Their eyes, smudged black with eyeliner or shadowed with red, peer from their sockets. Their hair is usually dyed black or different candy-colored hues. Silver or titanium jewelry glints from almost every imaginable anatomical feature, often eliciting winces from those who wonder at how much the piercing process had to hurt. Clad in uniform black even on the hottest days, these human apparitions seem unnatural, even frightening, to some. They term themselves "Goth," short for "Gothic," and delve into all that literary genre's darkness and drama as part of their chosen lifestyle, albeit to different degrees.
'Israeli society tends to be conservative and doesn't show much tolerance for the different and weird,' says DJ Nimrod.
Photo: Courtesy, Deadine Studios
The original Goths trudged into world consciousness as a Germanic tribe that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. Gothic society was looked upon as dark and barbaric in comparison to the newly-Christianized Europe. Later, during the Renaissance, medieval architecture was termed "Gothic."
A few centuries later, Horace Walpole set the Gothic stage with trappings that remain today. Credited as the founder of the gothic literary genre with his Castle of Otranto (1764), Walpole claimed that his novel was a serendipitous discovery - hailing from the same medieval period that produced Beowulf - but he was lying through his fangs. Meanwhile, Hollywood's horror and freak show melodramas were born and became a trademark of today's Gothic sensibility. Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe are staples of the Gothic bookshelf. Nietzsche, Voltaire, Anne Rice and the Marquis De Sade are also quite commonplace in the Goth library. But literature is only a drop in the blood bag - Israel's gothic scene is almost completely centered around music.
DJ, concert booker and promoter Von Elixir is one of the main public relations pointmen in the Israeli alternative, trance and techno music scenes, specifically in Tel Aviv. He hosts Gothic parties and promotes on a regular basis under the Tel Aviv party line (event promotional entity) Dark Revolution/Schwarze Union, often in conjunction with other party lines. Gothic music is his business, and business is good.
Von Elixir is aware that much of the subject matter that Gothic bands sing about is dark, atheistic and nihilistic, and is even seen by some as seriously disturbing. But Von Elixir feels that a lot of the performers are merely putting on a show, as their jobs as entertainers demand. "I know so many bands personally. Most of them are just normal guys, providing their audience with what [it] wants to hear in order to make a living."
An interesting sticking point for the local Goth scene is that most of the bands Von Elixir knows are from Germany. He has brought four German bands to perform in Tel Aviv, bringing in audiences ranging from 350-500 people, depending on the show.
"Today the German scene is the motherland of the Gothic scene," Von Elixir exclaims. "It is the anvil and hammer that creates the fine metal and the fine Goth music for the masses. Germany is the prime source for this kind of music, the schwarze scene, which is the name for all the different genres of the Goth scene, no doubt today the most popular scene all over the world," according to Von Elixir.
"Depeche Mode, Rammstein and HIM are all parts of the schwarze scene. A colossal number of music genres are included in this mainstream: synpop, dark 80s, electro, Gothic, and others," he says.
DJ Nimrod, a cultural anthropologist and founder of the party line Dark Jerusalem, adds that today's Gothic scene, "includes many subcategories: many different music styles, all of them considered to be dark in their lyricism or appearance of the band members, from bands who sound ethereal or neo-classical, to more heavy sounds up to harsh electronic and rock and melodic heavy metal."
When asked if his promotion of an aspect of German culture clashes in any way with his Jewish identity, Von Elixir replies, "I booked four bands from Germany. All of them are extremely nice and polite and very positive about Israeli culture, absolutely fascinated. More than ever, these people can't stand fascism, can't stand brutality. I brought [the band] Diary of Dreams to Jerusalem, to the churches, to Yad Vashem. They want me to book them once again. Maybe, a year from now."
DJ Nimrod wants to makes it clear, however, that Germany is not the only source of Goth music. "The most famous acts come from the UK," he says.
Viki, a longtime fixture of the Tel Aviv scene, currently resides in Jerusalem, where she co-hosts the Dark Jerusalem Gothic parties. She explains that the Gothic scene "began as a musical movement, with bands like Bauhaus, The Cure, and later, The Sisters of Mercy."
The late Ofra Haza lent her voice to the 1992 version of The Sisters of Mercy's song "Temple of Love." The band added the phrase, "Touched By An Angel," to that song's title, honoring Haza's artistic contribution. However, these acts were heavily influenced by German culture, and The Sisters of Mercy often sang in German.
The archetypical Gothic band, Bauhaus, is named after the movement that spawned much of Tel Aviv's famous architecture. Bauhaus (who drew its influence from acts like David Bowie and other 70s bands), wrote the quintessential Gothic song "Bela Lugosi is Dead," and marked the Gothic scene's first exposure to mainstream culture through Hollywood, when, in the early 80s, the song was featured on the soundtrack for The Hunger. The band performed as an onstage club act in the opening scene of the film, as well.
Films are, of course, a prime medium for the Gothic subculture. Every vampire movie ever made, beginning with Max Schreck's Nosferatu, has had an impact on the scene, as has every classic horror film. Director Tim Burton is the contemporary master of the genre, mixing emotional elements of ostracism and loneliness with dark and sensual visual imagery.
Many of those who call themselves Goth choose to be outcasts from mainstream Israeli society, while claiming to belong to their own private society. And Tel Aviv is a magnet for them.
