Art Review - February Issue - (Page 121) Warning : session_start : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : session_start : Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 Why won’t Goth die? In Contemporary Gothic, Catherine Spooner performs a critical vivisection of the Goth subculture aesthetic to isolate the reasons why it eternally resurfaces in marginal and mainstream contemporary culture. Cutting through the subculture’s conventions and clichés, Spooner examines Goth’s roots in the gothic literary tradition while deftly deconstructing some of the more visible examples of Gothic pervasiveness. Spooner, a lecturer in English Literature at Lancaster University and author of the fascinating 2004 volume Fashioning Gothic Bodies, a history of the gothic fashion aesthetic, traces the flowering of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century horror literature through an interdisciplinary array of media. Unlike many of her peers, or the adolescents channelling their angst, destructive urges or feelings of alienation into Goth’s theatrically grotesque aesthetic, Spooner refuses to regard Goth as a peripheral or antisocial subcultural sect. She also rejects the commonly held idea that Goth acts as the dark underbelly to our light, bright pop culture. Instead, Spooner places contemporary Goth within a larger corporate context and explores the commoditization of the grotesque. She slices through the conceptual ligature underpinning London’s ghoulish themed pubs, a sampling of satanically suggestive alcohol advertising, the abject art of the Chapman brothers, Gregory Crewdson and Joel-Peter Witkin, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, already popular fodder for academics. Smartly skimming well-worn territory like body modification and theories about how millennium anxiety accounts for gothic tendencies, Spooner instead looks at Goth as camp performance. Morbidity, aberrant sexuality, superstition and the appropriation of mass-media horror imagery are prominent themes in contemporary art, from Damien Hirst’s collection of flashing, nasty memento mori through to the new breed of emerging American artists seen in Saatchi’s USA Today collection at the Royal Academy. But Spooner looks past art to Goth’s dark influence on other, fluffier areas of culture. Her lucid probing into Goth’s historical, conceptual and commercial roots dispels much of its mystique as an aesthetic rebellion against mainstream imagery, without dismissing its inherent contradictions and its contemporary cultural importance. As with most subcultures, within their own ranks Goths are notoriously obsessed with defining and maintaining an internal hierarchy of authenticity. This subculture snobbery means that many of the sources Spooner examines lie on the outer edge of Goth. But as she persuasively argues, there can be no ‘authentic Goth’, because ‘Gothic possesses no original… Gothic takes the form of a series of revivals, each based on a fantasized idea of the previous one. As a form it has always been about fakery.’ Marilyn Manson and Buffy are therefore no less ‘authentic’ than the vampire cults that are as consumed with superficial fashion concerns as any other high school subgroup. Being confronted by the healthy, normal, banal subcutaneous layers that underlie Goth might disappoint many of its most dedicated followers, but Spooner also eloquently demonstrates that even commercially marketed and consumed Goth culture provides a vital intelligent, critical counterpoint to the pop, sparkle and giggle of mass popular culture. Ana Finel Honigman Contemporar y Gothic By Catherine Spooner FOCI/Reaktion Books, £12.95 / $19.95 p118-121 Books AR Feb07.indd 121 4/1/07 23:49:10 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0 Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Art Review - February Issue Art Review - February Issue http://www.nxtbookMEDIA.com
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