Italian Goth Subculture


Book Description

This book is the first in-depth investigation of the Goth subculture in Italy, focusing in particular on the city of Milan. It grows out of a three year research project - the first in Italy of this scope on the topic - based on the life histories of two dozen participants. In light of this, Simone Tosoni and Emanuela Zuccalà propose an innovative approach to the study of spectacular subcultures: contrarily to the most common accounts of the spectacular subcultures of the 80s, this book describes the experience of subcultural belonging as plural and internally diversified. In particular, three different variations - or 'enactments' - of goth are described in-depth: the politically engaged one; the one typical of the scene of the alternative music clubs spread all over northern Italy; and the one, common in the little towns surrounding Milan (but not limited to it), where participants used to 'enact' the dark subculture alone or in small groups. Their book argues that while these three different variations of goth shared the same canon of subcultural resources (music, style, patterns of cultural consumptions), they differed under relevant points of view, like forms of socialization, stance toward political activism, identity construction processes, and even their relationship with urban space. Yet, contrarily to the stress on individual differences in 'subcultural' belonging typical of post-subcultural theorists, the Milanese variations of goth appear to have been socially shared, as socially shared were the different 'practices of enactment' of the subculture that characterized each of them.







Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s


Book Description

This book explores some of disco’s other lives which thrived between the 1970s and the 1980s, from oil-boom Nigeria to socialist Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial India to war-torn Lebanon. It charts the translation of disco as a cultural form into musical, geo-political, ideological and sociological landscapes that fall outside of its original conditions of production and reception, capturing the variety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimensions in its global journey. With its deep repercussions in visual culture, gender politics, and successive forms of popular music, art, fashion and style, disco as a musical genre and dance culture is exemplary of how a subversive, marginal scene – that of queer and Black New York undergrounds in the early 1970s – turned into a mainstream cultural industry. As it exploded, atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas; its aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat, allowed it to permeate a variety of local scenes for whom the meaning of disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways.




Library of Congress Subject Headings


Book Description




Giallo!


Book Description

Italian giallo films have a peculiar allure. Taking their name from the Italian for "yellow"— reflecting the covers of pulp crime novels—these genre movies were principally produced between 1960 and the late 1970s. These cinematic hybrids of crime, horror, and detection are characterized by elaborate set-piece murders, lurid aesthetics, and experimental soundtracks. Using critical frameworks drawn from genre theory, reception studies, and cultural studies, Giallo! traces this historically marginalized genre's journey from Italian cinemas to the global cult-film canon. Through close textual analysis of films including The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971), and The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972), Alexia Kannas considers the rendering of urban space in the giallo and how it expresses a complex and unsettling critique of late modernity.




Youth Cultures and Subcultures


Book Description

This volume critically examines ’subculture’ in a variety of Australian contexts, exploring the ways in which the terrain of youth cultures and subcultures has changed over the past two decades and considering whether ’subculture’ still works as a viable conceptual framework for studying youth culture. Richly illustrated with concrete case studies, the book is thematically organised into four sections addressing i) theoretical concerns and global debates over the continued usefulness of subculture as a concept; ii) the important place of ’belonging’ in subcultural experience and the ways in which belonging is played out across an array of youth cultures; iii) the gendered experiences of young men and women and their ways of navigating subcultural participation; and iv) the ethical and methodological considerations that arise in relation to researching and teaching youth culture and subculture. Bringing together the latest interdisciplinary research to combine theoretical considerations with recent empirical studies of subcultural experience, Youth Cultures and Subcultures will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences.




Goth Culture


Book Description

'Goth Culture' explores Goths' expressive practices of dress, fashion, style and the body, in relation to issues of identity and representation. The book shares vivid accounts of the author's experiences exploring gender and sexuality and doing fieldwork in the Gothic subculture in the UK, US and Germany.




Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This book assesses the legacy of Dick Hebdige and his work on subcultures in his seminal work, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979). The volume interrogates the concept of subculture put forward by Hebdige, and asks if this concept is still capable of helping us understand the subcultures of the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume assess the main theoretical trends behind Hebdige’s work, critically engaging with their value and how they orient a researcher or student of subculture, and also look at some absences in Hebdige’s original account of subculture, such as gender and ethnicity. The book concludes with an interview with Hebdige himself, where he deals with questions about his concept of subculture and the gestation of his original work in a way that shows his seriousness and humour in equal measure. This volume is a vital contribution to the debate on subculture from some of the best researchers and academics working in the field in the twenty-first century.




Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace


Book Description

It was a scene that had many names: some original members referred to themselves as punks, others, new romantics, new wavers, the bats or the morbids. 'Goth' did not gain lexical currency until the late 1980s. But no matter what term was used, 'postpunk' encompasses all the incarnations of the 1980s alternative movement. Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace is a visual and oral history of the first decade of the scene. Featuring interviews with both the performers and the audience to capture the community on and off stage, the book places personal snapshots alongside professional photography to reveal a unique range of fashions, bands and scenes. A book about the music, the individual and the creativity of a worldwide community rather than theoretical definitions of a subculture, Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace considers a subject not often covered by academic books. Whether you were part of the scene or are just fascinated by different modes of expression, this book will transport you to another time and place.




The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture


Book Description

This interdisciplinary collection brings together world leaders in Gothic Studies, offering dynamic new readings on popular Gothic cultural productions from the last decade. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: contemporary High Street Goth/ic fashion, Gothic performance and art festivals, Gothic popular fiction from Twilight to Shadow of the Wind, Goth/ic popular music, Goth/ic on TV and film, new trends like Steampunk, well-known icons Batman and Lady Gaga, and theorizations of popular Gothic monsters (from zombies and vampires to werewolves and ghosts) in an age of terror/ism.