (hector), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:35 (twenty years ago)

Perhaps THIS will refresh your memory?
http://www.teringer.com/olda/vystavy/vystava_foto_98/images/robert_smith.jpg

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:38 (twenty years ago)

What might the sport of GOTHBALL be like?!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

a picture of an old man in his pajamas?

― hector (hector), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:45 (twenty years ago)

Jesus and Mary Chain are dripping with gothy tendencies; I don't care waht anyone says.

They'd happily slit your throat for saying so.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

To me VU were probably the proto goth band.

Why? Because they happen to wear black? Sorry, :::::BUZZZZZZZ::: wrong answer.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:50 (twenty years ago)

I honestly am not up to date with darkwave and current goth tastes

Nor should you be.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:51 (twenty years ago)

To be fair, they did have gothy girlfriends. Check out the end of the "Some Candy Talking" video.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 23:51 (twenty years ago)

Simply sporting a black wardrobe does not make you a Goth. Fuckin' CUTTING CREW wore black -- are they goths? I think not.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:02 (twenty years ago)

Cutting Crew, two decades ago:

http://www.virginmusic.de/de_images/artists/3251613.jpg

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:03 (twenty years ago)

I have long been in the Mary Chain are NOT goth camp. The girl on the left is the only thing that sort of made me ever consider it:

http://www.amniisia.com/aprilskies/gallery/big/jimwill/r1.jpg

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:07 (twenty years ago)

Wearing black do not necessarily make you goth but, writing about rather dark subjects "Heroin", long feedback drenched howls of noisy despair "Sister Ray" and generally being a morose bastard "Lou Reed" may have some bearing on being considered goth or not.

― hector (hector), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:08 (twenty years ago)

I would like to see the skinny brothes reid try to slit my throat for saying anything actually. Besides they are scottish which makes them halfway goth to begin with.

― hector (hector), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:10 (twenty years ago)

No eyeliner = not goth.

― Good Dog, Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

I've always thought that goth involved an identification with vampires and/or witches and magic.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:15 (twenty years ago)

I know it when I see it.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:20 (twenty years ago)

Andrew Boorde, physician in the late sixteenth century described it best in his Breviary of Health (1575):
"The original of this infirmitie doth come of an evil melancholy humour, and of an stubberne heart, and running to farre in fantasies, or musing or studying upon thinges that his reason can not comprehend, suh persons at length wil come and be very natural fooles, having gestes with them, or els pevish fantasticall matters having nothing to the purpose, and yet in theyr conceyt doe thinke themselves wyse."

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:35 (twenty years ago)

I think that's overly harsh!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

What is the definition of "grotty"?

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

I once saw the J&M Chain referred to as The Velveteen Underground

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:40 (twenty years ago)

They've also been called The Beach Boys of Death.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:42 (twenty years ago)

Beach Boys of Death would be an awesome name for a band.

I agree that the Drew Quote above is harsh but it sure has described a lot of goths I have known. As well as a hell of a lot of other people, myself included.

Are Matmos goth?

― hector (hector), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:47 (twenty years ago)

The harsh quote comes from my research for my dissertation on early modern representations of melancholy (I suppose the fashionable melancholics I am writing about were basically the goths of the 1590s), so it's something I certainly think about.

Is Matmos goth? Umm . . . well we made a song out of a human skull and we did a Coil cover, so maybe the honest answer is "Sometimes", but . . . I suppose too much of what we do is either too silly or too improv/messy or too beat oriented to count as goth. I mean goth is rather strict as far as emotional palettes go, right?

I guess I'm flip-flopping on the goth question, sorry.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 00:56 (twenty years ago)

cartoon/camp gloom

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

The Go!th Team!

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:03 (twenty years ago)

Not at all I think the whole thing has become too identified with vampires ect. That was the basis for asking what goth is. I mean how can you have micro-goth without the signifiers that would for most people identify something as goth i.e. makeup, Robert Smith ect..

Goths of the 1590s is an interesting subject, was it an upper caste thing?

― hector (hector), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:04 (twenty years ago)

xpost

weasel is right- goth resembles camp because it is a stylized way of announcing/exaggerating/amplifying emotion into something more like an instantly legible surface. Goth's tropes become especially flattened out when we see them showing up in the "wrong" locations for their alternately 19th century England/medieval Europe repetoire of signs (ie. LA, Tokyo, the American suburbs). They show up as especially campy in those forms. Goth, like camp, is a way of appreciating certain things which have already had a first run at being "serious" (Wagner, Pre-Raphaelite art, Romanticism generally, the cult of sensibility in 18th c. aesthetics)

about 1590s "goth"-

don't get me started on my dissertation but it goes like this: Marsilio Ficino rediscovers a passage attributed to Aristotle that says that men of genius are typically melancholic; he hot-rods with a neo-platonic philosophy and revives in Italy an aura of genius around the emotion of sorrow. Wealthy young English sons travel through Italy and bring the fashion back to their homecountry. It becomes a convention of fashionable portraiture ot have a "melancholy" portait painted. (we have one of John Donne, for example). So it was a trend in aesthetics, and was already tired in Italy by the time the English had cottoned on to it. The irony is that the passage is not actually in Aristotle- it was a misattribution. So fashionable goth is based on a sloppy bit of scholarship.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:11 (twenty years ago)

Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger is fashionable goth.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:14 (twenty years ago)

http://www.gothicorlando.com/hunger2.jpg

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:18 (twenty years ago)

yep.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:18 (twenty years ago)

marilyn manson has some really nice expensive suits

― chaki in charge (chaki), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:20 (twenty years ago)

I've always thought that goth involved an identification with vampires and/or witches and magic.

So how the fuck is The Cure goth, then?

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:24 (twenty years ago)

I'm kind of not sure how the Cure is exactly goth either, except that Robert Smith wore the makeup.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:33 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, they aren't but he did.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:37 (twenty years ago)

they're not goth they're death rock and nuromantic

― chaki in charge (chaki), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 01:38 (twenty years ago)

I think my entire point can be summed up as "If The Cure is a goth band, so is The Jesus and Mary Chain".

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 19:30 (twenty years ago)

Maybe it's having goth fans that make things goth or not, rather than artists. So there would be a goth continuum between certain comic books, novelists, role playing games, clothing items, cosmetics, bands, etc.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 20:56 (twenty years ago)

GOTH AS FUCK

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/alextwo_copy.jpg

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 20:57 (twenty years ago)

Is the Birthday Party still goth?
Or are they too rough and tumble?

― LSTD (answer) (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 20:59 (twenty years ago)

Wait, actually, that's a Visigoth. Sorry.

― The Mad Puffin, Wednesday, 5 January 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

I would say Birthday Party are pretty goth. I think I even remember hearing them in a club called the Batcave in Austin in the late 80s.

I know some goths are into Cradle of Filth and other Death/Black Metal.
I considered some grindcore quite gothy too.

I guess Drew is right, its whatever the boys in black say goth is.

― hector (hector), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 23:14 (twenty years ago)

eight years pass...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/29/style/goth.html?_r=0

"...a countercultural identity that had its heyday in the mid-1990s."

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 29 October 2013 20:58 (eleven years ago)

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