Skulls, Skulls, Skulls every where: Consuming Death in the 21st Century
Posted by Monica Germana on February 22, 2010 in Dr Monica Germana, Guest Blog tagged withIn the next few weeks I would like to explore a range of topics in relation to the significance of Gothic in contemporary culture. Much has, of course, already been written on the topic, but since contemporary means ‘now’, there is always scope for further discussion!
Is Gothic dead? This question has been haunting us for a while. The TV guide seems to suggest that Gothic is far from dead. As series such as True Blood and Being Human replace older televisual vampires such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, our staple evening entertainment seems to rely heavily on the interaction of vampires, werewolves and poltergeists. The success of Twilight books and films is perhaps the most overt manifestation of this progressive move of Gothic otherness into the normative centre of acceptability. In relation to horror, Fred Botting rightly proposes that the original impact of Gothic horror lingers somehow only in the diluted form of ‘candygothic’, ‘an attempt to reassess the function of horror in a (Western) culture in which transgressions, repressions, taboos, prohibitions no longer mark an absolute limit in unbearable excess and thus no longer contain the intensity of a desire fro something that satisfyingly disturbs and defines social and moral boundaries’ (134). Does this saturation of Gothic motifs in mainstream culture paradoxically announce the funeral of Gothic as marginal sub-culture? In other words, if the boundaries between centre and margins, normativity and subversion become so imperceptible that their mere existence is matter of debate, does it still make sense to discuss the Gothic in these terms? Are we still afraid of the other, when monsters of all kinds appear to have integrated within the patterns of our daily lives? Or has the object of our anxiety moved elsewhere? Perhaps the initial question needs reframing: what kind of Gothic do we live in?
Death is for sale. The Gothic has always been associated with consumption and popular culture: ‘Gothic has always had a mass appeal, but in today’s economic climate it is big business’ Catherine Spooner comments, ‘Above all Gothic sells’ (23). The logic of capitalism, with its emphasis on replication and relentless consumption, accommodates Gothic excesses, whilst, simultaneously, altering the ways in which we approach, consume (and exorcise, perhaps) our inner fears and negotiate our longing for the original that, by definition, can no longer exist. The unexpected death of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who took his life on 11 February 2010, has been regarded as a terrible loss, not only on a human/personal level – as with any death – but on an artistic/collective level: ‘He was a genius. What a terrible, tragic waste’, commented designer Katherine Hamnett. British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman also made an interesting point about the kind of community grief that has become a pervasive feature of the Gothic times we currently live in: ‘he was a modern-day genius whose gothic aesthetic was adopted by women the world over. His death is the hugest loss to anyone who knew him and for very many who didn’t’. Indeed, as predicted by Shulman, fans – old and new – have been prompted to visit stores stocking McQueen’s designs to ‘pay a tribute’ to the icon of Gothic fashion. There is something authentic in the desire to own something of the deceased; objects allow us to hold on to the ghosts of the dead, prolonging, in a sense, the physical communion shared in life. But something of a different nature occurs in manifestations of mass mourning: if it made some sense to see Naomi Campbell or Kylie Minogue wear the famous red and blue skull signature scarves the day McQueen’s death was announced, it is more difficult to view the soaring prices on e-Bay sales through anything other than a cynical filter. What those uncannily cheerful skulls represent is not the nostalgia attached to emotional memories of the deceased, but the urge to participate in the collective act of grief that authenticates one’s experience in the age of mass production and digital connectivity.
But there is something else, too, concealed in the contagious desire to own Alexander McQueen’s red and blue skulls. The notion of relentless repetition is one that characterises Gothic discourse: ‘What haunts Gothic’ David Punter, amongst others, suggests, ‘is Gothic: a ghost haunted by another ghost’ (14). Reproduction is the demon of late capitalism, the dark shadow looming over a culture without origins. The death of an artist means that artwork acquires a higher value, because death creates the illusion of a cut-off point, after which reproduction is no longer possible. Death puts a hypothetical stop to the possibility of replication, making each artefact apparently more unique. What we crave, therefore, is a piece of uniqueness, perhaps, taking comfort in the ownership of something that cannot be multiplied, and mass-reproduced. On one, cynical level, the commodification of the artist’s death promotes forgery and exploitation, reinstating the cycle of repetition that the demand for the unique craves. On the other, this longing for the unique, which makes the possibility of making a profit in the irrational market of mass-mourning a reality, has its roots in a much deeper set of anxieties. It points to the fragile sense of authenticity in our lives, fluctuating between the temporary objects of our desires and the archetypal fears that haunt our contemporary lives: in the age of connectivity, we are only ever ‘real’ if we share the collective experience of mourning for the loss of what we never had; as Alexandra Warwick puts it, ‘contemporary cultural Gothic is a staging of the desire for trauma, the desire to be haunted, because we do not feel complete without it’ (12). Buying death does just that.
References:
Fred Botting, The Gothic (Boydell and Brewer, 2001)
David Punter, Gothic Pathologies: The text, The Body and The Law (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998)
Catherine Spooner, Contemporary Gothic (Reaktion, 2006)
Mark Tran, ‘Fashion Designer Alexander McQueen Dies Aged 40’, The Guardian, 11 February 2010.
Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/11/alexander-mcqueen-dies-fashion-designer
Alexandra Warwick, ‘Feeling Gothicky?’, Gothic Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (May 2007), pp. 5-15.
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This idea that society can participate in a shared mourning experience through consumerism is extremely fascinating! Another recent example that I couldn’t help think of–dealing less with an artist of Gothic culture but still having that haunting aspect– is the recent death of J.D. Salinger. Salinger hasn’t written anything for about fifty years and has made very little, if any, new active contribution to literature in that time beyond the continued reading of The Catcher in the Rye in most American high schools.
So, here we have an author who, unlike McQueen, had given no indication of “reproducing” and whose main literary works have been readily available for decades… yet every bookstore I was in after his death on 27 January had huge displays of his books in different editions, and consumers were racing to buy them. This type of canonical literature is even less likely to disappear than scull scarves or anything in the fashion world, which is so changing and more limited.
I think this proves your point even more! We have even more obviously created the illusion that these items are unique and provide for us some part in the mourning process… even though, what exactly we are mourning is more complicated than the death of one literary recluse. In fact, in the midst of the buzz over his death, even some of my friends who are literature students said, “Really? I didn’t even think he was still alive.”
Thanks for your comment, Laura.
Yes, we can find several examples of the strange culture (and business) of collective mourning: from Diana Spencer to Jade Goody or Michael Jackson, the references come from various areas of popular culture and various degrees of cynical enterprises attached to the commemoration of the dead celebrity.
I certainly think this cultural obsession with celebrity death is made more and more pervasive by the technology of networking sites that allows people who don’t even know each other to ‘share’ the same grief. In a sense these serve the purpose of amplifying or even creating a sense of mourning that wouldn’t ‘naturally’ exist. When invisible children exhale every minute in parts of the world untouched by the McQueens scarf-hunt, it is amazing how we are affected by the other kinds of more visible death.
But perhaps this is also something to do with the untimely deaths of the famous: these always leave powerful ghosts behind; think of Marilyn Monroe, JFK, or Jim Morrison: their deaths have become insignificant, almost, in comparison with the resonance their lives still have in our culture. Journalists and biographers still write (and sell) books about their lives and deaths and mourners visit graves and pay homage to the images of those famous people they feel related to by an uncanny, invisible, familiar bond.
I really like the question, what kind of Gothic do we live in. Being Human, Twilight etc. these just seem to be sitcoms, romances etc that have taken figures, but nothing more, from Gothic.I wonder if those who watch and read this stuff think of it as Gothic. Do they respond, I wonder, with fear. Maybe Gothic continues in a more recognisable form elswhere. Some of the recent books I’ve read aren’t particularly popular but are, for me, in the line of Gothic. I wonder if the assertion that ‘Gothic sells’ might need a bit more unpacking? Sounds good, but is it really true? Maybe in the case of Twilight and Being Human etc. (as formerly in the case, I’d argue, with things like Buffy)it’s not the Gothic that is being sold. Maybe we need another word for these things? Botting’s candygothic might not take it far enough.
Yes, I agree with Jerri. They manipulate some elements, but they are not gothic. Buffy, Twilight, Being Human do not create any fear. Even the figures of the vampires have lost their supernatural, or horrific qualities. They are utilised in such a way, “outsiders”, “tortured soul” to accomodate the interests of the masses or to sell to young girls or “hysterics”. This is very obvious in gothic fashion (since we are talking about fashion, McQueen is probably misunderstood):for example more and more women wear corsets: is this for any appreciation for a lost epoch’s elegance? or just a way to expose in every opportunity a cheap sexuality?
I would also add that this is not a “progressive move of Gothic otherness into the normative centre of acceptability”. In the case of Twilight or Buffy entering the mainstream, I cannot see any blurring of boundaries. What I actually see is a confirmation of those boundaries. All kinds of terrible cliches are being present in these narratives. The vampire, or what they present as a vampire, has no power to transgress conventions; subjected to a circulatory reanaction of boring, mathematical and unimaginative stereotypical behaviour the vampire is not the monster any more.