Music Scenes Ch 7: The Goth Scene Critical Review

In Chapter 7, Paul Hodkinson points out the remarkable translocal nature of the UK Goth scene, an examines the types of connections that support it. He notes that goths have an uncanny ability to pick one another out, and feel more affiliation to non-local goths than local non-goths. This affiliation is manifested in translocal face-to-face connections established through traveling to shows and festivals, which are in turn bolstered (but not replaced) by connections via the internet. The preference for face-to-face relationships would explain why UK goths demonstrate less interest in establishing intercontinental online friendships, as travel becomes less feasible.

The other key translocal connectors are tied together: tastes and commerce. Goths feel affiliation towards each other through shared tastes, which are targeted by marketing at a translocal level, by mail order CD companies, shared merchandise distributors, and shared information among merchants about what is selling well. Hodkinson makes the point that this musical youth culture may fall in the gray area between globalized mass culture and isolated local culture, given its translocal, but not very transnational, connection methods.

Discussion Question: Why does the author present this unified translocal movement as so easily and effortlessly maintained? Do you think there are more global marketing factors at work than the author would care to admit? Do you think the definitions goths have given to their subculture makes it easier to unify/homogenize across a country?