Lazy journalism - generally awful goth article

[mrph]

I was expecting better from the Grauniad, especially after the recent review of Paul Hodkinson's book. *sigh*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,795915,00.html

Comments

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Oh, c'mon! Goths take themselves sooo seriously? The music hasn't changed in 20 years? Dali and Anne Rice (ok, the Rice comment may have been halfway accurate about six or seven years ago, but...)?

How many goths bother with whiteface these days? How many of us never bothered with the black hair or gothic home improvement? And Charles Manson?

It wouldn't be so bad if the Guardian hadn't reviewed Paul Hodkinson's book on goth only a couple of weeks ago - that piece was far more accurate.

I'm hoping the comedy's a little better than the article, anyway.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Oh, c'mon! Goths take themselves sooo seriously?

From recent reading of uk.p.g: far too seriously...

How many goths bother with whiteface these days? How many of us never bothered with the black hair or gothic home improvement? And Charles Manson?

The problem with cliches is that they're usually pretty accurate, applied across a wide enough sample. How many whiteface/bighair disasters happen at Whitby... And you've got to hand it to the ubergoth cliche - it's fargin' funny. (Witness popularity of "Gother than thou")

[zotz]

It's terribly researched. Really really abysmally. I read the Grauniad six days a week and I don't think they've published an article quite as underinformed in years. Let's see . . . he assumes that "goth" and "industrial" are synonymous (let's see him try to justify that one on r.m.i . . .). "Unlike heavy metal, from where it borrows its guitar solos"?! Errr . . . this is obviously a very different "goth" from the one I'm aware of (or a very different heavy metal). I'm not going to list the ludicrous mistakes in total, but a few won't hurt :

Manson - I've met non-goth rivetheads who were interested in Manson, but no goths.

"Punk rock eventually became grunge, mods turned into casuals and heavy metal turned into speed metal and skate punk" : No no no no no.

"Grishnack of Morgue (named apparently after an ork in Lord Of The Rings" - or alternatively after the singer in a Norwegian Black Metal band. I forget whether he's the one who's dead or in jail.

"In the straightness league, Craig could give Iain Duncan Smith a run for his money" - which is a good thing, whereas "as po-facedly conservative as any Daily Mail-reading denizen of Purley" is a bad thing. Actually, I'd say both of them were bad things, but I can't spot much difference. This is a shame, because I'd kept a sneaking respect for Mr Adams in spite of not liking the Mish or the Cult very much. When was he in the Cult, anyway? Shows how much I know . . .

Very sad. Very very sad.