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I'm not saying that these pairings represent works of equal value (with the exception of "Buffy," a series capable of fulfilling the darkest, most glorious dreams of both Emily Brontë and Phil Spector); even Davenport-Hines acknowledges that much Gothic literature is schlock. But we're hiding behind cultural cachet when we divorce "Wuthering Heights" or Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" from their own luridness, and when we do so, we separate their greatness from their power. In Daniel Handler's hilarious new novel "The Basic Eight" (a thoroughly rebellious take on teenage violence) a pop psychologist -- who, vampire-like, has fed her career on the blood of murdered schoolchildren -- notes that Edgar Allan Poe "took absinthe and yet is still a respected novelist and short story writer in America and elsewhere." That's the authentic voice of boredom triumphant, of the cultural value of "responsible" mediocrity that has been drilled into generations of schoolkids. In "Lost Souls" Poppy Z. Brite describes the voice (as heard by her protagonist, a kid called Nothing) this way:

In Nothing's English class the next day, Mrs. Margaret Peebles plunged her hypodermic of higher learning into "Lord of the Flies" and sucked out every drop of its primal magic, every trace of its adolescent wonder.

Is it any wonder then that Goth, with its transgressiveness, its bloody visceral charge, its romanticized alienation and dreamy, languorous self-pity, holds such an allure for adolescents? In his prologue, Davenport-Hines makes the point that Gothic uses passivity as a tool with which to subvert the balance of power.

The suggestion that submission is empowering is often reiterated by Goth writers. Dominance and subordination ... provide one of Gothic's themes. So does inversion ... Gothic's estrangement from the dominant cultural values of every age produces both its protean qualities and the obsession of its practitioners with transgression: All Goth writers worth any attention are forever returning to that immortality which defies or subverts ruling authority, and thus provides power-systems' necessary dark antithesis.

For teenagers who feel themselves alternately ignored or put upon by those who have authority over them, what could be better? Goth provides, simultaneously, an outlet for teen rebellion and an invitation to wallow in teen self-pity. Like the punks did, Goth kids attempt to transform what they perceive as the ugliness of the world around them by co-opting that ugliness as a form of beauty that is itself an affront to conventional notions of what is beautiful. Goth's preoccupation with death and ruin intensifies in its young practitioners an awareness of youth as a fleeting state, perfect for kids who see themselves as doomed and glorious creatures. Cradled in the mind-set of Goth, each and every one can envision himself as a Grand Guignol Byron. And that, in turn, feeds into Goth's inherent theatricality, dear to the heart of adolescents' trying on styles to establish their own identities.

There's no use denying that, as teen styles go, Goth is, on the surface, more startling than, say, hip-hop style or mod revival style, or young lounge swinger style, or any of the others. But the assumption that it will eventually manifest itself in destruction or self-destruction is at odds with the warped romanticism that lies at the heart of Goth. "The way people are blaming Goth kids for this really upsets me," Elizabeth Elmore of the rock band Sarge said to me a few weeks after the Littleton shootings. "The Goth kids I know are all so sweet." As a lifestyle, Goth is too gloomy for me; I like my rebellion more aggressive than passive. But I think you'd have to be completely cut off from your own memories of adolescence not to recognize how luxurious gloom can feel, and how Goth's brand of sensual rot can feel like an outsider's lifeline amid the shiny happy people of all age groups. Writes Davenport-Hines:

Gothic's obsession with decay, and its tradition of political negativity, makes it at the end of the twentieth century an aesthetic of defacement. It produces graffiti -- sometimes uncouth, in other instances witty or intelligent -- defying or decrying complacently rationalistic social controls which, though ostensibly intended to restore an idealised humanist harmony, actually enforce a regime of trivialized sameness.

That "trivialized sameness" is the same atmosphere, the same mind-set, that a bewildering preponderance of educators, parents and politicians seem to imagine as the desired state of adolescence. This sanitized conformity is so far removed from the real experience of adolescence that it suggests that the people demanding an end to such "deviant behavior" simply don't like teenagers. The greatest collective temptation that faces each generation as it ages is that of heaping on younger people the head-shaking contempt that was heaped on you. You can hear that contempt when adults say, "Why is it that kids today ...?" in a tone emptied of any real curiosity or impulse toward empathy. You hear it in the jokes made about the music or fashions of young people, jokes that barely mask the incomprehension of the people making them. You hear it in the blowhard tone that ridicules young people's fears of the future (or their doubts that they'll have one).

Young people can be frustrating. Talking to them, you find yourself confronted with ideas and assumptions that experience caused you to discard long ago. But it's very easy to fall into the trap of finding young people shallow because their experience has been different, or narrower, than yours. As someone born toward the tail end of the baby boom, I find it easy to understand why boomers are so easy to hate -- again and again, among my contemporaries or those who are just slightly older, I see people who long ago severed their connections to popular culture, acting as if they don't need to be told anything about it.

Who during their high school years ever found themselves hassled by the weirdos? It was always the "normal" kids, often encouraged by the values of their parents or the status their popularity or athletic ability conferred upon them, who made life hell for their less popular classmates. And in a climate that worships the conventional, the clean-cut, the predictable, the easily assimilated, it becomes even harder to convince school officials of how popular kids abuse their status. The people who have set themselves so firmly against Goth kids and all the other kids who don't conform have yet to grasp that the suffocating perfection they present is the best argument for the styles they're decrying. That they seem to have the upper hand in the current political and cultural climate is frightening, more frightening than anything the Gothic imagination, for all its glorious history, could concoct.
salon.com | August 5, 1999

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