ANDAutumn is probably the most atmospheric time of the year, tempting the senses with soft sweaters and warm drinks and the crunch of colorful leaves under your feet. But, as we all suddenly remember as September 30 gives way to October 1, not everything is wrapped in flannel and spiced with pumpkin. It's a time full of the contradictions inherent in the end of the calendar – cozy and eerie, Thanksgiving and Halloween, harvest and decay. The entertainment industry offers its own autumn cornucopia of contrasts. Between friends' fall baking competitions and the made-for-TV Christmas movies that come out earlier every year, there's a pile of gory, gory, nightmare-inducing scares on screens big and small.
Somewhere in between lies the season's third spooky sensibility, epitomized this year by the reunion of Tim Burton, Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton in the hit sequel to their classic undead comedy Beetlejuice: gothic. With aesthetic roots in pre-Victorian Gothic fiction, Gothic was adapted into a black-shrouded subculture by fans of melancholic 1980s British rock bands such as the Cure and Cocteau Twins, and has since been sliced, diced and assembled into dozens of disparate factions. I use it here in its broadest sense. It's dark, it's scary, it's romantic, and it's obsessed with death. It's velvet and lace and vampires and witches and black cats and dripping candles and séances led by a Ouija board. It has elements of horror, but it is not interested in jump scares. And more often than not, especially as it approaches its half-century of existence, goth has a campy sense of humor about its own melodrama.
Goth's mainstream work tends to ebb and flow, and over the past few years there has been a new wave of macabre media that seems to be reaching its peak this fall. (What he says Gothic revival more than medicine releases his first new song in 16 years a few days after the autumn equinox?) Recently Fashion
essay by Tish Weinstock announcing fashion's rediscovery of morbid beauty, How to be a Goth: notes on undead style he is a leader himself – he identifies a “full gothic revival” and announces: “welcome to the season of the witch”. Weinstock rightly calls witches the most important gothic symbol of 2024. Each retro movement is repackaged to fit the era in which it was born. and from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Down Agata all the waythis year's ultra-comfortable model has aspirations and girl power rooted in nostalgia for late '80s and '90s goth-pop artifacts.
Tracing the origins gothic aesthetic is a stupid move. Although the subculture has united within the music scene moving from punk in the 1970s to new wave in the 1980s, this sensibility has no distinct origins. It is older than the proto-Gothic touchstones Rock horrorbuzzing decadence The Velvet Underground and NicoSilent film vampire Theda Bara, the chilling fictions of HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, Dracula AND Frankenstein. Gothic didn't even begin with the titular Germanic tribes who invaded the weakening Roman Empire. While this entails a romanticization of death and the occult, the Gothic worldview may be as old as human society – a Freudian fixation on death that is as evident in ancient Egyptian funerary traditions as it is in Chappell Roan's Velvet, Chainmail and Crucifix at the VMAs.
Gothic as we know it today, however, can be loosely divided into eras. If the early scene was mainly focused on music and nightlife, by the late 1980s goth had become a full-fledged pop phenomenon, spawning superstars such as director Burton and author Anna Rice of Marilyn Manson and Hot Topic, a mass-produced PVC-covered the mall rat rebellion of the 1990s. A kind of binary emerged, with such aggressively masculine inflections as the industrial rock of Manson and his mentor at the time, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails on the one hand, and a witchy, feminine vibe on the other. It was a decade bookmarked by the turmoil of Lilith Fair's grrrlfeminist-punk energy and neo-pagan mother-earth ethos; gothic girls synthesized aspects of both movements, white magic and hot rage.
In 1988, Burton gave this audience the Ryder's icon Beetlejuice the heroine, Lydia Deetz, dressed as a miniature Siouxsie Sioux and moved into a country house where only she had the ability to see the ghosts of the previous owners. Burton's 1990 cult classic made Ryder an unlikely romantic hero Edward Scissorhandsblack comedy for teenagers HeathersAnd we accept Francis Ford Coppola Dracula. Following in her combat boots footsteps, Christina Ricci exploded, resurrecting the deadpan '60s proto-goth icon Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family AND Addams Family Valuesromanced a friendly ghost Casperand entered Burton's sphere with 1999 Sleeping Valley. By then the witch was everywhere, forming covens of outcasts Craftfighting supernatural evil Buffy the Vampire Slayer AND Bewitchedall adults and authorized to destroy aggressive boys Practical magic.
Although there have been short-lived revivals in the 21st century (see: Dusk), it is primarily this variety of Gothic that drives the current nostalgia festival. September Beetlejuice Beetlejuice gives Lydia her own sullen teenage daughter in the form of Ryder's closest Gen Z counterpart, Jenna Ortega. Ortega also plays the title role in Burton's hugely popular teen drama based on The Addams Family, a Netflix series Wednesday. The adult Ricci (who also returns to her quirky '90s girlfriend on Showtime Yellow jackets), appears as one of the Wednesday teachers. Those who desire a more tangible connection to the actor's dark brand can purchase Ricci's latest collection Collaboration with West Elm, which includes tarot cards. Musical adaptation Death becomes herthe 1992 goth camp comedy, which pits Meryl Streep against Goldie Hawn in an orgy of cartoonish violence, will soon premiere on Broadway; Sabrina Carpenter'S film “Taste”, starring Ortega, pays homage to the same film. And if you just want to watch Ryder in vintage style, the Criterion Channel is honoring her with an October Retrospective Award.
Sequels, reboots and re-releases may be pillars of Hollywood's nostalgic-industrial complex, but the return of the gothic goes beyond the reanimation of dormant titles. New Disney+ series Agata all the way is as original as the Marvel series. The once terrifying witch, Catherine Hahn'S WandaVision Villain Agatha Harkness convenes a makeshift coven to accompany her on a dangerous journey that may restore her lost powers. The show celebrates and evokes various witch archetypes, including 1970s singer Stevie Nicks and a wellness influencer mixing toxic concoctions in its story. Teen comedy set in the 1980s Lisa Frankensteinreleased this winter, it follows misfits who fall in love with a gentle Victorian zombie who follows her home from the graveyard. Featuring a period-appropriate indie rock soundtrack, the film itself is a Frankenstein's monster of influences Beetlejuice to the 1992 B-movie that spawned it Buffy concession. Its very existence confirms the longevity of dark teenage tropes of the previous generation.
What are we looking for? when do we gather for these paradoxically pleasant paeans to monsters and magic, mortality and the afterlife? in an interview with GuardianWeinstock, How to be a Goth the author ventured to say that “there is so much sadness and violence in the world that they are beginning to permeate culture and shape it…. It's a form of escapism, but also a confrontation with reality that reminds us that we live in terrible and uncertain times.”
I'm not so sure about that. The girlish gothic talismans we now cling to are a relic of a more optimistic era, when the economy was weakening, the Cold War was ending, and the daughters of second-wave feminists were inventing new ways to exert their power. While some of us will always be tempted to dive into the dark and the supernatural, a more powerful form of escapism in this awakening is nostalgia for the recent past. The eternal lure of the goth subculture, with its Victorian wardrobe and expressionist makeup, is its ability to distract followers from the present. “Goth's interest in the timeless,” writes critic Simon Reynolds in his post-punk history Tear it up and start over“It can be precisely seen as a rejection of the timesliecurrent, urgent matters of the day.” It replaces the sadness and violence we know with dark fairy tales that are too far removed from reality to require our involvement with real-world problems.
Gothic circa 2024 may not visually resemble the core of Taylor Swift's cardigan Folklore/Forever era, but like a certain seasonal latte it provides pure comfort. You can notice it Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels cozier than its predecessor; while both share the same rural idyll, the sequel downplays the original's awkward portrayal of Lydia as the titular ghoul's child bride in favor of a plot that mends the broken bonds between generations of Deetz women. Or this Wednesday The action takes place in a boarding school for outcasts, monsters and magic practitioners – shades Harry Potter. Or this Agatha eases his odyssey into the underworld thanks to faces familiar with the camps: Hahn, Aubrey Square, Patti LuPone. Meanwhile, the recent revival of the gothic Gen X IP that bombed was an intricate, serious reboot of the 1994 revenge fantasy Crowwhich grossed $9 million at home
checkout to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'S $266 million and counting.
Maybe that's why the most successful of these titles are enjoyed like any other fall trifle, enjoyable but forgettable Hallmark holiday specials for viewers who prefer
Halloween. Just as we line up in the fall for the annual round of seasonal virus vaccines, we can seek out these morbid fantasies, each with its own plush sensory overload, as an inoculation against the pain of processing wars, misogyny and political upheaval. The entertainment itself is surprisingly mild. What is definitely more terrifying is the impulse that pushes us to do this.
