Despite two very recent and horrific murders by young men who could be described as "goth", the Herald-Tribune (FL) has a fairly sympathetic article which points out the relative non-violence of the goth scene:
Trouble sometimes brews at Club Heat in Bradenton, a venue law enforcement knows well. But never on Goth night..."It's one of the friendliest crowds around," bartender Jeremy Hale, 24, said. "It's probably the only night we've never had a fight."
Goth, a little-understood and hard to define subculture, has cropped up on the news and in everyday conversation after six brutal Manatee County murders. Police and neighbors have described the two murder suspects as Gothic. Now, young people in the Gothic community worry they will be stereotyped as loose cannons and potential killers...
Richard Henderson Jr., a 20-year-old Manatee man known to wear black and paint his nails black in a Goth style, is accused of killing his family at their Myakka City home with a metal pipe on Thanksgiving. And on Sunday, Clifford Davis, 19, a black-clad man with gothic tattoos including a sword across his back, killed his mother and grandfather in Bradenton, authorities say...
Elizabeth Bird, a University of South Florida professor who specializes in pop culture, said young people into the Goth subculture might feel alienated from the mainstream, but are not necessarily troubled or dysfunctional. She said being Goth doesn't translate into violence. "Your average sports fan is probably more violent," Bird said. "If a member of a basketball team does something bad, we don't say that's because he's on the basketball team."
Well, actually, some goths would say that. But the point is well taken.
Posted by kswygert at January 9, 2006 09:38 PM