Were the Beats the first Goths?
 

So I got the support of Gnossos of Crete to ask this question,

As long as I have the support of a Cretan, I'm willing to do anything. Such as start this poll.

And we know the Visigoths and Orthogoths et al, have nothing to do with being modern Goths. Unless you want to start your own silly poll about them.

Sincerely, were the Beats the first Goths? These folks were wearin' black back in the 1950's and doing many other Goth-like things, so it seems a reasonable question to me.

Anyone know any living Beats to ask their opinions? My parents apparently dabbled in it but were too confused to understand it very well.

No.

Johnny Cash was the first modern day goth.

Disagree with me if you must, but anyone who talks smack about the man I will photoshop you fucking a goat so well your own parents will disown you.

Carry on. ^_^

Pardon me fer saying, but weren't the goths the first goths?

Damn straight! If we are talking about goth, we're talking of a subculture.

A subculture, just like any form of inteligent sentient life, only truely exists as an individual when it becomes aware of itself.

What is always hard to determine is exactly when that happens chronologically. Much like trying to determine the exact moment you fall asleep. You can't.

Smells of Schroedinger's cat theory already, but fuck it.

Beats are no more or less valid than Victorian/Romantic artists. They're an influence. Not more. They preceed the notion of culture. You can call them an influence, or argue it's role as part of the moral, aesthethic or spiritual base of what grew to be called goth, but still, they preceeded it.

Much as you like Edgar A Poe, and could call his writing gothic (amongst many other things like hermetic, futuristic and even sci-fi), he'd stare at you wondering what the fuck it is you're talking about if you ever were to ask him if he considered himself to be a goth.

It seems Mael's gotten the hang of answering the this kind of thread.

I have nothing in common with a baetnik except wearing black clothing.I don't do berets though.I liken beatniks to the people nowadays who go to those poetry recitals set on a stage.Some call it art, I say lock 'em in the looney bin before they loose the rabid monkeys on us. :shock:

Okay, I guess the beatniks started that crap.

Hey, don't undermine the use of LSD to write such heights of human artistic expression as:

-The Sun set and I have a bucket full of herrings, I'm a lucky cat. Be bop a lula...yeah...groovy...

-Shut up John and stick up your thumb. It was your idea to do this "on the road" shit. Moron...

We'll hold hands and watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea......

Not really. The point is mute. A beatnik wasn't the first anything other than a beatnik.

Is a raver a goth? No, one is one, and the other is the other.

Don't get excited, breathe... ... ... ... ... ...everything's ok.... .... there you go... see?... ... it really wasn't complicated... ... ...do you feel better now?.... ...alright then...

Don't take it like that Jane.You're probably too young to know what a beatnik really was, babe.

What's more interesting, the opinions or the facts
 

MrMaelstrom has had so much practice at defining and defending what's Goth he's almost no fun...of course he's right in every way and this poll/thread has been crushed like the pitiful cockroach of a thread that it is.

I actually thought the vote could almost be more exciting than the posts. Sucks that almost no one is voting.

The cockroach's legs are wiggling yet...We could spice it up a bit by talking about the Beats more...gotta get more information than what's available from watching Popeye and Dobie Gillis...

So what were the Beats like??

--BIG on drinking coffee in coffee shops. Never seen Goths or Yuppies do that! Wierd stuff!
--Into painting, music, poetry, all kinds of creativity. Once again, stuff Goths wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole!
--Interested in other cultures. Unlike Goths who are so typically rustic, uncultured and ignorant of things outside their small towney borders!
--High suicide rates and moody, morose conversation high among Beats. Goths, on the other hand, are known for their cheerful, "Up With People" kind of outlook.
--The Beats had four legs, a heart, a beak for eating honey, and were equipped with fins for swimming. Wait, no, those are llamas.
--According to a Japanese website called "Beatniks information" here is a popular Beatnik shoe style!! Keep in mind that not knowing how to read kanjiscript may be a wee drawback to the accuracy of my report :

Mute? Is that like moo?


(moot)


;)

I like beat poetry, even if it is a bit. . . weird as hell.

And while the beats and goths are similar, they are not the same. And beats were not goths.

Not to beat a dead horse, or any thing. Pun fully intended.

Thanks for the "mute" correction guys.

Look Dawn, I, for one, haven't voted becuse there's no choice that merely denies them to be anything other than themselves without saying they have absolutely nothing in common.
Thus, I can't vote. none of the choices expresses my opinion.
I never argued they have nothing in common. They are different, in a subculture definition sense.

I have nothing against jazz myself, but I don't call it gothic.

And clotheswise, a catsuit and a beret naver made anyone a goth. My sense of aesthetics goes a wee bit beyond the choice of colour.

There, let's bitch over it...

Like my mother always said: laugh now, but this'll end in tears. Now why'd I pack the grenades next to the band-aid strips??

This farmer I knew, Billy Bob, ended up being very goth to me, you know.

Once, he backed up his tractor over his dog and killed it.
Man , he was really lost and dark and morosely depressed for a week after. And it rained all of that week too, so it was really dark and moody.

And his little girl was bit on an ankle by a snake while playing in the fields, and he sucked some of the blood with the poison out before he carried her to hospital.
I mean, man... blood sucking, poison, snakes and a little hint of incestual perversion at once!. How gother can you get?

Billy Bob's goth. He masturbates in the shower sometimes and I heard goths also do that (I wouldn't know it myself , of course).

Reminder: pack kleenex close to fragmentation shells.

I thought the "like Goths in some ways but with significant differences" would have covered it. But your darn correct sense of perspective won't allow that! Curses.

I'm going out on a limb, here. You were worried about being slammed for what you said, and I'm definitely risking getting slammed for not undertanding Goth now:

My opinion is that the Goth outlook contains much of what was attractive about the Beat outlook, but it is broader and has added panache. What if you didn't like poetry or jazz? How could you then be a Beat? It was too specific (too bad there are no Beats around to correct me here...but Beat sure didn't last long).

The sites that MrMaelstrom points us to seem to downplay the importance of depression and darkness in the Goth culture. But to me it's an important thing. I think, combined with intellectualism, that's what makes Goth. I think Goth draws people with certain psychological profiles, and those profiles are present in every generation. I think that Goth encapsulates it so well that it will last. The lighter side of Goth, I think will be the transient piece.

I'm not saying Goth will always be as popular as it is now, but I don't think it'll sink to the level you described, very soon.

Easy to be wrong, here, of course. Waiting for an expert to thwack me on the head and make me see reality. And time may also prove me a fool. I would like one day to understand enough to make MrMaelstrom proud.

_______________________________________
Zhou Enlai in the 1960s answered the question "What do you think of the French Revolution?" with "It is too soon to tell."

In my eyes goths are nothing but a form of a punk
at the end of the day. And Beatniks were really an
artistic form of a hippy.( beatnik = Hippy in my eyes)
From my experience of the goths and punx i hung with,
they really can't stomach a fucking hippy, they are polar
opposites. The only thing I see them having in common
is the non-conformist attitude. But they def. don't have the
ultraviolent, anarchist characteristics of a goth or a punk.
This is only based on the goths and punks I've hung with.


D-Creep

I like to be precise. It spares me trouble over semantical issues later on.

I can draw similar thought/behavioural patterns over gothic and a shitload of other post-war subcultures, and all you'll have to debate over afterwards will be the quantity of similarities. Grunge's depression, punk's nihilism, metal's sense of impending doom, revolt and chromatic choice, romantics' love of the baroque and victorian aesthetics, BDSM's extremes and experimentalisms in sexual behaviour, new-wave's sense of post-modernism in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, The holy inquisition's fashion sense if you give it a little cleopatra and halloween touch... and the list goes on.

Dcreep, you too are getting confused. And you're somewhat mistaken on your thoughts on subcultures you heard about.

Maelstrom,

OK, I might not know a whole lot about the Beatnik
culture (it was before my time and really have no interest)
But spending over half of my life in the Goth/punk
"subculture", I think I'm pretty familiar with that scene.
From what I know they are very different scenes!

And Mr.Maelstrom, excuse the fuck out of me about the whole
beatnik thing! 8) thought that was an appropriate beatnik emtiocon.


D-Creep

Ultraviolence is a concept of Kubrik's "Clockwork Orange". Nothing more.

Violence is always present in groups, not individuals. Even a nazi skinhead is not a menace when alone (if you're lucky enough to see one alone). Just about any kind of people (with the possible exception of hippies and hare krishnas) will act/respond violently in a group situation.

Goth and punk? I'm sure they put different names on them for a reason. The same goes for everything else.

Ok, the only reason I keep refering to goths and
punks in a group is from my experiences, because
in the area i grew up we both shared common views
and hung together. The only thing really different
about us was the way we looked and the music we listened
to. But I guess things are alot diff. now than in the 80's.
Again I am only stating what I know growing up in that scene
in the balt./D.C., and Philly area.Back then the scene was alot
smaller and we stuck together, we called it unity.
As far as the violent part it was a big part of the scene due to broken homes, urban frustrations and something caled survival.
Violence engulfs you in the city, everyone doesn't have the luxury
of driving home to thier nice and safe suburban neighborhood.
All I'm saying is in my experiences we stuck together and were
alot the same, just looked different and had different tastes in music!



D-Creep

Mr Maelstrom,

Although we do not seem to see eye to eye on alot of
issues. I'll bet if we met we would find out we share alot of
the same opinions. It's hard to know how to take someone
through a computer screen.
Btw, I have a good friend in portugal and a lot of friends who've made surf
trips there.
Def. plan on making it over there someday soon, awesome waves.
Two words "Super Tubos".


D-Creep

A scene is a very different thing from a lifestyle. I may not be an expert on gothic history *giggles at the idea*, but I at least know that much.