Eli5: How did the term “Goth” go from Germanic tribes destroying Rome, to the music and fashion we know today?

Question

Eli5: How did the term “Goth” go from Germanic tribes destroying Rome, to the music and fashion we know today?

In: 7280

Answer 1

The Goth aspect was tied to 60s British counter-culture playing off American pop culture shows like the Munsters, Addams Family, Dark Shadows, etc which were derivative of older golden age monster movies like Frankenstein, Dracula, Invisible Man, etc..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows

In the 70s, the British punk scene borrowed these character-types as on stage prop imagery. The Damned for example just wore the same outfit as Barnaby Jones from Dark Shadows. This music isn’t Goth, it predates it.

A couple years later the band Bauhaus came out. Peter Murphy looks like the spooky offspring of David Bowie and Peter Weller from Robocop. This is when the Goth image developed.

Shreikback was cool.

There’s actually not a whole lot of Goth bands because it was a fairly short lived subset of the punk subculture and it was always evolving. A lot of this stuff has fairly New Wave synths and merged with industrial bands so while you’d listen to something like Sisters of Mercy, you might follow it with Skinny Puppy who was one of the influences for Industrial music and the whole cyberpunk image.

Skinny Puppy was the model for bands like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.

There’s nothing especially romantic or fancy about the Goth subculture. It was just kind of fun to be spooky. A lot more women tend to be into it because of the fashion.

Also, Goth and Emo were 2 different things. The Emo image is completely fake.