SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSITY:The Punk-Gothic Vision: From Blade Runner to Batman and Robin

Nope sorry glam rock and heavy metal two different things remember I am speaking as a kid that was buying these albums and going to concerts from the early 70’s onwards. Bowie started out as a glam rocker and then went his own way T-Rex was a one hit wonder here in the states. From my perspective the glam stuff did not last that long but the New York Dolls did try to give it a punk feel before punk was a widely used term.

Groups that had the heavy metal pre-Goth look I am talking about could not be mistaken for glam. UFO, the Scorpions, Rainbow and Black Sabbath Led Zeppelin. Remember in the 70’s it was more of the themes of their music and the cover art on there albums then the fashions came later.

It is not unusual for someone looking back from twenty or thirty years to see thing that a person that lived it did not. I experienced the world that we are talking about as a tween and teen in upstate New York in a working class neighborhood. We listened to music worked on cars and did all the normal American things.

I also have the perspective of going to heavy metal clubs in the late 70’s and early 80’s again you might see things in a different light than I. At the time I was drinking listening to music and chasing and if lucky catching willing girls for all the normal male reasons of someone in there early twenties. I was not taking notes but I am just reporting what I experienced at the time from fading memory. Since I was in the Navy for part of the time I saw clubs in Florida, New York both upstate and NYC metro area, Connecticut, Las Vegas and LA.

I saw the beginnings of death metal, speed metal, big hair metal and yes Goth. Metal at the time was a subgenre that it self was dividing into even more subgenres. I can not report what was happening everywhere just on what I saw and my impressions of it. I am sure there are many more influences on Goth than the heavy metal world I traveled in but since I was a head banger back then it’s what I saw.

I think I'd consider what you're describing to be the glam movement in the early 70s - T-Rex and Spiders-era Bowie and noted pedophile Gary Glitter and whatnot. Most of the metal stuff you're talking about - KISS, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath etc - is Shock Rock which for the most part descends from Screamin' Jay Hawkins in the 50s, who's main goal was to scare hell out of white kids because white kids will pay money to have the hell scared ouf of 'em (Damndest thing!). Cooper was deliberately aping this as a kind of cabaret, as was KISS, but Sabbath doesn't seem to have realized the whole 'devil worship' thing Jay had going on was a joke, and thus it descends from there.

The whole androgynous glam thing *did* tend to resurface in the Goth subculture, and also in the "New Romantic" movement that ultimately became synonymous with big, dancy, splashy New Wave stuff in the 80s, then disappeared again.

Definitely the Fashion aspect has always been a really important part of Goth, though, I totally agree there. Just for the hell of it, here's my favorite Love and Rockets song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5vDWDUXwlM

I am at an unusual place because of my age (turned 49 this last Saturday) that I remember when certain things started to creep into our culture. What would become the Goth aesthetic started with early 70’s heavy Metal. Led Zeppelin had themes from Tolkien and the occult in many of there songs. This fantasy and occult look and feel was pickup by groups like Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Rainbow and Uriah Heep etc. Progressive groups like Yes and the Moody Blues also took up this fantasy aesthetic in there album covers and shows. By the 80’s it was the Heavy Metal look just like spiked hair and torn t-shirts were the punk look.

As Heavy Metal became darker through out the 80’s with groups like Iron Maiden, Judas Priests and others the Goth look started to evolve. Now this is not a scientific or historical analyses this is just my memory from being a head banging metal freak. It also seemed to me what we now call Goth started with women’s fashion in the rock world going for that look. (I found it sexy myself) over the leopard bodysuits that was the norm on MTV metal videos. For myself like most men of the time I have always tended toward leather jackets to the point even now when I wear my leather pea coat some of my friends tell me I look like a u-boat commander.

I know I did not mention Kiss and Alice Cooper but they where the more commercial faces of this in the 70’s and early 80’s. There lyrics where more radio friendly than some in heavy metal not withstanding there look.

I've long held the view that Poetry is more real than History: History tells us what happened, while Poetry tells us what it means, what it feels like, what it is.

I've also held the view that faith and reason are the shoes on your feet, and you'll go further with both of them together than you will with either one alone. I'm totally open to the idea - which most people see as rather muddy thinking, but I don't - of looking at something from an intuitive and analytical viewpoint simultaneously. In fact, I encourage it. A lot of people accuse me of falling prey to some kind of Orwellian Doublethink when I do this, but I think what Orwell failed to understand is that Doublethink is the normal, natural state of affairs for humanity, and always has been. We are, as a people, neither soul nor monkey, but an uncomfortable synthesis of the two, so naturally our thinking is gonna' be an uncomfortable synthesis of the logical and the emotional.

I'm cool with all that. Our lives exist in the intersection between what we know and what we feel. That said, it's a valid criticism that I probaly lean a bit far in the 'analytical' direction, though I strive to be something of a romantic. I was raised by engineers and farmers, and it's no coincidence that "-bot" is part of my name. I'm a slave to my core programming. I am, however, far more intuitive than most.

Also, please don't get the feeling that I'm attacking you. I'm not. I thought this essay was very interesting, you make a lot of good points, and even though there's some I don't agree with, I think they're worth talking about, and they *are* interesting. A theory doesn't have to be true to have value, after all. Sometimes by missing the vein we were shooting for when mining, we discover other stuff that's even more valuable. So this isn't a criticism of you or your style, I just feel like you've cracked a nut with this one, and that's brought up a whole lot of interesting ideas that are worthy of further discussion.

Names are delicate things. There are, for instance, thousands of agreed-upon terms for different aspects of theology, or sailboats, or engineering, or what have you. If I'm trying to figure out the actions of God based on scripture or observable nature, that's a Theodicy, and if I call it a "Theodicy" everyone will know what I'm talking about, either inherently, or when they look it up. Easy. If I invent a name for it - lets say "Divine Retrospective Interpretation" for instance - then that's not a term that everyone knows, or can look up, and using it is confusing and a case of re-inventing the wheel, which is, of course, frought with peril. In this case - and this is me being hyperanalytical again - I found you ascribing a name to something that already has a very well-defined meaning, and the way you were using it was more or less opposed to its conventional meaning. I personally found this rather confusing - as if someone were to refer to a Mainsail when they meant a Jib, or a Federal goverment when they meant a Fascist government or whatever - and I think it tended to undercut some of what you were going for.

But again, I really like your articles, I look forward to reading them, I think they're a great addition to our site, I like having you around, you're swell, and I'm not criticising you or your style. I just feel like I require some further clarification on this one.

The only conceptual link I'm making is the verbal one. The essay is about the evolution of a word in our culture. "Punk Gothic" is my own term used to describe a particular trend in film. You have a tendency to make critical assessments based excessively on the history of ideas. That's a mistake. It's reductive, especially in regard to the nature of meaning. Meanings aren't always logical; they're not always abstract; they're not always ideas. Nor are words static in meaning. I also have doubts about ideas always being historically traceable. At any rate, what I've read of your criticism of texts (from TV shows to my essays) suggests to me that your approach is very different from mine. As such you make assumptions about what I'm saying that aren't true. So what is my approach? A topic for another discussion, but it begins with an understanding of human knowing as at least tripart: based in reason, imagination and experience (and probably more). On top of this understanding is an understanding of the nature of meaning: it is not the same as truth or ideas (though ideas and truths are meanings); most important to this understanding is C. S. Lewis's claim that imagination is the organ of meaning while reason is the organ of truth. Once this is understood, meanings become far more than abstract concepts, truth statements, or philosophical/theological ideas. I could go on but that's enough for now and much of the rest of this discussion is in my Narnia essay and several other essays on my own website. My point: when I approach texts, I do so in a way that is different from what I see in your writing. Until you understand that approach, you won't really get my criticism.

I'm hardly Gothy MacGothington or anything, but I think I have to point out a couple things which - to me - appear as misassumption. I may be wrong, I don't pretend to be authorotative on this, but it seems to me that Dr. Starr is assuming a conceptual link between Gothic architecture, Gothic music, and Gothic novels based on the fact that all have "Gothic" in their names. I'm not sure that's the case.

First of all - as Dr. Starr alluded to, but didn't quite stick a pin in - "Goth" in the modern sense basically refers to a moraly and artistically dark, conflicted, brooding, and somewhat nihilistic subculture. This obviously has nothing to do with Gothic architecture, which is inherently pios, and was renowned when it arose for being unbelievably light and airy and cheerful compared to the blocky romanesque stuff it replaced. In the mideval argot, then, "Gothic" means "Sunny and happy," (Well, technically, it refers to a more-or-less extinct Germanic tribe, but you know what I mean.)

This of course has little or nothing to do with the "Gothic Novel" as it emerged in the 19th century, which was an outgrowth of the Romantic movement. As Dr. Starr points out, this was basically a post-enlightenment reaction to a view of a world that had become a bit too sterile and had lost its magic. Romantic poets and novelists sought to find or create this magic through overblown romance, adventures, call outs to the classics, and an emphasis on what things subjectively *mean* rather than what they are. Obviously, there's no real correlation between Gothic Architecture and the moody romance novels cranked out in the 19th century, though I *do* agree that the subgenre of Gothic Horror - Frankenstein (the first Science Fiction novel, by the way), some of Poe's work, Dracula, and even some early 20th Cthulu Mythos stuff - does definitely wander in to "Goth" in the modern sense, but that's a subgenre, so by definition, it's going to be an uneasy fit for the movement as a whole.

As to music, the name "Goth" has absolutely nothing to do with anything, and is completely random. As I recall The title "Goth" emerged in 1978 as a joke by a punk band. (I forget which one) They said something to the effect of "Punk is dead, and we're tired of it anyway."

"SO what are you in to now?" the reporter asked.

"Gothic architecture. We're totally goths."

After the fact, the guy who said that said he said it becuse it was the stodgiest, stupidest, most obviously joking thing he could think of on the spot, and hit had nothing to do with music, and was kind of the exact opposite of punk, but the reporter - and hence the readers - took it seriously. Hence minor key oppressive music with a heavy reliance on byronesque horror, drum machines, and tape
loops and relatively high basslines that frequently usurp the melodic role came to be known as "Goth," but even that name didn't really catch on until '82 or '83. (And IIRC, "Bauhaus" chose that name specifically because it was as un-Gothic a school of architecture as you could get.)

There *IS* some relationship between Gothic music and Gothic Horror, obviously, but there's just as much a link between the Goth scene and the moody, early SF of JG Ballard and esoteric philosophy (Love and Rockets have always been really in to Meister Eckhart) as anything else.

Also, "Gothic" isn't a "Punk" movement. Punk was expressly a rejection of the way things are. Goth is a step beyond that to the creation of something new. Musically and aesthetically, they're very, very different. Punk, much as I love it, has basically been in a holding pattern since about 1977 or so, whereas Goth has continued to evolve and develop. I don't think you can really lump 'em together any more than you can lump Christianity and Judaism together - yes, there's overlap, yes, they share a common origin, but they've become fundamentally different things.

I'd also suggest that "Alien" (1979) is a better candidate for "First Punk-Gothic Movie," as it was deliberately a Gothic Horror story set in space. "Blade Runner" (1982) was conciously intended as a sort of neo-noir, which is a different aesthetic, and it has a very different feel. I'm sure there's earlier examples, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. Suffice to say, "Alien" was the first "Gothic" movie that got a wide audience. Ain't nothin' 'Punk' about it, though.

Anyway, this is just my take on stuff. I'm not saying I'm authorotative - I may very well be wrong - but having existed on the fringes of several of these subcultures for years, that's the sense of it that I get.

Thoughts on my thoughts?