🖤 Goth, Thots, and the Who-Doo-Doo About Nothing
Thoughts From an Old Guy Who Apparently Missed a Meeting Okay, I’m sorry. I’m old. There. I said it. But somewhere along the highway of American culture, I apparently missed the exit where Goth became something requiring an instruction manual, a dress code, seventeen approved bands, and a tribunal of pale people deciding who is and is not sufficiently gloomy. When I hear “gothic,” my brain goes considerably farther back. I’m thinking STONE CHURCHES . Cathedrals. Gargoyles. Pointed arches. Stained glass. Monks wandering around holding candles while somebody in the basement is definitely translating a book they were specifically told NOT TO TRANSLATE . That’s Gothic. Then popular culture got hold of it. We wandered through the dark theatrical swagger of the Doors, the glorious mutant rockabilly madness of the Cramps, the chilly post-punk and new-wave years, the Cure looking beautifully miserable, and eventually Marilyn Manson arriving like somebody had detonated Halloween inside a...
