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The Influence of Genre Gothic Novel in Romantic Period to The Gothic Style in Indonesia Today ‘Gothic’ came from the word ‘Goths’ which is the name of one of Germanic tribes. According to Jordenes, the writer from Romantic period, the Goths came from the southern Sweden and then moved to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. In recent years, Gothic has meant several things. It can be a particular style of arts, novels, paintings, architectures and even in the form of music style. Initially gothic novel first appeared at time of Romantic period in a novel by Horce Walpoe, “The Castle of Otranto” in 1765.
Concerning with the Romantic period, gothic was mostly identified as a bad feeling such as disappointment, sadness, fear, and concerns. The gothic novel is mostly set in an old castle and it evokes strong atmosphere of horror and frightened. The character itself often shows the weakness of the protagonist characters who always succumbs to the antagonist one, it usually occurs on the women who has to be married to the one she doesn’t love. It arises anger and highly sentimental feeling. Crying and emotional are often shown in every characters in the novel.
Moreover the gothic novel always closely relate to the condition of someone’s feeling of the feeling itself. As the time goes by, gothic has become very popular in all over the world, including in Indonesia. The influence of Gothic genre in Romantic period has greatly affected to the adherent of gothic in recent years. For some people, gothic is accepted to be a particular style of living, such as the way they think, interpret something or even how they look like in public. Gothic is supposed to appear as a sub culture for modern society, but unfortunately many Goths accept this in the sense of gloomy.
For me, personally, in this case, gothic style is kind of strange, they usually apply black color to express their personality. They always wear everything in black. As well as the way they perceive everything ahead them. The basic assumption of gothic which is identified as a very bad condition of human’s feeling make the Goths often doing such things unexpectedly. For example in a case of that The Goths often feel that they are out of attention, they feel people around them seem like ignore them, this thing mostly occurs in young age. But the fact is not always true, they are just exaggerating the situation.
They regard everything only in ‘black’ point of view. They are very sensitive and even some Goths do a crazy thing like cutting a particular part of their bodies in order to leave out what they assume as problems. This thing happens is solely to pull out attention from the others. This kind of thing is the example of the implication of Gothic genre which is being followed by Goths in order to express their feelings and emotions. We can relate it into some kind of depression, suicide attemption, and many other mental problems which doesn’t bring any good effect either for society in general or for the Goths in particular.
Another effect of Gothic genre to the Gothic style is drinking their blood by cutting some part of body as the ritual and a symbol of strong culture. They copy the habitual of a vampire drinking blood that they assume as someone strong and immutable. By drinking blood like a vampire, they believe that it is the way to the eternity. Whereas, to show our pride of something, is this case ‘culture’ or something they believe and exalt, there is no need to do such thing. There are so many other things to apply such like doing performance art or something like that.
All matters above strongly reinforce us that Gothic is identified as hurting ourselves. No wonder many young age in this case the Goths, like to be alone and tend to have a soul rebel. In some research, they say that 55% of young age who are in Gothic style often like to hurt themselves in many reasons. It means that most Goths tend to have personality problems. In this case, the gloomy of Gothic style is not the only thing to blame. it depends on how people see this case in what point of view. No wonder most Goths are young ages, they are still unstable and not able to control their emotions.
They are easy to be influenced and they need to learn more about what exactly the meaning of Gothic in general. They often don’t know what implication of Gothic really is. It will be better if we apply ‘gothic’ in the form of architecture, novels, paintings and many other things that don’t have any relation to the human body. Rather than doing risky thing, it will be better utilizing community with something more useful and don’t forget to always give emotional support among friends. let’s keep the gothic style without taking the negative side.