My understanding is that the term “Gothic”, which led to “Goth” is derived from the name and writings of Johann Goethe, whose works of fiction have a mood of despair and depression.
The fact that it coincides with the name of the Goth tribe of barbarians is linguistic coincidence.
I would just like to point something out. Abbot Suger built the worlds first gothic building, the abbey church of Saint-Denis. It was called gothic because “Gothic architecture has nothing to do with the historical Goths. It was a pejorative term that came to be used as early as the 1530s to describe culture that was considered rude and barbaric. François Rabelais imagines an inscription over the door of his Utopian Abbey of Theleme, “Here enter no hypocrites, bigots…” slipping in a slighting reference to ‘Gotz’ (rendered as ‘Huns’ in Thomas Urquhart’s English translation) and ‘Ostrogotz.’ In English 17th century usage, ‘Goth’ was an equivalent of ‘vandal,’ a savage despoiler, with a sense of ‘Germanic’ and so came to be applied to the architectural styles of northern Europe before the revival of antiquity, thus ‘Gothic’ architecture.”
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_architecture
We have already discovered the first time it was applied to music but that is what the word Gothic was meant to be originally. I do not know if it helps.
Nope. There is a real, honest-to-god goth subculture where the frames of reference–popular music, fashion styles, popular literature, customs, etc.–are different from the mainstream. There are people who really are part of that subculture (adults and teenagers), and there are people who pretend to be part of it for whatever their reasons are. Those in the latter group are posers.
Meh. My friends that are self-ascribed goths say that real goths smoke only cloves, not regular cigarettes – the reason being that cloves shred your lungs, so you’re bleeding on the inside as well as on the outside (emotionally). This must also be done in “chain-smoking” fashion, as one or two cloves a day won’t achieve the desired effect and therefore make you a poser.
I laugh at them when they’re doubled over, hocking up bloody phlegm balls. :smack:
I know that the goths we’re all debating about have nothing whatsoever to do with the Goths who proved something of a headache to the Roman Empire during the centuries of its decline, but I still have this hilarious picture in my head of a couple of Roman citizens walking home one night, and being terrorized (or, more likely, simply bemused) by some lanky goth in a big, black cape jumping out from around a corner, doing a silly dance in front of them, and going, “Whoo! Look at me! I’m a vampire!” IIRC, “The Goodies” once did a similar sort of silly send-up of the Vandals, another scourge of the ancient Roman Empire (they showed them sacking Rome, and one of them painting VANDALS RULE on a wall in the process).
In the same vein, I got quite a kick out of this.
What I’ve always disliked about the goth scene is that there’s always a handful of folks who think they get to decide what’s real and what isn’t.
I used to go to goth/industrial clubs here in Sac (all 2 of them… hehhe) and did the clothes thing. Then I realized that if I wanted to support my family, at work I needed to dress a little more mainstream. So I did so.
And I watch the occasional television show.
And yet somehow that makes me not goth, even though I love the clothes (but can’t wear them as much as I would like) and the music, and the whole scene.
Screw that. I don’t care if your entire outfit is from Hot Topic and you get your entire sense of style from “The Crow” and Neil Gaiman books, if you feel it, it counts.
That’s a classic! Ha ha ha!
For all your hanigng around goths, you didn’t realize that they’re possibly the most catty people one could hope to meet?
No more and no less than the Pagans, Import Racers, Rappers and wanna be gangsters I hang out with. I think they just add a touch more drama than others.
Ancient Goth: Someone who destroyed the Roman Empire.
Modern Goth: A vegan pretending to be a vampire.
Hee hee…vegan pretending to be a vampire…
Two cents:
The current goth look actually is a combination of a couple of early eighties looks: Death Rock and New Romantic and Mod. Death Rock evolved out of punk, basically punk except all black/red/purple clothes and focusing on death rather than anarchy. New romantic was a Duran Duran, Brian Ferry, Ultravox kinda thing involving lace and ruffled shirts and whatnot. Mod was the Who and chromed vespas and really sixties-brit looking (watch the movie “Quadrophenia” and you’ll get what I’m talking about. Current “goths” for example would wear black lacy ruffled shirts with torn black fishnets and date a boy who rode a chromed-out vespa. 
Sigh. Although the eighties looked rather horrible, and I HATEHATEHATE the current fashion trend that is soooo retro-eighties (ack! layered ruffled miniskirts! ack!) I do get very nostalgic for how damn artistic it all was. Maybe I’m getting old, but it seems like there isn’t a whole lot of art in current pop culture, where as in the eighties art was the axis that pop culture turned on.
P.S. In the late eighties/early nineties, my friends and I referred to ourselves as both Goth and Deathrock.
It started with Renaissance writers who believed that medieval archictecture was barbaric. They called this form of architecture gothic, and the term stuck.
Then, in the early 1800s, a style of highly melodramatic prose called “horrid novels” became popular. This prose usually involved virtuous ladies being abducted by a depraved, yet well-born villian to be eventually rescued by the dashing hero; or perhaps said virtuous lady might find herself in a castle haunted by malevolent spirits and general weirdness, again to be be rescued. These novels were often set in crumbling medieval castles or churches that were barely more than a few gothic arches leading to the inevitable dungeons. This lead to the term “gothic novel” or “gothic romance” and the term gothic acquired its meaning of things dark, dangerous, convoluted and occult. Horrid novels led to both the modern genres of horror and gothic romance, and gothic romances were popular well into the 70s.
Finally, the tone and mood of “gothic” were picked up by the current goths - who often take on the trappings of the horror genre, even including the gothic arches from the medieval churches that the renaissance writers were so down on.