Eli5: How did the term “Goth” go from Germanic tribes destroying Rome, to the music and fashion we know today?
In: 7280
The vadals sacked rome right? They vandalized it.
Long story short, “Gothic” has always been the anti-culture since the late Roman impirial period. It’s a label splaped onto counterculture or passé movements to deride them or co-opted as a source of pride.
Gothic barbarians vs civilized Romans, Medieval Gothic architecture vs Renaissance Hellenistic and Roman revival, Gothic Romanticism vs Enlightenment Reason, Marilyn Manson vs Bill O’Reilly.
Music critic John Stickney coined the term ‘gothic rock’ in 1967 when describing a Doors show. He wrote that the cavernous venue was ‘the perfect room to honour the Gothic rock of the Doors’. That name stuck with other new wave bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus -who even dressed as vampires.
Others mention the Gothic architecture connection, but the explanations are generally incomplete, so I’ll try to be as thorough as I can.
Gothic architecture is derived from the earlier medieval Romanesque architecture, largely through the architectural innovations of the Normans. At the time this style was called “frankish/french” or “modern”. This new modern architecture used techniques like flying buttresses, which allowed walls to be thinner and windows to be wider, allowing more natural light to flood the interior of churches. Because of this modern churches were a lot brighter, and also came to use more stained glass.
With the Renaissance classical antiquity came back in fashion, and churches were instead built in a new Renaissance style which mimicked ancient Roman architecture, which was seen as more civilized. It’s during the Renaissance that a concept of a “middle age” is invented, as European historiography begins to categorise history into the old golden age of Rome, and the new age of the “Rebirth” (Renaissance) of civilization, with the time in between being considered by contrast uncivilized and even barbaric. It’s simply called the “Middle Ages” because it’s in between two periods of high civilization, unremarkable and worthless by itself. This is also where our idea of the dark ages comes from, and in part why such an emphasis is placed on the Fall of Rome in the West.
In rejecting the old medieval world, the Renaissance also rejected its architectural style, and supporters of the Renaissance started using the term “Gothic” as a derogatory term for the style, as one might use “Vandal” or “Barbarian”. This the term “Gothic” began to be applied to what we now call “Gothic architecture.”
In addition to letting in more light, Gothic churches were generally bright in their construction, built from relatively light-coloured materials and painted in bright colours. However, over time the paint faded and chipped, becoming bare stone churches. This is not unlike to why during the Renaissance people thought Roman architecture was pure white and started carving statues and building marble buildings the same way, even though originally they had been painted. The paint simply didn’t survive, and over time people forgot. In addition dirt and smoke would increasingly come to cover churches and cathedrals over the centuries, which would lead them to be darker, even black in appearance.
Their dark spires could make these buildings quite intimidating, which is perhaps why they became associated with and a staple of Gothic horror novels. Generally the first Gothic novel is considered to be _The Castle of Otranto_, set in a haunted castle. Thus an association between horror, the medieval, and the darkened remnants of medieval architecture began to take shape, all under the label of “Gothic”.
As it happens, a new trend of Gothic Revival architecture also came about, which was prominent in the United Kingdom. Thus there was both old and new Gothic architecture.
Gothic horror would later be explored in film, and it frequently used locations such as Gothic cathedrals as well as neo-gothic architecture because it fit the aesthetic, and was often already the aesthetic described in books, which further reinforced the connection.
Because most Gothic horror was written in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and was also set in this time period, movies naturally took inspiration from the times, especially the fashion of the upper classes, for their costumes. These costumes would however be considerably darker than most of what people would actually have worn at the time, fitting the darker aesthetic of Gothic horror. Of course, early films were also black and white in any case.
It’s basically Gothic literature and this dark Victorian aesthetic of Gothic horror which inspires the Goth fashion trend, Gothic rock and the Goth subculture.
However, the Gothic music scene is derived from the Punk scene, which also brought over Punk fashion trends into Goth subculture, so the fashion is actually a mix of Gothic horror and punk inspirations.
I took a class on gothic literature once and on the first day my professor gave us a lecture on this lol, I’ll summarize.
1. The goths were a germanic tribe who contributed to the fall of the roman empire.
2. Gothic architecture was called such because it was such a massive change in style from architecture of the time, it was a bit of a derogatory term, like how the Goths destroyed Rome, they were now destroying architecture
3. In the 18th century, there was the gothic era of fiction. It was called this because they often took place in a gothic castle. There are a lot of things that define a gothic novel, but in my opinion subversiveness is the most important characteristic.
4. this continued as a mode of fiction throughout history, including non literary fiction such as tv shows and movies and…even music.
5. Rock with gothic-inspired features exists and is referred to as gothic rock
6. this gets popular, and spawns the gothic subculture
What unites these all together? Subversiveness! Gothic fiction can tell us a lot about the national anxieties of a group.
British journalist reporting on the DIY dressed youths at clubs like the Batcave did a “moral panic” move a described them as “Barbaric like the Vandals and Goths”
The name stuck and also allows to draw a connecting line to Goth Literature (Romantic and Fantasy which starkly opposed the Enlightenment ideals of its time), which in turn links to Goth Architecture (a descriptor for medieval architecture in the Renaissance), etc.
The label “Goth” has been used to essentially describe anything seen as “backwards”, “barbaric” or simply unaligned with the principles of the time – always as a reference to the Goths destroying Rome as if these movements were going to “destroy foundations of society”
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.
The term goth started as a barbarian tribe. Later we had barbaric architecture, barbaric art and barbaric literature. The goth subculture had barbaric/tribal music compared to other music at the time.
One origin story is about Andi Sexgang who was nicknamed the Gothic Goblin of Visigoth Towers (where he lived) and his fans were therefore called goths. The media used it too and the name stuck. For a short while goth was called positive punk but it didn’t stick.
Tldr – something something barbaric compared to mainstream ideals in ancient tribes, architecture, art, literature and a modern music genre plus its fans.
Answer: I believe the gothic music and fashion we know today is more to do with gothic architecture than the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Gothic architecture used to be called [the French Style](https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_cathedrals).
Latest Answers