Vampires & Goths

It seems odd when I think about it and even stranger if I say it out loud but I’m really intrigued by the goth subculture. Ok, the music doesn’t really get me going (unless of course you are counting The Cure) because it depresses me. Maybe because it has an uncanny ability to influence my emotions into a state of despair but either way I keep away from it so I avoid any emotional trauma, like I do with Radiohead. I do like the way they dress though, especially the females and quite frankly I find goth girls alluring in an eerie way.

I could never be a goth though because I’m pretty rubbish. Committing myself to wearing black is too hard to do. There’s only a black leather jacket and a black t-shirt in my wardrobe. The rest is pretty much navy, grey or white. A navy coloured goth would just look foolish, surely. Also preparation time would take up much of my time. I’d have to learn how to apply black nail varnish and guyliner which would leave me looking stupid. Currently I can get ready in fourteen minutes in the morning which enables me to have an extra half hour in bed, giving that up would be hard to do especially to tie up those big ol’ boots. But why would I do I look in awe and curiosity when I walk past a gothic posse in the streets?

Maybe it is because when I was younger I was terrified of Vlad the Impaler, aka, Dracula. Christopher Lee swaggering around with his black cape in those hammer horror films had me going to bed having nightmares. Dracula is surely the goth messiah always shrouded in black and at his most powerful during night. Eventually, when I was a bit older I accepted that Dracula was not real or at least would not seek me out so now feeling a bit safer I began investigating his lore. The library brought me some rather different interpretations of a Romanian warlord or Count who used to dispose of his enemies by impaling them with a spear. Only for it to be done to him but he did not die. Women were wooed by his lascivious aura only to find themselves bitten in the night. And those victims to the sanguinary bite would become vampires themselves. Was Dracula unwittingly the original goth instigator? Well perhaps not especially if you look at Hollywood’s fairly recent portrayal of vampires. Interview with a Vampire had Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise walking around dressed rather casually without much black at all. There were no capes seen anywhere. The Lost Boys (I love this film) show the eighties generation of vampires as The Doors fans who although wear a lot more black still were not dressed in full gothic clobber. I am keen to see this Twilight film, the one with Cedric Diggory in it, just to see if the vampires of 2008 have by chance gone back to their original Dracula style roots. Vampires these days have drifted away from the black cape and powdered face so this has me thinking that Dracula may have kicked off the goth fashion but contemporary vampires try their best to integrate in society and therefore don’t walk around with high collared shirts (I will be keeping a more closer eye on Harry Hill though).

The relationship between vampirism and Gothicism seem entwined with me still trying to work the various connections, although for the learned it is probably clear as day light! Either way the subculture still fascinates me and I will continue to admire those goth chicks from afar.