The Death And Life Of Punk: The Gothic Subculture

Introduction

In our society today, everyone is categorized by the way they express themselves, whether it’s the way they dress or the music they listen to. There are many of these groups more commonly known as subcultures that represent people with shared interests and values. The Gothic subculture is very diverse and carried throughout the world. It generated globally from the United Kingdom in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s from the punk genre (Goth: Undead Subculture, 2013). This subculture is usually defined as being ‘dark’ or ‘depressing’ with the dark coloured clothes, makeup and hair, since it mimics the Renaissance age. Thus, it is highly mistaken by the outside world. Mainstream culture has labeled the gothic culture to be violent

Originally, it began in the late 1970s in England after the punk genre began to fade out of fashion. The article, “The Death and Life of Punk, The Last Subculture” focuses on how the meaning of different subcultures has changed throughout the years. Historically, subcultures were very different to the way they are portrayed today. It mentions that punk has died in order for it to live again, in this case coming back as Goth, a more popular subculture (Dylan Clark, 2013). It is well known that followers of this subculture share the same interests regarding dark music, art, and fashion. Their sense of expression is much more visual when it comes to other

Ironically, this subculture was formed because certain citizens did not feel that they even belonged to society and it’s routines. Goths often felt misunderstood by people around them and that they were not fitting in with others. For this reason, they came together and found a sense of identity within the group.

According to Frank’s “perpetual motion machine”, today’s youth has enough freedom and money to station themselves away from the mainstream culture if they are not pleased with it. By counter dominating culture, they pose a new label of “cool” on something other than what everyone else in society likes. The Goth subculture in this sense brings attention to different clothing, movies, and music. Consequently, this provides a new consumer market for a variety of businesses (Gibney, September 30, 2013). Rather than adolescents all spending their money on the same type of item, these different subcultures are luring them towards particular things to make them fit in to a specific group. This situation is a win-win for both participants. Corporate companies and stores are wheeling in huge amount of hard earned cash from a youth’s minimum wage salary because that adolescent believes that a purchasing a product is essential to become “cool”. While on the other hand, most of these subcultures are branched off from the mainstream culture because they are