Tag: Romantic Period

The Sub-Cultures – Emo

Posted February 1, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 3 Comments

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.

Cultural Profile – Byron

Posted January 22, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Poetry / 0 Comments

Lord Byron is probably best known as a poet for the romantic period. widely read and influential, considered one of the greatest English poets of all time.

So I wanted to look more into the personal side of his life. Which is sometimes described as; ‘upper-class living, numerous love affairs, debts, and separations.’ I’m not an expert but this is what I’ve managed to piece together and thought it was very interesting, I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me.

As a teenage he feel for a distant cousin Mary Chaworth, which his mother thought, “He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth.”

Byron expressed a sense of melancholy;

“Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here,
Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear
To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam,
And seek abroad, the love denied at home.”

Later in life he had an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb which involved a lot of obsession from either side. Once the affair ended Lady Caroline became emotionally disturbed and lost a lot of weight, Byron described this as if he was been “haunted by a skeleton”. Lady Caroline Lamb described Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”

Through the rest of his life he still seemed to continue with marriages and affairs, and numerous amount of debt, due to his reckless disregard for money. Later in life he became involved in The Carbonari, which were a secret revolutionary societies whose goals were patriotic and liberal. They played an important role in the Risorgimento and the early years of Italian nationalism. He then went on to fight in the Greek War of Independence, against the Ottoman Empire, which is where he developed sepsis causing him to develop a violent fever and died.

Interestingly enough Byron often described his affairs as ‘violent and passionate’.

Disarm – a Modern Frankenstein story

Posted January 22, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 0 Comments

Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins wrote the song Disarm about a fantasy of cutting his parents limbs off. Because he hated them, he hated the fact they brought him into this world which is full of hate and all he wants, is to be loved.

“It’s about chopping off somebody’s arms.. The reason I wrote Disarm was because, I didn’t have the guts to kill my parents, so I thought I’d get back at them through song. And rather then have an angry, angry, angry violent song I’d thought I’d write something beautiful and make them realize what tender feelings I have in my heart, and make them feel really bad for treating me like shit. Disarm’s hard to talk about because people will say to me ‘I listen to that song and I can’t figure out what it’s about.’ It’s like about things that are beyond words. I think you can conjure up images and put together phrases, but it’s a feeling beyond words and for me it has a lot to do with like a sense of loss. Being an adult and looking back and romanticizing a childhood that never happened or went by so quickly in a naive state that you miss it.” — Billy Corgan on Disarm

Does this sound familiar?

Well it defiantly does to me, my all time favourite book is “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley which is an amazing story written in two view points. Dr. Victor Frankenstein created a monster and being scared of his creation abandoned it. Monster Frankenstein was a lost soul, with nothing the desire to be loved, yet his creator abandoned him and society feared and wanted to destroy him.

At the very end of the book when asked to justify his actions Monster Frankenstein said something like; “I do this because I feel too much, I was brought into this world with the desire to love and denied it at every turn”

Both Billy Corgan and Monster Frankenstein both wanted to be love but life and society seemed to give them violent thoughts. Billy Corgan expressed his dark thoughts via writing a song but Monster Frankenstein didn’t know how to handle these thoughts.

Support Knowledge Lost and my reading habits, If you wish to get a copy of Frankensteinor the Smashing Pumpkins album which featured Disarm; Siamese Dream do so here.