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6. I II IIde de de de denti nti nti nti ntity ty ty ty ty H u H u H u H u H un n n n nter ter ter ter ter A A A A A Asian American Goths and New Masculinities If Goth refreshes concepts of masculinity, allowing new ways of understanding previously demonized forms, this is especially evident in what might be called contemporary cinema’s Goth-techno zone in which images of Asian American males1 converge with images of so-called nerds, or the technologically invested and gifted. An examination of the connections between Asian American and Goth identities reveals, more than does any other focus in this study, why Goth has been a valuable force in the battle of nonconformist young people to attain social justice. In this chapter, I will consider how some of the conventions of the Gothic genre in film and literature have been changed by Asian American participation and also how that participation has broadened the field of intelligible gender identities for young Asian American men. As I hope this book has shown thus far, officially promulgated lies about Goths often take the form of audacious inversions. We are told that Goths are violent when, as Hodkinson shows and Goths themselves consistently report, they are far more likely to be the victims of “prejudice and occasional violence ” than its initiators (74–77). We are told that teenaged Goths are a threat to their schoolmates, while the personal accounts of hundreds of students quoted in and responding to Katz’s “Voices from the Hellmouth” document the opposite situation. Not only do Goths seem to avoid conflict at school whenever possible, but the tendency of school authorities to consider Goths disruptive and noncompliant because of their appearance creates, in many schools, a situation of danger for Goths. We are told that Goths are sexually perverse, yet this definition can hold only if we understand perversity as attempting to achieve sexual self-determinacy, rather than following an official power-knowledge program in which all sexual expression is co-opted to serve 138 G G G G Go o o o ot t t t th’s h’s h’s h’s h’s D D D D Dark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire consumer capitalism. And finally, we are told that Goths are racist. In this, my study’s final chapter, I will address this most serious of the charges against Goth with the intention of showing that here, too, what is said about Goths by their persecutors is grotesquely opposite to the truth.2 Post-Columbine popular culture, as evidenced by such texts as Faye Kellerman ’s best-selling 2001 murder mystery The Forgotten, continues to view racism as a major motivation for participation in Goth youth cultures. Kellerman ’s beautifully crafted police procedural novels not only use Orthodox Jewish life to provide background color, they make a serious effort to educate readers through descriptions of Judaism meant to combat anti-Semitism. Therefore her conflation of the villainous new character Ruby Ranger’s involvement in Goth with pedophilia (here defined as a twenty-two-year-old woman’s interest in teenaged boys), nonconsensual S/M practice, white supremacist views aligned with those of the militia movement, a “fixation about the dark side,” hero worship of Hitler and other mass murderers as “those who make an impact, albeit an evil one,” and criminal computer hacking strongly reflects mainstream media images of Goth as essentially racist insanity threatening to destroy young people’s decency in all possible ways (120–21). Ranger’s appearance is recognizably Goth to those familiar with the subculture ’s style. She dresses all in black and “[h]er hair was black and pokerstraight . . . . Her complexion was chalk white, red lipstick outlined her mouth, and green eyes peered from black-lined sockets” (118). In case we lack the specific knowledge necessary to recognize Ranger’s adherence to the subculture ’s standards from this description, another character explicitly identifies her as “Goth” (120). Although Kellerman’s characters tend to be developed beyond the usual stereotypes of genre fiction, Ruby is presented as “[j]ust evil” (206). This depiction is understandable given that the novel focuses on the dangers posed to Jews by obsessive racism and that, at the time of the novel’s composition, the Columbine shooters were generally understood to have been neo-Nazis on a...

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