THE GOTHIC STYLE
VII OPEN DAYS FOR THE STUDY OF PHOTOGRAPHS. COMMUNITY OF MADRID. Canal de Isabel II, Madrid.
Audiovisual presentation. Thursday, the 5th April 2000.
AFTERHOURS The Sisters of Mercy
SHE IS IN PARTYS Bauhaus
PAGAN LOVE SONG Virgin Prunes
SEBASTIAN Sex Gang Children
SEXUAL UK Decay
TRAIN The Sisters of Mercy
FOLLOW THE LEADERS Killing Joke
DEAD AND BURIED Alien Sex Fiend
RADIANT BOYS March Violets
FETISH Vicious Pink
REDRUM Alaska y los Pegamoides
TENGO UN PASAJERO Parálisis Permanente
SPIRITWALKER The Cult
YOU GOT GOOD TASTE The Cramps
KISS KISS BANG BANG Specimen
THE DROWNING Christian Death
PREMATURE BURIAL Siouxsie & the Banshees
It had to happen in London. Towards the beginning of the '80's, between buildings, parks and Victorian monuments, a new juvenile fashion arose that the Press christened "Gothic Style". High Street Kensington, Camden Town and King's Road markets were brimming with young people offering other youngsters clothes, complements, hairdressing articles and, of course, the new "fashion trend" records. Gothic aesthetics had been taken from those new music groups belonging to the Punk movement, or were heirs of the same in one way or another. In fact, this musical tendency, which is also sometimes referred to as "after punk" kicked off in the year 1979, when two basic records were edited that served as foundations for the movement. It was the year in which the second LP of Siouxsie and the Banshees, titled "Join Hands", was published, with its magnificent white tombstone marble cover, funeral wreath and memorial that radicalises the dark strains of the band's first record and the single, "Bela Lugosi's Dead", by the recently discovered group called Bauhaus, which was, in itself, a declaration of style that would rapidly convert them into another cult band. Together with them and in later years, Killing Joke, Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, UK Decay, Christian Death, Sex Gang Children, Virgin Prunes, Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, etc... all gathered glam, reggae, classic rock and even disco music to do a "fade to black" with them and reinforce the Gothic fashion trend.
These and other artists recreate a conceptual and aesthetic framework whose peculiar characteristic was the eclecticism that was so typical of the '80's and which combined XIX century romantic ideals with leading tendencies from the beginnings of the XX century, psychedelia from the '60's, beat and pop cultures, etc., to form an amalgam of influences shared by both "Goths" and "New Romantics" and which was already being reflected by the first Punks who emerged from Saint Martin's. Thus, the Gothic Style first sprang forth in a very "arty" context, but with a very recreational vocation that went hand-in-hand with club culture. The London "Bat Cave" was the emblematic club that had two different locations: the first was in Dean Street in Soho and then later "Under The Arches" (under "Heaven") from where the Greatest Hits club record was edited in 1983. This was also the year that "Batastrophe", the EP recorded by The Specimen was edited and when Gothic Style crossed the Atlantic and arrived on the shores of America. By that time, however, followers of this wave of obscurantism and diversion could be found over practically the whole of Western Europe. One year earlier in Spain, for example, Alaska y los Pegamoides edited their first LP, called "Grandes Éxitos", making it perfectly clear on the cover that they were the ambassadors of the movement in our country. The groups founded by members of the group when it split up, Parálisis Permanente and Alaska y Dinarama, edited two LPs with sinister-looking covers and songs that not only successfully translated the style, but also made it evolve along newer paths. But, though Gothic Style shares the same imagination as others of the same period, its obsession with romantic myths that directly oppose the idea of nature that the bio-medical paradigm had constructed in the XIX century (the Frankenstein of Mary Shelley, and the reinterpretation that was made of the vampire of Bram Stoker in the '80's) makes it quite unique. Gothic Style has yet another, interesting interpretation inasmuch as the body it constructs. On one hand, as in Frankenstein, for example, the movement proposes the idea that monsters can be beautiful and, on the other, with Dracula, (evil transformed into unconfessable sexual practices) celebrates sexuality - and not only the officially recognised alternatives either. The figure of the monster is also exalted and we are encouraged to construct our bodies and identities (not only collective, but also subjective) time and time again, thereby permitting and exalting the difference. The time has come to explore the darker sides of one's personality, reconsider sex, gender and sexuality and laugh at death, whilst criticising those religious beliefs that constrict it. In this way, the Gothic Style occupied itself revisiting preceding icons and it is curious to witness how other romantic images were cited that were automatically subverted in the '80's. If sphinxes and other female romantic monsters were macho images that reflected the subconscious fear that men felt towards women in the XIX century, then Gothic women used this imagery as a sort of make-up that became a symbol of power. It is therefore not surprising, to cite only one instance, that Siouxsie used to be called "the Ice Queen" or "the Preying Mantis". Of course Siouxsie and the others were rather more than mere sexual objects or malign figures, they were respected artists and examples of behaviour to be imitated and followed by other young people. They also formed part of that imaginary reference to cultural products coming from the '50's, '60's and '''70's that used to be called "B series", with their characteristically shy flashes of sexual freedom which, when incorporated into the Gothic Style, were amplified and accepted as being normal. Dissident sexual practices, in addition to those definitions of gender and, more specifically, transvestism, formed part of the "Ten Commandments" of good taste belonging to the Gothic Style, a taste that thought that looking like Alien was much more exciting than looking like Richard Gere, or that Lilly Monster was infinitely more desirable than Kim Bassinger.
Xabier Arakistain.
