An interesting thing happened today to my mother. She teaches english to kids of second to eight grade. While she was in class she played the audio activity cassette for that lesson. The lesson contained, at the end, a kids song entitled: "Creepy crawlies and things that go bump in the night" (I looked it up on the internet , and didn't found it), The song is very childish I enjoyed when I was a third grade schoolchild. It does have some background effects like some evil laughter and such. Most of the kids love it (and some even do headbang). But there was this one boy today who was really scared when my mom played it, and by "really scared" I mean horribly terrified. Is that kid "abnormal"?
That got me thinking. I don't think that the preference for dark , horror , gloomy things is actually natural or characteristic by default for the human nature. In the past, horror and gore in art was very tame, or non-existent. What changed?
I for example, occasionally get fed up with Type 0 Negative, Bauhaus , In Flames or whatever, (although I'm a big fan of them) and feel the need to have a break and listen to The Grateful Dead. Is that odd? And for those of you with children, if they prove to resent the goth culture, and be fond of bright colored things, would you be unhappy about their choice?

This is something I've thought about often.

I don't think that morbidity was non-existant or even less tame in the past, depending on how far back you go. If you go back to the 19th, or even the beginning of the middle ages, death was a part of life that practically surrounded you at every corner. It's funny that in the middle ages, death in society had two phases: back when most of Europe was engaged in tribal warfare, death was a very honorable thing, especially if you were a warrior and you died in battle, so, some people more or less looked forward to the day that their body and riches would be shipped out to sea, or burned in a sacramental funeral pyre, etc (not just in the early middle ages of Europe; Egyptian pharohs spent their whole life preparing for their death and the afterlife). A few hundred years later, that all changed when the Black Death came, and death was looked at as a very ugly and frightful thing, and we see that from grotesque grave markers, paintings depicting life during the black death, songs, poems and ballads alluding to the plague, and the general morbidity that arose during this time in the middle ages.

Now flash forward to the 19th century, death is a still a lingering part of society, but, in a wierd manner, because as we Victorian goths know, morbidity and death wasn't as feared as it was in the middle ages: it almost became a hobby, even a business in some aspects. So it wasn't looked at as odd for somebody to be ravelled up in gloomy stuff (alas, this is where Gothic literature got its foothold).

Now in the 21st century, that's all changed. Now people shelter themselves from death as much as possible. I think in the case of American culture, there's this deep rooted case of denial concerning "the end", because not only can't the majority of Americans see themselves one day growing old and dying (especially with the rise of plastic surgery and anti-aging products), but they can't see the nation doing so either, because we've been taught to believe that we as a nation, country and people, are immortal.

Back in relation to the topic at hand, this worldview has gone to the point where if you aren't smiling - or at the very least, "not looking sad but not quite smiling" - some people will just come up to you and say, "what's the matter? You look so sad" like there is something wrong with you. I've had this happen to me, and this was before I called myself goth and I wore a bit more color in my wardrobe. Now, I'm not a smiler, but, you know - just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm sad or morbidly depressed. But in this society, not looking happy or to be without flamboyant expression is unacceptable. I think it also has to do with the American way of thinking of, "you have no excuse to be unhappy; you live in America. Be happy dammit!"

The ironic twist here is that if you do find yourself smiling, but you're not in the company of friends while doing so, people will think you're a psycho.

But all in all, I personally think it's abnormal for people to not think anything morbid from time to time, because we all do; the thing is is that the topic is more taboo in some culturals than it is in others, which is why, for example, there are some parents, like mine, who just out and tell their kids, "your hamster isn't around because it's dead and it isn't coming back. Oh, and they aren't going to heaven either" while there are other parents who have no idea how to talk about death and dying to their kids and would rather put off the discussion for as long as possible. With the case of the child that you mentioned, I don't want to call him abnormal, since he is still a young child, but it is odd since when I was that age (third graders, right?) we didn't have problems with ooky spooky stuff, especially during Halloween. I mean, if a teacher with a hack saw popped out from some random place singing that song, yeah I think I'd shit my pants then. But I wouldn't even relate anything truely morbid with the song. Alas, I don't have the mind of a child, and I don't fully understand child psychology, so I guess morbidity is a whole different thing to comprehend when you are a child.

Anyway, that's my useless input.

You are so right! The Black Death is the main factor that changed people's perception on death. Finally the fog has cleared in my mind.

So much of that has to do with what people have been exposed to. I was talking to my grandmother, back around christmas about old horror movies (silent movies and the really early talkies). She told me about some of the ones that scared her real bad when she was in elementary school. And by scared, I mean having nightmares for weeks kind of scared. I can't imagine many kids that age getting scared by the same titles today because they've become so accustomed to "scarier" movies & tv shows.

When I was in that age group, if I was home sick for more than a day or two my mom would usually go to the library to pick up some tapes for me to watch. She would routinely pick ones that had scared her when she was young, but to me they were more cheesy than anything else. Taking myself out of the equation my brother and his friends would usually find movies like those to watch, not to get scared, but to laugh at the bad acting & special effects. So it wasn't just me.

If someone wanted to show Nosferatu to a class of 3rd graders today, I think the biggest obstacle would be the kids thinking it were too slow. I couldn't get my brother to watch it in one sitting, and he's an adult, because he's so used to modern action-movies and the like. But if a 3rd grader had been relatively sheltered, I would imagine the "scary value" would increase.



How far back do you mean? The Puritans had some fairly impressive tombstone designs, complete with skulls, bones, winged hourglasses among other things. Their epitaphs were usually dominated by the subject of death. Though my understanding is that this wasn't intended to be art in the "let's go gawk at the pretty drawings" sort of way so much as to strike a sense of mortality & religious submission into the viewers, to remind people that they need to be careful how they live their life or they could go tomorrow and end up in hell (or something like that). It was to be a serious commentary.

I don't recall which European countries practiced it, but it some parts of Europe it was common for people to reclaim the skulls of their dead relatives from priests, who would keep track of the corpses by engraving their initials or name into the skulls. These skulls when taken home would be put on display

The German saying of momento mori gedenke des todes on the other hand was less serious than that, which would be closer to the type of light hearted "darkness" I think you're talking about? The Germans took it from the Romans, if I am not mistaken, who had also used it as a fairly light hearted saying. The serious application of momento mori gedenke des todes didn't become common until the late 19th century-early 20th (Like this WW1 postcard).

I would be more tempted to say that the inverse has happened over time. We've moved away from storing body parts in homes (exception being ashes, which are usually kept in decorative urns so people don't actually see the remains), people don't usually use cemeteries in parks anymore, torture in the justice system is frowned upon, not many people kill and eat their own livestock, and public executions are going out of style. Tocqueville called these changes the pacifying of mores and predicted the trend would continue. I can see why he thought that, but I think he was ultimately wrong. We merely tried to adapt to bring compassion and bloodthirst into coexistence (i.e. violent movies & video games). The later wasn't powerful enough to do away with the former.



I do think it is possible for people to be "over exposed" to death & gore, causing the "purge it from my day to day life" reaction. During the CW there was a massive market for macabre war-related goods. Photograph books full of pictures of dead & injured, stereoview cards of the same, war-related trinkets bought up by civilians. Spectators would rush to battlefields after the fighting would end to buy up the land hoping to turn it into tourist attractions. But by '65 the exposure of it all had been so great that the interest died. In Ken Burn's CW documentary, he mentions that there were untold thousands upon thousands of photographic plates taken of the war (mostly dead & injured, photography wasn't good enough to capture movement yet), but since the interest in seeing them died off by the end of the war, the photographers had to find alternative ways to recoup their costs since it just wasn't selling anymore. So what did they do? They took the photographic plates and sold them to people who then used them to construct windows & green houses. Yup that's right, mid 19th century homes all over the eastern United States have windows made of photographic plates of KIA's. The negatives can't survive sun exposure for too long, so the sun erased the images themselves. Makes you wonder how many home owners today look through those glass panes every morning not knowing what they once showed.

But all that paled compared to the backlash that followed the Great War. I forget the actual numbers involved, but the size of crowds at church services tanked all throughout western society following '18, never to fully recover, in part because of people wanting to get away from things that would remind them of their mortality. I think you could successfully argue that the perky go-lucky 20s and ultra conservative 50s were both settings fabricated from scratch to hide the trauma from being over exposed to wholesale death. I have a hard time buying that a happy society without such a recent past would put up with 50s family sitcoms.



I find that's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. When I'm not smiling I have strangers come up to me and ask me about it, assuming I'm sad or something. When I am smiling, I have strangers come up to me, comment on what I am wearing, and go "wait, you can't be dressed like that and be smiling... what's wrong with you?"

I had something like that happen to me when I was a kid and crying over the death of my pet rat. I was sad and hoped he was going to rat heaven when I get the response that he's not going to heaven and was worthless. I cried harder. It was mean but ow it's sort of amusing to think about. In a saddening way.

Rats should go to heaven. They have a shitty time of it here and are rather awesome people really.

I agree, Arq! I hope there's a heaven for all creatures.

Carpi, for some reason women get that ridiculous "you should smile, you're purdy. a-hyuk!" All the time. Why the hell should anyone feel they have the right to make such a remark? Like we should feel so blessed by their presence we should be grinnin' like fools? As if!

I don't know if there's a natural tendency for some people or not. My mother and I bonded over the years through our love of horror.

Some naturally love the dark, naturally, and others don't. I think for many people, tastes are created around childhood.

Generally i developed my love for the dark and morbid BY being afraid of it at early childhood, and entranced all the same. Most of my childhood memories entirely revolve around things I was afraid of, not to mention most ultra-cool evil villians that stalked my Saturday morning cartoons.

Who knows?? Maybe that child will develop a fondness for things he's terrified of in later years??

And yeah, sometimes I get fed up with Type O Negative(though there's always time for Bauhaus!!) as well, and feel the need to put on a good David Lynch, Lustmord, Diamanda Galas, or SPK album.

My solution for the smile/no smile conundrum is that I smile when I want to (which is quite often since I am usually a pretty happy person), and don't, when well I don't feel like it. Who cares what others think?

The only thing I can possibly link to my love of all things Goth, is that I went through a traumatic 8 year custody battle with my parents which started around my birth. For years I was plagued by some of the most frightening nightmares I would never wish on my worse enemy, everything from finding the decayed corpses of my parents, to my mom screaming at me with burning red eyes. Also around the age of 6 or 7 I visited the son of my dad's neighbor quite often and we would watch horror movie after horror movie.

When the custody battle settled down and I was finally able to be raised in a good and stable home, the nightmares pretty much went away. Still drew some morbid pictures though, but overall I think it was a way to help me integrate the pain, and the nightmares into my full being. Morbid things always intrigued me, though where I was raised Goths were non-existant (a small town), it wasn't until HS where I was introduced to the culture and LOVED it. Though buried that part of me because I thought it would be unacceptable to my family, and the fact I never seen myself as a Goth Guy but a Goth Girl.

So well, here I am. A quirky goth girl, who is loving life and appreciating the morbid all at once.

Hi

I was ateacher for a few years in the UK and I can attest to the truth ofmy Mothers beleif that it is the naturakl state of all children to love to be scared and to be facinated by the macabre. One particular time I recall was teaching a lesson on the Egyptians and the kids concentration was wavering - so i started to tell them in depth, with actions, about the mumification process- and they were rapt!!

The one and only time I came across a genuinly terrifed child was once after talking about witches- apparently he was deathly afraid of beig kidnapped anf killed by witches- something he must have picked up somewhere.

As children we (my family) were as interested in corpses and crypts, vampires and werewolves as we were interested in Sindy dolls, faieies and action men. It was all one and the same (as indeed they are in European folklore- it's not split- nasty vs nice!) As an adult I find that the more death (and decay through wasting illnesses) in loved ones in my personal life I have experienced the more I have grown apart from morbid things. I have a feeling that i want to embrace vibrant living things as the dead things tend to bring up my feelings of greif.

i guess my trauma was
-being afraid of the darkness and every single 'dark or bad' thing. even the mentionof the word 'demon' scared me till i ran to my mummy ,
-bullied,hated,left out and total loner in school for the longest time (at least to me) for 9 1/2 years. (idk why i feared school people after an incident where everyone agreed howw wierd i was and liked talking about me. they just love it when theres a person which everyone doesnt like due to something and they all wanna pick on that kid.
-my cold family(in the past)

probably, all thbese things will be over soon, ne.

I'm just going straight to this point, I love colour. Has anyone seen the film The Masque of the Red Death? The use of colour in that is exceptional. And you can't force children to be a certain way, all the stories I hear of Goths whose parents won't allow them to dress the way they want, do you want to do that to your kids when they want to wear pink or blue or yellow? 'No dear, you can't have a pink dress, you have to wear black.' Dress is a very personal thing, although I certainly hope that my children won't resent the things I like. I'll certainly let the play with Barbie, I have my own Barbie doll that I brought last year.

My fiancee dressed her daughter in dark victorian outfits when she was a baby, but she never pushed her to be gothic. In fact she just treated her like a normal little girl as she grew up, and naturally she loves pink and barbies and iCarly at age 8. Being the little teenager that she is, when we goth out to go to clubs or shows she rolls her eyes at us, but she enjoys halloween just as much as any other kid her age.

Point being is that she is her own person, and she's the most beautiful happy girl I've ever known. She was never forced into anything, and therefore found her own her. So yay to parenting where we let kids do what they want! They'll figure it out! ;P

Bright colors are annoying to me. But if I did have children, which I don't, it would be their choice to wear bright or dark colored clothing. But as for me, I LOVE dark colors. My favs are black and purple.

I guess it's easier to keep kids away from death now. Even though there's more violence around, at that age it's still possible (though difficult) to keep kids away from it through parental controls on tv and internet and just giving them other things to watch. There may be more depictions of violence and death around but death has become less visible in society..... or it has here. It might be different in countries with wild animals that aren't considered pests but here you don't see dead animals around, you don't see dead people (even at funerals), people who are sick or injured are kept away from others (children in particular)..... we've become pretty good at looking the other way.