Emo Subculture

There’s a new trend sweeping through American youth, and there’s something strangely wrong with it. Emo has found its way into multiple aspects of society, from music and fashion to art and philosophy; it’s imbedded itself into suburban culture. Presumably a slang term for emotion, Emo is generally considered to be a music, fashion, and mentality revolving around passive unhappiness and melancholy; not as a passing state but as a lifestyle, almost to be celebrated. In other words, being emotionally distraught is very in right now.

Like most subcultures, emo has its roots in a musical scene. The development of the style is usually attributed the 1980s band Rites of Spring, originally a punk band that began to be described as "emotional hardcore", for their emotional performances. Critics originally described emo as a subunit of punk; however in the nineties it steadily differentiated itself by increasingly melodramatic lyrics, and an emotional, at times whiny style of delivery. By the 2000s it had become almost unrecognizable from its predecessor, a synthetic over dramatized mess of production; punk on estrogen. Apparently the major record labels thought this would make a great trend, and a host of bands such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance were signed and entered the mainstream. Emo began streaming onto MTV and the Internet for a generation that was glued to the glowing screens like none before them.

The genre had developed its own fashion by this point. Most band members had black hair, wore make up, and were clothed in tight fitting black and white apparel; "girl pants" were popular regardless of gender. Major label pop rock bands were handed a new wardrobe and told to make slow songs. 2004 saw Green day, the previously pop punk band, in black suits and eyeliner. In an almost coordinated effort, designers released Emo apparel and merchandise into the mainstream market under the guise of underground, millions of kids rushing to claim their misunderstood individuality rapidly devoured the new style. But what were they really feeding into the mind of this restless suburban generation?

Emo almost immediately caught on, becoming not only a musical preference but a series of philosophies. The most immediate of these was the limiting of the spectrum of emotion to "sad". Followers of the trend decided that they were depressed, whether they actually were or not, and that the world was to some degree victimizing them. Moreover, depression became uniform; emo music contained common themes of mental illness and masochism, these therefore became icons of the trend. Not because these kids were masochist, but because it was an understood part of depression in the culture they felt they were part of; making them feel authenticated and giving them a sense of identity and acceptance.

It became fashionable to claim a borderline personality disorder. Paranoia might look good with your new fishnet stockings, and cutting was in a sense the new smoking; kids gave themselves a pinprick just to say they did it. Depression was not something to be overcome but to wallow in. Overindulgent self pity being encouraged; anyone who tried to join the trend without following these prerequisites was looked on as a "poser" because they were not validly depressed. This is combined with pseudo-intellectual nihilism, based on faulty and pretentiously oversimplified metaphysics mainly derived from the lyrics of their favorite band.

It seems odd how a generation could be so susceptible to such a lifeless and backward way of thinking. I once read on a bridge that "insanity in this country increases in proportion to lack of actual physical suffering". This may be, to some extent, true. Many people may feel somewhat aimless and disconnected from life in a culture where there are so many layers cushioning them from the core of life. During his stay on Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau writes:

"Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind"

Many in our culture live as if the ultimate goal of society is to spend life with out ever having to move from the spot where we are born, to be completely rid of the inconvenience of having to do anything for ourselves. This so-called "progress" would appear to be the only method of self-improvement we know. Every generation in our country has, in a way, had its trend to make up for this feeling of deficit. Emo kids are basically the neo-hippies, however instead of trying to make a difference through love, peace, and flower power, Emo is going to change the world by being feeling sulky and melancholy in the corner, and then writing blog entries about it on Myspace or various other online journals.