Where Did Goth Teen Subculture Come From and Why is it Associated With Roman Invaders?

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you may think dating back no further than the early 1980s despite taking inspiration from earlier periods particularly where clothing is concerned it all began in the uk as a side phenomenon of a music genre so-called gothic rock the first band to be labeled thus was actually the doors as far back as 1967. alice cooper david bowie the veil that underground and the sex pistols also being considered forebears of the genre the album to be called the first goth album was nico's the marble index from 1968 with the singer's looks becoming a prototype for the subculture to follow as well as the 1976 debut of the dam whose vocalist davanian deliberately played on his former occupation as a gravedigger and dressed like a vampire however as a distinct music style gothic rock did not pick up real steam until the late 1970s and early 1980s with notable artists beginning with suxy and the banshees and extending to the likes of joy division bauhaus and the cure an important date in its history is july the 21 1982 when the batcave club opened in london providing a venue for the scene and leading to its rise in popularity anne rice's 1976 novel interview with a vampire also played its part by giving a popular platform to the romanticizing of the darkly supernatural but sensitive protagonist as its own genre gothic rock took inspiration from 19th century gothic literature and its themes generally sounding darker more melancholic or dramatic in the lyrics death tragedy and the supernatural were also romanticized and the present state of the world condemned and rejected elements and tropes from horror films further shaped the look and sound of the artists and their fans music is in fact still a big part of the goth scene though tastes have diversified and now also include dark wave cold wave and ethereal wave as well as death rock and post punk as for fashion in the words of ted palhamos goth fashion is a profusion of black velvet's lace fishnets and leather tindered with scarlet or purple accessorized with tightly laced corsets gloves precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes the fact that these fashion choices are made by both male and female goths is only one component of non-compliance with traditional perceptions of gender and sexuality the modern goth subculture has of course not remained in the uk alone but spread throughout the world as for the name itself being applied as nice as it would be to have an easy explanation for the origin of the term it has undergone a lot of change for example in the 20th century it merely translated to what was to be found as gothic meaning old-fashioned slightly scary with the air of brooding darkness literature and art forms from that time mainly deems buildings with tall windows abandoned and haunted mansions and other such edifices of dark allure as gothic so how did this term come to be applied to such architecture and literature while both of these are in some way or another misleadingly associated with a real people the goths going back a couple of thousand years the first misconception has to do with the dubbing of medieval art as gothic this goes as follows during the medieval times in europe one of the first major developments in architecture was the so-called romanesque art which to some extent can be seen as a combination of late antiquity for example in buildings you can notice this by the rounded arches and the heavy form as time passed however architects began experimenting especially wanting to construct the large cathedrals of the 12th and 13th centuries as a staple of innovation and power of the cities building them amongst the innovations was the use of the flying buttresses so that the load of each huge church or building would be spread out to the side piers with this technique you can have a very tall nave as well as more windows but they have to be long and narrow the other innovation coming from the east possibly during the crusades was the pointed arch strongly contributing to that distinctive feel of what we call gothic used in doors and rib vaults in churches castles in any type of building in painting and sculpture despite their painful attention to detail like each hair individually painted and some examples they did not emphasize naturalism or expression in favor of distilled forms that we today perceive as apathy and sometimes as unsettling furthermore the paintings lack the feeling of space as if everything was on the foreground it should be clear that these developments were done not by any invading gothic tribes rather centers for this were france and flanders though many examples are known from italy with the dawn of the renaissance in italy in the 14th and especially in the 15th century it was all the rage to return to the life like splendid greco-roman standards for the arts which glorified life and movement in contrast to the old medieval art somewhere along there an arrogance towards this edgy non-smoothness of the gothic appeared and hence its name referring to the goths who to the popular mind had destroyed and vandalized the ancient civilization along with its art the ragged edges of the gothic churches were thus seen as barbaric by the people of that time even though it was their grandfathers who had created them in the common mind the false association was made that these gothic structures and painting style had replaced the greco-roman one and hence the word gothic was used as a slur to denote the unrefined it was a renaissance era burn for someone to call your mama's house gothic in any event four centuries later around the 1800s what had started as a revolution had slowly become establishment in turn classicism saw itself as a continuation of the renaissance ideals in art and architecture this range from classical music to the corinthian columns of the united states senate or the national capital columns around that time along with the revolutionary spirit there was an awakening in art looking back at the slightly ragged past and finding appreciation in the gothic church ruins even in traditionally romantic painters like their ultimate representative casper david friedrich this phenomenon has even received the very appropriate artistry term ruin last and went as far as the intentional building of fake ruins though these might have the style of greek temples right next to parts of medieval castles as one may guess faithful imitation was not the purpose here but rather the evocation of a lost past and all the feelings that come with that notion additionally distinctly so-called gothic elements began to appear in the otherwise peaceful landscape settings such as in the work of american painter john quindor and for some authors romanticism also simply wasn't emotional enough and needed a tad more darkness added to it making their works priority not simply beauty but a range of feelings the eerie and macabre came back into fashion giving us mary shelley's frankenstein right next to the sheer romantic drama of lord byron gothic novels emerged in the mid to late 1700s with possibly the first example of one being the castle of tranto by horace walpole but became properly popular in the 1800s and lasted into the early 1900s during this time notable authors include emily bronte edgar allan poe robert louis stevenson daphne de mourier bram stoker and even oscar wilde in work such as the picture of dorian gray protagonists were mostly isolated there was a clear and particularly evil villain the setting was the appropriate decaying gothic edifice there were elements of the supernatural of mystery horror and romance in short an entirely new genre was invented and so were many of our favorite horror villains monsters stories and tropes music too began to shift a transition from the joyful tunes of mozart to angst-ridden beethoven one of the results of these tendencies of their time is the gothic revival or the neo-gothic where gothic archers appeared in modern buildings of the 19th century this led to wildly evocative if terribly impractical edifices such as pontel abbey a vast building including a 90-meter tower conceptualized and realized by william thomas beckford and architect james watt the trends overwhelmed central europe and spread to america as well one of the building types emerging from this was the victorian mansion this type of rich house went out of favor in the early 20th century and owing to economic factors many were deserted solely they began to be associated with the old decaying ability and became the archetype of the scary or even haunted house thus the gap is bridged to the late 20th century's perception of gothic as a gloomy dark noir-like element batman appropriately lives in gotham but what about the og goths themselves we first encountered them as yet another tribe that made advances into the roman territories of modern germany france and belgium as to the various individual names of these peoples it's not always clear where they stem from as in the case of the swabians or later thuringians it is not clear if an accident or ethanol a name they were either given by someone else or one they called themselves the goths appeared rather late in the historiography prominently around the 3rd century although mentions of them could be found much earlier as some travelers mention the guitars of people around the area of what is modern-day poland additionally plenty the elder quotes an even earlier source the ancient greek traveler pythius whose travels lead him to the northern lands of tully at some point he encounters a northern people called the guions who traded an amber whom some scholars identify with the good owns people and the goths trade in ember is a nice piece of evidence as scandinavia was a major exporter of amber from ancient times until today together with the early reference to poland and the vestula river we have a location that is traditionally considered the home of the goths the baltic this is also supported by the early work of getaker written by a citizen of the eastern roman empire in the 6th century of gothic origin called jordans supporters of this theory show the island gotland in south sweden and some other places that bear their name as a possible origin but of course this is not accepted by all the chanyakov culture of the later third and fourth centuries aed beside the black sea and the polish and by the russian weibach cultures of the first to third centuries provide evidence of a gothic migration down the vistula to the black sea but no clear trail leads to scandinavia in any case from somewhere in northern europe should be close enough for most people as for the meaning the various etymologies never agree with each other one of the most common but also most boring concepts is that it just meant people a slightly more out there hypothesis is that it meant the cedars whatever the case despite their late appearance the goths quickly developed into one of the main players in late antiquity categorized into two main groups one called the ostrogoths meaning the goths of the east since they ended up in italy and the other being called the visigoths meaning goths of the west since they ended up in spain but originally the visigoths entered the game in the balkans the visigoths crossed the danube in the 370s and in 378 in the battle of adrian apple the unthinkable happened the roman emperor valens not only was the first emperor to lose a battle within the empire but also the first one to die in battle within it after this shock the group were left mostly unchecked and the people relied on the walls of the cities to protect the populace while the visigoths went on pillaging and burning their leader alaric finally even pillared jerome in 410 a.d that said it should be noted that despite their valiant efforts which should give the goths their prize for being the most prolific pillagers our word for destruction is connected to the vandals who sacked rome 40 years later but as always there is another side out of all the germanic people the goths were integrated the most into roman society with intermarriages with the roman elite and positions within the army the whole empire was under their rule in rather difficult times those leaders were never officially named emperors as the roman elite would not care for a low-class goth to be emperor but some personalities such as steliko in fact did have that job in orbit name further the visigoths became foderati allies of rome in 418 only eight years after the sacking of the city also they adopted christianity at a very early stage in the late fourth century being the first germanic people to do so a hundred years before the franxx in this development the missionary work of the bishop ulfalus is noted under whom the bible was translated into the gothic language around 350 a.d making it the first bible in the germanic language a rather important event for linguists this early translation gives a very interesting insight into the language which is the oldest recorded germanic language of which english is a branch of so although incomprehensible to modern english speakers some elements will seem familiar as an example haben is to have gibbon is to give despite their assimilation in the public memory however the goth's image survived as a menace with pillaging in the midst of the chaos of the eve of the fall of the roman empire an issue was also that the christian dogma they were initially converted to one called aryanism was and is considered heretical which caused other internal problems entering medieval times the ostrogothic kingdom officially ruled in italy under ottarek who accepted the abdication of the last roman emperor a 13 year old boy called romulus augustilus the visigoths were established to the west and goth generally became a collective name engulfing many groups that were not related to each other in this vein the gothic invasions also include the vandals allens etc slowly they were assimilating into the various regions they inhabited taking on the italian and spanish languages one of their enduring legacies are some loanwords for example italian has a number of words with germanic rather than latin origin it should also be noted here briefly that a less celebrated branch of oge goths is the crimean goths who lasted into the 18th century in crimea near the balkans unlike some of their forebears their impact on world history is minimal with interactions mainly with the slavic populations to the north and byzantium to the south solely however they disappeared with the last mention of them being in the 1780s no violence seems to be the cause of their downfall they just seem to have integrated into the crimean tatar and crimean greek populations but at least they've managed to make it to within two centuries of the modern goth culture in any event after all this one thing we can say for certain is that the original gothic tribes would not feel a great kinship with the modern gothic subculture or art and literature and while particular pagan elements prevail in modern goth the modern goths likewise with their general active practicing of non-violence also might be a bit put off by all the pillaging of their namesake forebears so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching you

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 250,431

Rating: 4.9209471 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know

Id: M4RSnrL1QXc

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021