First #RomancingtheGothic talk of #spookyseason #Spooktober2020 folks and we are kicking off with the Gothic in 90s Music Videos absolutely not a drill

Our speaker today has no kofi/patreon links, but if you support RtG on Patreon or monthly on Kofi you are supporting Sat talks

Dr Evan Hayes Gledhill is our speaker today and will have a reading list and reading suggestions at the end. Check out the YouTube when it is uploaded.

Here we go! @DrGothicBodies Evan Hayes Gledhill on HOT TOPIC: 90S MUSIC VIDEO GOTHIC #ROMANCINGTHEGOTHIC

Why the 90s? Progressive political movements with conservative backlash, the circular return to 90s fashion, Evan was a teen goth-!

Part 1: Gothic on Screen in the 90s

The Gothic timeline - actual and aesthetic. Castles and corsets moving to high contrast, heavy makeup and abstract shapes. This is a history of the Gothic as later gens constructed it aesthetically and in terms of how it was marketed and sold.

Bryan Adam's EVERYTHING I DO 1991 theme tune for Robin Hood Prince of Theives - super gothic storyline, with exotic middle eastern opening, torture dungeon, mysterious stranger alliance, good patriarch who is doomed! Benevolent kidnapping! Sublime landscape! Villain abuses power

Ok literally every Gothic trope is in this film

Savage Celts, disguised leprosy, unwanted marriage proposal, church corruption, defenestration, marriage in presence of corpse ...

Not marketed as Gothic or discussed as Gothic but literally everything is in there.

TURN OF THE SCREW opera by Britten 2003, THE INNOCENTS dir. Jack clayton. WUTHERING HEIGHTS even got a musical by Cliff Richard.

So we are very familiar with the Gothic. The mediums through which we view "gothic" sets up and thwarts our expectations

We have children's animated films like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, musicals like PHANTOM OF THE OPERA based on Leroux's gothic horror novel. So we are very familiar with certain kinds of Gothic imagery and it pervaded popular culture of the 90s to the point that it is more normalised?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 1994 dir. Kenneth Brannagh - Brannagh made it as much about aesthetic of set as about period drama "authenticity".

Interview with a Vampire 1994 dir. Neil Jordan, which cemented Brad Pitt as the pretty boy of the 90s but also peak Vampire Aesthetic

Tim Burton's BATMAN RETURNS 1992 with modernist Gothic. Sweeping concrete staircases, amazing statues... Reminiscent of 1920s expressionist cinema like THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI.

The titles of the adaptation films go hard for Victoriania - e.g. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA 1992

Love Never Dies - tagline of Coppola's film which links back to HIGHLANDER 1986.

We also had a lot of tv shows in the 90s, mainly marketed at kids and nostalgic adults. The urban gothic comes out in 90s horror like CANDYMAN 1992, engaging with race and other issues.

90s gothic drama deconstructed the reliance on a constructed White past, in films like BELOVED 1998 dir. Jonathen Demme (adapted from the novel)

We also see it in Spanish cinema and Industrial Gothic creeping in, e.g. CRONOS (del Toro)

1994 industrial gothic aesthetics appeared in new adaptation of THE CROW dir. Alex Proyas. The costumes in this film were influenced by and in turn influenced Goth subculture fashion.

Deliberate choice of The Crow to use the Gothic aesthetic to recreate his persona.

The Crow blends the lived experience of the Gothic in being a revenant with the aesthetic experience of being a Goth musician in life. Plus actual muzic: My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, the nightclub itself as a set. Villain has incestuous affair with witchy murder-halfsister.

So much Gothic goodness in Part 1 to set up the context.

Short break but q&a is mainly fangrrrrling

Donate to http://www.ko-fi.com/samhirst  monthly and say it is for the project to support the speakers on a Saturday- also http://www.patreon.com/Romancingthegothic

Part 2: some technical difficulties with Zoom so bear with us

My head is still on how to read my favourite film of all time (Robin Hood PoT) as a Gothic text

Ok!!

Part 2 :

The Gothic became popular in 90s for transgression AND rebellion, modernity AND nostalgia, and other dichotomous ideologies which were gaining traction in the political-cultural landscape of this decade.

Different types of Gothic appear.

Meatloaf I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE music video uses facial prosthetics prefiguring Buffy vampire aesthetic and taking loglines and vampire aesthetic from Bram Stoker's Dracula and Interview with a Vampire.

<Omg this video I loved it>

EVERYONE SING ALONG
I refuse to believe you do not know all the words

Ahem ok

So analysing the colour palette, the links to Phantom which come from meatloaf's musical theatre background, genderqueer costumes exaggerating femininity and masculinity, candelabra and dry ice, hitting high notes of Gothic Romance

M/f couples are performing heteronormativity but the gaps left in the lyrics and the aesthetics of the video leave room for queering potential.

Celine Dion also had a Gothic 18thC aesthetic video which is a narrative of a lover killed in a motorcycle accident.

Drapery, costume, lightning storms, past transgression- what is remembered is ambiguous. Her shadow becomes "him" but is not a man but a masc version of her? What is going on here? This can be read as coding, even if it was not deliberate. What is the "transgression"?

Boyzone LOVE ME FOR A REASON (official video) ... wow

Candles, black and white costumes, clean cut Irish boyband in a haunted gothic cellar situation. Gilt mirrors and pretty boys in waistcoats referencing Phantom of the Opera.

Backstreet Boys doing a deliberate monster mash

Boyzone 1995 were not doing the monster mash like that but they were performing the well groomed metrosexual het thing adopted from Louis in Interview with a Vampire. His aesthetic meshed with Brad Pitt's own projected aesthetic as a new symbol of young American masculinity.

Unifying iconography of American nostalgia pairing gilt mirror frames with motorcycles and candelabras. Irish Gothic and American Gothic were linked visually. However they looked ... like 90s gay women

the 90s lesbian iconic look was Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. K. D. Lang

re-used 1930s gothic aesthetic in her video CONSTANT CRAVING with an unspecified past and deliberate butch/femme dichotomy of 1930s lesbian looks blurred the lines of heteronormativity when boy bands of 90s also adopted visually similar looks.

Crash Test Dummies up now folks
SUPERMAN'S SONG
...

Oh my

Oh no

Oh god

The cellos

Superman's funeral setting for the official video, with candles, church, strings. Sepia 1930s look with gold and red tones coming through. Mourning, transgression, moral dichotomy of good vs evil

Red Hot Chilli Peppers SOUL TO SQUEEZE

B/w evocation of vintage travelling circus restaging Todd Browning's controversial 1930s film FREAKS which ruined his career.

Medusa imagery evoking Freddie Mercury.

Monstrous gothic mode not romantic mode.

Suggests transgression without being "unsafe" or "Satanic" - not shocking to 90s audience because returning to a past that has already done them.

However this past was ableist and constructed exclusionary narratives turning queerness and disability into monstrousness.

This meant that the mainstream 90s evocation of this past was also restricted even though it tried to deconstruct to some extent and queer it, but remain within socio-culturally "safe" boundary lines - but even this provoked conservative outrage and backlash in some cases.

Part 2 Q&A
discussing heroin use as part of the aesthetic creating idealised pallor and body types that were emphasised in the music videos and remarketed as fashionable

Q&A
Heroin chic vs surf jock look

Dreamlike space for Otherness created by the drug/alcohol use

Musical beefs of the 90s

Not gone into much subculture as time is limited. Stuff that made it to MTV and were seen by a wide range of people and part of a mainstream image that were a kind of recognised 90s Gothic

Part 3:

In British and American pop culture Gothic was still associated with Siouxie & the Banshees, The Cure, Bauhaus.

This became part of an old school Gothic style with musicians reinterpreting the genre to stay ahead of the mainstream curve. The terror Gothic, body gohic

Edgy side of 90s music: heavy metal and hip hop. Viewed negatively as Aggression, anger, misogyny, loud.

But also looked at mental health issues, expressed frustrations at society and social justice issues.

Ref to #horrorfilms like Nightmare on elm St, chainsaw massacre.

Videos tapped into "horrorcore" style

GraveDiggaz DIARY OF A MADMAN video - insanity plea, vaulted arch church setting, incarceration, infestation. Tied into satanic panic, courtroom drama introduction with unreliable narrators calling out expectations of the listeners.

Use of Islamophobia to exoticise and to contrast against corruption of Catholic Church.

This is being the Gothic subject, being the one who is the monster, the Othered, and about reclaiming that position and narrating own experiences.

Attacking White systems of power and also saying heritage and lived experience is important. Echoing ideas of the Black American existing as a phantom or spectre in the mind of the White American and reclaiming this position in horror core aesthetic and deep textual layers

Gravediggaz and Horrorcore remained a marginal subculture

A white band became the most famous horrorcore band go figure

The Sisters of Mercy TEMPLE OF LOVE 1992

This video is also a lot but we dont have time to unpack all of it. Graveyard, moonlight, dove, peaceful gentle side alongside corpses, industrial vs sublime, black and white aesthetic... mixing disjointed imagery with no narrative

This is a bombardment of images with stereotypical Gothic imagery in rapid fire layers, with no clear reason for it. Part of it is viewer expectation layered on as thick as possible, referencing 1930s gothic, Dracula, modern expressionist imagery. Dense text!!

Nine Inch Nails - barbed wire exemplifies the urban images of decay, rustbelt gothic/industrial gothic.

CW in this video (CLOSER) for animal distress.

Gothic drawing attention to itself as constructed. Deliberate constructions of urban decay, medical apparatus, disease and infection, images of a Gothic past with collections of natural history in a decaying decrepit manner, moving from romantic side of being Frankenstein to-

-being the object of the medical study gaze, being the Creature.

Early cinema evacuations, the inexplicable, unexplained "freakery" with bodies deliberately on display for the viewer. The singer himself is obscured, seen in profile, confused.

Transgressive song, confrontational lyrics taking the sheen off the Gothic and deconstructing it. Are we more than meat? Setting human heart against cow cadaver. Vampire ideas of humans as food.

Inverted religious imagery with live monkey tied to a cross.

Also creating a new way of configuring this aesthetic. Eye goggles in this video prefigure steampunk a bit and make them "cool" ...

See also Marilyn Manson and The spooky kids echoing Clarissa in their costumes moving into more disturbing territory embracing darker glam Gothic.

We are going to watch the ironically titled BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE...

<lush>

Marilyn Manson THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE has a lot of similarities to CLOSER. Medical imagery, infestation, blurred and shaky camera work, industrial medical aesthetic of the past (mid20thC). Manson makes himself a monstrous image taking it further. Costume inc medical trusses which-

- inc harnesses for extra limbs he doesn't have. Body gothic implied.

What about these videos and these images that reads as authentic/less authentic? What about medicalised images of the body that is disturbing and shocking? Discuss

You are not bringing things to this imagery but being presented with images that tell you how others view or have viewed the human body as a site of external intervention, within a decayed and infested or corrupted space.

Manson isnt pushing us to interrogate these images - they are moving too fast for that. Renders viewer passive as they flash by.

Positioning of Gothic bodies are deliberately doll like and dehumanising. Political commentary or a side effect of other imagery in the video?

We are left to interpret it as a whole based on the impressions it leaves us with. These are also not things and issues viewers are unfamiliar with. Manson presents us with obvious criticisms of social and political constructs and leaves viewers to do their own work with it.

Central contradiction of Hot Topic teen goths: yes it is a mainstream mall shop but wearing the clothes and signalling you are part of the subculture is not just a matter of apparel but a commitment to ostracism and individuality etc.

Coal Chamber - LOCO

Viewed through a viewfinder. Neoclassical safe space of the home is invaded by the Gothic. Silent film era villain (Dr Caligari again) - but the people being attacked in the house are the band themselves. Already weird. Is the villain showing them who they r

Or is he creating them? Making them more weird? What is going on?

Mixture of childlike innocence of suburbia with transgression: maybe this is my space too

Act that intervenes in suburban life with the thing being remembered (or re-membered) - gothic past, gothic self.

Why are women fronted bands missed out of this? Who knows more about being the Gothic subject than the Gothic heroine?

Tura Satana - LUNA

Draws on same thing lots of medical Gothic, with religious imagery and exorcism integrated into the medical facility set.

The video quity is shit. They aren't being shared. Men are crossing over and white men in particular really kick off. Why?

In particular: it's abusive white men who make it big in the mainstream. There is a lot to consider about this, about what this says about society and about what this says about measures of success and the music industry...

DISCUSS.

//Fin.

A reminder to support the organiser and the project on Kofi http://www.ko-fi.com/samhirst 

Or Patreon http://www.patreon.com/romancingthegothic