OPEN GRAVES

This is part 2 of Poe’s Big Tiddy Goth Girls, which gives a more in depth look at the literary trope of dead women fetishized by male narrators. It is debatable whether this has a direct effect on the goth subculture any more than it does on western culture as a whole, but either way it is an undeniable building block of the Gothic literature where we find our roots. Ophelia and Desdemona, Annabelle Lee and Lenore, Elizabeth Frankenstein, Sybil Vane, all the way up through Laura Palmer and Nick Cave’s many lyrical deaths and beyond, this trope lives on (see what we did there) well into contemporary art and pop culture. Navigating this narrative from a feminist perspective is no small task, and it won’t end here.

Playlists discussed:

Imagined Dead Girls & Living Sad Girls

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/057ejY77DrLJJZoaOp2ig5?si=db31831ff3dc475b

Dandies & Dead Boys

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jRZfqs7yiOaMLWE1rpYmo?si=903bdcd507c54ea7

Heather and Vesta chat about how the goth subculture is represented in mainstream media, interpreted by those outside the community, and often therefore fetishized. We discuss whether we tend to fetishize youth within the community, what happens when our aesthetic is decontextualized and sometimes appropriated, and why this podcast will never tag #gothgirl (ugh what a conundrum, we just did). We leave you with a cliffhanger of the manic pixie dead girl trope, which we will get into more in depth on our next guest-free episode.

Tonight we are graced by the presence of Davey Havok, whom you may recognize from such bands as AFI and Blaqk Audio, as well as Dreamcar and XTRMST. Outside of his very successful music projects, we know Davey as a staple on the dance floor in the LA goth community. We jump right into discussing whether the label “goth” is diminutive, whether labels in general are anything more than lazy journalism, the experience of growing up as a casualty of Catholicism and rejecting organized religion, and coming up in the hardcore punk scene which then gave way to a more poetic, less aggressive goth side. Davey tells us the nerve wracking tale of playing The Cure in front of The Cure, discusses his convictions around veganism and the straightedge lifestyle, the meaning of vice, the blurry boundaries between artist and fans in our community and how this can still result in problematic limerence, and symbolic aesthetics in an age of decontextualization. You can find Blaqk Audio’s latest album - Trop d’amour - wherever you found this podcast, and if in LA you can see them at the Fonda this Saturday 9/24.

Today we are chatting with SoCal deathrock enigma Morticia Batz, founder of online publication GothHausLA.com. But there is more to her than just deathrock, rollerderby, and band interviews. Coming from the LA County foster system and homelessness, to giving TedX talks and getting her Psychology and Indigenous People’s Studies degree at UCSD, she is determined to use everything she’s been through to help others through activism, nonprofit work, research, and changing public policy. One thing is clear: community comes first and foremost to this goth-adopted bat. And someday soon she will answer the question: does Jonny Slut like water?

If you’re from LA, you have seen a shirtless man dancing up a storm, and that man is Jay Byrd and he is with us today. He tells us about growing up in Santa Clarita in an extremely preppy environment, having a jock phase, and how being bullied led to both an interest in martial arts and an overdevelopment of empathy. We discuss his compartmentalization of identity between work, family, fitness, and the goth scene (who is Jason White?), as well as the importance of male friendship in our scene and brunch with the boys (sometimes Vesta is one of the boys), and how Covid actually strengthened some friendships and our scene itself. Now that the world is back, Jay still goes out more than his 22-year-old sons, sweating on predators to keep our scene safe.

It is obvious that the goth scene is fueled by musicians, music, and dance, but how does the arts community in general overlap with the goth community? We discuss our experience as poets, working with productions such as Ex Corpse, a queer goth art collective, The Poetry Brothel in which Vesta is the token goth and proud of it, Heather's own book of published poetry, "Feral Black Sheep," and Wilde Words which focused on dandyism in literature. We have artists of every type in our scene, extending out to the blurrier boundaries of what is considered art, when we include engineers, programers, chefs, gamers, and cosplayers. We also discuss the self as art, in the sense that the gothic aesthetic requires not only technique but the drive for self-expression. And then of course, the experience of insecurity around not-goth artists, and the ever-lingering fear of judgement, even as relatively confident adults: am I a cliche? Can gothic art still be innovative? Fuck it, we think so.

If you’re in the goth scene at all, you probably know Shok, the Andy Warhol of many musical trades. He was goth before there was a word for it, literally. We talk (poolside!) about his many music projects, working with David J of Bauhaus and Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde in the band Tres Vampires, his John Hughes level of confidence and how it lives side by side with clinical depression, and how connecting through his many Twitches and Zooms during the pandemic helped to heal this depression. Among Shok’s many projects, you can find Lost Tapes at Losttapes007.bandcamp.com and visit him on Twitch at Twitch.tv/mylivetube, which kept us all going when we were housebound.

It always seems to get weird when it’s just us. We get into an intimate subject that is more universal than specific to the goth scene, but Vesta is convinced we approach it a little differently: body hair and grooming. Aesthetic expression and gender dynamics are integral to our subculture, and that doesn’t stop at the covered parts. We discuss gendered expectations, how androgyny functions in our subculture, inclusive feminism, some TMI, and that goddamn Fad Gadget song. Drinking game: drink every time we say we have to cut something out, and clearly did not cut it out.

We are joined by our second not-goth guest, Joe Keeper of Bar Keeper Silverlake. Vesta was the first goth person he had ever gotten to know, and he had questions; instead of just having a normal conversation about it, we decided to record it. What is the relationship, if any, of Rocky Horror to goth? How does androgyny function in the goth community? Do we shave more than our heads? How might goth compare to keeping kosher? Are we all this literate or do we have idiot goths too? Are there old goths? Is everyone white? Can we date outside the “faith”? What about religion? We touch on all of these sincere questions while also discussing the importance of David Bowie, the inauthenticity of Madonna, the marketing of counterculture, the importance of compassionate outsiders, and how Vesta got her name.