Having left off with Night of the Living Dead becoming public domain, we continue our discussion with Marc about how mainstream media set the stage for goth. We also question how the influence of worldwide collective trauma set us up to embrace feelings of otherness, how monster narratives provide solace, and debate the difference between pop culture and subculture. From Harold of Harold and Maude as the prototypical goth boy to Bauhaus and Bowie in The Hunger, to the opening of Spirit Halloween and The Cure releasing a compilation on a major label, we conclude with Lydia Deetz codifying contemporary goth in Beetlejuice. We also get Marc’s personal history with Rocky Horror and his goth-adjacent tastes. Check out his film blog at projectorhasbeendrinking.blogspot.com/

Marc Heuck, Vesta’s first employer, friend of 20 years, and  self-proclaimed goth-adjacent film nerd, might be our first guest to show up with pages of notes, and is definitely our first guest to lead to a two parter. This dissertation-level discussion is about the media that set the stage in the mainstream for goth to thrive later on. By this he means television, radio, and comics; the types of media that come directly into your home. We begin in 1930 with “The Shadow,” through the Charles Addams in the New Yorker, to Night of the Living Dead becoming public domain. We discuss how an interest in monsters humanizes Otherness, and that the feeling of otherness is a unifying factor in the goth community. If we say “monster kids drink beer and goths drink wine,” you probably know what we mean. But in this case, we are actually drinking scotch. 

Today on zoom we have one of Heather’s gothmothers, Laura Coldheart. She discusses coming to the goth side through experiencing death in the family and the cultural influence of Dia de los Muertos, finding music through working at Sam Goody, and feeling that the goth community used to offer more support to its members. This evil librarian offers insight into how appearing dark and spooky can function as protection against predators - and her children agree. Keep it spooky!

After a preamble about lingering Covid, summergoth pool parties, vasectomies, and laser hair removal, we revisit the ever-surfacing topic of The Addams Family in their many incarnations, this time prompted not by Netflix’s Wednesday, but by a recently discovered Pluto channel that plays only the 1960s television show. This time Vesta is fixated on deconstructing the capitalist themes in every iteration of the family, the way that their outsider status relies on wealth, how their wholesomeness allows for wealth without abuse of power, and worldliness and openness as part of their alienation from the white middle class. We also dredge up the forgotten corpses of Addams Family Reunion, the Broadway musical that should definitely stay buried, and we also learn a deep dark secret: Heather transitions from Wednesday into Morticia every day and night. And you heard it here first: Obelisk is throwing a Mamushka party in October!

We are joined today in some stereotypically bisexual and neurodivergent seating positions by Jared Eakin aka define.human, to talk about how they skipped right over goth to get to industrial, how health trauma in the family coincided with their introduction to goth and industrial, growing up in the homophobia mecca of Riverside, and now living in an entirely queer, nonbinary, trans, and poly household. They discuss their spreadsheet-level obsession with new darkwave music, becoming a club DJ and promoter just this year, and being part of the “cult” of Ex Corpse, the art collective that curates space for queer safety. Hear Jared DJ Nihil at The North End every second, third and fourth Fridays, and check out their industrial music project define.human here: linktree.com/define.human.

Goth, feminism, and comedy do coexist, and our guest Virginia Jones is living (and undead) proof. We talk about how refining her art allowed her to become more herself, having her own album title mansplained to her, and growing up as a Texas punk fascinated with California deathrock. We know that otherness unites goths and comedians, and the origins of both run deep; we learn about growing up Mormon, leaving the church after learning about its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment as a teenager, and finding a new secular Church in Dallas. You can now find Virginia performing in Los Angeles and all over, so check out badinia.com for show dates, Badinia on tiktok, and her comedy album Gothic American anywhere you have already found this podcast.

Since day one we have intended to do an episode (or episodes) focusing on The Addams Family, their many incarnations, and cultural and subcultural importance, but now it is impossible to do so without first addressing Netflix’s Wednesday series. Unsurprisingly, we have a lot of feelings. In addition to bitching about some of the choices of the television show, including but not limited to praise of Jenna Ortega while dragging the rest of the cast and the Hogwarts fever dream fan fiction plots, we touch on the intersection of the Addams with subculture and identifying with the “other,” why it feels wrong to refer to Wednesday as a “goth girl,” and the importance of social justice to the Addams legacy. Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc; not just pretty words.

It’s live music season, and this is an intimate recovery zoom after the chaos of the Cruel World festival weekend. Heather was fully prepared and committed with a wine bra and a She-Wee, while Vesta…is not a festival person. We discuss the overwhelming(ly positive) experience of the triple-stage goth-leaning music festival at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, including but not limited to Iggy Pop summoning lightning and the festival’s evacuation, to he and Siouxsie performing a redux on Sunday. 

After reuniting by sharing a tattoo artist, we have one of Vesta’s first goth friends and a day-one listener, BattyKat Weed. She tells us about being into Edward Gorey and Stephen King as a child, growing up with some unspoken parental mysteries, finding her way to goth through an interest in paganism and Renaissance Faire, putting her self-expression on hiatus to pursue acting, and how this may have tricked her not-goth husband at the beginning of their 20+ year marriage. Harkening back to our chronotype episode which resonated strongly with Kat, she discusses the toll that fitting into the daywalker working world effects her physical and metal health, and how being chronically early has become a coping mechanism (for Heather as well). Though she self-identifies as goth without being a big club-goer, she may be having a personal renaissance, and not just the Faire kind.