Fashion goth

[imomus]

I'm not into this thing, fashion goth.

It's probably because I'm not into rock and roll, Romanticism, or Christianity.

I'm not into Asia Argento or Vincent Gallo.

I think their way of thinking is inherently right wing.

I mean, Gallo votes Republican. Fucking fashion goth!

Trent Reznor is also a plonker.

I'm not into Suicide Girls.

I hate tattoos and piercings and the cult of self-injury.

Sex is not evil or wicked.

What Christian sect do you guys belong to?

I'm not a Christian.

Fashion goth is an aestheticization of pain.

Just like a Cranach crucifixion scene.

We invented goth in London in the Batcave in 1984, but something else came along in 1985, I forget what.

Oh yes, Live Aid.

But America takes much longer to forget stuff, especially stuff like punk and goth.

And social activism has no chance against Christian imagery and teen suicide and eating disorders, has it?

The Marquis de Sade was mounting a critique of the Enlightenment.

What's wrong with the Enlightenment, girls?

Why do you dress in black and dye your hair with streaks of burgundy red?

It looks terrible.

Fashion goth!

Hedi Slimane has a lot to answer for!

Hedi gave fashion goths a skinny tie.

We love you, Hedi! But personally I prefer Bless, or Ann-Sofie Back.

Jack Brennan and Maximilian Hecker are pretty fashion goth boys.

They work for Hedi sometimes.

Life can't be all that black when you're as pretty as they are.

One DJs, one sings, hunched over his piano, so intense.

Come on, Maximilian, you fucking fashion goth tortured Romantic genius!

I like Kai Althoff much better.

When I say "I like X much better", it's usually because X has a keen sense of the absurd.

And also because I can't immediately pigeonhole X's style.

X is not a fashion goth.

Sometimes Berlin seems like nothing but fashion goths on the one hand and the cute kitsch crew on the other.

(Oh, and of course Russian punks with scary dogs.)

The fashion goths and the kitsch crew both love Japan, but I think they get Japan wrong.

I'm not into Trevor Brown, who makes S&M look kawaii.

I'm just not into S&M full stop.

And I was never a Bauhaus fan, although I did see them live in 1981.

Are you jealous, fashion goths?

Pete Murphy was vicious and pretty, lashing out at people with pointed shoes and carrying a strobe light.

Japanese people tend not to be fashion goths, or into kitsch.

Even the black lace Gothic Lolitas in Japan are something else, really.

They're human mille feuille cakes, not goths.

I think it's because Christianity has never meant anything in Japan.

If you get into a Shinto-Buddhist mindset you don't dwell on negativity.

Japan is a different culture bloc.

Shinto is a fertility religion.

Can you imagine a fashion goth soaking in a sento and then playing pachinko and then eating a hearty meal at an isakaya, chatting away and laughing at the comedians on TV?

"Where's the agony?" he would cry, meaning "Where's the beauty?"

He'd miss the beauty in the food, and in the water.

It's a mistake to think there's only beauty in pain.

Fertility religions celebrate life, whereas Christianity and Islam celebrate death and resurrection.

Your average Japan-based girl blogger photographer has something in common with the brilliant Rinko Kawauchi.

Photos of tendril ferns, a clear sky, a starfish or a seahorse, a delicious cake!

Sunshine came into the room! Life looks good, and the cake looks tasty!

Why is fashion goth always connected with eating disorders?

What's wrong with our relationship with food in the West?

Why do the Japanese-in-Japan love food so much, and celebrate it all the time on TV?

Let's not even talk about drugs here, "heroin chic".

I really, really hate heroin, and how it makes the world around you matter less.

Just like Christianity.

Shall we have children?

Shall we celebrate fertility?

Kahimi Karie was wholesome and positive until she started living in Paris and started dating a fashion goth model called Jerome Lechevalier.

She changed visibly into a fashion goth. Then she started asking me for songs about skulls and monsters and sleeping in a coffin and stuff.

I blame the fashion goth model guy. (Though of course I'm to blame too. Post-feminist guilt made me try to toughen up her image.)

When I was in New York this time all I could see on everyone's T shirt was skulls, skulls, fucking skulls.

How can you protest the Iraq war if there are skulls all over you, fucking fashion goth?

Apollo not Dionysus, Marx not Spengler, Gandhi not Jesus!

Happy not sad, chatty not mute! Celebrate, don't mourn! Fertility, not necro-fashion!

If you mourn you'll give us a reason to mourn. But if you celebrate you might give us a reason to celebrate.

The good thing about Devendra and (say) The Incredible String Band is that they're hippies, not goths.

They draw on the orient, not the occident.

Though of course the Incredible String Band were Christians, weren't they?

But they were "white robe" Christians, not black shirt and scars Christians.

Robin Williamson says something in "Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending" about not feeling inferior to god but finding god in yourself.

I wonder if 9/11 gave New York a big fashion goth boost?

New York is a big global disseminator of styles.

Are we all living in the shadow of the towers, "learning to live with somebody's depression"?

I don't want to live with somebody's depression!

You can't just suddenly become fashion goth if you don't feel it, if it's not deep in your culture.

I mean, if we were bombing people to fashion gothery the way we're bombing them to "freedom", it wouldn't work either.

Joy Division were quite a good band, but New Order are better, ne?

Because, finally, it's better to be alive than dead, and happy than sad.

My next album is going to be deeply immersed in the reputedly banal positivity of Shinto-Buddhism.

No influence from Asia Argento, but lots from Rinko Kawauchi.

Fashion goths will not buy it.

The sleep of reason breeds monsters, said Goya. "And fashion goths," we might add.

Comments

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I must say, I'm rather fond of goth, but I suppose I'm thinking of the British movement that, I believe, began with Joy Division. I'm fond of it because in this country (Britain) everyone finds goths to be ludicrous and pretentious, except the goths themselves, who are now very much an endangered species. I like the fact that there are people so visibly dramatising their inner lives in a childish 'make-believe' manner.

I'm not so fond of Marilyn Manson, though I certainly don't hate him. I believe he went out with Rose McGowan, and that alone justifies his existence.

I do actually think Joy Division are far better than New Order.

I even like Fields of the Nephilim.

I don't think Buddhism is a particularly 'positive' religion, anyway. It's certainly one that I find fascinating, but it is centred very much on death. As every Japanese person knows, it's Shinto for weddings and Buddhism for funerals. However Buddhism may have started, culturally it is not an 'affirmation of life'. If you're very good, in Buddhism, you get to escape the eternal round or earthly existence forever - that is the ultimate goal. And I think it's inaccurate to say that Japanese culture celebrates life, as if it is in some way markedly more life-affirming than Western culture. Death has also, traditionally, played a central role in Japanese culture, with death, to many, actually being far more important than life. In the samurai ethic, for instance, it was the warrior's death that was all-important.

Japanese literature, too, is full of preoocupations with death rather than life, dwelling on pain, on the sad transience of existence and so on. The most sybaritic Japanese writer I can think of - Tanizaki Jun'ichiro - was intensely aware of death, and his last two novels are painful explorations of the sexuality of men succumbing to death in old age.

But, all this aside, a very interesting post.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, you're right about Buddhism being rather death-oriented. I was seeing Japan more as a Shinto culture, with Shinto standing as a fertility religion and therefore being attuned to festivals and the agricultural / gourmet joys, as well as sexual reproduction. But I also think the aristocratic nature of Buddhism has had a strong influence on Japan: Siddhartha Gottama was the scion of a rich family who turned his back on money and materialism. So in Japan you have both a populist celebration of the material world (Shinto) and an aristocratic rejection of it (Buddhism). One just in time for marriage, the other just in time for death!

[(Anonymous)]

Don't bother Momus with factual accuracy!

der.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Marilyn Manson is like a walking venereal disease. There is something viscerally manky and repulsive about him.

Or perhaps my sensibilities are just too bourgeois and conservative to handle his iconoclastic genius. Though, on reflection, probably not.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

An interesting point. Certainly my gut reaction on my first exposure to MM was very similar. Having seen him interviewed and listened to more of his music, I do think there's something interesting going on, but it's not for me.

I think there's something here about textures. I love Gothic literature, and I quite like British goth music, because I feel there to be a dusty, grainy texture, if that makes sense. MM gothicism is too... I'm not sure how to describe it... glossy? Square-jawed? Disney? John Wayne?

Something like that.

Which venereal disease is he? Herpes? Chlamydia?

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Not to mention too cynical and manufactured. Marilyn Manson is the Ronald McDonald of Goth (aside: which would probably make Trent Reznor its Mickey Mouse, in the way that McDonalds marketed itself as a day-to-day mini-Disneyland for the tastebuds, but I digress). His entire shtick is to be as outrageous and transgressive as possible as long as it doesn't involve any genuine thought, as opposed to mindless reaction against Bible Belt values by adopting their exact opposites. Sure, anyone not buffeted by adolescent hormones and Middle American culture-war neuroses may see right through him, but as with all transparently simple shticks, there are enough people who'll buy it to make it worthwhile.

As for which venereal disease, something with weeping sores and/or a rancid, foul-smelling discharge. He gives off that sort of vibe.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh please don't bring any facts to the table to get in the way of Derrida Jr.'s "facts".