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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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March 25, 2007
The Ugly Face of "Suicidal" Goth Teens
Blogcritics' groovy Retro Music Chick wrote a pointed little satire a week ago called "Teen Suicide - What's Stopping You?" It focused specifically on the music and personae of Gerard Way and My Chemical Romance, and their grand crusade to provide the voice and courage to the afflicted and misunderstood teenagers who go around cutting themselves. Message boards and Gerard Way will tell you that their music has help snatch back countless teens from the edge of suicide. Retro Music Chick ain't buying it.
It has gotten a lot of predictable indignant responses from cheesed off MCR fans, most of them in typically illiterate teenage chatroom style - like we're even supposed to consider the opinions of folks who aren't serious enough about their "thoughts" to at least attempt writing a legible sentence.
I note that she never actually used the word "goth" in her story, but this modern goth youth culture goes back to the 1980s. Without over analyzing and categorizing, a lot of this "Gloomy McMopeypants" (RMC's term) stuff comes from the Smiths and the Cure from back in my college days, who inspired the "unearned unhappiness" of Ben Folds' classic "Battle of Who Could Care Less."
The Smiths and the Cure and now stuff like My Chemical Romance don't entirely sound that much alike stylistically, but are basically inspirations in mopiness. Upping the ante from mopy Morrissey and Robert Smith, Gerard Way and such have become more morbid, dealing frequently in suicidal shtick like "Bury Me in Black."
But they have a big new morbid audience of faux-suicidal teens as a market niche. We've got some whining, narcissistic teenagers these days who like to go around cutting themselves for attention and such. There are teens who go to school showing off their self-mutilation for attention and sympathy.
As some have pointed out, it's unlikely that truly deeply troubled, actually suicidal kids would be showing that stuff off. They would more likely be hiding it in shame, and quietly planning their personal end of days. That's sad, and you can only hope that such kids seek out help and find some relief. But that's only a relatively few young folk.
Essentially though, a lot of this modern self-mutilation and carrying on is a huge and incredibly abusive bluff. Most of these kids are not that truly sad, and are never really even considering killing themselves. They talk about it for attention, sympathy and manipulation. If Mom and Dad don't try harder to please them, then they might Do It.
This showing off of self-mutilation and threats of suicide is a particularly ugly form of narcissistic attention grabbing. Kids carrying on this way need beaten. Worrying your parents this way is a horrible form of abuse, worse than most child beating. How evil is it to make the people who gave you life and raised you keep waiting for you to snuff it? Kids can be just as evil as parents. And if you go carrying on like this to your "friends" at school milking for sympathy, then you're no kind of a friend.
But the ugliest part of it is how these little wankers at the likes of ImNotOkay.net are crassly exploiting the tragedy of the truly suffering. There are always a few poor lost souls who from bad situations or bad medical depression absolutely go out and kill themselves. Then a bunch of heartless little bastards use the fallen to buy credibility for their attention ploy and ward off the obvious criticism.
This jumped out at me reading the same type of comments over and over in the thread for RMC's piece. How can you judge? You don't know what people are going through! Quit whining about your job at Cinnabuns? Yeah, you tell that to a poor girl being beaten and raped by her stepdad every night, etc.
That's true enough. I don't know the personal histories much less the internal emotions of these anonymous posters on the RMC article or the message boards. I strongly suspect that 99% of them are morally ugly suicidal pretenders, but maybe there are a couple of sincerely distraught folks drawn into such things. Again though, it seems unlikely that the really distraught, a Kurt Cobain say, would be carrying on with these kinds of displays.
Others of you are ugly little bastards merely exploiting the suffering of others for sympathy though, and that right there is one of the ugliest and most morally depraved things you could do. What you need is some REAL hardship and suffering more substantive than having to work a double shift at Cinnabuns. Maybe some of you whining jackasses could use a few weeks trying to live in North Korea or Darfur. THEN you'd have something to bitch about.
Since I am speaking fairly harshly, let me prune it back a bit. For starters, this is an if-the-shoe-fits thing. It doesn't apply to just any kid who likes a certain band, or to any band that might be designated as "goth." It certainly doesn't apply to any teenager who just takes a spell at dressing in black generally trying to look cool and put off the straights. Personally, I tend to find a lot of that cute and endearing, particularly if it comes off as more rebellious rather than mopey.
Heck, I'll even say a few words in some defense of Gerard Way and My Chemical Romance. The shtick behind song titles like "Bury Me in Black" and "Welcome to the Black Parade" is pretty clearly some cheesy niche marketing, but that's pretty much marketing to these cheesy fakers. Screw 'em. Let 'em work an extra shift at Cinnabuns to pay for some overpriced concert tickets and posters. They need to be exploited.
In my neverending quest to be fair and balanced like Fox News, I've made a point of actually listening to some My Chemical Romance, even now on the first Sunday morning of spring as I'm writing this. [Thanks to the nice folks for their suggestions for what to hunt down.] I'm not overly impressed with most of this corporate music food product, but I've definitely heard worse. Just as songs separated from all the marketing, "Famous Last Words" is pretty good. "Welcome to the Black Parade" strikes me as definitely their best thing musically, in significant part because of the creative nuances of the orchestration.
But if you're actually seriously torn up inside, you don't need any of this teenage foolishness. I would suggest instead for your meditation the Roger Miller classic "You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd."You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd
But you can be happy if you've a mind to
All you got to do is put your mind to it
Knuckle down, buckle down - do it, do it, do it
Thing is though, that knuckling and buckling down is the hard part. It takes real work and effort to actually do something for yourself, rather than just whining and looking for sympathy. Just from my point of view though, the more effort I see you putting out for yourself, the more sympathy I'm going to give you. And by "doing something for yourself," I do not mean taking a trip to the mall to buy more cheesy goth paraphernalia.
Let us close this meditation with a bit of understated homespun wisdom from a classic Wilburn Brothers song, "The sun is going to shine on anyone who's got enough sense to get out in it."
You know, this is now the first Sunday afternoon of spring - and that's just what I'm fixing to do.
posted by Al at 3/25/2007 01:03:00 PM
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