Disclaimer: While I don’t agree in the whole Sub-Culture labeling it does play a big part in culture itself. So I will try to remain unbiased and not try to stereotype any sub-culture.
Possible one of the most misunderstood sub-cultures is the Emo movement. While there is a lot of stigma with this group there really aren’t grounds for it. The Emo movement is based around the rock genre of the same name, though no band claims to be an Emo band.
The Non-Existent Genre
The genre of music began in the mid 80’s as an off shoot of the Hardcore and Punk genre. In those days these styles and even grunge music was very political based and the people listened to it, while they enjoyed the music didn’t really care about politics. So a whole lot of bands started popping up that would start singing about something other that politics, they started singing something more personal. Those bands were labelled Emocore or Emo, the artists themselves never claimed to be apart of the genre, they just claim that they writing songs about their emotions and what’s going on in their world. If no band claims to be an Emo band, can it really be a music genre? Thus the reason why this is a non-existent genre
The Sub-Culture
“We’re all alone, together”
This is the response a girl said when asked about being an Emo. While amusing it does sum up the movement pretty well. The whole culture has been considered to be all about social withdrawal and suicide but the people that do claim to be Emo would probably say otherwise. They would probably say it’s not about self injury but more about expressing emotions, speaking out about the feelings of alienation, depression and angst.
Revisiting an Old Movement
The whole culture behind Emo’s is nothing new, in fact it’s almost modernising the whole Romantic Movement. There is so many connections between the two, both Romantism and Emo focus on the emotion and not order and both would be considered socially outcasts in there relevant societies.
Ultimately the whole movement is a much mocked, maligned, and misunderstood term for melodic, expressive people.
Resources
Andy Greenwald wrote the definitive book on the Emo movement entitled Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo in this book he explores the evolution of the emo scene from basement concerts in the 1980s to stadium shows today, and how this culture has affected its target group, teenagers. Greenwald interview many so-called in an attempt to gain greater insight on the appeal and the concepts behind this movement.
I thought this would stir up some controversy, and it needed to be said
I can see some correlation between The Romantic Movement and Emos, as the Romantics embraced individuality over society, subjectivity over objectivity, emotion over reason, and the imagination.
I think Emos (or at least, how they are perceived by the media), correlate better though, with the later Dark Romanticism, which was much more cynical in nature. Two of the most famous authors associated with Dark Romanticism are Poe and Hawthorne.
I enjoyed your post!
Another great post, I am surprised by the ignorant assumptions so often made about emo and so called emo kids. I like the observation about Dark Romanticism, I know a kid who would react with absolute contempt at being called emo, although that is the label that is most easily applied to describe the image he projects, I am thinking about his current passion for manga like Death Note which fits with the ideals of Dark Romanticism.
This is such an interesting blog!