Chuck Klosterman - Something Wicked This Way Comes: An Essay from Chuck Klosterman IV

An Essay from Chuck Klosterman IV

Chuck Klosterman

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This essay was previously published in Chuck Klosterman IV copyright 2006, 2007 by Chuck Klosterman.

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ISBN 978-1-4516-2517-2

Previously published in a different form in SPIN magazine.

THE ICE PLANET GOTH

This article is a combination of two forms of quasi-journalism: its 50 percent a Look at All These Misplaced Weirdos story, and its 50 percent an Enjoy My Self-Reflexively Peculiar Personal Experience story.

In many ways, this was among the easiest pieces I ever wrote; all I had to do was show up. One day every year, a whole bunch of goth kids go to Disneyland (partially because they like the iconography, but mostly because it seems like a crazy thing for goth kids to do). As such, these kids really want attention; they were not difficult to find, and it was not difficult to convince them to talk about themselves. I simply spent the day walking up to pasty strangers in black capes and asking them why the fuck they thought Space Mountain was fabulous.

This was actually the second story I wrote about goths; the first was in Akron, the day after the Columbine school shootings. That, obviously, was a somewhat more serious article, my core thesis being that the overwhelming majority of existing goth kids did not aspire to wear trench coats to biology class before shooting every cheerleader in the face. To me, that was the most insane thing about Columbine: prior to April 20, 1999, it wasnt just that goth kids werent considered violent; prior to that tragedy, goth kids werent even considered scary. They were just the kids who listened during English class.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
(DECEMBER 2002)

If you cant find a reason to hate Disneyland, youre just not trying. Like the insincere smile of an aging bank teller, Disneyland represents a contradiction with no discernible upside: its hokey and archaic, yet gaudy and corporate. Its all kitsch sunshine and crass consumerism, and any self-respecting cynic would despise its existence.

Unless, of course, said cynic enjoys Bauhaus.

Dont let anyone tell you the Age of Irony is over. Its alive and well in California, and heres proof: goth kids love Disneyland. On the final Sunday of every August, droves of goth-tacular witches and warlocks drive to Anaheim and enter the foreboding inner sanctum of Mickeys Toontown. Welcome to Bats Day in the Fun Park, the annual SoCal collision of goth culture and family fun.

L.A. goth is very different from goth everywhere else in America, explains Bats Day coordinator and Disney super-fan Noah Korda, the diminutive thirty-one-year-old who spearheads the pilgrimage. I mean, its cold everywhere else. In places like Chicago, its gloomy. But goths in California are mostly happy people. I was just the kind of person who was always interested in creepy crap. For me, this has never been about being sad or alienated.

Bats Day began in 1998. At the time, it was just an excuse to be weird. A few regulars from Hollywood goth clubs like Helter Skelter and Perversion decided to drop acid and walk around Disneyland on a summer afternoon. The following year it was officially dubbed Bats Day, and it has grown ever since. When the sun was at its zenith on August 25 of this year, more than five hundred black-cloaked iconoclasts were tromping around Mickeys playland. It is not, however, a Disney-sanctioned event. We dont contact the park, says Korda. And they probably wouldnt care, but just in case, I dont want to give them a chance to come up with a reason to shut it down. But its got to be pretty obvious that this is going on.

At times during Bats Day, it was impossible to swing a dead cat in Disneyland without hitting a goth (of course, if you had swung a dead cat around Disneyland, a few of these kids probably would have found that awesome). Heres a Dionysian diary from the Day of the Disney Dead.

10:10 A.M.: The sun is already pouring through holes in the powder-blue California sky as I meander through the gates of Disneyland, assaulted on all sides by small children shrieking for merchandise and ice cream. At the point of entry, I see a sign that reads Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. I take ten steps into this world and immediately see a man selling overpriced Kodak disposable cameras. Yesterday and tomorrow arent quite as charming or futuristic as one might anticipate. My suspicion was that 10:00 A.M. would be too early for goth hunting, but there are already dozens of specimens congregating near some poor sap in a Goofy suit, and a few of them are pushing baby carriages and donning mouse ears. I begin chatting with a forty-year-old goth legal secretary named Crickett Hoffman. I ask her to explain the paradox of supposedly gloomy humans frolicking in the happiest place on earth.

Goths tend to be kids at heart, says Hoffman. When youre young, you think the goth movement is about depression and alienation. But if goths were really that depressed, there would be no goth movement. Theyd all kill themselves.

10:54 A.M.: Several goths are gawking at a woman portraying Ariel, the chesty little mermaid from that movie about the little mermaid, which I think was called The Little Mermaid. Although there are no goths at a nearby headgear outlet called Hatmosphere, I spot several of them wearing newly purchased Captain Hook pirate hats. This prompts me to consider starting work on a nonfiction book titled Sir Francis Drake: The First Goth?

11:07 A.M.: My first error: I see a goateed guy wearing a skull T-shirt, accompanied by a black-haired girlfriend with more tattoos than Tupac and a complexion the color of cocaine. I ask him how many years he has participated in Bats Day in the Fun Park, but it turns out he has no idea what Im talking about. We just came here for the hell of it, says twenty-seven-year-old Brandon Stratton. I had no idea any of this was going on. Stratton and I then have a brief conversation about Tim Burton movies while his girlfriend stares at me silently, probably fantasizing about how I would look swinging from a gallows.

Noon: The entire goth army convenes at Sleeping Beauty Castle for the first of three group photos, all taken by Noah Korda. While we wait for Korda to organize the sinister posse, I strike up a conversation with Scott McElhaney, a six-foot-two forty-year-old who vaguely resembles Marilyn Manson and has an interesting backstory: After spending twenty-one years in the navy, he has taken a job with a defense contractor, building and testing military infrared sensors. This is an admittedly ungothlike move, but McElhaney says goth-dom was never his bag to begin with. I dont think Im really goth, he says. Im more of a hearse person. But hearse people are certainly sympathetic to the goth sensibilities. It seems that McElhaney is a member of Phantom Coaches, a subsection of humanity united in their love of cars that tote corpses (McElhaney drives a 1970 hearse with a Cadillac chassis but concedes that the ultimate ride is the 59 Superior driven by Bud Cort in