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This may have been brought up before, im not sure. I was just wondering,
if anyone knows:

What started the gothic culture? Or how long ago was it started?
And how has it evolved through different generations?

Hello,
To put my opinion in here, I think it mainly became widespread when a lot of teens felt like rebelling. How it started? That I am not sure of but I think, again, that is might have started with the occult, but I am not sure. Sorry, if I offend somebody...

if you talk to a music historian, they will tell you that it started in the late 70s when bands like the banshees, the glove, sisters of mercy and the damned came out of england. it was an alternative to punk and at the time still had a lot of base in it. (same with a lot of the death rock and post punk that is out now.)

Here's my take.....being a geratrigoth

It started in the 70's, with Iggy Pop, the Stooges, David Bowie, Velvet Underground, the Punk movement, a little of the beatnik movement, and an average dislike for the popular music cultures....first there were punks as a culture (mostly UK), and the goths appreared (see the early California goth and NYC bands such as Christian Death, Ramones, GenX, and others a plenty)dressing more morbid, tons of makeup, black et al. Goth the word does in fact come from the historic period and the ancient people....but the appreciation of the historic added to the cultural name, as well as the time period itself being dark and depressing at times....it evolved...then movies started coming out. The Hunger, Suburbia, and others.
These featured the culture. The 80's took off with it, the hair, the colors, the clothing, even New Wave had a bit of goth in it (tons of mid to late 80's bands existed in the goth scene). By the 90's, there were bands who called themselves this....and so on it goes.

Unfortunately IMHO, the bands of today that are radio played and considered somehow 'goth' are not really goth as I knew it, but some perverted twisted mutation. If you ask some, not all, younger 'goths' about bands such as Siouxsie, Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, etc, they look at you blankly. Sure some of the evolving subgenres, such as Industrial, and EBM, are cool..hell even they came from other older bands such As Skinny Puppy, This Mortal Coil, Throbbing Gristle, even Lords of Acid..they hold their own but are not without influence. Goth music as I see was never a radio-played genre, definately not top 40...tho I liked some darker 90's rave....I can't stand some of the current relations to goths and rave...gravers with huge pants, that even back then, weren't all that complimentary even then.


But this is just me, and I mean no offense to anyone.

Hmm who started it? I do no think it was just one person it had to have beena group of revolutionists.

It was said earlier...it branched off the punk movement. Even got a boost from the new romantic movement (Adam and the Ants). Kind of pulled a swan dive for a bit there but was kept alive almost purely through the clubs. Limelight (UK), Club X, House of Usher, Twilight Zone, Bondage A-Gogo, Coven 13, DV8, Orgasmitron...(West Coast clubs from the 80's and 90's). Don't know the East Coast. It didn't have the airplay of today's goth but I won't bitch.

TheBatt and Ankhenanset are dead on with those early bands (Bauhaus is surprisingly missing from the list)...though I think every one of them complained about the goth label at one point or another. The Damned being a personal favorite of mine. But the musical style has evolved to be so varied as to become almost new genres. Bands like Specimen and Virgin Prunes pushing a 'deathrock' bondage style and music whereas bands like Faith and the Muse, and Switchblade Symphony took a more ethereal bent.

Some singers who were never really a 'part' of the movement just made a perfect fit into it musically (like Nick Cave or Tom Waits). And the goth movement really created sub genres in other areas like Horror style rockabilly (like the Cramps) or punk (see Misfits).

The fashion has become as varied as the music and we've got influences from every corner but always with a dark, macabre or horror influence making it recognizable.

I suppose you could also lay a lot of credit at the doorstep of early gothic literature since the poetry of people like Lord Byron or Edgar Allan Poe had their influences in pushing the macabre as well. But the scene itself is an offshoot of late 70's UK punk.

thebatt, felixfelix~ yes, that's it. It is merely the evolution of other cultures and styles before it.

From what ive read gothic culture came from older times nd style. Such as a church. Many older churches are goth style. Especially over in Europe. The way they dressed and looked at arcitecture changed and became out of date. Therefore if you see someone wearing real goth clothes, im not talking tripp pants with eyeliner and a slipkknot shirt, respect them becuase they have enough sense to know what goth is. The only reason its frowned upon by many adults is because they were raised thinking if its not in style its not good.

You know I saw an interesting article that said the gothic subclture was even influenced as early as the late sixties by the beat knicks at jazz clubs.

The term goth originated way earlier. It was a society that dressed in all black because they attacked their enemies at night. It was their way of hiding from the enemy. I cant recall the dates but I did have to do a study on it a few years ago. I wish I could find that paper so that I could post more on it. :)

You are right about the term goth not being used until much later in the movement. Those in the late seventies were actually reffered to as death punks by most of the underground culture.

It is funny how most of your older "goths" never really reffered to themsleves as such for the most part.

It started as early as the tortured artist, the Beatnik, in the 1930's, the wearing of large amounts of black, etc. It started to REALLY grow druing the late 70's/early 80's with the post-punk genres of gothic rock and death rock being recognized as their own sub-genres. Pretty much anything you could ask to know would be HERE

AshiburzSangueDeVie thanks for that I was wondering about the Beatniks influence on it all. I remember they were still around in the 50's but the hippie movement of the 60's pushed them out of the limelight. But as I remember it they were antiestablishment, wore lots of black and were into giving art and music the freedom it deserved. Based on many of the definations of the "goth" of today much of that still applies. Aside from the musical groups I'd say they had the most influence on the culture at least in it's earliest days.

Personally i think there are so many sub genre's of the term "goth" today that there is no one true was to explain it.

I believe that in representing the "goth" community a person would have to be there own individual, it is also these days highly evolved into more a music scene.
I guess it is each goth to there own?

It is basically indefinable, because "Goth" means different things to each follower. Many adopt unusual fashions in order to separate themselves from other youth. Gordon A. Crews, associate dean of the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University in Bristol, CT is an investigator of what he calls the "occult" which-- in his opinion -- includes the Goth culture. He said: "It is up to the individual to define what Goth is for themselves ... The mentality is, 'I want to be left alone but I want to be seen. I want to see the shock on other peoples' faces."

The words Goth and Gothic have had many, largely unrelated meanings in the past: the name of the Germanic Visigoth tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. From this source arose the concept of a Goth as an uncivilized person, a barbarian.

A style of architecture in Western Europe which was popular from the 12th to the 16th century.

A style of horror/mystery literature that is dark, eerie and gloomy.

Goth, as a modern movement, started as one component of the punk rock scene. As the latter faded, Goth survived by creating its own subculture.

The first use of the term Goth in its present meaning is believed to have been on a British Broadcasting Commission (BBC) TV program. Anthony H. Wilson, manager of Joy Division described the band as Gothic compared with the pop mainstream. The name stuck.

Their use of black clothing was originally "something of a backlash to the colorful disco music of the seventies." 5 It also stuck.

The movement first became established in the Batcave, a nightclub in London, England, in the early 1980's. Spreading to the U.S., it first became popular in California.
Goth is featured in The Crow horror movies (1994, 1996). Other Gothic movies are the original Nosferatu, the color remake Nosferatu the Vampyre, and the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.

Popular music bands are the Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Sisters of Mercy, Dead Can Dance, and many others.

I do believe the culture stemed from the punks in the UK. And as above stated the name "goth" was not used to describe them until years later. In any event the US had goths in the 80s. Doc Martin boots and clove cigarettes, dark "koal" around the eyes of boys and girls, absinthe to drink, and the black clothing, all were dressed and outfitted accordingly. Lurking among them of course were vampyres, as the association with them was inevitable. There were the bands, and the horror fiction writers, like Poppy Brite and Caitlin Kiernan who contributed much to recruit new blood to the culture. In the movie "The Hunger", it starts out with scenes from Bauhaus live on stage singing "Bela Lagosi is Dead." Of course the movie had David Bowie as one of the supporting actors, and was centred on a beautiful vampyre. Now how did they know that would work with Bauhaus?

Current Goths.. Yeah.. I have to agree that they came from the punks.. being as I was punk in the early 80's and goth by the mid 80's. (i wont even touch the 70's eeww).

However, I believe PERSONALY that "goth" was around in the victorian era. Anyone that uses leeches in order to get their skin a "deathly white" is freakin goth in my opinion.. humble that it is.

wow... if it was the music movement i'm taking a step back. about a year a go i was goth, now i view myself as punk... explains why the only change in fashion to go goth for me is a change into black pants though. (bringing stereotyping into it but for a chuckle).
i'd have to say music culture highly affected it though, i'll agree with that, the fashions are so similar having been part of both lifestyles there really isn't much of a difference, as well as attitude. so i'll second (or however many people have agreed) music culture being the main factor.

Couldn't tell you when it was started myself, but when I was in high school (mid 80's) seems like the style was around, it just wasn't as well known.

What ever it is, and how ever it started, makes not much influence on nothing, it is all a comercialised thing by now only, slavery.....

The only relation to the Visigoths or the Ostrogoths of the 5th century is that people in the 18th century thought of them (Goths) as barbarians so when the wanted to insult the newest style of architecture, they chose gothick to mean barbaric.

It later was re-adopted to mean that which pushes the extremes of emotion (like fear and terror) as an insult to the original 'system' that first insulted them. In other words, they took an insult term and in an act of defiance, adopted it as their own term. This revival was where the art and fiction began with works by Thomas Parnell's or Edward Young's poetry...which later influenced Lord Byron's vampire poetry. Most importantly, this is where Horace Walpole wrote the The Castle of Otranto, which was a huge influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula and John Polidori's The Vampyre (the first vampire fiction story).

But until the UK punk movement of the late 70's, that was where it ended. Beatniks while wearing black and being artistic and creative, had little influence by horror or the macabre, or even the gothic fiction of the 18th and 19th century. If they can be given any credit, beatniks deserve credit for their anti-establishment ideals that may have given rise to other anti-establishment subcultures like punks and hippies...but so did rock and roll. The water gets pretty muddy in that kind of historical influence on music and art.

That's why the clearest line is most directly from the late 70's UK punk movement with some stylistic influence from 18th and 19th century fiction as well as the modern horror movies and stories that they influenced.

Although this will probably lend to much thought to my age.... I have to ask...

Does anyone remember when goths were called "Bat-Ratters"?

Never heard the term but it could be a local thing. '86 in my area was all about 'goth-balls'

which I suppose I should clarify for the younger people was a poor reference to moth-balls.

Felix.. thats horrible!

"Bat-Ratters" was a term I mostly heard during the early/mid 80's in Seattle Wa.

I got that Bat part back then.. never did understand the "ratters" part.

Can anyone think of any other names?

Well, from what I know. The very beginning of the Goth, was this.

5th and 6th c AD; The Goth Invasion

The invasion of the Roman Empire by the warriors of goth, visigoth and ostrogoth peoples. The Romans considered their behavior barbaric, from the way the goths behaved. The names began to be associated with bad behavior and gratuitous violence.


And I got this from.

http://www.angelfire.com/moon/darkchamber/goth-timeline.htm

The goth culoture was actually an outgrowth of the punk culture of the 70's and early 80's.

There are other threads that have covered this topic. However, the gothic culture has evolved and altered throughout the generations. I would recommend searching through the older threads for more information on this subject.

as an aside, when "Alien" was released in 1979, it was described as the first gothic science fiction movie. by this, they meant that it was dark and atmospheric, rather like what was then termed "gothic horror" movies. throughout the seventies movie critics referred to movies such as Dracula, Frankenstien, Phantom of the Opera etc as Gothic Horror, as opposed to the schlock horror of the then popular slasher movies. this pertains to the Gothic movement in as far as Gothic horror movies were an inspiration for style. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was a particular influence. I dont know about America, but in England, reruns of the black and white Addams Family series became role models for many teenagers in the eighties and late seventies.

Darkness and its symbolism goes back a long ways. There are Gothic elements in Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Moorish, and the list goes on.

However as it affects the subculture, that'd be a bit like saying that vikings were an influence on punk rock...

The modern Gothic culture has it's subgroups and possibly a good chance at least, is that both the Goth and Punk originated from the Post WW2 cabarets in europe which heavily influenced the "Beat Nik" generation here in the US in the late 50's and the 60's.

this is going to be craxy but i base my opiniosn with what everyone else has said but the gothic style that developed, to me brings me back to the gothic structured churches. Thick walls that hold secrets. the walls tend to be thicker in width which makes me place that the gothic environment of those who follow under the lines of being goth go into the walls of the churhces. the walls are thick. goths tend to keep to themselves more then others, keeping secrets, keeping mystery hidden in their barracaded walls. thats what they remind me of for the walls. then theres the structure. the gothic dress is dark ( not always) but it tends to be darker structured.

churches. the structure of gothic chrches stand tall above cities. back then they built the gothic churches to try and rach god, puting in the stainglass windows to show the light of god. i think that in the hieght of the chrch standing over all the land. i believe that its a sign of being different. in general the church is different, it stands out alone in the crowd, being stared at, gawked at. theres more behind what i think. but i characterize the churches with the subculture we see today.

gothic culture has bcome modernized because it became popular, but the gothic culture is not modern (I'm not in any way referring to the germanic people the name began with). Look back throughout history and you'll see it, it goes through cycles of popularity. It is always centered around some form of art. Look at the Renaissance period and tell me that most of those artists weren't "goth." How about Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespear? It has almost always existed.